Roadtrip to the Drakensberg

Okay, back to ‘reporting.’ Over Labor Day weekend, a group of us (Michelle, Erin, Stephanie = PAC doctors and a couple of other friends = Tao and Joe) went on a road trip to the Drakensberg mountain range in South Africa. On Friday night, we drove part of the way to Newcastle, South Africa and stayed in a quaint bed and breakfast called, The Tigerskloof. We requested breakfast at 7:00am so that we could get an early start and complete our trek to the Drakensberg in time for an afternoon hike and much anticipated sunset (the Lonely Planet described it as an ‘explosion of red and orange’).

Tigerskloof

We were quite coordinated and managed to roll-out of ‘the kloof’ just before 8:00am. As we weren’t sure of the availability of gas along our route to the Drakensberg, we opted to stop in Newcastle on our way out of town. Doug, Joe and I were in our car and then Michelle, Erin, Stephanie, and Tao were in Michelle’s Honda-CRV (that will be important, later). As you have probably come to expect, there are always a series of unexpected little twists and turns during our weekend adventures. We have endearingly opted to call these ‘side trips’ like they are bonus points of interest or something. I’ll say upfront, that Michelle was the ‘side trip’ queen for our Drakensberg trip, and her first little jaunt took place at the gas station in Newcastle. Since we were in South Africa, a couple of folks needed Rand (instead of the Emalangeni we use in Swaziland) and opted to frequent the ATM inside of the gas station. Stephanie and Erin successfully extracted money, but Michelle’s ATM card was eaten by the machine. This detour cost us 90 minutes at the gas station until a local representative for the bank that sponsored this particular ATM came and rescued Michelle’s card. None of us are sure how Michelle convinced him to come before noon on a Saturday morning, but we were relieved to be once again, on our way (P.S. at 10:00am)(P.P.S. her ATM card was expired and that’s why the machine ate it…note to self…).

Eventually, at 12:30pm we arrived at Golden Gate National Park (South Africa, not San Francisco) and stopped on the way into the park at a ‘viewpoint.’ This baboon was just sitting on the edge of the cliff checking out the valley below.

After a quick lunch, we set-off on our afternoon hike. The group had elected to climb a peak in the central region of the park and we were all happy to stretch our legs after a back-to-back long night/early morning full of driving. While there were 7 adults and 3 trail maps, I think that everyone was relying on everyone else to lead the way, because in no less than 30 minutes into our 4 hour hike, we were completely off the trail and bushwhacking our way up the mountain. Despite the fact that (like I said) there were 7 adults and 3 trail maps, we never did right our course and proceeded to summit the mountain ‘from the side.’ During the actual ascent, I didn’t think it was all that fun, because it was like being on a treadmill set at maximum elevation – straight up. But, when it was all over and I was drinking a beer, eating a ‘no bake’ cookie and watching the explosion of red and orange reflect off of the cliffs, I agreed with the group that it was ‘more fun’ doing the hike without the trail.

Getting ready to hike
The mountain
Our route
Views from the top
Happy hour
Sunset off of ‘the mushroom’ rock

After the hike, happy hour, and the sunset, we set-off to our next destination in the Drakensberg, Windshoek Lodge. On Sunday, we were going to hike in an area of the Drakensberg called, the Amphitheatre; therefore we drove the 60 kilometers on Saturday evening as to wake-up close to the trailhead. The Amphitheatre proved to be a spectacular hike and included countless meters of exposed chain-link ladders on the side of a cliff. For a few, these were no problem, for others these were not necessarily welcome, but tolerated, and for Doug, well, these were ulcer inducing. Doug doesn’t love heights (unless he’s jumping out of plane or bombing down a run on his snowboard – go figure), and the chain-link ladders nearly made him turn around. Alas, he persevered and here are a few shots from the day.

Windshoek Lodge

The hike
The ladders

The Amphitheatre Post-hike happy hour
On Monday morning at breakfast, as we were planning our drive home to Swaziland, Stephanie mentioned the possibility of stopping at a museum on the way home. We all agreed that this would be a fine idea in order to break-up the drive and to learn a little more about South African/Zulu history. We made our way to the Bloed River Museum and then to the Zulu Museum to see ‘both sides’ of the story.

Bloed River MuseumZulu Museum
This particular side-trip was 20 kilometers down a dirt road and while we had estimated that getting back to the highway by 4:00pm would enable us to reach the border by 6:00pm, before it closed, we were wrong and found ourselves driving 140 kilometers north to the next border crossing, which was open until 8:00pm. That is, until…’side-trip’ number 2 happened and Michelle’s Honda CRV overheated. To make a long story short, because trust me, it is a long one, we were on the side of the road for 4 hours in rural South Africa and obviously ended-up missing the 8:00pm border crossing, too. Due to safety reasons, all 7 of us decided to stay the night in South Africa and to get up at 5:00pm in order to cross the border (finally), which opened at 7:00am on Tuesday morning. Since it was a three-day weekend, all of the employed folks needed to be back to work! All-in-all, it was a fantastic weekend, and my ‘car kit’ got a good workout (we used the water, the coolant, the emergency reflective triangles, the gloves, the headlamp, and the first aid kit (Tao cut his thumb open on a pocket knife while under the hood of the car examining the source of the overheating…). Always an adventure…

Lots of cooks in the kitchenRescue mission

Reporting vs. Reflecting

Recently, my friend Joe and I were discussing our respective blogs when he posed an interesting question. He asked me if my blog entries were more ‘reports’ or ‘reflections.’ Without much need for deliberation, I promptly responded that my blog entries were definitely ‘reports.’ Basically, I report each week about our travels, the people we’ve met, the adventures we’ve encountered, the funny or random events which have occurred, etc. Occasionally, I insert a reflective statement or two into my entries, but in general I am definitely the ‘reporting’ type. So, for the sake of variety, I am going to dedicate this blog entry to ‘reflections.’

Reflection #1: Our life in Swaziland is very different from our life in Los Angeles. Based on my (current) values, I would say that our lifestyle in Swaziland is better…or at least that it is just what we need, right now. We don’t have a television, so we read and play games with greater frequency. We get more sleep and a lot more exercise. I make dinner most nights. I’ve stopped grinding my teeth. We get together socially with friends 3-4 nights a week. Doug has lost 10 pounds. We take Siswati lessons two nights a week and play Ultimate Frisbee two nights a week (I honestly can’t remember the last time I had time to commit to doing anything, every week). And don’t get me wrong, I’ve been happy at every stage of my life to date and thoroughly enjoyed whatever I was doing at the time, but I think that this ‘break’ is perfectly timed. We are in between Doug’s residency and his upcoming fellowship (for those of you who don’t know, Doug has accepted a fellowship in neonatology at the University of California San Diego beginning in July of 2011). I am coming down from the best job I’ve ever had (at Teach For America) and the hardest job I’ve ever had (at Teach For America). We are getting some of the time back that was lost to commuting over the past three years. We are spending 80 hours a week together instead of working 80 hours a week. We are taking advantage of the fact that Doug is never ‘on call’ and that he gets all of his weekends! Doug is doing a pediatric HIV research project that he’ll put forth for publication. I bake, for crying out loud. Basically, life here (for us) is slow and simple and we are lapping it up.

Reflection #2: I cannot recall a time in my life when I’ve truly felt like the ‘odd (wo)man out’ or discriminated against (unless you count in elementary school when I had a mustache (thank God for electrolysis) and my gender was debatable). Even when I lived in T’iis Nazbas on the Navajo Reservation and clearly was the odd one out, I was immersed (so, so, so immersed) in the community and therefore more readily accepted. So, last week, when we were crossing the South African/Swaziland border very early in the morning (see ‘Drakensberg’ blog entry for details), I was taken aback (a bit) by my first real dose of ‘one of these things, is not like the other.’ We were crossing the border with three friends, but since Doug and I were driving, we waited in the ‘immigration’ line in order to get a pass for our vehicle, while the others went aehad to wait in the ‘customs’ line. And, let me be clear, I’m using the term, ‘line’ loosely. It is one of the most frustrating parts about getting out of Swaziland – so frustrating, that I’ll take my number and a wasted afternoon at the DMV in the States over the craziness of ‘the line’ at the border, any day. So, Doug and I were waiting behind a group of people who also appeared to be waiting behind ‘Window 1.’ There were lots of people and the hallway was cramped. We were being jostled about, but I was holding my place firmly as the border had only just opened when a man came from outside of the building (so, not even in our little ‘line’ for Window 1) and looked me in the eye and then squeezed himself directly in front of me. Now, in my normal life, I would have said ‘excuse me’ and explained that there was a line and that he was cutting and blah, blah, blah, but there was something inside of me that prevented me from doing so. I felt angry to be the obvious and ideal place for him to enter ‘the line.’ I felt inadequate because my Siswati is only emerging and I definitely couldn’t have articulated my desire for him to go to the back of the line. And I felt like a foreigner; almost like I didn’t have the right to say anything anyways because I clearly did not belong. Now, obviously, getting cut in line is not the end of the world, but like I said before, what I felt his cutting in front of me represented was bothersome and also a first for me. Two more men cut in front of us in exactly the same fashion which provided a little reprieve from the ‘I’ll show you’ conversation that I was having in my head. My attention was quickly diverted to convincing Doug that our place in ‘line’ wasn’t worth getting into a fight over! In the end, as soon as Window 1 opened, we ended up cutting every last person because the man behind us heaved us forward, but regardless, it was the principle that got me fired-up.

Malolotja

This past weekend was a 3-day weekend due to the annual ‘Reed Dance’ during which all of the eligible young, Swazi women dance for the King (topless and holding a reed). Traditionally, the King uses the Reed Dance as a means of choosing additional wives (I think he currently has 9), but this year it was just a ceremony as he did not take any wives. Before our arrival in Swaziland, Doug had read about this tradition and exclaimed numerous times that we would be leaving town the weekend of the Reed Dance, just in case the King developed a desire for a midwestern umlungu. So, we booked a cabin and made the short, 40 minute journey to the Malolotja Game Reserve (one of the perks of living in a tiny kingdom is nothing is very far away!). When we arrived at the park and walked into the reception office to check-in, the woman behind the counter introduced us to the other woman in the office by saying, ‘this is my son’s doctor.’ It was a prideful moment for Doug as it was his first, ‘doctor sighting.’ Occasionally, when we were in Richmond I would see one of my students in the grocery store and experience a ‘teacher sighting’ or in L.A. I would see a corps member out-and-about in Long Beach, but Doug has never lived/worked in the same community and especially not one this small, so it was a happy moment. Anyways, after getting the key to our cabin, reviewing the park map and getting hike recommendations, and discovering coke light at the little country store we made our way to our cabin.

Malolotja is another one of the parks operated by the King and it was truly awe-inspiring. The park itself was 1800 hectares (not sure of the conversion to acres, but it was a BIG park) and we only saw two other people the entire time that we were hiking. The terrain changed frequently from lush green to desert brown and sometimes there was even a line in the brush when it changed. The thing that I liked the most was seeing the layers upon layers of mountains.

On Sunday, after we got settled, we ventured out for a hike at about 2:oopm to check out the Malolotja Waterfall, but we were stopped short due to the fact that the birds are nesting along the trail until about November. We decided to take a different route when we heard the first grumblings of thunder and decided not to wait for a third reason not to go on this particular hike. Having heard how the lightening is attracted to the granite rock and seeing exposed domes such as this one, we decided hiking in a storm on exposed mountainsides was not in our plans for the afternoon! So, we drove through the park to some of the different viewpoints and ended up checking out the mine, as well. By late afternoon, the weather had moved on, so we hiked just 45 minutes in to see a waterfall and ended up back at our cabin before nightfall.

There were a couple of new animal sightings in Malolotja including the aardwolf.

On Monday, we woke up early to hike and were surprised to encounter so many animals enroute to the trailhead. We saw the largest herd of animals that we’ve seen in one place to date and it included zebra, impala, and Blesbok (also a new one for us).

Additionally, we saw group of about 10-12 baboons (we think, but they could have been another primate creature) running across the valley. They were too quick to capture on film, but I did get one looking back at us. Look carefully, in the mid-to-right-center…