MacMac and the Flying Nemo

Mac Mac and the flying Nemo’s

Heading to South Africa for weekends sounds plausible when Gabs is just 6 hours from Johannesburg, SA –right? Well it is when your greenery, mountain and ocean deprived…(Let’s ignore the fact most sites are then a good 5+ hours from J’burg on top of that). What can I say, we got desperate. 

Once more I’ve decided to put my blog in more of an outline format.

Caving, Sabie and J’burg w'end
Aka --- MAC MAC!

-Our weekend trip already had an eventful start when Audrey had forgotten something and was running late; the bus driver refused to wait 5 minutes in a country where everything is late by at 10mins or several hours. It was painfully ironic. I pleaded for him to wait, but clearly I need to work on my womanly charms. But that’s OK because my taxi-man, Julius, (mentioned in the ‘A Rough Start to Africa’) chased down the bus, driving along the sidewalk telling Audrey “It’s ok – we’ll catch him!” And catch him they did.

-With my brother working for Google in J’burg, we got to stay in his luxurious pad for the night. The next day, while he was at work, we visited the Apartheid museum using local combis as transport. It was a good way to see the ‘real’ J’burg and realise it was not so hostile as everyone makes out (well, ok, I wouldn’t visit the MTN combi rank at night.. and we still avoided certain suburbs). More shocking though was passing through suburbs and seeing the most downright affluent castle-homes contrasted only 5 minutes later with shacks.

-The Apartheid museum basically outlined the history of the apartheid, how the policies developed, the abominations committed during that time and how it was finally brought down.

-In Sandton we visited a typical Melbourne-style shopping centre, gaping over the wondrous cafes and coffee. Initially I was amazed at my Melbourne-level coffee, feeling as though I had been transported to sheer awesomeville, but about 5 minutes later I was already over the bright lights and obnoxious superficiality of the shops.

-That night we headed out of J’burg to Sabie (Mpulunga region in a mountainous area) through a thunderstorm that got so intense the red earth from the roadside swept by in treacherous torrents, leading to a few hairy skids. I must say, Gavin handled the car amazingly. The trip was so entertaining, popcorn was obligatory.

-The next day we took a 13km hike through beautiful greenery, rolling fields and waterfalls. Fog and mist enshrouded the ‘panoramic route’, but whilst we didn’t see much of a panorama it was beautiful none-the-less!

-The night was slightly out of the ‘normal’; a braii with a whole bunch of german travellers, a dip in the FREEZING COLD pool of a waterfall , (the falls so strong you could feel the suction trying to pull you under) and a trip to a witchdoctor where Jen and I had good fun playing with little lizard dragons. Oh and the owner of the backpackers shuttled us to and from said witchdoctor, stopping on route to fill up with about 20cents of petrol. Apparently he felt compelled to take us to the witchdoctor on a ‘magic’ whim… Makes sense, right?

     

-Sunday was the day I had been hanging out for: CAVING!!! ‘Dry’ caving in the sense it didn’t involve scuba… but it did involve wading up to chest height in water…
In any case, it satisfied my need to scramble, squeeze and crawl through watery passages, get ridiculously muddy and finished in an beautiful crystal chamber. Alas there are no pictures in said cave as I like my camera intact. Later we scared a huge group of tourists who had come to see the large/lit-up touristic cave, oblivious that separate, ‘real’ cave passages existed and thought that us coming out muddy and drenched (also adding a limp or two for effect) was how their tour would result. Ha.ha.

-Alas, not long after that we had to leave the beautiful, mountainous, green countryside with cute cafes (and gooood food/decent coffee), friendly locals and minimal obnoxious high-level security.

-Back to J’burg for the night and back to Gabs early Monday.

Sodwana Bay

Pretty sure I don’t need to re-iterate my dive obsession. For a short, 5-day break between classes and exams I had decided to go on another Scuba Trip to Sodwana Bay. This time, however, I was determined to drag some others into my addiction; Audrey, Jenipher, Rebecca, Nora, Alyssa and Lindsey (other international kids at UB) all joined me as they went diving for the first time on their OW course.

-Our trip started at 5am on a Wednesday after a late night at Karaoke – I got just 2 hrs sleep. The others didn’t really fare any better, so we slept on our pick-up van from the border. It was so spacious and roomy compared to the normal bus, so we took full advantage to find an ideal sleeping position.

-We transited through J’burg to get kitted up with gear from Greg’s ‘Jozi divers’ shop and collect permits and such. Needless to say, our priority again was good coffee and once that need had been satisfied we were able to continue.

-There were quite a few delays in our trip, resulting in us arriving near midnight in Sodwana after our 5am departure. The most significant was when we got bogged on the sandy road, oh-so-close to our destination. With brute girl power we detached and pulled away the trailer before giving the minibus a good heave and relocating said trailer to a less-boggy area to be reattached.

-The others had pool-and-theory sessions early the next day whilst I just chilled and played with my dive gear in preparation for the next day.

-The open-water diving started the following day. The boats were large rubber duckies that made the journey half as fun as the destination. Upon return, the means of stopping and ‘landing’ the boats back to the beach was literally by powering up through the waves, flying out of the air and ‘crashing’ into the sand. Not as rough as it sounds, but you had to hold on tight!

-Across 2 days we did 4 dives. Alas, I wanted to do more but charters are loathe to go out when the wind picks up a bit in the afternoon. Pffft.

-The others spent 3 of those dives focussing on skills, whilst I got to cruise around and explore with my ‘buddy’ (the operator of Nemo dive charters), staying down for over an hour.

-Some of you know I’m not good with identifying my Marine life other than “oh pretty!” or “ohh that’s colourful” or “holy crap that’s huge!” I’ll try to let the pictures do the talking, but some of the things I know we saw inc; turtles (biggg ones), ribbon eels, honeycomb moray, rays, giant potato bass, many nudibranches, shrimps, COMMON HELMET GURNARD (I’ve only seen one once before in Madagascar – it literally looks like a flying fish), many Nemo’s and Dory’s, parrot fish, rainbow wrasse, triggers etc etc etc.

                                      

-As per usual, the novelty of being in good-food-land (ie not Botswana) was amazing. The dinners we had were literally like home-cooked and the best we had since leaving home. We also enjoyed the wondrous delight known as ‘smocktails’ (smoothie cocktails/alcoholic milkshakes – really a dessert more than anything).

-Ostensibly the Sodwana bay initiation for open water divers concludes with a drink from a Kudu-horn. I tried to opt out for this, simply because after so much dinner I couldn’t fathom more liquid, but apparently as a ‘first-time-Sodwana-Bay’ diver I was also obliged. Admittedly I couldn’t resist the novelty of drinking out of a Kudu-horn either (good vegetarian or what?).

-On the last day of diving we also experienced another bog-event leaving our campgrounds. This time it was really deep. As locals trickled by, each of them stopped to help and the result was a massive group digging, wedging rocks and logs and pushing the minibus to freedom. Great success! One of them claimed with that hard work he needed hugs from us. They were so friendly; we couldn’t resist (geez I’m getting soft in my old age!)

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-We were all sad when it came time to leave the beautiful beach behind and head back to the desert with a long journey ahead of us. But as a group of 7 you can probably guess we made good fun of it!

Go Siame – Goodbye: An extension about leaving Gabs

Basically after returning from Sodwana I had just one week left. This was full of exams and farewell events! The final jog behind UB to the game reserve, the final visits to the park (with a walkey walk and a spiney spin – as Jen would say), the final visit to Fego (our amazing homework study café), the final trip to riverwalk….

It all sounds so trivial, but you get to the point where you realize that despite any drawbacks a place may have you really learn to make it a home. When you get to the point that the local cafes know who you are as do the ladies by the craft stalls and the students at the university…..and even your shoebox room has become such a familiar retreat, it makes it so sad when you realize you’ll be leaving it all behind forever.

Nonetheless, I made the most of my last week with friends. Our final activities included:

-Gaborone Dam for the sunset (can’t believe it felt like such beautiful African bush on the water – effectively in the middle of the city!)

-Climbed Kgale hill one last time, taking a new exploratory (and longer) route in refreshingly stormy weather and were granted a beautiful night time view.

-Burnt our UB notes (the hand written stuff that we couldn’t cart back) and appropriately roasted marshmallows on them.

-Had a final mugg and bean session to complete Kgale hill

-A big group farewell dinner :’(

-A final night out at Bull n’ Bush

-The last departure from Las Vegas!

I’m not going to lie, it was hard to hold myself together when I was collected by Julius on Sunday morning (not my taxi man this time, but a friendly Engineer at Aurecon who was to take me to Kasane and the next chapter of my trip).

Even thinking about all my buddies now and my time back in Gabs pulls at me. And I’m not meant to be an emotional person! =P

Still, you know your life is pretty good when, despite missing the past, you’re also enjoying the present and looking forward to the future!!