Howick

     We went to Howick to stay with more cousins! There was fantastic food (all of our South African relations were fantastic chefs), and then and we watched the funniest comedy show I have ever seen. I usually don't like comedians and sigh inwardly whenever I get stuck watching someones favorite comedian for hours on YouTube (I find most comedians to be so full of themselves it makes me queasy). However, this guy was very funny (and slightly less narcissistic). His name is Trevor Noah and although he was a bit naughty, I was so excited to get most of the South African social commentary jokes!
    One of the days we spent there we went to Howick Falls which was very beautiful:

We then shopped around a bit and then our cousins showed us a local shoe factory--it was so quaint! There was a very well-designed sun dial outside which was of the elves and the shoemaker story:

       The next day we were shown a pig farm, which changed my mind about consuming pork...pigs are kinda yucky (except when they're babies).

    We also were shown a polo-horse farm, went on a beautiful drive, and then went to Michael House School ( a posh private school--gorgeous), then went to a very cute place for tea.
    We then left the next day for Johannesburg!

St. Lucia

     We got to St. Lucia just in time to take a sunset river tour. We saw a water monitor, kingfisher, fish eagle, ibis, a couple of smallish crocodiles, and tons of hippos! I was super excited to see hippos outside of a zoo and also because one of my favorite books when I was little was Hot Hippo and I felt all cool, because I already knew most of what the guide was saying about hippos from it.

       We got so close that the ferry almost bumped a hippo! They were enormous and quite cute...in a sort of grotesque way. It made me really want to go and watch Disney's Fantasia, so I could see the one bit where the hippos dance around in tutus. However, hippos are not all cute, they are very dangerous! In fact, they are thought to be the 5th most deadly animal, killing approximately 300 people a year. Although they look fat and lazy, that's because they are nocturnal and at night they may walk about 6 miles to graze, so there were warnings all over town telling people to stay indoors at night. I was glad to be in a fairly large ferry!

       We had been lucky enough to not only make the last tour but also have that last tour be a sunset one! This was not only pretty, but the hippos were waking up and getting ready to get out of the water and munch.

I am excited about this picture because it was taken with my broken camera

The lighting was absolutely stunning, and it was a very romanticical idea to be on the water with the sun setting, a slight breeze, and "exotic" animals.

After our tour we searched around for accommodation and the next morning we had a market adventure (just f.y.i. the markets in St. Lucia are a bit of a rip-off, it would be far more economical to shop at the little stands on the sides of the road leading to the town) and then were off again.

Tembe Elephant Park

    

 We set off to Tembe Park (for a more "official" game drive) and drove, and drove, and drove, until we were up by Mozambique! The drive there was very interesting because of how rural the area was. The landscape became more and more how I had pictured Africa: dry. There were also all sorts of livestock in the road, lorries (trucks) piled up to a point of lunacy, markets, etc.  

                            

        My dad had told us that we would be sleeping in tents so we were all expecting a true camping experience....

The sleeping bags

The bushes

...and were very pleasantly surprised.
       We got there just in time for a game drive (we saw some impalas, nyalas, zebra, elephants, giraffe) led by our amazing guide/tracker Tom. He was very knowledgeable about the habits and personalities of all of the animals and patiently bore our incessant questioning and potty stops. Afterwards, we had the most amazing food, fed bush-babies pineapple and then happily retreated the "tent"!
      
Day 1:
We woke up at 5:00, turned off the heated blanket (luxe non?), and went on a freeeezing game drive 'till 9:00. During the drive we spotted a pride of lions sunning themselves in the distance, as well as the usual nyalas and impalas, and because it's an elephant park: some elephants. The entire morning drive I had terrible hiccups and so that provided entertainment between animal sightings. When we came back we had another amazing meal and then had a nap. During our siesta, a troupe of monkeys jumped on the roof of our "tent" like a trampoline, scrambled up a tree next to it and then bouncing to the ground. It was so funny and I wish I had gotten a video of it...but my camera was broken, and by the time I got the family one they were gone.

       At 11:30 our guide took us to a hide (a balcony sort of thing by a watering hole) where we got to observe the animals come to drink. It was very interesting to see such a massive variety of animals interacting and I learned a lot more about male elephants than I ever wanted to. It was so funny to see the warthog families come and run around with their little tails up in complete panic when a bigger animal shooed them away. Tembe actually has a live webcam of the watering hole on their website which is really cool so here's a link if you're interested.  We stayed for about an hour, went back to camp for lunch and then at 3:00 we went on another drive until 6:00.

We found some elephants!

A zebra

 ...and lots of other animals! We then headed back to camp and had some kudu steak for dinner--which was absolutely scrumptious (and I am not usually a huge meat fan)!

Impalas (I always recognize them by the "m" on their bums)

     Although we had been having lots of fun, we decided to cut our stay from 3 days to 2. This wasn't because we didn't like it but because we wanted to travel to a different area with different animals. Tembe's landscape is called a "sand forest" meaning the ground is pretty much completely sand and then there are lots of scrubby bushes and trees that grow very closely together. While this is great for the animals it is a lot harder for humans in a somewhat noisy car to see them. We were also just kinda sick of sitting for sooooo long, which sounds spoilt, but you have to remember that we had already been spoilt by our cousins, gone to a different elephant park in Knysna, and spent most of our trip driving.

Day 2:

      We were up at 5:00 a.m. again and went on another game drive. The sunrise as always was superb and we stumbled upon about 25 elephants breakfasting! Also a lioness came about 20 ft away from the car...just as our memory card was full...I'm not making it up--cross my heart and kiss my elbow! Our guide had been teaching us how to recognize different animal tracks and it was exciting to follow their lives from their spoor. 

Elephant footprints

We finished up the drive, packed (I finally got to shower!!!!) and then said goodbye. We had wanted to do a quick drive through Mozambique but good ol' James II was not built for sand and so we decided instead to find a place where we could see some hippos!

Umdloti (pronounced ooomshlotee)

    A very kind lady let us use her flat in Umdloti and it was absolutely beautiful there! We got to watch all sorts of massive ships deliver things to Durban and saw the beginning of the sardine run. Sadly, we missed it by about a week, but it was exciting nonetheless!

      Because South African homes are usually running on propane instead of natural gas like in the western U.S. their dryers are not very effective, or use so much electricity that they keep blowing circuits. Instead we hung our clothes to avoid power-outages, however, because it was often very humid things like jeans took forever to dry. After talking to our cousins we discovered that everyone irons everything, probably to get the remaining moisture out of clothes--boy I'm glad I don't have to do that everyday!

      We went to another ghetto-looking-but-surprisingly-awesome park, a bird one called Umgeni River. There were tons of different varieties of birds and a fairly good bird show. There was a fun aviary area where you could feed birds and they would come to eat from your hand and poop on you.

      One morning in the flat I grabbed my camera to take a picture of a lovely sunrise and discovered that the LSD screen had been cracked! I guess some mysterious being picked it up to look at pictures and dropped it. We had been warned that monkeys liked to break in, and although we didn't see one the entire time we stayed there, maybe they pulled a sneaky mission just to destroy my camera? Either way, it was not very fun to have to share a camera with my family the rest of the trip.

Death of a camera

Wartburg

     Wartburg is a tiny town that pretty much only exists because of sugar cane farms. In fact, our guide book didn't even feature it. We went there because we have some family there and it was my great-aunt's 80th birthday! Our family was super fun to get to know and we did all sorts of things. Our "cousins" (in South Africa if you know you're related to someone but it is too complicated to explain you just call them cousins) were friends with a couple of people who had their own little game farms and so they kindly took us on a tour!

We rode African style :)

     This tour ended up being the coolest exposure we have ever had to the wild beasties of South Africa (even after going to an actual game park later on). Because the animals were half tame we got to go super, super close to them and got to see a massive variety in a short amount of time (the happiness of this will be explained later).

We even got an epic giraffe picture!

  

And got super close to some rhinos

    Later on we also got a tour of a sugar factory and learned about how sugar is made from sugar cane. It was very interesting and I will never look at sugar the same way again. My mom's entire life was pretty much ruined and our hearts broken when we learned that brown sugar isn't healthier than white sugar. It is just a bit dirtier...that's pretty much the only difference nutritionally. However, I still think it tastes much better.
     While we were there we also got to see a sugar cane field burn. The farmers light their entire harvest on fire because it reduces the amount of manual labor to harvest it, and apparently returns some nutrients into the soil. I am pretty sure that this method of harvest is horrible for the environment, but that seems to be the easiest method...and it looks really cool!

        My great-aunt's birthday was great and we got to meet even more family which was lovely, because that was pretty much the main reason we went to South Africa was to get to know our family.

Yay cousins!

Durban!

 

     We flew into Durban and rented a car that looked the exact same as our other one (I will take the liberty to dub it James II) and drove off to Kloof to stay with some friends of my dad. On the way there we got stuck in rush hour traffic and saw a phenomena that would never be allowed on a free-way in the US: vendors on the free-way!

It was a bit scary, but the vendors were great at dodging cars and scooting along once the traffic started flowing again. 

        

     We stayed with some of my dad's friends in Kloof and had a fantastic time with them! On our first day there we went to a museum sort of thing called pheZulu. It had a model of a Zulu household (kraal?), tribal dances, and a very patient guide that we questioned nearly to death. Learning more about traditional  Zulu culture explained a lot about the issues that South Africa is having right now with switching from being very grounded in tradition to a more modern, globalized culture. 

       I felt bad for our guide because we had so many questions concerning Zulu culture that couldn't be answered simply, or at all. Modern Zulu culture is difficult to describe because it is always shifting due to globalization. Nowadays it is extremely hard to retain a pure tribal culture with so much modernity and now necessary interaction with other people that are not of the Zulu tribe.       Traditionally (according to the guide), a group of people are governed by a chief-- and later his decedents--who grants his subjects enough land for his means and sorts out arguments, crimes, etc. A Zulu household is started by a man finding a woman he is interested in and paying lobola for her. Paying lobola seems to be a fairly strong tradition still and has created some very interesting situations. Eleven cows is normal payment and each cow costs 5,000 R--so 5,000R divided by 7 = $714 and some change x 11= around $7, 857--that is quite a bit of money! Now it is a bit more common for people to just give the cash instead of going out and finding cows, but for someone who makes a living polishing shoes or selling coat-hangers on the side of the road it would take forever! There are also several meetings the man has to go through with the woman's family and then finally they can marry.

         Because of how long it would take to get married many people abandon the lobola tradition and just live with each other as if they were married because they don't think the payment will ever be possible to make. If the lady ends up getting pregnant the guy has to fork over another two cows (I think) for the first pregnancy and another cow for every one after that (if her family is traditional). 

       Having a family is a quite an ordeal as you can see! Also, traditionally, a man will have several wives--in fact, someone isn't really looked at as a man until he has a couple of wives. Each of the wives require their own hut and so a family can end up with several rondavels: one for the man, one for each wife, a separate cooking hut for each wife, one for boy children, one for girl children, and one for guests...and a couple others I can't remember. Then the women and children subsistence farm while young men hunt and the older men drink beer and plan out how much food their family will need. 

      However, from my observations (ignorant as they are) there are very few people who live a traditional life style. Most pick and choose which traditions they keep and adapt their lifestyle to suit modern times. Living traditionally seems to be super difficult, there are many traditional practices that the government has had to outlaw because it is not accepted in modern society ie: smoking marijuana for council meetings. So the result is people move away from the traditional places and go to the city to work and end up living in a tin lean-to with chickens and tyres outside it, drink cream soda, have t.v., but still have to pay lobola. Think of the Native Americans, but instead of them becoming a minority, being a majority... in a similar situation.

         I would really love to talk some more with some Zulu people and discuss how these changes have effected them and what they think will happen in the future. I feel like the easiest thing to happen would for people to join the global culture and just remember the tribal ways. The reason I feel this way is that even though a death of a traditional way is tragic, it really would make running the country much easier. Politically, it seems like things get a bit sticky because the government is trying to include the chiefs in decisions, which works sometimes, but often just goes ahead without them and that makes people angry. 

Disclaimer: these are my ignorant guesses, and opinions gathered from hear-say so I am super sorry if I have guessed incorrectly or made some gross misjudgment. If you want the whole story go do some researching that your's truly was too lazy to do. 

        After learning all sorts of interesting Zulu stuff there was a "traditional" Zulu courting dance, which was interesting, but I felt really bad the entire time that the performers had to act out something that used to be very important and now has turned into a tourist attraction. 

       Attached to the Zulu village part of pheZulu was a reptile park that was surprisingly awesome (I say surprisingly because from the outside it was pretty old and tacky looking). They had about 100 large crocodiles and 50 babies, a tortoise petting-zoo, and a snakes of South Africa exhibit. 

A crocodile was asleep with its tail out of the enclosure...so we did a silly tourist thing and touched it.

       

        Later we went into the city of Durban, and it was absolutely fantastic! We went to a flea market, ate delicious Indian food (Durban has a high concentration of Indian people), and people watched.

People really do carry things on their head!

    

We got some yummy curry powder!

I think the safety codes in the U.S. are different than in S.A.

       The next day we went to a creche (daycare)/orphanage...but ended up feeling really bad because although we brought sweets and food with us we didn't end up really helping with anything and didn't want to stick around and mess up the daycare lesson plan so we were just...awkward. Anyway, the moral of the story is to stay for a while and really find out what needs to be done. The kids were super cute though!

       Then we went to uShaka which was one of the most amazing aquariums I have ever seen!

The aquariums were massive, the specimens were top notch, and it was super new and shiny, we could have spent at least five hours there! There was also a water park that we didn't make it to, but I would say that uShaka is a must see. 

Then we had some more curry....which may be one of the best parts of Durban--I loooove Indian food!

        One night the maid of the family we stayed with made some Zulu food: milli pap (corn meal) as well as samp (it's kinda like hominy) and beans. It was yummy, but I think Indian food still wins.

Samp and beans and milli pap

      I really enjoyed going to Durban and wished I could have spent longer people watching, the city was so interesting.

P.S. While we were there, June 15 to be exact, we got to watch a total lunar eclipse! It was sooooo cool! 

Port Elizabeth (and the journey there)

        On our way to Port Elizabeth we stopped by:

Yep, Bloukrans Bridge: a 216 meter bridge that crazy people bungee off of! I had signed up to do it, but chickened out because my "logical" side kicked in and I had been awake the night before thinking about all sorts of weird injuries I could get from bungee jumping. I already have back problems and so my excuse (aside from losing the desire to jump off the bridge once I saw it) is that I was being sensible... My younger sisters did though and it looked super fun! The worst thing that happened was that one of my sisters had some of her capillaries around her eyes burst, but it wasn't a super big deal. It just looked like someone had taken some purple paint on a stipple brush around her eyes. At the end of their jump we stopped by the gift shop to get the videos of the jump and there were t-shirts that said: "Fear is temporary, regret is forever." I think that is a good line to live by--there are so many things that I've skipped out on because I was afraid and have always regretted missing. In this situation those are my sentiment exactly--I still wish I had jumped. Mostly to prove to myself that I'm not afraid, and can take risks--act out an allegory: throw fear to the wind, step off a ledge and have a grand time when I find out that not only am I still alive but flying! Ha! What a cheese-whopper inspiring t-shirt! 

       After the bungee adventures we went foofy-sliding (zip-lining) in the Tsitsikamma forest. 

It was super fun, but I wouldn't recommend it for people who want to actually observe animals and learn a ton about the wildlife. The particular one we went on started in Storms River, and was more like a fun ride than a nature experience. For example, the guide told us to do an epic yell, talked loudly, etc. so all of the wildlife was frightened away. That was a bit of a let-down because I had envisioned some cool animal-observation and learning a bit more about the animals and lore of the forest, but it was a lot more goofy and the facts we learned I had already read or heard of elsewhere. 

      Our main objective in going to Port Elizabeth was to visit our family, so we didn't do a lot of sight-seeing so here's a link about it. We had lots of fun with our cousins, visited lots of my parents friends and went on a cool walk to a beach that was completely covered in pink seaweed stuff!

    We spent a couple of days there and then were back on the road again!

This was all the luggage that our family of six had for five weeks! *cue applause*