Into Africa

(Special addendum to Tim's last post, at his request: Best visa/passport stamp = Kingdom of Cambodia.)

We've been really delinquent in blogging since we arrived in Africa and we would like to offer our apologies. We already finished a month in South Africa and we've been in Namibia for a few days now. We'll try to catch up on our posts, but we're on a tour at the moment and internet access is hard to come by. But we haven't disappeared!

After leaving Malaysia back in March we had a brutal stop over in the Dubai airport from 4am to 11am. It was actually a really cool airport but we weren't in the best mood to appreciate it! We then flew to Johannesburg, South Africa and headed straight to Pretoria where we spent 5 days planning the next few months while getting over jet lag, curry withdrawal and a couple of colds. (Tim was afflicted with an Al Green voice for a few days much to our amusement.) It took awhile to get used to the many differences between Asia and Africa.

The budget accommodation is called "Backpackers" here and they're located in residential neighbourhoods in the suburbs. They usually have one or two resident pets/guard dogs. We have a funny story about this later - stay tuned to hear about "Mr. T" the Great Dane.

Since it's much cheaper to make your own food here we had to remember how to cook again. We really miss our $2 noodle meals :(
There's always a big communal kitchen and a grocery store nearby. They usually fire up a nightly Braai (bbq) over a fire and you can throw some meat on. The Braai is taken very seriously in this nation of carnivores - it's a true institution. Tim is impressed with their "unparalleled meat innovation" but I'm sure he'll want to write about that himself. Personally I'm more impressed with their marshmallows - they're eaten in bags like candy and come in flavours like litchi, grape, kiwi and caramel. Some other interesting foods are Bunny Chow and Monkey Gland sauce which thankfully bear no relation to their names!

I always seem to end up writing about food for some reason. But I don't know where else to start, there's just so much to explain about South Africa! In a matter of hours you can go from a modern city to a remote village where they still practice traditional customs. There are 11 official languages and everyone speaks at least English and Afrikaans, and usually a tribal language as well. We've tried to learn the "clicks" but I don't think we'll ever master it.

When the jet lag cleared up we dug out the Lonely Planet Southern Africa and planned our trip for the next couple of months. We also bought a two week pass for a backpackers bus since public transportation is either unreliable or non-existent. They pick you up and drop you off right at your accommodation so it's a lot more convenient too. As soon as we finished making our plans we headed to Kruger National Park to start off with an authentic African experience. See next post!