Back in South Africa

We are now into our last week of the trip. Somewhat sad. Maybe a little relieved. Massively grateful to have had the opportunity to explore part of such a beautiful continent – and to do it with our wide-eyed and curious kids.

We are now in Addo Elephant National Park, just north of Port Elizabeth.

Since my last blog entry we’ve spent four days in Kruger National Park, the grand-daddy of South African national parks. As our trip ends and the prospect of starting lives all over again in Canada looms, we’ve been starting to plan and consider things. We downloaded a document published by the Ontario Ministry of Education that aims to help new immigrants (yes, we kinda feel like immigrants!) acquaint themselves with the school system – and it included some earnest advice on how to help your kids make friends at their new school. We hadn’t put that on our long list of to-dos. More to think and worry about. Then we pulled into Crocodile Bridge Camp in Kruger where Ben and Hugo spotted a kid vaguely the same age as them, jumped out of the car, ran to him and introduced themselves. “Hi! My name is Ben. I’m from Cape Town and I’m moving to Canada soon. This is my brother Hugo. What’s your name? Want to play some cricket?” Strike that off the list then.

It was great to be back in South Africa after 3 1/2 months. Really great. We found a SuperSpar (supermarket) just outside Kruger and spent 2 hours excitedly running up and down the aisles marveling at the selection, filling a cart and then trying to stuff it all into our already stuffed car. Fiona was like an air-starved astronaut gasping at her first breaths of oxygen… Lettuce! Biltong! Cheese! Grapes! Naartjes! Boerwors! Steak! What a feast we had that night… And how much laundry we did. Crocodile Bridge had the first laundry room we had seen since leaving Cape Town 110 days earlier. Joy!

But with the good came some bad… For the first time in 3 1/2 months we were again (albeit slightly) worried about crime and realized that in spite of all the doom and gloom, the rest of Southern Africa feels a LOT more safe than South Africa. Not that South Africa is anywhere near as bad as the press would have you believe. The real shock was that we had traveled through a lot of Southern Africa and felt perfectly safe and totally unthreatened.

Kruger National Park is always an amazing animal viewing experience but after Ngorongoro, the Serengeti, Etosha, Hwange and other parks, it feels a little like the world’s largest zoo. But we’ve been spoiled a bit – it’s still amazing. We camped at Skukuza, the main “camp” in Kruger, which is more like a town than a camp, complete with an airport, theatres and conference centres. This was a bit of a shock after some of the more remote places we had been camping where a long-drop toilet was a luxury. At Skukuza, we struggled to find a campsite and when we did, we were sandwiched between a bunch of A-Team Gautengers in their expanding pop-up trailers and caravans with satellite dishes and plasma TVs. Eek.

But Kruger impressed by giving us packs of hyena, a leopard (our first ever) and entire prides of lions… amazing.

We left Kruger to head through Swaziland to south-eastern Mpumulanga. Swaziland was beautiful – mountainous, verdant, sub-tropical. Our first stop was Mbabane to stay with Fiona’s Kilimanjaro climbing friend, Steve and his wife Maggie in Mbabane, the capital. Mbabane was a shocker: really beautiful and mountainous – and felt a bit like Noordhoek (in Cape Town). Swaziland is a fairly wacky place not least because it is an absolute monarchy, ruled by a traditional king. So absolute is his power that he still gets to pick virgins from the general population to add to his stable of wives. Progressive he isn’t. Anyway, the topic of the king provided our family with some interesting questions and conversations as we drove. Our four-year-old is now versed in democracy, virginity and polygamy. Waaay better than play school.

We left Mbabane to spend a night in a traditional “bee hive” hut in Mlilwane National Park – a beautiful thatch domed structure hand-woven and thatched by local women.

Our next destination was Sodwana Bay to get in some beach time and let Ollie spend some time with one of his Cape Town friends, Kieran, who was coincidentally holidaying at a dive camp there with his mom, Lara. We all spent a lot of time snorkeling, fishing and beaching on a stunning Indian Ocean beach and had a super time with Kieran and Lara.

Then off to Durban to stay with our old friends Eric and Joyce Monson. We slept in a real house, with real beds, ate real home-cooked meals, sampled Durban “bunny chow” curries and spent a day at the incredible Durban Sea World aquarium. Poor little Ollie experienced his first “ring of fire” the next morning! Joyce and Eric (an American and a banker respectively) were our first friends in South Africa back when we found the other champagne-swilling, beach-lay-about residents of Hout Bay a bit odd (now they’re our role models).

Then up to the Drakensberg mountains for a night and a wonderfully impromptu breakfast with the family of one of Ben’s SACS friends, the Toeriens, who just happened to be in the Drakensberg too. To be honest, the Drakensberg wasn’t all I thought it would be but that might have been because we couldn’t see through the rain and dense fog.

Our next objective was to get to Morgan Bay on the Wild Coast to meet up with more Cape Town friends, the Williams and Knight families. We overnighted in Port Edward on the edge of the Transkei and drove for 9 hours through the Transkei to eventually arrive at Morgan Bay. Morgan Bay is a special place: a small town built around a huge beach and a family hotel. We had stayed there three years before and as we arrived we were greeted by the staff as if we hadn’t left at all. We, still on our rather demanding budget, occupied a rather lovely campsite on the lagoon in Morgan Bay while our friends occupied the penthouse apartment in the hotel. A great thing about Morgan Bay is that your kids just disappear together for hours at a time to the beach, lagoon, whatever, while parents relax etc. As our kids hadn’t really left our sides in 115 days, this (no offence to our mostly lovable progeny), was a huge relief. We spent three days beaching, fishing, kayaking, sandboarding, riding and drinking and generally lapping up the place and the company of some great friends. These three days highlighted how unsustainable the acquired habits of four months had become. Four months of sobriety and 12 hours per night sleep: poof!

Our next stop was Addo Elephant National Park, about 4 hours from Morgan Bay. We stayed that night just outside East London and headed to Addo Elephant Park the next morning – where we are now. Today, we’re enjoying what will probably be our last game drive on the trip – and our last game drive in South Africa (for a while at least). Addo is a pretty special place for all of us as we’ve been here so often and have such great memories of bringing other family and friends here.

We’re all really looking forward to seeing friends back in Cape Town, but equally unhappy about having to say our goodbyes in a few weeks as we head off to Canada.

Our last week of the trip will be spent at Tsitsikamma National Park and then in Still Bay with the Lloyds. Then we’re returning to Cape Town for three weeks of sleeping on friends sofas before our flight to the UK and Canada. Everyone in Cape Town, mark off May 7th for a big bash. Everyone in Toronto, heads up, the Tudor Prices are coming soon!

But what a way to say goodbye to this part of the world!