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So I've finally started putting some of my snapshots on this big ole web; check em out if you're so inclined...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9905591@N06/

Indolent Otter

My sincere apologies; this blog post is going to be a monster. Due to estrangement from internet for the last week, events seem a bit of a blur. Our last full days in Cape Town were spent combining a portion of the winelands with a visit down to Simon’s town to visit the infamous jackass penguins, indigenous to South Africa, a trip to the archives office, and shop, shop, shopping. Groot Constansia, most famous for it’s desert wine which Jane Austin said had, “healing powers a disappointed heart,” is well know to most tourists and guidebook reviewers vacationing in cape town. The wine tastings (as at all the vineyards) were extremely reasonable---5$ a person, but the hoards of obnoxious tourists would deter most except the true die hard Austen fan. What better (or more irnonic) way to read Sense and Sensibility than while ruminating with a “Grand Constance,” a sweet desert wine with the highest alcohol content a proper lady would dare to down. The weather in the Cape Town was absolutely horrendous—more than a few South Africans bitterly proclaiming it the worst they’d seen in years. Arguably the most tragic result of this was the scene we whitnessed at Simon’s town—hundreds of adorable innocent jackass penguins being pelted flat into the costal roughage by sizable hail. The cute little birds only could only look up in amazement at the stupid Americans far away from any rocky shelter snapping copious amounts of pictures of them. Later that night those very same Americans found refuage in a beautiful Cape Malay restaurant set with a view of the city the poshest restaurants would kill for and notably fantastic samosas and curried prawns. Joseph the owner sat with us an hour and spun us the tale of his life and the founding of the restaurant and hotel underneath, just in time for a huge convention of Malaysian diplomats to roll in. Joesph proved invaluable to the trip however, by showing my dad how to put the manual in reverse the South African way—shove it to the right into fifth and slam it down till the reverse lights come on. Our last morning in Cape Town we made two stops, a South African record store and the famous Pan-African Market. Filled to the brim with three stories of rented stalls, goods from all over Africa are placed in front of you by vendors eager to give you “special weekend price,” “pretty lady price,” and “bad weather price.” Modou Mboup, a transplanted Senegalese Art dealer bargained with my parents (and eventually sold) a beautiful abstract Elephant carving which he gave them a “special price because it was his daughter’s birthday” and nudgingly told my dad of the trip to Senegal he planed in which his first and second wife would meet and he would hopefully score enough art to afford a third wife. FYI: He gave me his business card if any of you lucky lady readers are interested....

After our encounter with Modou, we made our way to the Cape Winelands and enjoyed a delicious lunch and wine tasting at Blaauwklippen—by far my favorite vineyard of the tour. Though the cabernet sauvignon was to die for a nine year old boy stole the show. He was the most excited taster of the bunch, hurridly pushing to the counter to get another glass of Merlot, and by his fifth glass he was weaving in and out of Balthazar and Methalusa (the biggest bottles of Rose the vineyard possesses), he embarked on a thrilling rendition of, “I can see clearly now the rain is gone,” hitting all the high notes in a charming Afrikaners drawl. After visiting a couple more barrels; we (especially I, who drank my parents leftovers) were effectively sloshed, and we stumbled our way to Hermanus for wale watching the next morning. Our night in Hermanus was one of the coldest I have ever spent, but I provided a great comrade for the B&B owner who told me that just because I was sleeping alone, like she, an extra hotwater bottle would find its way to my bed.

The next day we started the morning off with some wine to steel us against scouring the cold coast for dolphins and Southern Right Whales; of which we caught some beautiful sightings. For a late lunch we stumbled upon a town Sunday lunch which we were lucky enough to attend due to a cancellation—the food and company were superb. We ate a traditional Afrikaans four course meal and met half the town who communicated more with their smiles of wonderment than the limited English they possessed (and our non-existent Afrikaans). Knysna and Tsitsikamma National parks provided extraordinary and refreshing hiking trails for us later on. The freaking adorable otter you see pictured was on the beach at Tsitsikamma, indolent as could be, providing able time for me to shoot a good twenty pictures which still produce an automatic “awwwww” from me. The Garden Route (which both of those parks were along) is breathtaking; the most mountainous and rugged terrain paired with beautiful coastline and brightly painted cement houses.

Addo Elephant National Park was our next stop, indulging both my mom’s elephant fixation and my meercat adoration. Early the next morning, after making it through the 5am road obstacles on the way to the Airport, we boarded a plane to Jo’berg to make our way to Honeyguide Safari.

Honeyguide is a surreal experience; when you get there a guide in a truck is waiting for you to take you town to catch the “game drive” you’re already late for. You are escorted to a jeep with a guide in the tracker (who sits at the front of the car with a spotlight to search out animals once it gets dark). After cocktail break about half way through our first four hour night drive we drove through a herd of about 400 buffalo and saw three lioness and a cub at a watering hole. A typical day at Honeyguide, the staff will explain to you, starts with a 6am wake up call (drums beating), coffee delivered to your tent and a 6:30am game drive. You get back about 9:45am and are greeted with a huge breakfast. Next you take an hour bushwalk accompanied by your guide (who carries a gun in case any of the beautiful beasties come out) and come back to a delicious three course lunch with white wine paring at 2:00pm. After a nap or another cocktail, you start of for your four hour night game drive and come back to an even more decadent three course dinner (comparable only to the meal I ate earlier this summer at Nomi) complete with red wine parings or any other drink you might desire. You stay in out-of-Africa-style tents surrounded by the bush—literally a elephant ate some leaves of the top my tent and a monkey pissed on the copy of a “A Problem from Hell” I left on my end table. I’ll leave you to conclude the verveet’s politics. Our three day stay was incredible—you get to know all of the staff and fellow guests intimately and meet some of the most interesting people from all over the world. As un-cliché as it can sound, by the end they were like family. Our tracker and guide, Devance and Craig respectively, were some of the loveliest most down to earth people I’ve ever met—I’m even meeting up with Craig and his sister in Jo’berg when I return from Argentina. Not only did we see leopards, zebra, elephants, giraffe, bushbabys, sirle, hyena, eagles, cheetah, wildcats, rinos, steenbuck, and kudu to name a few, but I got to see the happiest my parents have been in a while. Ernest Hemingway once said, “The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.” After only a brief time here, I have to say, I believe it.