South Africa at a Glance

my dear blog,
i've missed you.
it's been a week - and there has been much in between to grace your lovely (cyber)pages.
a summary:

first spectacle upon arrival. half expected Mufasa to appear from amongst the clouds..

johannesburg is a brilliant example of wealth disparity. the old town centre - abandoned, shuttered, glass broken, unemployed wanderers.

So depressed when we drove through in the coach. The shops were closed and shuttered because the crime rate is atrocious. Hopefully it was just a public holiday, but the guides seemed pessimistic.

the new town centre - uptown apartments, brightly-lit shopping centres, clean cut offices, luxury cars.

the presidential palace. manicured gardens, italian architecture and huge statues. no, of course the money can't be better spent.

i felt quite depressed while pasing through the old town centre and was a bit disgusted at myself for being the rich tourist in a large coach. such is the world nowadays.

sun city was another lavish display of commercialism bordered by informal settlements (official term for shanty towns). the place itself is really grand and pretty well built up (imagine sunway lagoon with cooler weather and beautiful sunshine).

i can't complain about the service, and the fact i had my first proper african meal there (really tender and delicious marinated meat... can beat pat's lamb in the houseboat... and their staple is a maize mash thing called pap - pronounced 'pup' like in puppy. i liked it!).

it really tastes a lot better than it looks in this picture... i was stuffed after that meal. but it was yummy!

also, played a game of mini golf where i met the friendliest mini golf caddy (probably the ONLY mini golf caddy) ever..Simon our caddy - hhhmm... were we meant to tip him?

it strikes me how gay-ish this pose is. what with the hand touching and leg tilting. hhhmmm....

i had an overwhelming impression of the friendliness of the south africans, from everyone that i met there!
just like our bartender in the Johannesburg hotel who gave my mum Sex on the Beach and me some other strange-named concoction.

McGlory - our bartender! His African name's Komoto, but he was named after a charitable Scottish dude who died in his grandma's house the week he was born. Cool heritage!

also went on a safari while at sun city, it's the 3rd largest national park in s africa, but i still wish i went to the largest - kruger national park. all in all we were pretty lucky because apparently the tour guide hadn't seen lions in the area for a few months, and we saw 4 lionesses waiting to prey on some wildebeest. felt sorry for them cos the pesky tourists made noise and got in the way of their hunting, probably deprived them of a meal. right after that stopped by a lion park where I PET SOME LION CUBS! waaaaah... i dunno, i find it real cool to have pet some wild animals.. plus they're cute too! i can only remember the 2 month old cub's name - Lizzie, and 2 of the 5 month old cubs - Zahara and Mozart. =)

feeding baby lizzie - don't pet while feeding, she gets grumpy and has sharp claws already! and no, i didn't find out the hard way.
don't know which cub is which. i know i was stroking one when i suddenly felt a paw on my leg. haha, not really that funny when you think they're wild animals with really sharp claws.. lucky he was just playing..

In Johannesburg also ate at a restaurant called Carnivore - a meat buffet which nearly killed me from meat overconsumption. MADNESS! The menu consisted of impala, antelope, kudu (another type of antelope), ostrich, crocodile... you get the idea yeah?
Wanted to try everything so i did - and kudu is actually really tender and tasty. But i sort of had to avoid meat for the next day or two.

Serving it up African style (on a Masai sword). Mum's face sez it all... Priceless

Sickening fact: lions eat probably a similar portion as i did that night. Difference: lions eat once a week. i eat 3 times a day. *bleurgh*

Cape Town is a beautiful city. I fell in love with it on the first day.

Looking down on the city from Table Mountain
The waterfront where (*grumble* *grumble*) our passports got stolen. Table mountain in the background, btw.

The weather was beautiful - sunny and breezy, the beaches reminded me of those idyllic english summertime getaways that you read about - and all the lobster red (guai lo) people frolicking around!
somehow the ice cream there also tastes so much better.. so creamy and perfect on a hot sunny day!

Yummy lobster we ate by the sea... fresh seafood there of course! random fact: there are no prawns and crabs in south africa, only lobsters...

The town has slight Melbournian undertones, no really tall buildings, wide streets and colourful houses that slope up the mountainside - the latter feeling like a spanish town, villas and all.

It's like the Mexico of old time movies! Zorro and Three Amigos and all that. This is the Malay Quarter of Cape Town.

I really love the place and i believe i only began to scratch the surface of its vibrance.
We visitied the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point. Sound familiar? Maybe reminisce about those sejarah lessons where we learned that Bartholomew Diaz (with mandatory statue honouring him) discovered the capes and then proceeded on to India and then to Malacca. something like that. In any case, I could spend a whole day just standing there and staring at the waves. Its such a big difference, the waters of a sea and the waters of an ocean. Just the intensity of the crashing waves, and the ocean breeze. I wanna go back and just spend a day by the waves.

sea, sea and endless sea. i could never get sick of the colour blue.

Cape Town was also where i pet a 1 and a half year old cheetah (they're adult by 2 years) called Hemingway.
I can say that he's like a giant pussy cat.. the fur also nice and soft, and so beautiful! Lion's fur is a little rougher. I wish i'd seen more animals while there but I won't complain because i've touched 2 of the biggest cats in the world!

Now that i've sold the country to you - and mind you i still love it. There were also some downsides to the trip:
1) My family's passports got stolen as some bastard (and i think i saw him - he was a chinese guy or something like that - just so that the often blamed africans are not implicated) took our bag from right under our feet, literally. thankfully, nothing irreplaceable and nobody hurt, i say.
2) they kept telling us how dangerous the place was and how you shouldn't go about on your own so i never saw a lot of the town, and i really wanted to see Long St in Cape Town with its antique stores and second hand books! All nights were spent watching tv or reading in the hotel room. True African experience.
3) Not enough time at the things that count - thanks to bloody tours. I rather spend half a day at the safari, or at the cape rather than 3 farking hours in a shopping centre that pales in comparison to ours here.
4) If you're travelling overseas, have an open mind .... and open stomach. 80% of our meals were at a chinese restaurant because "last time when we had clients, they couldn't get used to the african food so this is safer". well screw that. *sigh* corn soup and ma po taufu every meal.

I think the wonderful parts of the trip definitely outweighed the gripes and South Africa is definitely a place i would want to return to - in my own time, to my own venues and at my own leisure. I'm sure the memories of it will fade soon enough but i hope the photos will remind me how breathtaking the place was, and how beautiful the people are.

Bayar Dankie (thank you very much in Afrikaans) South Africa for a wonderful trip.