Gigxl | Travel

February 27th, 2010 : Addo Elephant Park

Alix says:
After 3 weeks in South Africa we have made our first effort to spot some animals. Not just any animals. No. The big guys…elephants, lions, rhinos, zebras. Those animals. I was really excited! We’ve seen heaps of new animals on this trip that could never, ever be seen outside of a zoo in our country. And now we get to add more wild animals to that list. We headed up to the park with our new pal Jaco, another wonderful local whom we are couchsurfing with and whom had never been to Addo

It started off slow. Kinda rainy actually. Lots of huge tortoises and these dung beetles. Then we spotted a warthog. Those guys are seriously weird looking! Their boney faces. Pumba!

Colin says:
More like Addo Tortoise and Dung Beetle Park. We did actually see a good a mount of elephants and even lucked out with a brief glimpse of a couple lions - so we have that going for us which is nice. Saw many kudu which is very similar to a deer or elk but bigger and with massive spiraling horns. Saw so many of them however we became bored with them and wanted another lion sighting. We end up only getting one, so we went and grabbed a beer at the lodge. Cheers.

Alix says:
Decent first animal park trip I’d say. Wouldn’t want it to be too grand otherwise what would we have to look forward to at Kruger? I was pleased to see some zebras on our way out - I was really hoping for those guys. As for logistics, it’s only R30 to get into the park and about 40min drive from Port Elizabeth then we slowly drove the park for 4 hours or so. If you tool around in your own vehicle it’s really cheap, it’s once you jump on a safari that it gets pricey.

Had it not been rainy I think we would have seen even more animals. Being so close to the elephants was rad! And our second elephant spotting was a group of 3 including a mom and her baby! Cute!!

dung beetle

kudu

warthogs

elephants

mother and child

carcass

lion

this photo

zebra

February 25th, 2010 : The Karoo

Alix says:
Winding our way through The Karoo. Its like the southwest. And Montana. And Australia. And Portugal? And the Shire. All rolled into one. Prince Albert. Lazy little town in The Karoo. In between two rugged mountain passes, olive farms, some tiny vineyards, ostriches, Dutch houses. The rock around here is like layers of pancake rocks. Like a cake thats baked all wonky and some parts are risen while others are still raw and saggy so the rocks bend and zig zag in areas, rounded curves, it so crazy. Rust color reds and oranges and desert biege. Scruffy shrubs and pink aloe plants. So expanse, The Karoo just stretches for ages out in front of you. Rolling hills roll smack into mountains, narrow roads that snake around then run through the open valleys passing sheep, goats and the occasional baboon. Clouds and weather patterns throw themselves across the sky, really chunky, like paint flung from a brush. Like as if Van Gogh waltzed down to South Africa and decided to give the big sky a paint job. Mmm yes he did. Boughts of rain, but nothing much. The clouds give serious respite from the sun which would have us pinned down on all sides were it out. A car from time to time. Generally a small white Volkswagon zipping past. We are in a small white Chevy. Chevy Spark.

Now its become very Shire. Desert Shire. Maybe we’ll catch a glimpse at some African hobbits. Always these vacant house squares. Then many that are not so vacant. Small African villages. Villages made up of houses built by the government during the Aparthied. Relocate the people you took the land from, yep that makes sense. The homes are these solid brick blocks. Very sturdy. Some are just empty, hanging about the rolling terrain. Little lego pods. These are some good mountains. Looks like super sized dinosaur feet over in that direction. Kinda reptile like. Rolling mountains. Big skies. Red dirt soil. It’s nice Colin is getting the hang of manuel driving, so now I can play passenger.

I’ve had so many passing thoughts for hours while we drive and of course now I get out the computer and I got nothing.

Colin makes a really good picnic. That and we also have some really good bread. Baked today in Prince Albert, this crunchy whole wheat, chalk full of brains and seeds. With some homemade strawberry jam. Mmmmm. Colin whipped that up roadside a few min ago. Yesterday we had that, plus cheese and dried apricots, for our lunch while hiking. Also delicious creation made by Colin the picnic-er. It was toast with mushrooms, tomatoes, onion and fried egg while in Australia that was Colin’s specialty. He’s good with multi level noshing meals. Good man to bring with you on a picnic that’s for sure.

heaps of ostrich along the roads

funky pink aloe tree

the view along a winding dirt road we turned off on

orange-ish layered bendy rock mountains

wild clouds paint the sky

another karoo view

February 24th, 2010 : Prince Albert

Colin says:
I think I have a Herbie Hancock album with a song entitled Prince Albert or maybe that was the album, I’ll have to double check that with the guy who has all my records….Prince Albert the town though is very much like the model Alec Baldwin was building in Beetlejuice which, I guess, is a model of the town he lives in - in the movie of course. It was basically one street, one church, one gas station, one information center, one this, one that with the people who went to one of these things living around and about in a very structured and squarish fashion. It’s situated in this area called The Karoo. What is The Karoo? Looked like farm land on rolling hills with a couple mountains peppered in there for some excitement. The weather was always unpredictable and the ecosystem mimicked that of the desert except with vineyards. The people are a hilarious mix of small town-ers who have sought out the holes-in-the-walls of the world and have finally held it up in Prince Albert. They speak Africaans in Prince Albert. Africaans sounds like Dutch, which sounds like two elk screwing, which equals fun to listen too. And we saw on TV some of that ridiculous event they have every 2 years where one of the things they do is to run around a circle with sticks their feet and shoot things over and over over again in the snow. Champions.

Alix says:
Equally wonderful and odd small town in the middle of mountain passes to end up in. This stop was a classic case of ‘Alix and Colin need a place to crash for a night but we’ve ended up staying on longer’. That seems to happen to us a lot. We are easily sucked in to new places a dig sticking around for a bit. Plus, we found killer accommodation! We met a local woman who owns all this property around town and she rented a house to us for R140 a nite! Incredible. That’s less than the two of us pay to stay in a hostel dorm room and now we had a three bedroom house all to ourselves. It was super decked out in small town kitschy stuff - crochet doilies, funky curtains, Bibles in every room and the bed we slept in had a headboard that had a radio and speakers built in to it.

We stuck around because we dug the quirky small town feel, our rad retro house all to ourselves and there was some good hiking in the nearby Swartberg Pass. Oh yeah, and really good bread. The best bread I have eaten in possibly 10 months. Fresh baked and chalk full of whole goodness. We had some yummy picnics.

The weird thing about this town, and many others we passed through in this area, is the unfortunately segregated feel. This area was a prime spot for the Dutch to push the Africans to when they we being all imperialist. The government built them all shit little square houses in their own areas away from the whites. So first you drive through the African part of town, then you roll into the Africaans / Dutch part of town. Very antiquated township.

Winter River, er, I mean, Prince Albert

lonely street

kitschy buggy in the corner of a room of our house

groovy curtains

fine dining on wicker chairs

old school half door

February 23rd, 2010 : Swartberg Pass Hike

Alix says:
We stuck around longer in The Karoo for some hiking. Swartberg Pass is really gnarly and great for hiking. We went along with another fantastic picnic, packaged by Colin and containing some damn good freshly baked bread from Prince Albert. Nice.

4 timer pics enhanced with the power of animation

spikey mountains

frogger

down the pass

the picnic, the feet, the mountains

craggily tree

guess who? guess where? yep.

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