South African Adventures

We are currently in Cape Town, South Africa, but before we get on with the blog here's a nice photo of Hong Kong that we took during their nightly light show. The light show is every night at 8pm set to music. On alternate days, they have English music and Chinese music. Really impressive. We also spent a day a Hong Kong Disney. We spent the bulk of the day on Space Mountain making strange photos at the camera as we whooshed by. Photos to follow later.


We are loving it here in the Western Cape province of South Africa, which is beautiful. The weather is fantastic, the scenery is outstanding, the people are friendly and there's a plethora (Jefe agrees, a plethora) of really unique activities to do. We drove out on the Garden Route, which is about a five hour drive southeast of Cape Town down the Indian Ocean coast.

Near a town called Oudtshoorn, Gina got the opportunity to ride an ostrich. They loaded her onto the ostrich and then as you can see in the photo they ran next to her, then pulled her off at the end. You have to hang on by the feathers... whew! It was quite the experience though!!
They actually have ostrich races that you can bet on. They pull the neck of the ostrich in the direction that they want the bird to go. Sadly, Gina did not ride the ostrich with that much accuracy.
Also in Oudtshoorn, there is a wildlife park where we caught this photo of a tired lioness. The park was pretty sweet, they had all kinds of big cats like cheetahs, white tigers and jaguars. Take a look at those teeth! Looks like she is saying cheese for the camera!


There is an Elephant Sanctuary too, where you can get up close and personal with some elephants which were rescued from various maladies. This elephant had once been a house pet! Amazing because they eat so much food, something like 3-400 pounds per day. Another elephant had been rescued from a lifetime in a Chinese zoo. Gina is leading the elephant with her hand here, the same way elephants will hook onto each other's tails and walk. It's not quite as pleasant as it looks - there's a lot of elephant snot involved! Small price to pay to spend some time with these magnificent elephants.
Of course, sometimes the wildlife comes to you. We took this photo after driving down to the Cape of Good Hope. The baboons are everywhere, and this car pulled to the side of the road and got a bit of a surprise. This baboon sat on the car for a while, and when he got off, another one promptly got right on. They didn't see the need to leave, apparently.

Also on the Cape, we stopped at a place called Boulders where there are lots of wild penguins. You can go right up to them. There are about 3000 penguins in this colony. You can't touch them, though because they're mean. And this photo isn't quite as nice as it looks - Bob had to sit in a pile of penguin poo to get this close!

Today we did a township tour of the Cape Town area. A township is a community of Black or mixed-blood ("Coloured") people created by the government's re-population schemes during Apartheid. We were a bit apprehensive about how we would be accepted into their community. They welcomed us with open arms. The children here love to get there photo taken and will gladly strike a pose to be able to see themselves on your camera. Here I am with some of the children. Their houses are modest and all of them have running water and electricity. There is a wide range of living conditions within the community. There are people with full cement houses and roofs and TVs and eat in kitchens and there are people with tarps and aluminum roofs and one public toilet and kitchen for the whole area to share. A lot of them are waiting for an upgrade in their housing, which the government will provide on a first come first serve basis. The main issue is that there are more people then time to build these houses. In 1998, there were 248, 000 people and in 2001 there was 500,00 people in the township. As you can see, the need can never be possibly be met. The cause of this is that there are a lot of people immigrating from Zimbabwe and other nearby countries and moving into the township.

This great country is definitely on the mend after a long time to struggle for basic human rights. This is a great country and thus far our favorite. We are off to Kruger National park for our safari. I have been looking forward to this for awhile and hopefully will have a bunch of great photos to share with you when we return. As always, sending good vibes to all of you back home.

Love,
Gina & Bob