South Africa Sojourn arrival in Cape Town 28th Jan

The train was about an hour and a half late into Cape Town station. As a %age of the whole journey I don't suppose that's too bad. Next we negotiated a reasonable rate for a taxi to our apartment, which you can now see.

Our place is the bottom flat beyond the wooden steps. This is at the back of the house, the upstairs of which is occupied by the owner of these and several other properties in Cape Town. It is very nice and well appointed but more studio than apartment. Look inside and you will see what I mean. 

Not as tidy as Helen would have liked. 

The pool is a bonus and I pretty well had sole use of it. It also features a device that I have not seen before. You have probably seen those robot vacuum machines that randomly wander around your floor and magically clean it. Well this is the aquatic equivalent. It's name is MX5, happy memories. 

The area we are in, Devils Peak Estate in Vredehoek is prosperous, and largely white. There is nothing like the amount of home security here, compared with Pretoria. We do have a sliding front gate, which is operated by a key fob. The view from our front door is however rather impressive. Here it is. 

It is, of course Table Mountain. The cable car up it starts about 1km away round to the right of where you are looking. The overriding concern is still Helen's health. Her problems continue unabated for the rest of Saturday and through the night. On Sunday morning I went to the 24 hour pharmacy at the airport. The chemist prescribed more imodium, a prebiotic with 5 separate strains and finally some rehydration drink sachets. Despite the new medicaments and the pharmacist's best reassurances there really is no improvement. On Monday about 7-30am we decide it is time for Cape Town Medi centre, that is the private hospital that has A and E facilities. The treatment was very good, a rather brusque nurse followed by a thorough examination by a young doctor. She took samples for testing and prescribed antibiotics, a different binder and some more dehydrating drinks. Well let's see what happens next. Helen had the first solid nights sleep, so to speak, for 6 nights. Tuesday, and we decided to try a gentle trip out to see how things go. 

The famous clock tower on the Victoria and Alfred water front. Why Alfred and not Albert you ask. It was built in 1860 at the time of the Prince Consort's death and is named after her eldest son Alfred Edward. While we were there we booked for the trip to Robben Island, now a World Heritage Site which we will do on Thursday, all things being well. 

This plan allows us to do the Red bus trip tomorrow which is a present from Cameron, Helen, Ollie and Finlay. After a spot of lunch we complete this first tentative day out with a drive down the Atlantic Ocean coast including the renowned Chapman's Peak Drive. On the way round we popped into Llandudno. Now someone got this wrong. Whoever named the place clearly had never been to the real Llandudno. I think they got it muddled up with somewhere in Cornwall. I suppose if you were a mono-ocular Welshman you might see the similarity between Table Mountain and the Great Orme. 

Chapman's Bay.

Hout Bay looking north. 

This wonderful silver beach behind Helen has hardly got a soul on it and stretches for nearly 5kms. It is called Noordhoek beach. 

South Africa Sojourn in the shadow of the Blue Train 27th and 28th Jan

Helen could not eat on Wednesday night and her sleep was regularly disturbed by involuntary visits to the wee room but not for a wee. We had a somewhat daunting drive next day that would take about seven hours without stops. We were carrying a supply of imodium from the UK and also some left over from our Turkish experience. Unlike Lily the pink's, none of the medicinal compounds were effectatious in any case. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Scaffold, they didn't work.
Our over night hotel in J'burg was the Aerotropolis which we reached with timely stops and without mishap. Next morning brought dawn but no improvement.
Chantelle, the hotel manager offered to lead us to the rental return, then take us to the Gautrain. You would have thought that 2 hours was plenty of time to get to the central station but you would have reckoned without Chantelle's "help". The booking information told us to be there an hour before departure and the gate closes 15 minutes before. I bought the tickets at 12-16 for the 12-30 train. We then had to sprint to platform 16 to see if they would let us get on, if it was still there. They did, it was.
Had we missed the train, the next one is same time next week,and probably fully booked by now. Phew! Not best for Helen's problem which was to continue for the 28 hours of the journey.
The Blue Train also does the same journey. It is acknowledged as the most luxurious 5 star hotel on wheels in the world. Tickets are about a grand per head. That is about a pound a mile and includes the Havanas and Moet.

The Shosholoza Meyl train, the one that we travelled on at about 4 pence per mile.

The distance was about a thousand miles which we travelled at an average speed of 30 mph. We stopped at a lot of red signals which was surprising  because we only encountered two other trains, both coming towards us, both freight. Allow me to give you a little geo/historical background. Cape Town was the first port that the imperial Europeans used in the C17 because it was a good natural harbour on the right side for western Europe. Inland transport from there was difficult for two reasons. Firstly the Cape Fold Mountains presented an immediate and challenging barrier then the Great Karoo which is an immense area of semi desert stretching hundreds of kilometres up to the savanna grasslands. Towards the end of the C19 both gold and diamonds were discovered around Kimberly so it became paramount to build a railway line so that the wealth could be exported back to Europe, or rather now mainly Britain.

The Cape Fold Mountain range 

The Great Karoo 

Railway engineers considered that the mountains could only be successfully breached with a narrow gauge track. They plumped for 3ft 6ins and the result is that became the standard throughout the country and is still today. This is also the reason why the coaches we travelled on have rather narrow corridors and the compartments are a bit of a squeeze compared to the 4ft 8.5ins gauge ones that we are used to over most of the rest of the world. In 1989 the Hex River tunnels were completed and No. 4 is nearly 9 miles long and takes half an hour to get through. 

In the bowels of the earth (with apologies to Helen) That is not the light at the end of the tunnel, but signals and nearer to us an escape alcove. 

Touws River, formally an important railway centre for banking engines. Extra engines to assist in pushing the trains up the hills. 

South Africa's railway system does now seem very run down as indeed is a lot of the other industries, agriculture and razor wire manufacturing being the exceptions. 

View                                     Thank goodness for small mercies. 

Other internal arrangements.  At least a change of seat for Helen but unable to enjoy the menu. 

Our sleeping accommodation. 

And here is a short video so that you can get the idea. Don't be surprised if you can't make the video work, I can't! 

South Africa Sojourn a day in Malealea

As it had poured with rain all day yesterday and we were more or less confined to barracks the result would be a busy day today. Firstly at 9-00am we have to meet with our guide who will take us around the village complete with a visit to the school. The walk will take about 2 hours.
Our guide was called John and he proved to be most companionable with excellent self-taught English. First of all he taught us enough Sotho to get by. That was "du mela" which simply means hello. I always find that it is much appreciated if you are fluent in at least one word of the native tongue!

Here is Helen and John sitting down in the village "pub", but more of that later. We started by looking at at the shops. These consist of corrugated iron huts measuring about 6 ft square, somewhat dilapidated and without any services. We bought some homemade fat cakes which are much like doughnuts. We wandered further up the road and looked at some dwellings, each of which had its own "long-drop" loo. Remember there are no main services although there is a tap to supply several houses. The water is piped from springs. Some have electricity if they can afford solar power or a generator. The people are not all equally poor. A few people live in quite grand houses and have vehicles. They would have earned the money by working in the mines in South Africa. 

This chap, with the horse-tail fly whisk was particularly keen to have his picture taken.

A long drop. 

You can see a lot of houses have flags flying. There are three colours each representing the type of beer available for drinking (at a small charge) in that house. The types are, maize, hop or ginger. They have to buy the hops and ginger in. Let's go back into the pub again. 

Here are the brewing vats, each one is colour coded according to the type of beer. The strength is about 2%. Notice the "dresser"  on the wall. This is made from the mud and cow dung bricks when the house was built. This sheds a new light on the concept of built-in furniture. IKEA take note. Malealea is the largest of a grouping of 14 villages each with its own chief whose role I have described previously. The agriculture is run on a family basis. Each one will have a garden near their home for growing vegetables then a portion of the flatter land for arable purposes and finally the herd which typically consists of about a dozen cows, half a dozen sheep for meat and wool and maybe four goats for the mohair. These are grazed all day on the higher common land but need the constant attention of a male family member to act as shepherd. 

A raised bed garden

So now on the school. Malealea has a pre-school 

which is free and provided by foreign donations. The primary school is also free and paid for by the state but secondary school is fee charging which prevents many from progressing at 12+.

Some children outside the school and, Henry that's the flag of Lesotho on the wall. 

I was lucky enough to get the chance to teach an impromptu geography lesson. Note the attentiveness of the kids. This never happened in England. 

The school kitchen where lunch is prepared, generally pap a kind of mashed potato made from millet. The man is the teacher of the oldest class. Finally a picture of the staff room. 

The afternoon is to be devoted to a two hour pony trek. So after a short rest we mount up. 

The views were spectacular, the horses were very compliant and our guide could not have been more attentive. We had the time of our lives.The ride was just the right length, leaving us tired and satisfied but not quite sore. 

Look, one handed driving. Oh, and that's a hair net I'm wearing there. 

Monarchess of the Glen, Queen of the Mountains, Champion the Wonder Horse woman, take your pick as Michael Miles would say. How many remember those 1950s TV references? During the ride Helen began to feel rather unwell with stomach cramps and after she got back to our room she started to suffer from what proved to be an extended period of upset tummy. 

Signage on the way out of Malealea

South Africa Sojourn meet Lesotho

Lesotho is sometimes described as a fourth world country and in some respects it has some fairly grim statistics weighing against it. It is 160 from 187 in the UN Human development index, nearly half of the population scrape by on little over a dollar a day, nearly half of the people are HIV/AIDS positive, life expectancy is 48. The country is both enclaved and landlocked and is ruled by a Unitary constitutional parliamentary monarchy and styles itself as the Kingdom of the Sky. In Afriski it has one of the only two ski resorts on the continent of Africa.
The majority of the population are subsistence farmers who tend cattle, sheep and goats on the hillsides and grow maize, millet and some vegetables on the flatter grounds. Village affairs are controlled by the chief who listens to the fortnightly meeting of the villagers and then makes decisions. There is an appeal system if there is any dissension.
Lesotho has the distinction of being the highest country in the world. It's lowest point is 1400ms and 80% is above 1800ms.
It is also the only country to have an official twinning with another country. It is about the same size, has about the same population, both are largely mountainous and bilingual. The partner is, wait for it,............ Wales! The scheme is called Dolen Cymru.
Malealea Lodge started life as a trading post in the very early 20th century. The ownership changed a few times until the present owners bought it and changed it into a tourist lodge with a particular emphasis on the culture and wellbeing of the local people. This place represents a superb example of ecotourism and hence attracts interesting visitors from around the world. Apart from the owners and their family the place is entirely run by the local villagers.
Have a look at some pictures around the place in general and the route in. Tomorrow I will give you some details of the activities that we did.

This could look like the Grand Canyon if I messed with the scale, but it shows the amount of soil erosion caused by the frequency of the thunderstorms. Several people get killed every year by being struck by lighting.

Warning about the road up and into the upper plateau.

The gates of paradise. This is the top of the pass into our Shangri-la.

And now you can see down to it.

Our house........ there could be a song there somewhere.

Pretty self explanatory really.

South Africa Sojourn Kruger Park in pictures

Helen was chief photographer in the Park as I was driving so this is largely her work. I am proposing to post pictures and give identification where I can. Some birds to start with.

Yellow Billed Hornbill 

Black Stork

Juvenile Marshall Eagle 

Pied Kingfisher 

White Breasted Cormorant 

Southern White-faced Scots Owl

Jacobin Cuckoo 

Spotted Eagle Owl 

And few other animals 

Foam Grasshopper 

Hinged Terrapin 

Flap-necked Chameleon 

Baboons 

Cheetah in the middle of eating his kill 

Giraffe 

Lioness 

Zebra

Female and male golfers, hippo in the background between the heads 

Cameron, Mike and James about to tee off on the Skukuza Golf course hippo to the right of James's elbow.