Seeing beauty and the flourishing natural world in South Africa...and all it costs was a flight and accommodations and a purse (containing wallet and new camera)

People who like to travel like to have the slightly douche-y travel conversations about the top places they'd like to go and the places they have little-to-no interest in going. This is not unlike the conversations that happen at mountain/ice climber parties, if you've ever had the great pleasure of attending one of those...with all those young lives that will inevitably be cut short in their need to make life more exciting than it already is. Hey, you don't see old climbers, am I right??

For me, while North Africa has always been of interest to me, Sub-Saharan Africa has not really piqued my interest...but more so than Australia and Las Vegas (only if someone PAID me to go). 

So when my brother and his family moved to Mozambique from Brazil (a place I'd dreamt of visiting) a number of years ago before I had had a chance to visit them in Brazil, I made it very clear (and in probably a rude way..and for that I am sorry) that I would NEVER visit them in Mozambique as I had NO interest whatsoever in Africa. 

But now that I'm kind of in the neighbourhood, with highly affordable flight options, a one hour time difference, an ever-growing love of netflix animal documentaries, and the fact that I hadn't seen my bro and fam in about a year, the time seemed kind of perfect to take a little trip down south for some family time. 

After a solid crack-down on my work in January and February, which resulted in some bouts of cabin fever that led to me engaging in "donald trumping" (defn: (verb) wandering around my apartment aimlessly and restlessly in a bathrobe, avoiding work), I was back on the road and headed to South Africa!

We agreed to meet up in Cape Town, my brother and his family's fave get-away-from-Mozambique place, and spend the majority of the time there. I won't provide a laundry list of all the things we did around the area but suffice it to say there was lots of wine and vineyards:

Buitenverwachting vineyard, Constantia region

Vergenoegd vineyard, Stellenbosch

Maison Estates, Stellenbosch

Vergenoegd vineyard, Stellenbosch region

...lots of food:

Crayfish

Fish curry

Some sort of dessert as the final course at our wine and food tasting

Hmmm...not sure...but it's fine dining and, as such, I assure you, it was delicious!

Fine dining for all ages! My nephew enjoying his kudu steak dish.

...lots of animals:

Black girdled lizard, only found on the cape peninsula

An ostrich just being an ostrich, Table Mountain National Park

The coastal ostriches of Table Mountain National Park

How curious...

Cutest parade EVER!

Eland, Table Mountain National Park

The Houte Bay garbage seal

One of amongst many beautiful butterflies @ Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden

A usually flitty sunbird majestically posing for us @ Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden

Road baboons of Stellenbosch

Baby road baboons of Stellenbosch

I. just. can't.

A non-garbage seal of Gordon's Bay showing a little flipper.

...loads of penguins:

Simon's Bay reserve for these Jack Ass Penguins (a name after my own heart), the only penguins to stay year round on the cape peninsula

Here at the penguin reserve, you can see penguins in all stages of life:

From singlehood...

To coupledom

To enjoying marital bliss

Nesting and waiting for the stork to arrive...

To proud new parents

Settling into family life

Toddler penguins

The teenage years

To the awkward molting phase

And in between, enjoying leisure time swimming with the humans

And defending your fellow penguins from the fearsome rock dassi!

We saw lots of vista views:

Cape of Good Hope hike

Cape of Good Hope... Atlantic on the right, Indian on the left

Me and my little buddy, Cape of Good Hope hike, with the paradisaical Dias Beach in the background

Indian ocean beach

Scenic drive through the Stellenbosch region

View of the Table mountain range from the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens

Table Mountain, the newest natural wonder of the world

Fog rolling in over Lion's Head Mountain

The view of the coast from Table Mountain

The fog quickly rolling in over Table Mountain

Not but a few minutes before the fog rolls in at smoke machine speeds

Gordon's Bay

..and incredible sunsets off a stunning coastline:

Me and my bro watching the sunset at Gordon's Bay

Gordon's Bay coastline in the sunset

Gordon's Bay sunset

Chapman's Peak sunset in Houte Bay

A major highlight and lowlight in Cape Town occurred on the same day...day 3. Day three was the day that, as we were packing up our vehicle within the security of our airbnb fortress (our house surrounded by concrete walls topped with an electric fence) my purse containing my new camera and my wallet full of all my cards and about 150 bucks cash was stolen out of the back seat of the car. It happened like this: All the luggage was sitting outside of the car waiting to be packed into the trunk. I had loaded all of my back seat needs (ie purse, sweater, sunglasses etc) onto my back seat in preparation for departure. In a moment of Canadian care-free carelessness, because the trunk was open and other car doors were open, I left my back seat door open with my things laying on the seat. My brother and I were in and out of the house, packing up other things. The cleaning lady came early and the driveway gate was opened to let her in and was not closed afterwards. Someone, in the span of two or three minutes that none of us were watching the car, came into the driveway and swiped the purse off the back seat. And we're not talking about a busy street. We basically had seen three people walk down that street in two days. By my calculations, that means that 33% of all Cape Towners are thieves. I was MOST upset about the purse, a Cape Town-made beautiful leather bag purchased on day two. It was not even in my possession for 24 hours. Sadface.

We were all in a state of incredulousness, unable to believe that it could happen so fast in a super quiet neighbourhood, trying to think of alternative explanations... like the shiny zipper might have caught the eye of a hadida and they swiped it to build their nest, like a magpie might do. After finally all of us coming to the realisation that it was gone, stolen, vanished, we did the only thing we thought we could to shake it off (and that was already planned for the day)... we went to the beach for a 10-course seafood lunch/dinner:

Die Strandloper restaurant

Yup... just had my important things stolen. Talk about having social capital to get you through the tough times!!

In our hands we hold yet more wine! 

On the way to which I not only made some skype phone calls to credit card companies while in the car using my sister-in-laws mobile hotspot (sometimes technology, you rock!) for fear that someone might at that very instant be booking an all-inclusive cruise package with my American Express, but also we came across a private reserve and spotted some ostriches and zebras which really helped me forget my troubles:

The roadside ostriches of South Africa--you can't look at these weird creatures and not be cheered up

While the seafood dinner and seeing ostriches and zebras was a highlight, another highlight was catching a glimpse, in a bit of a stressful situation, as to how far I've come mentally and emotionally...that the unexpected loss of all ability to access any money while in a foreign country and the unexpected loss of hundreds of dollars worth of cash and items... didn't ruin the whole trip...and in fact it didn't even ruin the day. Of course the stress of it was buffered by travelling with family who had the ability to look after me for the rest of the trip. But that too can be stressful, relying on others to pay for everything. But my brother and his wife's flexibility, thoughtfulness, and generosity made it really all okay. 

Also, my sister-in-law made a great point about how it was the best possible way to get robbed: to not have to watch it happen and to not have to experience aggression or fear while it happens, to which I thoroughly agreed.  #bestrobberyeva

After Cape Town, we spent the last few days in Kruger National Park.WOW. From the moment we drove up to the Malelane Gate, one of the many Kruger Park gates, I knew this experience was going to be worth every penny. Immediately, even before entering the gate, we were graced with a hippo sighting:

Yay hippos!!

And some crocodiles sunbathing on a distant rock staring across to the other bank of the river where a young antelope of some sort was tentatively, deliberately, cautiously, considering taking a drink of water from the river.

We checked into the gate and signed our lives away in case of things like an accidental warthog evisceration and began the slow, safari-state crawl to our rest camp, Skukuza; a 60 km distance that took 3 hours to drive due to all those pesky animal and bird sightings along the way:

This is an elephant

The European Roller

A Great Kudu

Ground Hornbill

Southern Yellow-Billed Hornbill

Impalas and Zebras

Warthogs: One of the ugly 5 and their little wee ones

Shy white rhinos

And the wonderful encounters with these surreal and otherworldly creatures just kept on coming:

Vervet

Baby vervet

And because one can NEVER have too many baby animal pics...

Hey there little fella...aren't you *gulp* handsome....

Zebra crossing! Zebras doing their "confuse the eye of the lion" trick

Eeeeeeee!!

African Jacana

This is a giraffe

Green-backed Heron in dinner-time mode

A skink

Praying mantis... posed for me for this picture and then I accidentally stepped on them while packing. RIP my sweet mantis. I am sorry.

Another member of the Ugly 5: She wasn't hurt, she just thought the road was a great place to take a load off

And wee little munchkin hyena!

Another one of the Ugly 5

This seems ominous....planet of the apes-esque?

I say YES to this!

A member of a the first lion pride we came across before the sunrise

Give it up for the ladies of the second lion pride!

Poppa's waatching you ladies!

He wasn't super stoked about us being there and promptly, after posing for a few photos, took off into the deep grass...

She's just asking for a lion cuddle.

Beauty.

..creatures I had only seen either in cement pens at the zoo doing their insanity pacing or on the TV, their activities soothingly couched in the narrations of my beloved Attenborough.  

Ultimately, I was there for ten days and in the most touristy way possible (and I had no desire to do it any other way) so I make no claims to have 'picked up' on the subtleties of South Africa. However, what I will say is this, it felt as if this country imposes itself on you. It imposes some not so great things on you but also at the same time imposes it's magic on you... in fact it seems the word magic may not be the correct word as it implies a sort of 'special-ness' or 'rarity'. Nay, the beauty and diversity of flourishing natural world in South Africa just is. Daily, it felt like there was no escaping the wondrous privileges and encounters that the natural world here wants to bestow upon you, to reveal itself from sunrise to sunset and during the darkness in between. And if you close your eyes for a minute, you miss it (and perhaps also risk having your purse stolen...this is not Canada, people!!).

And this is what makes coming back to normal life, even after only just ten exhausting days of observing unimaginable beauty each day,  seem trivial. In light of the majesty of what the natural world on this big planet has to offer, the work I am doing is revealed to me to be what it truly is: a time-killing exercise in triviality that will keep me gainfully employed to sustain me while I wait to die and become nothingness.((Musical interlude:  **it's the cir-r--c-cle...the circle of l-i-i-i-f-e...hmmonyana hmmahmmonyana**))... And you know what? I fully believe that my work is no more trivial than trying to get a man on the moon or developing new drugs for erectile dysfunction or trying to get people to quit smoking. Rather than this perspective evoking anxiety, it invokes liberation for me ((You mean I DON'T have to take it all so seriously???)).

And thus begins the next work crack-down phase while I await he arrival of my parents in April for an extended stay. With them comes new credit cards and maple syrup... and of course some nice family time...and maybe a few free meals... thank you in advance mummy and daddy!