Now Entering Phase 3 of the Adventure

Thursday, May 26^th Casey flew from South Africa to Tanzania, where she is now working at a school teaching English to community children and “prison babies,” babies who were born in prison and, after the age of two, have been taken by the authorities and placed in this school/home (http://www.saintgabrielhome.net/). Meanwhile, Caleigh is still in South Africa spending her last month working with the environmental newspaper Green Times—the “green” news publication in South Africa (http://www.thegreentimes.co.za/).

So we have parted ways! After living, working, eating, sleeping, and spending all free time together for four months, we have almost morphed into one person. We even have a mental telepathy thing going on. So while it’s probably a good thing to get some space from each other and regain our individual identities, it was a very hard goodbye. But that doesn’t mean the updates are over! We will both be updating from our respective places, so keep an eye out. Actually, they will probably be coming more frequently now, as we both have more reflecting and writing time on our hands.

But first to recap the rest of our travels along the Garden Route and inland:

We left off at Oyster Bay with Camille. We had a blast there and fulfilled another goal of ours, actually one of Caleigh’s lifelong dreams: riding horses on the beach! It was so incredible, racing down the sand as the waves washed ashore, wind whipping through our hair…or through Casey’s hair really, as Caleigh was stuck on the old pregnant horse who didn’t fancy quick movement. But it was a great experience, just the same. Kodak moment for sure.

the fabulous dream-like dunes of Oyster Bay

Casey ogling our new friend named the Dinner Plate Jellyfish 

(there is no time when we are not thinking about food)

Then on to elephants! And boy, did we see some elephants. The Addo Elephant Park was amazing. We arrived with only 2 ½ hours until the park closed for the day, but we made the most of it and took off in Carma on our self-guided safari. Kudu, tons of kudu (these awesome spiral-horned deer, they were all over the place). Warthogs (our new favorite animal…very funny looking). Zebras. Ostrich. And the elephants. We saw many, but the most noteworthy experience: we had stopped our car and were sitting and watching a herd of mamas and babies eating leaves. They were about 10-15 meters away from us. But they gradually started moving closer and closer. And then the big mama elephant walked right. in. front. of. our. car. Literally, she was centimeters away from our front bumper. She was so peaceful and just kept walking across the road, and the babies trailed after her. It was the most incredible sight. They’re very graceful, wise-looking animals. Very wrinkly. Their trunks are amazingly dextrous—just like a human arm. And their giant floppy ears. Let’s just say we’ve fallen in love with elephants. These 2 ½ hours were absolutely one of the major highlights of our time in South Africa.

 Ostrich at a farm on our way to the Karoo

 Kudu male

 Warthog!!!! (Pumba)

 Zebra

more kudu

 Mamas and babies

nom nom nom

The next day we drove north, straight into the Great Karoo. There we stayed at a friend’s ranch for 5 days—exploring the farm, wildlife spotting, riding horses, learning to cook South African dishes, eating some fabulous fabulous food, meeting lovely people, seeing some local sights, reading, playing with dogs and relaxing. It was heavenly. Then from there, we high tailed it back to Stellenbosch with a whopping 10-hour drive. Carma is a champion and took it beautifully.

huge moon over the Karoo

Once back in Stellenbosch, we had a week of whirlwind last together time and visiting friends and wine tasting and adventures, culminating in one last Opskop (longarm dancing!) night before the tearful goodbye as Casey headed off to Tanzania. And now we are off on our own journeys…alone in Africa.*

*Just kidding! Not really alone—we have Sisters and friends looking after us, don’t worry! There was just such a nice dramatic ring to it.

We’d like to thank everyone for being patient with our infrequent updating.  We have many good reasons for our infrequency, like the fact that it takes probably between 1 and 3 minutes to load a single picture, but we are learning the art of patience.

This third post is coming to you from the road. We said goodbye to Rozendal last week and are now nomads for the time being. Since Wednesday we have been venturing around the south coast of the country along what is known as the Garden Route. It follows seaside towns along fabulous beaches and through lush vegetation unlike that around the Cape Town area (hence garden route). We expected to be spending much of our time on the beach and in the water (which is much warmer than back near CT…we’re getting some Indian Ocean influence!)…but the beginning of our trip was mostly rainy and windy. Just yesterday we got our first full day of sun! Boy was it glorious.

One thing we got to tick off our to-do list: surfing! We spent an overcast afternoon in the water at Buffelsbaai (Buffalo Bay), a gorgeous local surfspot along our route, where a couple friends of ours suited us up and took us out to brave the waves. It was so awesome. I wouldn’t call what we did “surfing” exactly, but we did have the boards strapped to our ankles and we did paddle them out there, and we even rode some waves in splayed across our boards in an “upward dog” type position (our arms were so tired from all of the paddling that we had little strength left to actually lift ourselves up when the perfect wave came). So we didn’t quite stand up, but we had a blast and vowed that we will try, try again. I only wish we had some pictures to show for it. Maybe next time…

We are now in Oyster Bay—a small settlement 45 minutes down a rugged dirt road dotted with crater-sized potholes. The town is sleepy and out of the way…not a usual Garden Route stop…but most importantly it is the new home of our French friend Camille, who is working on a cattle farm here now. So we are staying with her and our new friend Mario, the farm manager, in a beach house across the street from enormous sand dunes and a gorgeous deserted beach. We are having a ball.

We’re here until Friday, when we head to the Addo Elephant Park to drive around and see elephants and other game. We’ll camp there before heading inland to visit a ranch in the Karoo (SA’s version of the outback) and then back to Stellenbosch. So now you’re caught up on where we are, where have we been and what have we been doing for the past…forever since our last post? We’ll have to update little by little, from internet cafes here and there…

One quick story: 

To tie up loose ends, the rugby game we talked about at the end of our last post was a total blast.  Well, more specifically, the all-afternoon braai beforehand, which we Americans would call tailgating, was the most fun part.  We spent many sunny hours sitting on, around, and under our vehicles, which were arranged in a tight, parking-lot fashion in a high school field right next to the rugby stadium.  Grills, coolers, and blue jerseys were everywhere.  Boys ran a-muck, weaving around cars and people, chasing their rugby balls.  Radios blasted the same ten pop songs imported from America that we hear constantly.  Old men chuckled in their beach chairs.  Basically, we were in a giant field of adjacent private barbeques.  It felt like a festival, except you didn’t have to walk around or pay for food.  It was lovely to spend time with our group of friends, mostly winery interns, and their co-workers.  Even more exciting was the late arrival of Midd-grad and dear friend Margaret Owen, of whom we have seen a fair amount.  The weather was perfect, the beer was cold, the meat—like all the meat here in South Africa—was delicious.

The rugby game itself was a disaster.  The local team is the Stormers, and as we filed into the stadium, they were number one in the country.  They had yet to lose a game this season.  Well, as our friends would tease us later, the American girls apparently brought bad luck because they played horribly and lost.  It was not an exciting game at all.  Hardly any tries were scored, and the crowd was bored and irritated.  In our customary fashion, we bickered intently on our interpretation of the rules of the game, whether it was “clearly like soccer” or “definitely more like football.”  As our respective theses reveal, neither of us had a firm grasp on what was happening.  We did do the wave, however, and I managed to knock the lady in front of me in the head, but turns out she was from New Jersey, so it was nice to chat with her.  Rugby is such an institution here, like soccer was in Italy, and unlike any sport in the U.S., save perhaps baseball back in the day.  Almost every South African male we know played rugby growing up.  Last night, one South African guy described the rhythym of life here.  “What is nice about winter is that there are a lot of rugby games on.  Saturday is rugby day.  Then Sunday, you relax and go to church.”  Rugby and church.  The  foundations of Afrikaans society.

Post 2

So. A lot has happened since our last blog entry (we’re working on updating with more regularity…but let’s be serious…)

Carma

Is the name of a beloved new addition to our adventure team. She is an ‘84 bronze mercedes and easily the nicest car either of us has ever touched in our entire lives. See picture below. We have been tooling around the countryside for the past month or so in style—she’s taken us places we never in our wildest dreams imagined we could go. Like Cape Town. And the beach. Winecountry. Friends’ houses. The grocery store. Who knows just where she’ll take us next?

Birthday Bonanza

As many of you know, the anniversary of Casey’s arrival on this earth was about a month ago. And boy did we celebrate. On her birthday eve we attended an all day wine festival called Ommiberg where we spent the day busing around to different wineries in the coutnryside tasting the newest wines of the 2011 vintage. The next morning Casey awoke to an extravagant birthday breakfast of pancakes with yogurt, whipped cream & rhubarb, borewors (south african lamb/beef sausage that is to die for) and delicious (real!) coffee. From there we embarked upon a roadtrip down the eastern coast to a town called Hermanus, known for whalewatching. Though we saw no whales, we did find snazzy sunglasses, gelato, and South African penguins! We spent the late afternoon watching the sun go down on one of the most beautiful beaches in the entire universe. Definitely a day for the memory book.

*Note the language in the picture of the South African Penguin sign: “comical but vulnerable.” If you find this a little bizarre, then you too would find Afrikaans English to be the same—comical, but vulnerable. With its strange phrasing and slightly inappropriate vocabulary as well as creative grammar, Afrikaans English never ceases to entertain. Take this bowl for instance (picture below). It is a very serious fixture in the home of one of our dear friends. Or the billboard advertisement for pork that can be found in downtown Cape Town. “A tasty treat for the silly season.” No matter how many south africans we ask, no one seems to know to what “the silly season” refers. I’m sure there will be more to add to this list as our time here continues. Stay posted.

Rozendal

The wwoofing farm where we have resided for the past month still feels too good to be true. It is the ideal situation. We work from 7 am-1 pm every weekday and have two primary responsbilities: the dairy and the gardens. We milk the cows and make yogurt, butter, and cheese. We have gotten pretty good, but we do encounter the occasional mishap (like when Casey dropped an entire pound of butter into a dirty bucket of old whey). We fed that butter to Truffles, Caleigh’s beloved pig. She is so fat she can’t see. The day we first saw her get to her feet we were shocked because movement didn’t seem to be an option for her (see photo). We are planting and harvesting lots of vegetables which we eat at every meal. We also feed the two lovely Arabian horses named Shulwon and Fielu.

So I know you all are wondering, if you only work until 1, what do you do for the rest of your afternoon? Well, one of the reasons we were so thrilled at the prospect of half work days was because hoped to make some under-the-table cash while we’re here. Our busy social lives have transformed our wwoofing budget. So we were naturally quite please with ourselves when we found a waitressing gig at a faux-Cuban restaurant/night lounge. Besides the indentured servent-esque wages, the questionably legal extortion from our tips, the ridiculous hours, the sleazy people, the thick smokey air, and the shitty (and expensive) uniform, it was kind of fun…for about two weeks. We did really enjoy the waitstaff and kitchen staff with whom we worked and hope to keep in touch with many of them. But we decided that getting home from waitressing at 3 AM to then get up at 6:30 AM to milk cows was not a sustainable lifestyle. Agh shame.

Fun

We have discovered the best thing. It is called the “longarm” and it has transformed our expectation of dance culture. No longer will we accept the bleak prospect of the sweaty and awkward “bump and grind.” Oh no. Here in South Africa, good ol fashioned two steps still thrive. Our jaws dropped the first time we saw the Afrikaans couples of twenty-somethings floating, dipping, and spinning their way across the dance floor. We’re learning and oh my gosh it is SO MUCH FUN. American boys, beware. Our standards have risen significantly.

Now we must hurry to meet our our friend/farm manager Graham for the farm fresh dinner we promised to cook him. Tomorrow we will witness our first professional rugby game. Go Stormers go! We will definitely keep you updated on that. Until then…

Bluegrass Safari

Plan B is working out superbly well.

Caleigh has been here for about a month and a half, the first three weeks of which were spent living Plan A: working at a large industrial wine operation. Here is a list of things that were wrong with that experience in no particular order:

1. 19 hour workdays

2. No English. Most of her coworkers could speak English but didn’t like to. All Afrikaans all the time.

3. Less than stellar management

4. Extremely large, old and poorly designed winery without proper machinery = Caleigh lugging 25 kg chemical bags and buckets of scalding water up labyrinths of stairs and catwalks all day. Shame*.

So naturally when Caleigh phoned Casey back in Connecticut with a hesitant “How do you feel about having an adventure?” she enthusiastically agreed with a loud “WWOOF!”

So here we are 2 ½ weeks into Casey’s arrival at our second WWOOF farm in Stellenbosch. Here is a list of things that we have experienced thus far:

-       Riding to the supermarket in a clunky white hippie van, whose exterior was covered in sheep quoting bible verses

-       Being chased by a flock of large aggressive honking geese (daily)

-       Fashioning delicious meals from fresh vegetables and herbs we’ve picked ourselves minutes earlier. Michael Pollan eat your heart out.

-       Climbing a mountain** and sunbathing on rocks overlooking Table Mountain and the South Atlantic while listening to a pack of baboons nearby who were doing the same

-       Lounging with South African winemakers at sunset drinking wine that had come from the vineyard in which we were sitting (at which point Casey spilled red wine over both of our white clothes…shocking)

-       Drinking beer and eating pizzas at a restaurant on the beach overlooking Robin Island (where Mandela was held in prison)

-       Milking cows, making cheese and yogurt

-       Making a fabulous french friend named Camille, whose incredible one-liners entertain us to no end

-       Making a cake for our South African friend’s birthday…and then eating it all by ourselves because South Africans don’t like sweets, and, well, we do.

-       Making a mosaic

-       Buying a car

-       “Braaing” the night away

(more to come on all of this later)

So this is just a little taste to whet your appetite--our first of many updates to come. Our title "Bluegrass Safari" comes from the title of a song we heard a guitarist perform last week--a mix between Bluegrass music (the music of Caleigh's homeland) and a special rhythmic African music that is the bomb. So we decided that is an appropriate title for our trip: the Bluegrass Safari. 

* Shame: one of our favorite South African phrases. No matter the magnitude of the problem, the South Africans will regularly reply with "Ahh, shame." 

e.g. I forgot my cell phone back home. Ahh, shame.

       OR

       I left the tap open accidentally and drained 100 gallons of wine into the gutter. Shame. (Yes, it is a really freaking big shame)

** While hiking, we were under the impression that we were nearly at the top, but in actuality we were just short of halfway there. Klem, I'm sure you are shaking your head right now.