That was a slip of the tongue from Sharon as we crossed the border from South Africa into Botswana! What she really meant to say was ‘look at the baboons in Botswana’. And to emphasise she in no way was talking about the cross-border and customs officials. There were actual baboons crossing the road in front of us.
We managed to leave Johannesburg last Thursday, a bit later than we had wanted to. We had to wait for a border letter from the car insurance company, which as it turned out we were never asked to produce! Chico, our car, got a clean bill of health that morning and let’s hope it stays that way. The drive was easy and the roads were in pretty good condition. We just had to watch out for the animals – mostly baboons, donkeys, goats, cattle and loads of ostrich.
We were only crossing through Botswana to get to Namibia so we only stayed there one night in a place called Kanya. We had no idea of where to stay before we arrived. We had found two hotel names listed on an obscure website, so stopped and asked a Kenyan lady where they were. One was no longer operating, but she very kindly led us to the other one which turned out to be fine.
The first palaver we had was with paying on credit card. The receptionist didn’t really know how the ‘chip & pin’ type cards worked. It looked like the card got swiped twice, but it was hard to tell as there was no paper in the machine!
The second palaver was dinner. The meat was a bit tough and Sharon had a choking attack in the dining room, but the locals were concerned and all willing to help. Thankfully the Heimlich (not sure how to spell) manoeuvre was not necessary.
Friday was to be our long day of driving so we wanted an early start. First stop was the ATM machine for some cash where the machine swallowed Dave’s bank card!!! The bank was not open and the security guard said it would be another hour or so before we could get help. But we were in luck this time, a very nice gentleman from the bank came out about 10 minutes later with Dave’s card so we were able to get a move on.
Considering we were only in Botswana for less than 24 hours, we haven’t got much room to comment, but the people we did met were more than helpful. In fact the customs/border officials on the way out of Botswana were the nicest either of us have ever come across! When Dave signed the form as the Customs official instead of the tourist they even joked about it!
We will keep Botswana on our ‘list’ and will try and get back there some day.
What a difference a day can make! We are happy to say that our second welcome to South Africa was a much more hospitable one.
The day after we last wrote our blog, our friends Michelle & Peter picked us up from the Basecamp Backpackers in Port Elizabeth. They drove us to St Francis Bay where they had booked us into the most luxurious place either of us have ever stayed. The Beach House was the ultimate in laid back luxury for the next three nights. We felt thoroughly spoiled and enjoyed every minute – sumptuous breakfasts, walks on the beach, and candle lit baths with sea views.
The Beach House DeckThe Beach House BedroomSea Views!Peter and Michelle
This was in stark contrast to the previous two nights we spent at the backpackers hostel with the craziest hosts we have ever met. Franzie and Monica were ‘Basil and Sybil’ to a tee! Franzie was completley interfering and Moncia constantly nagging him, but they did want their guests to have a good time.
We have also had our first experience of a Fair Trade in Tourism accredited operator – we took a city and township tour with Calabash Tours in Port Elizabeth which gave us an insight on how things work; it was a little disappointing, but worthwhile all the same.
We unfortunately had some very sad news in the last two weeks. Sharon’s sister phoned to say that Avis (a good friend and sister-in-law) had lost her mother in the fight against cancer. Then two days later just as we were getting ready to leave St Francis Bay, Sharon’s Dad phoned with the dreaded phone call that wee Eileen (who had been part of the Brunt family for more than forty five years) had died.
The next couple of days for Sharon were by far the saddest she has ever experienced living away from family, feeling so isolated and not being at home where she was needed. It was not possible to get back to Ireland and very difficult to come to terms with the fact that she could not be there to support family and friends. This is certainly the down side of choosing our travelling lifestyle, but we were so thankful that at least we had each other and we were with supportive friends.
Volkswagen Chico
Since then we have bought a car and to be honest not had the best luck with it so far. Let’s face it, it just hasn’t been our week, but DV things can only get better. We bought our little 1995 VW Citi Golf on Friday from a distant referral, but after walking the streets of East London talking to used car salesman, we thought even a distant referral would be better than taking a chance with a complete stranger. One thing we found is that it is very difficult to buy a car without a car – walking from lot to lot is time consuming work!
We also managed to clear our remaining baggage through customs at the end of last week, a bit of a long winded process, but we got there in the end and now have our camping gear and Dave’s paraglider in tow.
Anyway on Saturday we packed up and hit the road at 7am for an early start – 70kms later the car conked out, fortunately at a Shell garage where there just happened to be two policeman shopping for doughnuts and who were willing to help. They tried their best as did another couple of kind motorists, but all to no avail, the little Chico was going nowhere. Eventually the AA towed us back to East London where the mechanic took 10 minutes to fix an apparent simple alternator/battery wiring problem!
At 1pm we decided to stick with our original plan and headed for Howick (Sharon lived here back in 1990!) in Kwa Zulu Natal. Everything was going well until about 150kms from Howick. Sunset followed by thick fog (no more than 2 metres visibility) accompanied by pedestrians, wild animals and vehicles with no lights on the road meant driving was far from a pleasure. All this accompanied by the oil light flashing on the dashboard with not a garage in sight. Needless to say we were more than relieved to arrive with Mr & Mrs de Jong at 8.30pm in two safe, but shattered pieces!
We had a very relaxing Sunday watching Michelle and her horse in an eventing competition followed by time walking with Mr & Mrs de Jong on the completed Sakabula Golf Coursewhich we first saw in it’s infancy some 9 years ago!
Monday ended up being a bit of a marathon drive from Howick to Pretoria – the car did not get off to a good start, but we did make it just in time for a 5pm appointment with Sharon’s new boss at Fair Trade in Tourism. It was good to put faces with names and she now has no shortage of reading and research material to digest before starting work in January.
Right now we are at Michelle & Peter’s home in between Johannesburg and Pretoria getting ready to re-start our road trip. And guess what? The Chico has had to go into the garage for another check up! All being well we will hit the road again tomorrow and aim to cross the border into Botswana. We don’t plan on stopping long in Botswana on this trip as the goal is to get to Namibia and travel there for the next few weeks.
Although we no longer have our lap top (see previous blog post), we are still able to update schindlersinsa.blogspot.com and check emails via internet cafes to keep in touch.
Our welcome to South Africa was not quite what we anticipated. We have now been in so called “sunny South Africa” for a week and it has rained for the past two days! But no problem, it has not dampened our spirits, and anyway the sun is out again today.
Our first couple of days we stayed at a B&B until one of the other VSA volunteers (Lindsay from Dunedin) kindly offered us a spare room at his place. We moved in there temporarily last Friday. He lives next door to another VSA volunteer (Lesley from Auckland) and we were pleasantly surprised by the quality of their accommodation. Who knows what standard of place we will get later on in December?
Sports Day
Lindsay took us along to a sports day organised by his church on Saturday and managed to rope us in to taking part in Pastor Roco’s team! It was mainly kids competing, with a few bigger kids like us as well. Dave competed in the football, touch rugby, and wheelbarrow races (using real wheelbarrows), and Sharon played volleyball and had to do the sack race. It was a great day out, just a bit too much sunshine for us and we really enjoyed watching the black kids dance, they were superb with unbelievable rhythm. (Oh by the way our team won!)
Sharon competing in the sack raceDave leading a real wheelbarrow race!
Familiarisation
On Saturday night we went out for dinner with a few VSA volunteers. There are currently 5 VSA volunteers in East London, and a few more scattered around South Africa.
Sunday was spent with two volunteers showing us around the area. We did a lot of walking on some beautiful beaches, something we hope to do a lot more of when we get our own place here.
We have also met our VSA field officer and have found out a wee bit more about Sharon’s actual assignment, not much more, but a little! He has also put me in touch with my soon to be boss in Fair Trade in Tourism in Pretoria so hopefully we will get up there to see her at some stage before I start work.
The last few days we have been car shopping and doing a lot of walking. It is hard to buy a car without a car because it is a fair distance between car lots and private car sales! Hence no car yet!
We went to a drumming circle on Tuesday night – a group of people who get together weekly and play the African drums, great sound and maybe that is something else we will do when we get settled in East London.
Right now we are in Port Elizabeth (PE), two hours south of East London (EL), and although as we said earlier our spirits have not dampened we are fairly p!$$ed off .
The inevitable welcome to South Africa
Our welcome to South Africa has involved the inevitable, something we thought was likely to happen at some stage during our two years, but not anticipating it would happen in the first week.
You have probably guessed by now that we have been the victims of SA crime! The volunteer’s house we were staying at was broken into on Wednesday morning just after we left to go catch a bus to Port Elizabeth for a few days. The bad news is that we lost half our stuff. The good news is of course that we still have the other half!
It is just unfortunate that the missing stuff was our luxury stuff – the laptop and our trusty iPOD with all our music. Sharon’s backpack is gone, her clothes, our hiking boots and running shoes (great excuse to not have to go running anymore), and a few other bits and pieces. Note that none of Dave’s clothes were taken!!! Lindsay, our host, lost a few pairs of shoes and some pens!
After dealing with half the SA police force and completing a dozen forms to report the crime, we managed to change our bus time and still get to PE as planned.
One parting quote from Lindsay as we left the police stations was “we thought we were all coming to SA to help the poor, but it looks like the poor are quite happy to help themselves!!!”
We are meeting our SA friends (Michelle & Peter) tomorrow and really looking forward to spending the weekend with them.
One last thing – we have not managed to work out a way to make cheap international phone calls yet, and texting is also very expensive for us, so email and this blog will be our primary source of communication.
Wednesday 28th September 2005 is now ranked up there as the longest day we’ve ever had, but more about that later.
We are now in South Africa, and writing this at 5am from a bed & breakfast in East London!
Our last week or so in New Zealand was a wee bit strange, it was kind of like being in limbo because we had to move out of our house on the 18th to allow our tenants to move in, and our flights were not leaving Queenstown until the 27th. We are not sure what we would have done without the generosity of all our friends who housed and fed us during our homeless state. A big thank you to everyone we stayed with, and also thanks to all of you who so kindly offered, it was all very much appreciated.
Stewart Island
Since we had a few days to while away we took the opportunity to visit Stewart Island and it was a well needed break away from all our preparations. We had a lovely time relaxing – we spent our three days there reading, walking and eating some delicious fresh fish while admiring the stunning views. It is a beautiful little island and well worth a visit.
Halfmoon Bay Stewart IslandOban, Stewart Island
And so it was that we could no longer prolong the inevitable emotional departure from our home of the past four years. We had a bit of a farewell do in Queenstown on Saturday night, which had a knock on effect on how we, and a few of our friends, felt on Sunday morning!
If things go according to plan with our VSA assignment in South Africa, we will not return to our home in New Zealand with the views that we will no doubt miss, until the end of January 2008.
Farewell party with friends
Back to the longest day
Okay back to the longest day.
It started in a Christchurch airport motel with a very early morning (or rather middle of the night) wake up call at 3.30am! Our international flight left at 5.50am for Sydney where we had a few hours to kill before the 14 hour onward flight to Johannesburg.
There is no getting away from the fact that it was a very long flight all the while seeming to chase daylight, but the amazing views over the Antarctic made it all worthwhile. The pilot who had been flying for 30 years said he had never seen such impressive views of this unique continent. It all felt even more relevant due to the fact that we had just spent the previous afternoon in the very educational Antarctic Centre in Christchurch.
We arrived late afternoon in Johannesburg, and on the connecting flight to East London, we were relieved at last to see the sun set. We’d had 22 hours of daylight – it would soon be bed time and at this stage nothing else mattered!
The fact that Sharon’s backpack did not make it with us to East London was of no concern – we were in Africa now! We were met at the airport by two VSA volunteers who drove us to our B&B (The Gate House in Quigney). And the surprising news was that the missing back pack turned up at 9.30pm just as we turned down the sheets at the end of the longest day (about 28 hours after we got out off bed)!
We are on the move again! Volunteering this time. As many of you know we had our first experience of volunteering back in 2003. Since returning from that first four-month foray in Peru, we knew that this was something we both wanted to do more of, so it is with that in mind that we are on the move again.
Our experience in northern Peru was really great and we learned a lot from it. First and foremost that teaching was not the way to go for us. Secondly, we wanted more time to achieve sustainable results, and thirdly we knew we wanted to get involved in a volunteer project where we could use more of our skills, experiences or whatever you call the things we felt we could offer!
Volunteer Services Abroad
And so it was that back in February this year, after a fair few hours of researching on the internet, we came up with the idea of registering our interest with Volunteer Services Abroad (VSA) based in Wellington.
Anyway to cut a long story a wee bit shorter, there were a couple of tourism related jobs up for grabs so Sharon applied for both. One in the Solomon Islands, and the other in South Africa.
In May VSA invited us both to Wellington for the interview process, but only for the job in SA.
Our first reaction was disappointment as we had an idyllic, romantic notion of working and living in a Pacific Island where everything would be new and exotic to both of us. On second thoughts perhaps living on a very small remote island with limited running water, and a sporadic electricity supply for 2 years may become ‘old hat’ after a while!
All of this was in comparison to going to South Africa, a country we have both been to before, and primarily think of as being developed, but facing a different set of challenges.
Although Dave did not apply for a specific role, he did have to join Sharon throughout the lengthy and thorough interview, selection, recruitment and preparation processes. Bearing in mind that he had not had an interview in almost 20 years, that experience was a little nerve-wracking to say the least! (A special note of thanks here to those people, you know who you are, who provided the very detailed references for us – we didn’t recognise ourselves when we read them!).
South Africa it is!
Suffice to say we got through it all, including extensive medical and dental examinations, and Sharon has accepted the role of Tourism Development Advisor for Fair Trade Tourism South Africa. We are on the move again!
Dave is officially going as an ‘accompanying partner’. Although he claims he is going to spend the next two years paragliding, golfing (very loose term), and learning to surf, he is actually going to find volunteer work when we settle in to our new location, a city called East London on the Eastern Cape of South Africa.
It is 15 years since Sharon first lived in SA, and it was nine years ago when we both had a short holiday there. No doubt we will notice changes, but we have a vague idea of what to expect in terms of climate, geography, landscape and lifestyles. Let’s hope we can adapt and fit in to our new community.
We have just received our visas and are waiting on final flight confirmations. All being well we should arrive in SA by the end of September, either way we are moving out of our house this weekend because we have tenants moving in on Sunday!
Because the volunteer assignment does not start until January, we are going to travel around SA for 3 months or so, and experience the tourism industry first hand! And by way of this blog we will try and keep you up to date with what’s going on in our lives, but meanwhile should you want to contact us please do so on: schindlersinsa@gmail.com
6 May 2001, Christchurch, South Island, New Zealand
We imagine that most of you will be very relieved to find that this is our last travelling update. No more long posts for you to plough through. And what’s worse is this is probably the most difficult one to write as we cannot find the right words to describe the beauty of the South Island, but we will give it a go.
After Nelson we drove south along the west coast under a little bit of drizzle, but certainly not anything close to the amount of rain that is so common in this area.
By the time we reached Franz Josef the sky was blue and perfect conditions for a heli-hike on the glacier. We had about a 10 minute ride in the helicopter before it landed on the glacier where we were met by a guide who took us hiking on the glacier for a couple of hours. It was a really strange, but good fun experience walking on the glacier going through huge crevices and even ice caves. It could have been a whole lot different if Dave had fallen any further into some broken ice – the bruises on his shin were pretty spectacular. Thankfully, the ice kept the swelling down.
We spent the next few days taking it easy by Lake Wanaka. We managed a few short hikes with some fantastic views of the lake. The town itself was a lovely little laid back kind of ski town and it was just full of beautiful trees all shedding their colourful leaves. Some of the autumn colours we have seen en route have just been glorious – loads of deep reds and golden yellows.
Nap time in Wanaka!Stunning views in the Wanaka area
Our next stop was the explosive town of Queenstown, probably the tourist (and adventure) capital of NZ, and of course home of the famous AJ Hackett bungy jump. Dave had jumped last time he was here 11 years ago and Shaz was not desperate for an adrenalin rush so we gave it a miss. We did really enjoy a trip on the Dart River on a jet boat – the thrills were minimal, but the scenery was outstanding.
Probably one of the best campsites we have stayed at was our next one at Te Anau, which was our base for exploring Fiordland. The standard of campsites throughout NZ is really high and far superior to those we stayed at in Australia.
The drive from Te Anau to Milford was spectacular to say the least. We had met another couple at the campsite who came with us, as the road was not an easy one for them to ride their bicycles on. We were all booked on the Milford Sound overnight cruise on the Wanderer which set sail at 4.30 in the afternoon. Our luck was in again as this time the boat was followed by a pod of bottlenose dolphins. Once the boat had anchored for the night, we both took out kayaks for a paddle.
It was while we were on the water that we felt so insignificant in this place – we were surrounded by steep sided mountains with huge waterfalls tumbling down and baby seals playing under our kayaks. It is impossible to capture the beauty and mystery of Milford Sound in words; it just has to be visited.
As if the cruise wasn’t enough to captivate us, we also flew over part of the Fiordland and Milford Sound. We had a 70-minute flight from Te Anau, and to date, this has been the best ‘tour dollar we have spent. It was just the pilot and us and the scenery – mountains, fiords, and glaciers – it was simply stunning.
Once we got back down to earth, we were off to Invercargill, NZ’s southernmost city and a very depressing one at that. It just looks like a city that is dying and is the root of many Kiwi jokes.
Needless to say we didn’t hang around, but headed off towards The Catlins where once again we had beautiful scenery and wildlife to admire. It was here that we ended up staying one night in a cabin instead of the tent – the rain was catching up with us.
We also managed to view a flock (?) of penguins, the quite rare yellow eyed variety – they were really comical to watch and we were fascinated. Since then we have visited Dunedin where we watched our first game of Super 12 Rugby in a local bar and that brings us to where we are now, Christchurch.
We have a few more days left in the South Island, but must be back in Auckland in the North Island for Friday 11 May.
For those of you that haven’t heard the jungle drums yet, we will back in the UK for a quick trip, arriving on Tuesday 15 May and probably staying about a month. The time of course will be split equally between England and Ireland! We hope to catch up with as many of you as possible.
A few of you in the UK have asked us to bring some good weather back with us – not much chance of that as we would rather leave the drizzle and winter weather here and go back to some dry sunny days – some chance eh?
So as we say that’s your lot! It has been really lovely to hear from so many of you during this trip and hopefully you have enjoyed reading about it as much as we have enjoyed the experience.
Hi, we're Sharon & Dave an active and adventurous Irish & English couple who've been travelling together for more than 20 years. These posts are our travel stories and personal journeys. Follow our adventures to see where we've been and where we're going next!
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