Group Excursions

If you haven’t noticed yet from my writing so far, there are a lot of activities organized by our director that we participate in as a group. The biggest of these are our group excursions. So far, we have had two day trips, one to Addo Elephant National Park and Schotia Game Reserves and one to Grahamstown and King Williamstown, and one weekend trip to Durban. Along with those, we are currently in Cape Town until Sunday, having left on Tuesday, and then we have another weekend trip to the frontier to stay with some Afrikaner (of Dutch ancestry) farmers on April 17th-19th.
I would say that my favourite excursion so far was the one to Addo Elephant National Park and Schotia Game Reserves, both located about an hour outside of Port Elizabeth. As you can maybe tell from the names, the main attraction at these places was the animals. This was one of our earlier excursions, taking place on Sunday February 15th (the same weekend we went to Jeffrey’s Bay). It was a pretty cold morning, but believe it or not, that was the nicer part of the day. After lunch it started raining a little bit, and then the rain picked up in the afternoon, and by about 4:00 it was pouring and it didn’t stop until we left around 9:00 pm. That was probably the worst weather we have had in the whole two months that we’ve been here. Despite the weather, it was a ton of fun, and was one of the biggest highlights of the trip for me.
We left Langerry around 7am and drove there in a bus, our first stop being Addo. The park is huge and is designed with small gravel roads that wind through it and a few different lookout stations scattered around the park. But visitors mainly stay in their vehicles and drive around spotting animals along the gravel roads, staying within the safety of their vehicles. There are, after all, three of Africa’s “Big Five” land animals within the park that would make a quick lunch out of you if they felt threatened. And wow did we see animals. We saw ostriches, springbok, kudu, warthogs, eland, and meerkats to name a few. The animals that were kind of the highlight were the flightless dung beetle (an endangered species that cars are required to stop for if they see one crossing the road), and cape buffalo and elephants, both members of the big five. Along with us, kind of acting as a tour guide, was a man named Bradley Levak, who has worked with our program in past years and has also done other things with our group. He grew up in the poorer townships during the 1980’s, the most intense years of unrest before the end of Apartheid. He is very knowledgeable and seems to have an infinite number of fascinating life stories about the struggle against Apartheid. Anyway, we drove around the park all morning and ate a quick lunch, then left Addo around 1:00pm for Schotia Game Reserves.
While Addo is a national park, Schotia is a private organization that owns maybe 600 – 1000 acres of African prairie land. On the land, they keep wild African animals that have been somewhat domesticated by all of the tours going through. If you were to imagine a “safari” from the movies I suppose that this would be pretty similar, only on private land. They have a handful of big Land Rovers that guides would drive through the park with tourists sitting on the open back. So, we split up into groups of about ten and spent the afternoon spotting animals from these huge Land Rovers. Keep in mind that this was the point in the day where the rain was coming down hardest and we were in a vehicle without any top, so we got soaking wet and a bit chilly. But the animals provided enough of a distraction, so we didn’t really notice the cold too much. Some of the highlights were wildebeest, crocodiles, hippos, impala, kudu, zebra (definitely white with black stripes, or was it black with white stripes?), giraffe, and rhinos. The climax of the day came when we saw the lions. Everyone else got to see a huge male, but just after we drove up and parked the vehicle, a lioness and four lion cubs approached him from opposite of us. Watching them was unbelievable, and I had to pinch myself a couple of times to make sure I was awake. Eventually they wandered off though, and we headed back for the park’s headquarters. We got there by the time it was dark and had a dinner that was included with the safari. We had kudu meat stew served over rice, my first bit of African game, and it was delicious! After eating, having a couple of drinks, and hanging out with our guides for a while, we left for PE. I would have to say that Addo and Schotia were probably my favourite part of my trip to Africa so far.
Our next group excursion was a weekend trip to Durban, a city in South Africa about an hour’s flight up the northeast coast of South Africa. It has a very large Indian population, so a number of things we did were to experience the Indian influence in the area. We left PE on Thursday March 5th and got back early on Monday the 9th. So, on Thursday we got there at around 4:00pm after a flight with some hilarious flight attendants. Our first stop was the Temple of Understanding, a temple for the Hare Krishna religion. The architecture and decoration of the temple was pretty cool and it was interesting hearing about their religion. Right after that was my favourite part of the day, a private performance by a pretty famous cultural dancing company. They do a number of different styles of dancing, including Xhosa, Zulu (both South African tribes), and Indian, and sometimes blend them with other dance styles. Afterwards we went out to eat at a buffet style Indian restaurant. The food was delicious of course, very spicy, and I ate way too much. We spent the rest of the evening just hanging out at our backpacker.
On Friday we had a tour of the city center, which is best described as a mixture between the big buildings of downtown Minneapolis, the crowded streets of New York, and a the small shops and street vendors of a crowded marketplace. It was like nothing I had ever seen. Also as part of the tour we had a tour of one of the largest Muslim mosques in the Southern Hemisphere. We had a former Baptist minister turned Muslim explain some of the traditions, and basically highlight the similarities between Christianity and Islam. We also went to some of the open air markets in Durban where they had everything from toys to food to jewellery in a big open-air market. Included was one of the largest herb markets in Africa. It was a very interesting morning and we got a very good glimpse into life in Durban. We had some free time in the afternoon, which I spent out to eat with some friends, which ended up being a two and a half hour ordeal. That is one thing that was pretty tough for me to adjust to in South Africa, the slow service in restaurants, even fast food places. So to avoid this I cook almost all of my meals when we’re in PE at my flat and am basically working my way to becoming a five star chef! Anyway, for the evening we went to a small restaurant and cocktail bar by the harbour to listen to live jazz performance and afterwards went out to a dance club.
Saturday morning we went to an Apartheid museum, giving us a more fathomable look into the lives of the oppressed people of the Apartheid era. It was a pretty sombre experience to say the least. In the afternoon we had the option of going to an afternoon of a five day cricket test match between South Africa and Australia, which I passed on so that I could go scuba diving! We were hoping to go at a very famous sight south of Durban, but the sea conditions were bad all weekend, so we dove in a tank in their Marine World. It was really cool. We got to see a bunch of sting rays and devil rays, the biggest being six feet in diameter. Our evening entertainment was the Bolshoi Russian Ballet. I guess they are very famous, and the performance was stunning.
On Sunday we had mostly optional events. Myself and eight others got up early for a boat trip in the harbour and the beachfront of Durban. In the late morning and afternoon a number of us went on a hike in a nature reserve about half an hour from our backpacker. It was good to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city for a little bit and get some fresh air. They also had some pet snakes there, so they fed one for us, and then they took their huge python out of its cage to show everyone and I got to hold it! For the evening, we went to a one man, one act play. It was pretty much a stand-up comedy routine with a storyline, except almost all of the jokes played off of South African things, so they were beyond us.
On Monday we left the backpacker at 6:00am for our 8:00am flight back to PE. Lucky for us, we didn’t have class that day, so I spent a bunch of time hanging out on the beach and doing some reading.
Our third big group excursion was to Grahamstown and King Wiliamstown on Friday the 13th of March, focusing mainly on land redistribution (redistributing land to the owners who owned the land before it was taken by white people throughout the 1900’s). The cities aren’t more than a couple of hours from PE, so we took a charter bus up there. Also accompanying us was Bradley Levak, the same guy who went to Addo and Schotia with us. Our first stop was in Grahamstown where we basically had someone explain how colonialism started in the area with British settlers landing on the shores. We then stopped at a small, traditional Xhosa art shop and museum in Grahamstown. The next stop was in a small town called Paddie, where the mayor talked to us about the African National Congress (the ruling party in SA) and their plan for land redistribution. After his talk then lunch there, we continued on to King Williamstown. The stop there was to visit Steve Biko’s former house, a big figure that died during struggle against Apartheid. We then drove back to Grahamstown where myself and ten others left the rest of the group to do some travelling on our own for the rest of the weekend.
Well, I realize that this got extremely long, and I apologize for it. Also, the internet is extremely slow here, so I will be posting some pictures to go along with this blog after I get back to PE. I send my love from Cape Town.
Peace,
Kirby