The Grande Plan, the Petit Plan and What's Going On

So, Amit pointed out that many people might not know what are our plans for the trip and such and so will not understand where we are going and why so here is comes...

The Grand Plan
Our grand plan is a circular voyage in southern Africa, starting and ending at South Africa. We started, as you know, at Cape Town where we traveled the southern coast for about a week. We then went up to Namibia, where we will be travelling for a total of 5 weeks.

Next we will be taking a bus to Victoria Falls in Zambia, from which we will take a train (that lasts a few days) to Dar Es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania (which is technically part of eastern, not southern Africa). At this point we will start our way back south, crossing into Mozambique on it's northern border with Tanzania, making our way down on the coast. So you ask,why is this not in the map I linked?? Because there is no driving route - you stop at the border in Tanzania to sign the papers, walk to the river and take a boat to the other side, then walk to the border there. But yesterday someone told us about this really cool 3 days boat ride from Zambia into Mozambique through Lake Malawi, so who knows :)

Once in Mozambique, we might be very happy laying on the beach for about a month and do nothing but read good books and eat good food, or we might still have the bug and will continue on to travel in Swaziland and Lesotho. Lesotho being the only country completely surrounded by another country, no other border - just South Africa. And from there back home!

That's it. Now you know the Grand Plan.

The Petit Plan - Namibia
 So the plan in Namibia is fairly simple - we started fro the Fish River in the south, then through Sesriem making our way north, perhaps stopping at the Himba people in the north west.Then we will start our way east through Etosha to the Kalahari to meet the San and into Botswana to the Okavango delta. Then back to Windhoek.

Other Stuff - Namibia So Far
When I set to write this post I did it because I haven't written in a while, but the truth is I don't really know how to define the passed week we have been on the roads here in Namibia. It is long long drives in sometimes breathtaking landscapes. Sometimes without seeing another car pass by for hours. It is full of unexpected surprises, like a stop we did to see a Quivertree forest, which are odd looking trees set against odd looking rock formations, but amongst them was a weird and crazy art work - peoples figures made of scraps driving cars and doing pull ups, it looked like an hallucination. Or the time we stopped at a camp and got some wood, made dinner on the open fire (yummy  shakshuka!) and the night was so cold we shivered through it, to find a thick layer of frost on our tent! Or when we went to see the champions league final at a sport pub here - I have never seen more expressive fans. They jumped, danced, hugged and cried. The owner was a Manchester fan and closed the tv everytime Barca scored as protest, it was awesome! So you see, it is just a combination of many experiences, some good some bad, like life but denser  :)

Animals and Humen

First some technical details: We took a car from Cape Town for 7 days and traveled the southern coast of South Africa, this area includes the Overberg, the Garden Route and the Winelands. We returned the car at Cape Town and took a 20 hours bus (which took almost 24 hours of course) to Windhoek, where we are now.

So it all started with great white sharks diving. Yes, you read correctly. They put you in a cage (you not the sharks) and lower you into shark infested water in the ocean. They then throw baits at the sharks to get them really near and excited. They are AMAZING animals and it was an incredible experience!!

We then went into a sanctuary for birds and one for monkeys that were both amazing, but they were beaten by Tenikwa where we went into a cage with a Cheetah!! What a beautiful creature, they were actually purring at us! Just like a house cat but much louder! One of the most magnificent animals there was the leopard. It is much more massive, and with leopards you cannot go into the cage, even if they grew with humans. He was just beyond the metal fence, when the guide realized how he was eyeing the little boy that was with us. It was a very intense moment, the leopard will not take his eyes off that boy and the guide said we must move on now, or the leopard will try to get the boy through the fence!

We stopped to sleep in a farm on top of a mountain, they had 8 orange cats, two dogs, a few horses and lots of chickens. I have to say, I haven't met many chickens in my life but these chickens were hilarious!! They followed me everywhere, even into the chicken making a lot of noise and looking confused and confident at the same time.

The next day we were doing a half day hiking trail in Nature's valley, at some point we have reached a beautiful lagune, completely empty that can only be accessed by foot or by boat. While we were walking on the beach, we startled a penguin. He was along on the beach and as he was trying to get away we realize he was injured, he could barely walk. We remembered that Tanikwa is also a penguins rehabilitation center
(where they heal them and send them back), and we had our phone with us. So we called them and gave them our location. We had to move on, and as we were walking away we saw him standing on the beach, looking out to sea. We didn't know if the rescue team will be able to find him and it broke our hearts. The next day however we called Tanikwa and were informed they found him and that he is recovering in their hospital! It made us very happy to know he was safe.

The last part of the story is us driving back into Cape Town. From the highway we could see those awful sheds people live in again. And it went on for miles and miles. Small, made of scraps, some with electricity wires going in some without. Some children playing on the dirt near the highway. It made us feel extremely sad. It looked like this is the forgotten backdoor of the world.

Cape Town - what can I say?

So many things have happened, so many experiences and stories to tell I do not know where to start.

We climbed that crazy mountain (Cape Town table mountain, go read the previous blog!), ho yes we did! It was one of the toughest climbs ever ("if not HA!"), but it was worth it, the view from the top is indescribable, and how it feels when you got there with your own two legs cannot be compared with the 10 minutes it takes to get up with the cable car (tough of course we took it on the way down, there is a limit to any nonsense!). Pictures are in the camera and will have to wait, but here is a clue...

We drove down to the cape of good hope, where I made Amit to turn the car so we can see the penguins that turned out to be a flock of seagulls... But then we saw some real penguins, between trees, very different from the image of them on ice you always see, and they made mating sounds like cows. Very strange but cool!

We stopped for a wine tasting in a place that looks like a European mansion, between green hills, horses and foliage. The wine was amazing but we could not but feel the gap between that place and the sheds we saw people live in - they look a little like the ones in "District 9" if you saw the movie - as small as our bathroom, made of tin scraps, with a number sprayed on the outside, children playing between the laundry in the dusty gaps from shed to shed. Terrible view, that goes on and on for way too long. The other side of beautiful Africa.

Sending hugs and kisses!

Away - Cape Town

After a very long (24h) but pleasant (Lufthansa) flight we finally arrived to Cape Town! And it feels exactly like any other western city...  :)

The best thing about this city for the mountain, you can see it from almost any spot in the city, towering any skyscraper, making everything look small in comparison. I love it. Instead of a city with some nature around it feels like there is nature and then a city that was permitted to grow next to it, but never forget it's place.

We are staying at a simple and cool backpackers place called the Longstreet Backpackers. They have several cats and dogs, including the blackest cat I have ever seen, a nice kitchen we can cook in and a lot of beer.

That's it, we are on our way to somewhere. Not sure where. And everything feels the same.

Sending kisses and hugs from far away...

Emma 1992 - 2011

Last Friday, after 19 years of companionship, our cat Emma passed away. She died from old age, peacefully during the night, and my mom and brother who were at home buried her body in a beautiful spot in one of the mountains near the house. It is very weird now, walking around the house without her - I still call out "Hi Emma" whenever I walk in the door, and I still guard my plate when I eat meat, I still expect her to come around the corner and sit in my lap. Though she was very old and thin and had trouble jumping as high as she used to, she still had enough zeal in her to snatch the chicken wing off the Passover plate just two weeks before.

I was ten when my father brought her, she was then a few weeks old, small and frightened and we chased her around the house until she found refuge behind my mom who was sitting on the bed. I'm glad I was in Israel when she died and got to say one last goodbye. As my sister put it, Emma waited for me to let go and pass away, and I am happy that she did.

Two pics of Emma and the little pile of rocks we buried her under