"Vacation" to the Garden Route (part 1: Tsitsikamma National Park)

Two weeks ago, we took a working holiday to drive the famous "Garden Route" along the South Coast, looking for plants, the occasional dinosaur, and some good port. Our trip took us from Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape west to Tsitsikamma National Park, then to Knysna via Plettenberg Bay, and then North into the Karoo via the port and ostrich capitals of Oudtshoorn and Calitzdorp. The scenery was amazing, and we took more than 1000 photographs, so we're breaking things up into four parts. Today, part one: Tsitsikamma National Park.  

Our route, more or less. Red line indicates adventure route along the R339 and R340 - 60km long, 3.5 hours of driving, all switchbacks.

The real reason Jonah was in the Eastern Cape to begin with was to do some work at the Albany Museum in Grahamstown. You may remember the dinosaur Jonah collected while staying at the Murder Ranch. This is the monstrous foot of that animal, with the hands of grad student Blair and preparator Lindikhaya for scale.

Our drive out of Port Elizabeth took us past a big windfarm west of town. The coastal part of the Eastern Cape is flat and windy - the coastal sand dunes there are the biggest in the world - making it the ideal "green power" plant. 

A small detour on the R102 gave us this view of a bridge spanning the Van Stadens River, one of many river gorges along our route. These were created by the bottom edge of South Africa lifting up while rivers cut down to the coast. 

We reached the eastern edge of Tsitsikamma in the early evening and checked in at our digs at Storms River Mouth rest camp. Here's the view from the parking lot. More about the vegetation later.

And here's our backyard. We rented a small, dorm-like and seaweed-smelling apartment in this well-disguised complex.

The view of the Indian Ocean from our back porch. A storm was brewing and the waves were up to 10ft. 

Of course, we didn't have much time to rest because we had to sample the local Helichrysum populations! As usual with field botany, this meant two things: 1. long walks through snake-infested wilderness, 2. it was raining.

Luckily, we didn't have far to go. Helichrysum odoratissimum was literally everywhere you looked.

Kelsey couldn't have been happier!

This meant we had a bit of time to explore the Otter Trail, a 52km walk along the entire coastal margin of the national park.

Here our fearless captain leads us into the sea...

While our practical navigator huddles under a cliff out of the rain.

Soaked, cold, yet having fun, we retired to the lodge for vital supplies: cappuccino and crappy ponchos.

After a warm cup of coffee, and with renewed spirits, we took the walk to the Storms River Mouth itself. This cliff margin scramble includes three suspension bridges. 

NO JUMPING ON THE BRIDGE!

Kelsey was not at all scared.

Oops! Rain's back!

We had both noticed a certain...aroma stench coming from areas of the walk. Naturally assuming it was tourist offerings we were surprised to learn it was instead the middens of these dassies (hyraxes). From the wikipedia entry: " Rock hyraxes produce large quantities of hyraceum—a sticky mass of dung and urine that has been employed as a South African folk remedy in the treatment of several medical disorders, including epilepsy and convulsions. Hyraceum is now being used by perfumers who tincture it in alcohol to yield a natural animal musk." Yup, MUSK.

The coastal margin forest is incredibly diverse, and most of the tree species were completely new to us. The most beautiful of the trees are these yellowoods (more in part 2), which unfortunately have been devastated for lumber.

Did we mention it was raining? Did we mention the trail was steep and slippery? Here, our captain riffs on the Bruce Springsteen cover but looks like he should have wiped more thoroughly.

Fun's over, time to press all those specimens! At least we've got some good South African wine to keep us going.

Stay tuned for Part 2: Plettenberg Bay, the Robberg Peninsula, and Knysna, the 50 point scrabble word named town

Neighbourgoods Market & Museum Africa

 Happy March, everyone! 

To open today's post, I thought I'd share a photo of my favorite lemon growing outside the kitchen window. It's a little funky with it's own style, and the setting sun cast fun shadows on its quirky shape. 

Jonah's off on another field trip in the Eastern Cape, so I offered to host a visiting American grad student for a couple weeks. Julie, her supervisor (who is staying at a local B&B in Melville), and I went down to Braamie to take in the Neighbourgood's Market scene. We've mentioned this place once or twice in our previous posts, but it changes frequently, so it's worth mentioning again. 

The egg's benedict with bacon looked so tasty today. I was surprised to find that instead of the normal English muffin, they swapped it out with a hash brown. Well played, Benedict's!

This is a new installment from when we first started visiting. I hope this stall hangs around for a while.

Jonah and I tend to follow this guy and his wife around various Joburg markets. The Polish Meat Guy is not to be missed, the kielbasa is nothing short of delicious.

Instead of the usual African vegetarian dishes table, spices abound! From your ever-popular Biltong Spice to the almost-to-hard-to-pass-up cardamom pods. Heaven in bags. I'm currently kicking myself for not stocking up.

Cumin, Garam Masala, and Biltong Spice, oh my!

Here's a view of the Market just getting started. We arrived just as the bell rang to let the anxious hipsters & yupsters rush to get their "flat whites with warm milk, no sugar, extra foam, please."...Yep, as soon as that bell rang, I was also striding to get in line for a strong cuppa Joe.

Champagne glasses were all set up with bright red raspberries, just asking to be enjoyed with a slimy oyster!

The tart table was almost too much to pass by. These are my favorite kinds of tarts and are next on my 'to-bake' list. 

How fun are these little tagines?! Each one offers different type of hummus. I should have taken a photo of the tagines and the purveyor; his glasses were super trippy.

Only at Neighbourgood's can you find the Ultimate of Wooden Frame Sunglasses. 

Amanda, the sunglasses on display were calling you.

After jolling around the Market, Julie's advisor was keen to check out a photography exhibit currently on view at Museum Africa. So we hopped into the mighty Getz and set off across the Nelson Mandela Bridge. The exhibit, Rise & Fall of Apartheid, was moving and presented many images that I still have to work to wrap my mind around. It is truly hard to believe that such a beautiful and generally happy place was riddled with turmoil within my lifetime.

The building is essentially a large warehouse located in Newtown. The vast open space consisted of four floors to explore. Some of my favorite exhibits I neglected to get photos of, but displayed clippings from recent newspapers, often featuring sangomas and the Tokoloshe. They provided a bit of comic relief after a more sombre glimpse into South Africa's history.

Welcome to Lion Country. This exhibit struck me as odd. First because it's a bar. In a museum. And two, it's not really jiving with the flow of things. It was a replica of a bar that used to be in Joburg. According to SAB WoB (in a previous post), there were over 200 bars in Joburg's CBD. Apparently, this was one of them. Perhaps it was there to prepare you for the sobering journey you were about to take.

This exhibit was excellent. The photographs caught the expressions, the feelings, and the trials of that time in South Africa's history. The majority of the photographers were South African, and many of the photographs depicted every day life. 

Here's a brief example of the exhibit. The photographs were arranged in rows along walls in a large open room with a number of free-standing walls. It didn't feel right to take lots of photos, so instead, I wandered around for a couple of hours learning more about South African history. Throughout the exhibit, different sections portrayed different decades. In these sections, timelines were listed out, which was extremely useful to contextualize the history within what I know about US history. It really started to catch me when we got to the 90's because I was cognizant of reality by that time in my life. 

Wits was one of the first Universities in South Africa to be an open institution with a policy of non-discrimination. The Wits community protested strongly when the government enacted the Extension of the Education Act in 1959, which forced university apartheid. Wits worked to maintain its open policy in the face of severe consequences. These photos were taken during those protests and demonstrations on our campus. Despite the irritations I feel when dealing with some things at Wits, these photos, among a number of others, made me proud to be a 'Witsie'.

Madiba

We know it's been a while, but enough people have asked us what it was like here when Mandela died, so we figured we share our rather limited insight. There is literally no way to understate the effect of Mandela's death on South Africans, black or white. Imagine (you USA natives) if George Washington had died in your lifetime (and didn't own slaves but had rather freed them). 

Our local friends' reactions were quite varied, but all sort of inspiring. Almost everybody had a story about meeting Mandela in school or at work. Our friend Kelvin, bartender at the campus pub, took some of his quite limited annual vacation time and hopped a taxi with friends to ride the 1000km (one way) to see Mandela's funeral in Qunu. Our buddy Andrew took his two little kids down to Nelson Mandela's house so they could put flowers on a makeshift street shrine that had developed, and at Andrew's birthday party we lit off hot air balloons in honor of Madiba's life. 

It was Andrew that suggested we go down to Mandela's house and see the scene in the street. It's hard to believe in these days of security threats that you could still get right up to Mandela's (albeit heavily fortified) wall, but we were able to drive easily into his neighborhood, park nearby, and walk past his house. These pictures are from that experience.

This street shrine is backed by a rickety chain-link fence, and Mandela's wall is the yellow feature in the background.

Literally thousands of bouquets, handwritten signs, and candles from people of all walks of life and all nationalities had appeared by this third day after Mandela's passing.

Some of the tributees were somewhat surprising.

The crowd outside was incredibly peaceful and the scene was truly moving, even for us outsiders.

Americans don't generally know this, but the Communist Party was (and still is) well tied to the ANC political party that Mandela was the head of. They had a robust presence outside his house, running this communist flag to and fro on regular intervals.

With the peaceful crowds, the enormous police presence resorted to doing what it does best.

The shrine stretched for about half a block around the main intersection on Mandela's street.

South African media and international media had been well set up for days, even months before Mandela's passing (with his hospitalization we all knew it was coming), and had built something of a tent city adjacent to their vans.

Ever the entrepreneurs, South African small businessmen weren't far behind the media. 

This is an ANC rally car.

In parks along the way to Madiba's house, small wreaths and other memorials had been set up, although it wasn't clear if they were sponsored by the government or private enterprise.

Finally, this video (if it works) shows the almost non-stop singing of old political songs by ANC party members in the street outside.

Madiba's memorial service got some embarrassing international press, given the selfies, the fake sign language guy, the traffic, etc., but Kelsey listened to the whole thing on local radio and said it was moving, powerful, and Obama's speech made her proud to be an American.