One Year Down! One More To Go!

On Wednesday (Sept 29th), Kale and I celebrated our one year anniversary of arriving in South Africa.  We spent the evening treating ourselves to drinks at the famous Oyster Box hotel and reminiscing about the last year’s adventures.

 

One year! (We tried to look fancy for the Oyster Box)

 

There have been so many!  As we talked, we became a little panicked that we only have one year left to explore this beautiful country!  Not only that, we have become quite attached to some lovely people here.  We are very much looking forward to what our second year has in store for us. So, what have we been up to in the last few months?  The seasons continue to be opposite, and we just finished the gorgeous winter that Durbanites tend to brag about: cool enough for a light jacket but nearly every day filled with sunshine.  Spring has recently arrived with a chorus of birds to wake us in the mornings and a choir of night frogs to croak us to sleep at night.  Seriously, there must be toads the size of footballs hiding in the bushes!  Since we neglected our blog over the winter season, I thought I’d do a short run down of the last few months.

June

Well, you know about the World Cup, but you don’t know about the car accident I got myself into on June 1st.  It was minor, but it left us without a car for the whole month! I was on my way to the doctor’s office with a serious case of the flu, and since this was my first time to the doctor’s office, I drove right past it.  In an attempt to make a simple swing around the block, my brain switched back into right side of the road driving, and I turned right into the path of a very surprised and irate old lady in a small toyota.   I can call her an old lady because when she jumped out of her car with the velocity of a young athlete, she charged up to my window screaming at the top of her lungs, “Why are you picking on an old lady like me?”  I just stared at her for a second trying to figure out how my brain could betray me in such a cruel way and then said, “I’m sorry, I’m sick.  I’m on my way to the doc—”  ”You’re sick?” she screamed, “I have ****ing cancer!!!”  No, it was not a very lovely turn to the afternoon.  But what was amazing about the experience were the people who pulled over to help.  A big strong tattooed man took the old lady in his arms and gave her a big hug.  Three Indian men stared at me like I was a complete idiot until I started crying, and then one offered to drive my car out of the middle of the road for me.  I had no idea how to handle an accident in South Africa.  “Do I call the police first?” I asked them.  “Do I call my insurance?” This small, professional looking lady (picking up on my foreign accent) told me that since no one was injured, it was faster to go to the station myself and make a report.  ”Where is the station?” I asked. “You wait right here,” she said.  “I’m going to drop my son off at home, but I’ll be back in ten minutes.  I’ll take you there myself.” While I was waiting for her to return, a young woman came out of the house my broken car was now parked in front of and asked me if she could make some tea or offer me a cold drink.  “Ah, shame, shame!” she kept saying, empathizing with me: the one at fault.  Where else would I find such abundant kindness from strangers?

 

Our Toyota Tazz finally returned! Isn't she beautiful?

 

July

The first weekend in July, Kale and I went away to celebrate our three year anniversary (June 30th).  We spent the weekend in the Drakensberg at the Umzimkulu River Lodge in a little cottage that looked like it was made by a hobbit.  You can see in the pictures the beautiful colors of a South African winter.

 

Umzimkulu River

 

 

Our little hobbit cottage for the weekend

 

 

Our love makes us happy!

 

Also in July, I got the worst haircut of my life.  I mention the haircut as an example of what Kale and I have felt at every new step in this process of living in Durban.  It takes years to understand a city: where to get your car fixed, which doctor you can trust, which hairstylist will not hack away haphazardly until your new hairdo has robbed you of all sense of femininity and pride. (The woman literally took hair from the back of my head, pulled it forward over my forehead and cut it to the length of my fringe—what they call “bangs” here.) Learning a new place involves a lot of trial and error, and many tasks that were easy at home become looming and scary. Luckily, we are getting to know a lot more trustworthy people from whom we can ask advice.  So, after a few weeks of wearing beanies and scarves tied around my head and asking everyone I talked to if they had a hairstylist they could trust (most of them didn’t), I found Martin.  He looked at my hair, sighed, and said, “I’ll give it some shape, but you’re going to have to be patient until some of these layers have a chance to grow out.”  He had a cool half mohawk, wonderfully cut fringe angled to the side, and a calm personality.  (Never a hyper hairstylist again!)  Unfortunately, because I am extremely vain, you’re not going to get to see a picture of the awful cut.  Just imagine me looking like a shaggy boy from the seventies with red puffy eyes from all the weeping.

August

I turned 30!  Kale threw a huge sushi braai for me.  A sushi braai is, of course, a grand contradiction since you don’t throw sushi on the braai—I mean, sushi is raw.  But we had fun rolling our own sushi rolls and then cooking some meat on the braai.  We ate around a nice hearty bonfire, and I felt very special to celebrate with such a nice group of folks!  On my actual birthday, which was a Tuesday, Kale took me to the musical, “The Guitar That Rocked the World!”  It was the history of the fender guitar and the famous musicians who played it, complete with a live killer band on stage.  The night became incredibly special because August 10th is also the birthday of Leo Fender, the creator of the fender guitar.  So after the show, the cast brought out a huge cake in the shape of a fender guitar to share with the audience.  Notice the script on the cake.  You see how it was actually a cake for me?

 

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY LEO"—Well, I'm a Leo too!

 

 

Inside the Elizabeth Sneddon Theater after the show. Smile, I'm 30!

 

Also in August, Kale and I took a weekend to visit Ladysmith and do a battle site tour of Spienkop.  Spienkop was a bizarre and bloody battle between the British and the Boers in which both sides withdrew after suffering heavy losses—without realizing the other side was also withdrawing!  We arrived in Ladysmith midday and spent the afternoon exploring the town’s museum in which we learned that the town was named after the famous beauty “Lady Smith.”  We stayed overnight in a lovely B&B, and the next morning we drove off to Spienkop Lodge to meet our tour guide.

 

Durnford's Lodge, Ladysmith

 

To say we were disappointed with the tour is a vast understatement.  We felt like we were pulling teeth to get information about the area and the battle site from our guide!  He kept silent until we asked questions, but then when we did ask questions, we got the eyebrow raise of shame.  Both Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi were present at this battle (Churchill as a courier for the British and Gandhi as a stretcher bearer), and you would think our tour guide would have brought this extremely curious fact up on his own?  Let’s just say we learned that a tour guide needs to be passionate about his or her subject.  Knowledge (particularly when withheld) is not enough.  The tour ended with a flat tire on the top of Spienkop hill.  Since the spare was also flat, we had to wait to be rescued.

 

The trench the British built. It was not much protection. Much death! They buried the bodies inside.

 

 

"Please close the gate to prevent cattle from rubbing themselves against the graves." That's what the sign says. Hmm...

 

September

During September, I had the fantastic opportunity to leave South Africa and visit my dear friend Amy the geologist/geophysicist in Munich.  I was very excited to bike around Munich (this is one of the most bike friendly cities in the world!), drink hefty mugs of German beer in the beer gardens (boy, are those mugs hefty!), check out Oktoberfest, hop on trains to see the famous castles of the mad King Ludwig II as well as the sites of the Sound of Music movie in Salzburg.  Mostly, I was excited to spend almost two weeks with one of my favorite people in the world.

 

On the terrace of Hohenschwangau Castle. I love yellow castles and my friend, Amy!

 

Munich was lovely.  I bought a pair of suspenders.  I ate lots of pretzels and drank a beer every chance I got.  You see, South Africa is lovely for wine, but beer?  There are like three kinds!!! So boring.

 

In the backyard of Amy's building. I am not bored.

 

 

At Oktoberfest. Now, that's what I call a pretzel.

 

 

Amy has the Lady of Bavaria statue behind her. Apparently, Lady Bavaria always has a lion(s) with her. And I’m like, lions in Germany? I know where the real lions are…

We both thought Oktoberfest was way over rated. But hey, that’s because we’ve both been to the Minnesota State Fair which gives all other fairs a serious kick in the arse!  All this one had was beer, pretzels, giant cookies, souvenir t-shirts, a few rides, and a chance to dress up German style.  Well, the dress up part was really cool.  But we both want to let you in on a little secret: the giant cookies they sell everywhere as trademarks of Bavaria? You are not supposed to eat them.  We tried.  Pretty on the outside. Inside tastes like cardboard.

And I spent over a week looking for the perfect one to enjoy!

 

A few days after I returned to Durban, Kale and I were off to the White Mountain Music Festival in the Drakensberg. It’s always held over Heritage Day Weekend.  I played on actual Heritage Day (Sept 24), which is also known here as National Braai Day.

 

White Mountain Stage

 

We had such a lovely long weekend, camping, listening to fantastic music all day long.  My favorite moment was when I was warming up behind the tent, just a few minutes before going on.  I could barely hear myself singing because I was standing between a port-a-potty and a huge generator, and suddenly this guy appears, wearing nothing but a pair of white swimming trunks and a black cowboy hat.  ”I like your boots,” he says.  ”What kind of music do you play?”  Turned out he played country music too and even has a song called “Red Boots!”  You can listen to it here: http://www.facebook.com/josh.grierson—just scroll down on the left!

 

My boots that attract like minded people.

 

On the last day of the festival, the wind picked up and some hot coals from someone’s braai started a fire.  It was crazy!  The music just carried on.  You could step out of the performance tent and see the fire sweeping the dry brush just behind the campground!  No one seemed too concerned.

 

Not too far from a teepee camper!

 

October

So now we are up to date.  Last weekend, Uncle Dan and Aunt Corie came to visit, and the four of us took a trip to Lesotho up the Sani Pass.  It was absolutely stunning scenery.  Kale and I had been to Lesotho over the Christmas holiday last year, but this was a new route for us.  On the way up Sani Pass, we stopped to take pictures and were nearly blown over the cliff by the wind!

 

That wind is mighty!

 

But then we got ourselves together for this nice group shot.

 

What a beautiful looking tour party!

 

 

Stunning. They call these cliffs the Twelve Apostles

 

Once we reached the top, we visited one of the small villages.  Inside a rondoval, a woman invited us to share beer and a giant loaf of bread that she had baked on a fire in the middle of the floor.  Guess what they burn for firewood since Lesotho has a serious lack of trees?  Dried cow dung.  They also use it mixed with mud to build their houses.  Very resourceful.

 

Delicious bread!

 

 

Our host outside her rondoval, baby on her back and all!

 

Kale bought a wool hat handmade by one of the residents of Lesotho.

 

And behind him, the donators of the wool!

 

Then we ate a nice lunch and drank Lesotho beer at Sani Top Chalet, the highest pub in Africa!

 

See, I wasn't kidding! Sign proves it.

 

Before we left Lesotho, we got one last picture of the unbelievable view.

 

You can't beat that!

 

Well, sorry we’ve been so absent on our blog!  Life keeps moving fast for us over here. It’s hard to sit down and write about it when we feel like we’re just barely keeping up with living it.  But we’ll try to do a better job of keeping you all informed on our adventures!  Until next time… Jaspar

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