Travel – Page 9 – Brave New World of Blogging

Trains and tears….

gautrain3

Melbourne, weep.

A city as sophisticated and elegant as Melbourne Still does not have transport from its airports into the city.

Here I am, on a Friday evening in third world Africa, saying good-bye to my ‘baby’ Jessica, at the main Oliver Tambo Airport. Painless the travel was, 30 minutes from home to airport, and when I was ready to go back, 35 minutes from airport to my front door

There is a distance of 33km, as the crow flies, from Sandton, where we ‘live’ to the airport. This can take more than an hour on the freeway, and longer if there is a traffic hiccup, which of course sounds quite familiar to my Melbourne ‘family’.

Except there is

The train;

the Gautrain.

gautrain1

Conceived in 2000 and completed in 2010 (imagine Melbourne thinking that far ahead!!). I visited during the construction and there was disruption, no denying that. In some of the busiest parts of the city where large, sophisticated stations were built.

Big disruptions.

And we quietly muttered and grumbled and navigated our way around construction sites where there should have been roads.

And it cost heaps, estimated at SAR 3.5bill it ended up costing in excess of SAR25bill.

And it created jobs – heaps of them; more than 120 000 jobs and 15 000 courses for unskilled and management were made available.

It has 80km of dual railway line, 30km of tunnels and includes ten new stations. 11km of new bridges.

Other interesting trivia is that it involved about seven and a half million cubic meters of spoil [ph] and the tender papers took 7 hours to deliver and took up 18.5cu metres!!!!

A really a massive project –

As I said, Melbourne,

a big commitment.

But oh, does it work. For a fair cost, one can park in the parking provided (and there is enough) get on a spotless, quiet train that leaves every 12 minutes and takes less than 20 minutes to deliver you right to the airport.

Why, oh why can a cities like Johannesburg and Pretoria plan and work together to create a state of the art commuter system to their major airport and Melbourne has a gridlock drive, hugely expensive parking and slow unreliable buses into the city and then perhaps if you lucky into the suburbs.

Melbourne weep.

The Bush..

It is a Brave soul that attempts to capture ‘The Bush’. For those of my friends who know the Bush, words are not necessary and can never do it justice and for those readers who have never known the Bush, words are all I can offer knowing full well, before I even begin, that they can never do it justice. So to you all, for different reasons, forgive in advance my paltry attempt at sharing the ‘Bush’

Welgevonden (place well found) sees us rise at 5am although the waking of the birds with morning song begins even earlier.

A quick strong coffee and we are on our vehicle; bundled up against the early morning cold. Very little is said as the smell of the overnight light rain fills our bodies with joy – it is dry and the drought here is crippling and the smell of rain is exhilarating. We have our binoculars and the sense of anticipation that only a game drive can bring.

It doesn’t matter how many times one walks or drives in the Bush, the unpredictability of what nature will reveal makes every trip have the same sense of anticipation.

In this case the terrain is new to us- mountainous, red boulders everywhere as we drop into open plains and climb out 0f them to reveal breathtaking vistas of the next rolling plains.

We stop every so often to gaze at zebra, buffalo, impala, waterbuck, giraffe, warthog, wildebeest. We sit and savour the silence that epitomises the ‘Bush’. Precisely because it is Not silent; only we are, as senses respond to the call of the ‘Piet my vrou’ – a bird call that Is the Bush; the brown hooded kingfisher, so small so exquisite with such a large call you know he is there long before you can find him, the wild cry of a fish eagle. There is the sound of the grass in the breeze, again a sound uniquely Bush. The cicada, frogs, all contributing so that we are silent.

Suddenly energy changes and bodies tense, voices are raised in whispers, adrenalin begins to pump as right alongside us are cheetahs. A sight so unexpected that no matter how often one has seen them, this sighting is like the first.

And there is mother and three cubs, with bellies so full you feel they could be pregnant (except of course they cannot be) and we stare in wonder, torn between watching and experiencing or recording to experience again and again via our cameras . And then a male appears and the most extraordinary fight right before our eyes ensues and continues for about twenty minutes;

The male harassing the mother ; the cubs running around squealing; the mother backing off ; the male coming back; the cycle repeated over and over again as we watched enthralled, horrified and bemused. Nature revealing a pattern of behaviour no one was familiar with.

A young elephant entertains with a show of bravado that involves mock attacks at us and at an imaginary foe as he raised his ears, and little trunk and ran forward bellowing as loudly as he could. Practicing for his future role as protector of his herd.

The beautiful precious rhino, horns intact grazing so close to our vehicle I could have leant out and touched him.

And in this particular day it stays cloudy and cool so when we stop for a cup of tea and a rusk, we huddle together hands curved round our mugs breathing in the warmth, savouring every moment of a unique time in the Bush.

Because every visit and every drive through our Bush is by its very nature unique.

And so still no words describe it, which is why we say, “it’s in our blood”

8/11/2016

all photographs belong to Jessica 🙂 Another thing about the Bush – one usually makes good friends, often from countries far flung, as in our case. Friends who kindly shared their photographs with us.

Thank you Pim Van Dam for this photograph

and the privilege of what Ekutuleni had to offer

“Everest”

Whenever I have to get up at 4am 💤😳I set my alarm to sound, twice, thus ensuring I can sleep soundly till then. Though why I do this is, perhaps a question I should ask (and answer) myself.
You see, I don’t really need to wake up at times like this because I don’t really sleep 😳. My brain seems to mistrust even my reliable iPhone alarm system, (set to play a suitably rousing tune), and keeps me in that twilight zone of non sleep, every so often checking the time and finally being so relieved it is four am so that I Can Finally Get Up.

In the dark, and silence, Jess and I put our hiking gear on and make our way downstairs trying not to wake the neighbours.

We had been invited to walk up Lion’s Head to watch the sun rise, and, since there was no mention of abseiling or jumping down, I assumed the invitation included walking down 😜.

So I found myself in the company of three young, fit women, at the car park at the foot of a mountain we could not yet see. Then they were off, chatting away and disappeared into the darkness. And I found myself wondering why I thought this was a great idea.

I am fit, but in the fading darkness I felt my age and three weeks of doing nothing but eat and drink as I followed as best I could. The path is broad, sandy and not too difficult to negotiate if you discount the angle – which is Up. To begin with, that is. Just as I found my rhythm so to speak, it changed to steps and boulders and my rhythm disappeared, together with any hope of keeping up with the young ladies who had so thoughtfully included me in this little gig.😂

The only thing that didn’t disappear was the angle – it remained Up.

I had company now though. A gentleman, backpack, walking stick, hat – a real ‘professional’ hiker attached himself to me. Thankfully as it was still early morning and not quite light and he had walked this route often and could point me in the right direction when necessary.
I was very impressed with the fact that he could talk and walk at the same time – something I most certainly could not do – and talk he did (and wave his walking stick- often dangerously close to my face as I clambered up rocks behind him😳).

He grew up on Robben island which one could see well from our lofty vantage point. I learnt it was a prison in 1600, a leper colony in 1700 into the 1800, a naval radio base (his childhood years) in the 1950’s, before we all knew it as where Mandela, Mbeki and co were incarcerated.

And then no one spoke as the last chain and ladder were negotiated and we pushed ourselves to get to the top for an amazing sunrise.

No words could adequately describe the awe and exhilaration of this sight and even the photographs fail.

With the dawn came the light so to speak and the rather small summit shrunk considerably as bodies clambered up over the ridge and joined us jostling for position.

I had this awful fear of someone toppling over the edge simply because there were five ties too many on the lions head. So without further ado I headed down.

Now this sounds simple, but believe me it was anything but simple. There is a narrow path. Do not think of a clear flatly graded walkway; think of boulders and rocks that require either very very long legs or very solid bottoms. You’ll work out which I used 😂

And that is not all, there are sections of chains and ladders that require strong nerves, and hand feet coordination (like that manual car driving 😜) and patience. As fast as we were trying to descend (some our ladies were due at work at 8am) so were a remarkably large number of athletes coming up.

Heads down, listening I think to some steroid pumping something, sweating, puffing, on a mission – which did not allow for novices like yours truly. The problems became particularly acute at the steep boulder sections and the chains/ladders.

Then I understood what it must feel like in modern times on Everest. Here am I trying to descend before my courage fades, but am forced to stand still, using valuable lung capacity as these young hulks shimmy up. At the same time I’m trying not to look down – it is a long long long way down – the view is startling, infinite and without interruption to the car park

My turn now to clamber down some rocks, hanging on to the metal foot or were they hand holds? At the same time as the next wave of body flesh arrived from below and had to wait for me to complete my descent. They puffed and snorted surely not to rush me, but to maintain their rhythm? Nothing could have rushed me – I hung on for dear life, acutely aware of the view they had as they looked up at me, acutely aware of the drop below should I hesitate for a second, acutely aware of how many climbers had failed, permanently not on their ascent but rather their descent – I have read all the Everest books!!!!
Acutely aware of how absurd it was of me to presume to do this. Alas, too late she cried.

And then the boulders were cleared, now just the steep steps and I would be passed the danger zone so to speak. I began to relax, in time to see some of those supreme beings who had run past me on the way up, now pass me on the way down!!!!

As the yard arm reached a respectable hour, about 7am I saw more ‘normal’ people setting off up past me. Some of them looked as though they were heading for a stroll in the park; no park here
Another group had brought their dogs, which left us wondering to this very moment where they were heading. One gentleman had a ‘work jacket’ on and another couple were limping at the start – a little like Jess and I are still doing two days later whenever we try to go up or down stairs.

Clearly again, those questions of fit and faint hearted come to mind