SA Post 2

After visiting with family (Oom Rem and Tante Ally, Oom Harry and Tante Annika) we were off, but first we checked out the East Rand Mall in Joburg- it was very large and we spent more time there than we should have. Our original plan was to drive to Kuruman from Joburg but after visiting and shopping we were forced to crash in Joburg for the night. We found a backpackers place that offered camping and hung out there for the night.

It was a long drive the next day- over 500km. The a/c was a nice treat, I must say. We camped in the Kuruman campsite and were one of 2 tents- it was quite empty. They say that in Kuruman is a natural spring fountain that produces something like 20L of water per day. We tried to find it, but alas, could not. We even asked some of the locals- but they didn't know, or perhaps didn't understand my question.

Micke is having a hard time with his english- no one seems to understand him when he talks and they are looking to me for clarification- I think it is quite humourous, not too sure about him, though.

We are now in Uppington for the night. It is quite a large town of 53 000, in the middle of nowheresville. It is quite nice. Tomorrow we go north to the Kalahari.

SA Road Trip Post 1

Well, we are at it once again- a holiday road trip; this time it is two months in South Africa.

We arrived December 27th at 0700 after 36 hours of grueling traveling from Sweden. After they let us through customs and we had waited patiently for our bags we were met by my Oom Peit and Tante Jette (Uncle Piet and Aunt Jette), who were kind enough to fetch us from the airport. The first few days were spent relaxing and recoperating- or perhaps preparing for the journey ahead. Luckily enough the preparation was made so much easier as Piet and Jette had most of the camp supplies we needed- a passerby had left them here for safekeeping with the intention of returning for them- but that was 2 years ago- it's fair game now...anyways we are just borrowing and Jette called to ask permission.

Friday was spend in Pilansberg Game Reserve, which is crater of a volcano, looking for game. And as luck would have it we found some- alot actually. A few pictures have been posted, see the link to the left. Saturday we were off, mind you, after a driving lesson from Oom Piet. Left hand driving is not as challenging as first expected but there are those 'habits' that need to be dismissed. We are now comfortable with it although there is the occasional scare when we see vehicles coming towards us on the wrong side of the road.

Anyways, the last few days were spent in the Drakensberg, a beautiful mountain range bordering Lesotho. All I can say is...beautiful. We were sorry we had to go. But we needed to exchange the non a/c rental for one with a/c. And after this short trial camping, we now know what to exclude from the "box" of stuff we are borrowing, hopefully lightening the load abit.

Country 10: Spain

Next stop was Madrid. We had hoped to take the night train from Biarritz but were told when trying to reserve our tickets that you needed to be in Spain to reserve places on spanish trains; we were in France. So we hopped on the next train and took it to the end, which was a small Spanish town just across the border called Irun. There we could reserve a place on the night train.

In Spain, communicating became alittle difficult. Earlier in the trip I had relied on Micke, in Paris both Krista and I had some background in French and could stumble by...but neither of us had any experience in Spanish- and it seemed that the Spanish locals had slim to none knowledge of English. But somehow we managed to communicate- through visual aids and hand movements.

We were late in reserving the night train and so were stuck with the chairs. We managed to trade spots with a couple in the sleeper section wanting chairs. We had a nice sleep in a bed, although things were rather crowed when having to share the small six man room. I was really surprised with the toilets when I sat down, only to feel a draft comming up from above- I looked down only to see the tracks below me. I didn't think they did that anymore- yuck.

Madrid seemed to be much calmer than Paris. Paris had the air of chaos to it. Madrid also seemed cleaner and the metro system was in better condition: the trains were fairly new and airconditioned, which was wonderful: to be able to escape the 35 degree weather, if only for a moment...

While in Madrid we visited the modern museum with a Picasso and Dali exhibit. I don't know much about art or artists except for their famous pieces that you see in everyday advertising and so I was really surprised when looking at the Picasso exhibition: It was full of death and unpleasantness. It seemed one of his favourite subjects was a mother holding her dead infant because it was a recurring theme in many paintings. As for the Dali exhibit, none of his more famous paintings were there, which was disappointing.

Valencia was fabulous. It had an old feeling to it, which is what I like: the old buildings and architecture, cobblestone alleyways that run in any direction, colourful buildings. We spent 2 days in Valencia, one soaking up the sun on the beach and another sightseeing. Paella was experienced (fried rice), red wine and sparkling white wine sangria, as well as tapas bars with their seafood appetizers. Fantastic.

Barcelona was more modern than Valencia. By the time we got there, both Krista and I were tired and did minimal sightseeing. But we did include the "thing to see" in Barcelona: le temple de le familia Sangreda by Gaudi. Construction was started in 1908 and is still not finished today. Las Ramblas (the main drag) was fantastic- browsing through the street vendors, watching the human sculptures and working our way through the chaos of toursits. We shopped, beached, walked, ate, drank and had a merry time all round.

Country 9: France

The first night in France was spent in a small town called Auxonne. This was the first time that Micke had troubles communicating with the locals. For most of Eastern Europe if you can converse in German you are good to go. Moving to the Western part of Europe German does not help you, and particularly in this small town, neither does English. But we managed.

I was reminded of my fathers stories of his trip through Europe so many years ago when I entered the bathrooms- and to my dismay I saw something I did not want to see:
squatters toilets.

I was not impressed. But thankfully they were not available in the larger campsites that we stayed in, I only had to deal for one night.

Krista (a friend from university) joined us in Paris. For three days it was three of us and then on the Friday Micke left to drive home and Krista and I continued on our adventure with the train. We spend 3 days in Paris, seeing the Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Notre Dame Cathedral, the Moulin Rouge. We drank wine in the park, chatted about old times and new time. Basically had a great time.

Backpacking is much harder than driving around in a car. It is an experience, one I will never forget. It is exhausting however- constantly trying to find lodgings for the night- usually on foot with a heavy bag. This was not my idea of a good time.

After Paris it was
a night Bordeaux
a day on the beach in Biarritz
a day hiking in the hills of the Pyrenees
and then off to Spain.

Country 8: Switzerland

The border crossing between Italy and Switzerland was the strangest so far. It came unexpectedly in the middle of a town. All the other border crossings we went through were out in the middle of nowhere- which made this unexpected and extremely odd.

We took the mountain roads to drive to the campsite- they reminded me of driving in Croatia or Norway, very narrow, steep and twisty turny. After awhile we came to a blockade in the road and were forced to turn back: the road was closed due to bad weather. The other route to the campsite was through the longest tunnel in the world (I am told), which was 21km long and was followed by another at 13km; pretty crazy.

The Scenery is beautiful here. We spent two full days in the Alps. On the first day we went for a small hike up the nearest hill and then on the second we took the cable cars to the top of Schilthorn with the plan to walk down. It took 4 transfers to reach the top at a height above sea level of over 3000m (not sure exactly how high). Accompaning us were many American tourists, and while comparing myself to them, I began to get nervous thinking I had over dressed- I had a hat, sweaters, long pants, jacket- I was dressed for cold. In comparison, the were dressed for 30+ in shorts and t-shirts- but mind you they did not leave the building and in the end I was quite thankful for all my clothing.

Well we walked down the first jaunt and that took us 1.5hours and my legs were tired because of the steepness of the climb. We decided to cable car it the rest of the way, but getting off and exploring at each of the stops. One of the stops was at the mountain town Murren, very swiss. The pictures I think, tell the rest of the story.


The day we left, there was not a cloud in the sky- perfect weather for going to the top...oh well.

Country 7: Italy

Driving so far had been relatively calm in the highways until we reached Italy; then it became chaotic. We were driving along when we came along to a toll in which the 2 lane highway spread out into about 12 lanes. There was a fair amount of traffic, and this spread out, I assummed, was to prevent backlog in the highways. But once we passed through the tolls we again had to merge into two lanes. This should seem relatively simple, except I think something happened at neck of this merging system and we were stuck. We sat there for about 1 hour while the traffic bottleneck seemed to build and build until cars could not get to the toll station.

There seemed to be more cars on the road in Italy as well, compared to the previous countries we drove through. This created abit of a challenge and kept us on our toes with the unexpected moves of forgien vehicles.

Venice was lovely. It is said to be the most romantic city in the world. It is also said to have 15M visitors per year. Where is the romance, when you have to share it with any of the given 41096 other people trying to create a romantic mood that day...

Venice is a money trap. We camped across the bay for 32euros per night, quite expensive when comparing it to...say... Budapest where it was 7. The 10min boat trip to the city cost 10E per person. To rent a gondola for 50 minutes cost 68E if before 20:00 and after that 76E. There were serenading gondolas as well, and I am pretty sure the serenade was not included... as Micke says, someone is making money over there...

Venice is a maze. There is no logic to the setup of that city. You cannot follow it on a map- as soon as you have found yourself and then walk for 2 minutes, you are again lost... It is just easier to follow the rest of the tourists instead of trying to make your own path... reminds me of lemmings for some reason ???

I expected more canals than what there were. You know when you create a picture in your head of something- from photos, stories, etc. and when reality meets your creation you tend to be disappointed. Well, this is the case here. The city was not romantic, it was crowded, smelly, lots of pigeons and when ever you walked, you always seem to come back to the same place. Micke and I walked away from San Marco Square three times, only to somehow return to it.

Country 6: Bosnia Hercegovina

On Monday (July 3rd) we started off for Sarajevo. We took a route that took us through the small town of Mostar. This route was beautiful and dramatic with mountains and vegetation. Mostar is a beautiful medieval town with a bridge from the 16th century. This bridge was destroyed in the war but has since been rebuilt. We attempted to find it but no luck on first try and Micke decided that he did not want to turn back.

Again we had trouble navigating through the city (Sarajevo) due to map problems and the street names were no clearly listed on the roads. The main road loops around so if you start at one end and continue driving after about 30min of driving you will end up at the same place, just going in the opposite direction. Well we ended up driving 3 times around the city before we could find our hotel, twice before I could find our location on the map. (Yes, we decided to treat ourselves and get a hotel for the night- only 17 euros per person…not bad. The one thing that was noticed on the drive(s) through the city was the amount of police officers- almost all street corners had an officer standing there.

You could really see the effects of the war on the city. It seemed uncared for. There was graffiti on the walls, abandoned and disintegrating buildings were everywhere, there might have been some order to the parking system but at first glance it seemed that people parked where ever and it just seemed dirty and chaotic.

In the rural area of Bosnia, as well as in Croatia, the amount of abandoned buildings was phenomenal- I would guess that one of every three was standing empty. Many buildings were also unfinished, although lived in. I think this was due to taxes- as soon as the house is completed then taxes become higher…so if you don’t finish your house…

It was time to eat again and we stopped of at the local mall. The restaurant was empty of people and there was construction going on next door so constantly we heard the thud thud thud of the machines: this made dinner really relaxing. The waitress gave us the menu, which was all in Bosnian and proceeded to give a brief description in German. I had no idea what to choose so told Micke that I would have the same as him. Well, he as well didn't know so closed his eyes and chose: it was a second meat plate, exactly like that eaten in Croatia- this plate was too much for two people, especially a mid afternoon meal. Well, to say the least, both of us had stomache aches before the day's end.

On our way out of Bosnia, heading to Italy we became abit lost. The road we started on took us north, where eventually we were supposed to come to a junction and change directions (to west)…but in that area (Republika Srpska) the locals use the Cyrillic alphabet…hence we could not understand the signs, missed the junction and continued north. For some reason we only thought of looking on the GPS to find our location until we were almost at the Croatian border- far away from where we wanted to be (and it was around 6pm).

So now we had to find a place to sleep for the night. Luckily we had this Croatian Camping Pamphlet listing all camping locations in the country- and there happened to be one about an hours drive east just before the border to Serbia and Montenegro. Great!

We exited the highway at the town listed and drove around looking for camping signs: no luck.

We then attempted to ask the locals (many could understand German, which Micke can speak abit of): again, no luck, they did not know of any camping area nearby. So back to the highway, we drove to the border and asked the officials there: again no luck. It just so happened that while driving back we say an exit to a rest area that was named the same as the camping site- but it was blocked off due to construction and we had no way of getting there- finally out of desperation we drove around the barriers.

The campsite looked closed, although there were people there so Micke went into talk to them and I stayed in the car trying to figure out a second alternative. Finally he came back and said, although the campsite was closed (and it had been for the last 10 years) we could camp there: for free as long as we were gone before 0700 (when the construction crew showed up). I have no idea why this campsite is listed in the 2006 Croatian Camping Brochure…I think they need to update their files.

This campsite had strange cabins that were made of barrels and it had more that it’s fair share of mosquitoes- we quickly put up the tent and then I jumped in and did not leave until we had to take down the tent in the morning.

During dinner Micke told me that if the owner asks…
I am his wife, am pregnant and need rest.

It seems that at first the owner was adamant that under no circumstances could we stay there for the night…so Micke had to use desperate measures. The owner was very nervous about us being there, because at 0630 he came out just to ensure that we were up and getting ready to head out.

6: Bosnia

Aug 16, 2006 - 15 Photos