Category Archives: Travel

Beating a Not-So-Hasty Retreat

The Dundee (pronounced DinDear locally) athletic club and the Dundee Hysterical Society run a 21km foot race called the Isandlwana 21 or The Fugitives’ Trail half marathon every January on the closest Sunday to the 22nd which is when the homeland-defending Zooloos routed the wickedly-invading Poms in 1879 and gave them a well-deserved smack on the snoot. After this thrashing Mrs Queen Vic dished out her Crosses by the dozen like smarties to cover up their embarrassment. A fig leaf for the Empire’s nakedness, I say. ‘Have one of her crosses, mate, just don’t tell her what actually happened, mKay?’

The race starts on a hill overlooking the Isandlwana mountain and ends at Rorke’s Drift.

I went to run it one year and it was very special: Half the club members manning the water tables dressed as Zulus in full regalia, and half dressed as pith-helmeted, redcoated Poms. Some of the former were pale and some of the latter dark, to add to the hilarity. I was appropriately dressed in my Savages Club black n white vest with my number 482 on show. This was quite a while ago, shortly after the actual battle, I spose. When I joined Westville Club in the 21st century I was given number 8754357808F. I don’t think they valued me like Savages did.

The oke who started the race looked like a drunken Pommy colonel, his nose as red as his jacket. He had no gun, no whistle nor no trumpet. He had a moustache, and he rambled on about who had done what to whom in 1879 – a potted history in which I think he underplayed the extent of the well-deserved smack on the snoot. And then, when the ‘off’ time arrived, he shouted:

“THE ZULUS ARE AFTER YOU!! RUN!

‘Course, in my specific case, all the Zooloos running that day were well ahead of me. Nevertheless, just like Mrs Queen Vic, the DinDear athletic club dished out Victoria Crosses liberally that day, even to slow coaches.

~~~oo0oo~~~

redcoats n zulus

The race result was something like this photo above.

We crossed the Buffalo river at Rorke’s Drift and finished at the famous mission of the same name:

I think the finishers medal is rather special – a cross between a Victoria Cross and a Zulu shield:

My VC from Isandlwana 21km

I later gave mine away to a great cause.

~~~oo0oo~~~

Slack Mountaineering

Aitch and I took Jess & Tom up Table Mountain in Cape Town. We took the cable car up, and Aitch took it down as well.

Table MTN walk (24)

Here the kids are – about to walk down Platteklip Gorge.

Platteklip Gorge

They bounded down like rock rabbits. I felt my knees wobbling about halfway down, so I sat down ‘to examine some interesting little flowers’. Was stiff for three days after!

Aitch’s Drumbeat for sale

From a yachting website:

For Sale: Used 60’6″ Clare Lallow Cruising Sailboat 1957. 

Sir Max Aitken (‘Lord Beaverbrook’)’s Drumbeat Is For Sale. Totally Rebuilt In The Early 90s At Berthon,  Has Had Truck Loads Of Money Hurled At Her Since. Special, Original And Thoroughly Useable Piece Of Our Maritime Heritage.

Trish sailed in her as navigator and chef in about 1983 from the Caribbean to the UK where she headed for a refitting (the boat! not the girlfriend-to-be!).

Image

Aitch at the helm

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Bicycles in the Bush

Dusted off the bikes and threw them on the back of the bakkie and headed off to Albert Falls Dam for our first mountain bike ride in years. Picked up a friend for Tom and a friend for Jess. Two more bikes.
Got there too late for the official start, so no hurry. Took the bikes to be pumped up (about six flat tyres out of ten) and brakes fixed. Off we went on a 10km ride through the nature reserve.
What a bunch of wimps. There was so much whining it sounded like King Shaka airport.
A small herd of bewilderbeasts and zebra thundered past us, spooked by the other riders in the actual race. Also saw nyala, impala and oribi.

Then we saw fresh rhino dung and the panic set in. “What if they charge us, Dad?” Relax! Just pedal on! And hush. Enjoy the day, I say. “We wanna go home”, they say. Eventually they go on strike and say “No further!”, folding their arms.

So I head off into the distance and they’re forced to follow, muttering something about cruelty.

They enjoyed it. “When can we do it again, Dad?”

Mutiny on the Bakkie

Mutiny on the way to Lilani Spa. It’s cold and drizzling, so the back seat of the bakkie thinks cycling has become a seriously kak idea and they’re making it known:
I’m NOT riding!
We’re NOT going!
You can’t force us!
It’s too wet!
It’s too cold!

‘Snot optional,’ I intone each time. ‘Snot optional’.

This got them giggling and making up their own snot sayings:
She SNOT riding.
He SNOT riding.
We SNOT riding!
SNOT funny, Dad! SNOT funny, Pete!

So off they went pedaling in the drizzle, shivering and shouting and giggling. I drove ahead to get out of earshot of the whining. Looking back, here come the four of them . . . What a goon show!

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The road to Lilani is 17km of downhill. All long gentle downhill. It’s Lazy Man’s Biking Paradise. From Ahrens to Lilani you don’t have to pedal. You simply place your bum in the saddle and gravity does what it did to Newton’s apple. What’s not to like?

And when you get to the bottom, what do you have to do? Jump into the hot springs mineral waters and soak. If you’re 9 to 15 yrs old of course you’ll take great delight in saying repeatedly, ‘Dad it smells like a fart,’ cos it’s sulphur springs, and it does, but its great.

Downhill biking, warm water, cold beer if you have a driver as I didn’t, and – almost always – solitude. Heaven. If you haven’t been to Lilani Spa, get your ass over there. You can drive right in if you like, and you can stay overnight too.

Here are The Four Mutineers again:

We were in a bakkie this time, not a VW kombi, cos Aitch was gone and the ban on bakkies – ‘the suspension is too hard’ – no longer applied.

~~oo0oo~~

An Earlier Mutiny which may have given them ideas . .

I Sold My Kombi Roofrack

Didn’t think I ever would, but I have the trailer now.

“Tell me a story and get a discount” I said in my ad on gumtree.co.za

“I’m going hunting in Namibia said the man in Cape Town – and it’s going to cost me courier fees.”

He got R1000 off! Paid only R4000 – Whattabargain!

Small pic for gumtree ad (184kb)

Especially as I was selling memories:

On the roofrack. Camping is FUN, Mum!

Cape Vidal

SibayaMabibi Apr 2003 (3)

Lake Sibaya

Midmar (2)

Midmar Dam

MalawiWithKids Kombi Baobab-001

Malawi

Aitch always had diversions - here it's big chalk to decorate the spare wheels

Zambia

Lion spark

Let’s go to the lion park, Dad, I’ve never seen lions!
This is Jess. I remind her that she has, actually, in Zambia – but she was little – five years old, 2003. I must show her the pics in South Luangwa Park.

They’re in hard bargaining mode, as we’re on our way to my folks’ place in PMB. It’s my ole man’s 91st birthday lunch, which is why I’m dragging them to Sleepy Hollow. It’s not their best place to visit, so I agree: Behave sociably and we can go to the lion park after lunch. OK?

By the time we get to the “Lion Park” it’s closed, but we can “see the lions only”. Same price, one hundred Saffrican Ront. I decide stuffit, let’s rather do this properly. “Stuff these lions” I announce, “We’re going to Mfolosi game reserve for the day tomorrow”. “Let’s go and see if we can spot some real lions”.

We left at 6:00am sharp and were in the park at 8:40am, already paid and entered, R240 for the five of us and the car for the day.

We had a ball. The kids were expert spotters, we saw lots & lots of eles, rhino, buff, giraffe, nyala, impala, bushbuck, wilderbeasts, wartpigs ensovoorts. – And a clear sighting of a gorgeous bush shrike!!

Mfolosi (45)
Mfolosi 2013 Dec Sunday

We sang rap and Mama Mia all the way there and back. And we laughed! These brats have decided they don’t like mixing with too many communities. Especially in crowds. Used to be bantu, then plurals, anderskleuriges, euphemisms, etc. Now its communities.

“Don’t stop here, Dad” as we drive through a village, “there are too many communities here”. I threaten to buy them each a mirror so they can check their mahogany brown selves whenever they think of such nonsense, but they just hose themselves at me.

They must have introspected a bit, though, because at lunch at the picnic spot they announce: “Hey we’re the only communities here!” To shine them up I made them do a spot of community tribal dancing in a tree.

The communities doing a tribal dance
– the communities climb a tree – Jess & Minenhle –
Mfolosi (16)

And of course the two 12yr olds Tom & Lungelo couldn’t miss the opportunity to disgust the teenage girls by letting rip on the way back, causing a hasty winding down of windows and heads hanging out for fresh air till the green fumes could waft away.

So the lion park sparked a search for ‘real’ lions.

We didn’t see a lion this visit, but I heard a whole lotta lyin’.

~~~oo0oo~~~

Saffrican Ront – South African Rand; worth anywhere from US$1.42 (1973) to less than a dime (2015)! Depends when you ask;

ensovoorts – etc.

~~~oo0oo~~~

Die Donkie is n Wonderlike Ding

I was going too fast, but we were late and I could see miles ahead along the sweeping roads on the hillsides of Lesotho. A speck of dust would show up then disappear as we rounded a hill, then reappear later a bit nearer, but still far away. Eventually a car would materialise, turn into a white bakkie and sweep past in a cloud of dust.

We were hastening to get to Sani Top after entering Lesotho near Ficksburg, and zooming over Khatse Dam after waiting a while for the brakes to cool so they’d work again after too much braking for sight-seeing down the steep decline to the dam.

Little Jessie and Tom are strapped in the back of the VW kombi, me and Aitch in front. The Dizzis were waiting for us and Aitch hates keeping anyone waiting and especially the Dizzis, so I was putting foot, it’s true.

Dusk was approaching as I rounded one more bend. My eyes widened and the donkey’s eyes widened much more. Huge, in fact as he stared at his impending doom. The look in his eyes was quite fatalistic, and he was rooted to the spot, massive bundle of sticks and bushes loaded on his back and sticking out more than his body width on both sides. On the left a high bank, on the right a cliff plummeting down to the river valley far below. Swerving was out of the question, as was hard braking, so I manual-ABS’d, slowing down as much as I could without endangering us.

As we hit the poor ass I probably closed my eyes. WHACK! A sickening bang. Dead, I’m sure. Kombi messed up. I stopped and hopped out thinking: You don’t stop and get out. For safety you keep moving. Like hell you do. A glance at the kombi showrd no sign of anything! That was puzzling but i had no time to think about it.

.

I walked into a wall of cussing and swearing and remonstrating in high seSotho. What the hell did I think I was doing and Who the hell was going to pay and Where the hell was I headed in such a hurry and How the hell was he going to . . . I hardly heard him. I was staring past him at the donkey walking away minus its load, seemingly none the worse for wear! I was so relieved I actually giggled and had to bite my lip.

I immediately launched into a sincere and abject apology oft-repeated and completely ignored. I apologised for speeding, endangering, carelessness, being younger than him, and for breathing. I was sorry that he’d have to catch his donkey and I regretted that he’d have to do all the loading all over again. I was getting nowhere and the tirade was warming up and getting more creative. I saw I wasn’t getting through, so I returned to the kombi and fetched R200 and pressed it into my fully-justified tormentor’s hand.

It was like switching off a radio. He was COMPLETELY satisfied and what were we talking about a minute ago again? A last apology and off we went, just more slowly. We still had a way to go. Phew!

– near Sani Top in earlier days –

There was a sequel the next morning as we headed back into Lesotho on the same road. There was my man again, so I gave him a cheery wave. He was with a mate and he pointed at us jabbering away, grinning excitedly. We had fun imagining what he was saying. All complimentary, we agreed.

~~oo0oo~~

Back from Afriski

Afriski Savanna 2013

James gets First Prize – takes after Ma!

Just got back last evening.
Nine slow hours there on Thursday, and nine hours back today. Dawdled through the Oos Vrystaat. Saw jackal (Tommy spotted him just outside Clarens), mongoose, springbok, blesbok, hartebeest, white-tailed gnu, zebra, grey rhebok, and lotsa birds. Sterkfontein full to the brim and looking blue as the sky. Fascinating to think beneath those clear waters is Nuwejaarsvlei, the farm my Mom was born on in 1928. Lived there till she was eight.

The air was crystal clear, we could see every detail of the Malutis and the ‘Berg. Here’s the whole High Berg from Sentinel to Giants Castle (click on the pic).

The Full High 'Berg Panorama
– all of the High Berg – seen from the top of Oliviershoek Pass –

Kids were a pleasure. Jess took a friend Savanna, and they giggled and ogled the ski instructors non-stop. The Naudes joined us again, so Tom had Joshua and we had James and Michael, old-time skiers all, now – *yawn*!

Ma Michelle took to skiing like a duck to water and won all the bum boarding races hands-down. Must be technique, as I thought my superior attraction to gravity would beat her, but no.

Car Trouble! Craig had car trouble and spent two nights in Ficksburg after we’d all left!! He took his new black Jeep CherryOkie and burnt out the starter motor trying to ignite frozen diesel. Ernest the resident Afriski diesel mech (he keeps the Pisten Bullys going) tried, but no go, so a flatbed truck was summoned from Ficksburg, land of the Cherry Cherry beauty contest.

Before the flatbed arrived, he borrowed my bakkie and took his vrou Michelle and three boys to the Free State Holy City by the River Jordan (OK, Bethlehem). Hired a car for them, so they got back to Westville one night before we did (Monday night). He got back to Afriski late Monday, just before Braam arrived wif ve flatbed. R3600 later the Jeep was dropped on (or off) a jack at the Ficksburg auto-electrician’s, cracking the sump.
So Craig is still in F’burg, two nights later. F*ckit, I think he said . . .

The Resort: Afriski is MUCH more organised now that PIN (the guys I bought thru) have 51% and management control.

This was our seventh trip, so I’m happy we’ve made good use of it. The kids still look forward to it all year – they’re already plotting next year! And they always ask, “Can we go again in the holidays?” and I have to explain how it costs a stack if you go out of your allocated week.

I paid R125 000, so still expensive, but getting less each year! The big question will come when we decide to sell! (update 2020: Well, COVID lockdown played havoc with the resort’s finances; if it survives – it’s touch and go – it’ll be a while before we’ll be able to sell ).

Our chalet is very comfy, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a big lounge, 12 beds. Lovely kitchen, well-equipped. About 500m from the slope, so we get plenty of exercise in the thin air!

Eye Candy: On our last day six gorgeous shapely models arrived for a photo shoot and had a ski lesson. It was a glorious bright sunny day so they all wore skimpy tops and I had to check up on the kids wif me binocs.

~~~oo0oo~~~

Long Drive to Kruger Park

On Tuesday, April 9, 2013, Pete S wrote:
Drove twelve hours from home to Hazyview on Thursday. Then eleven hours back on Sunday. 1750km in all, with plenty of road repairs on the way. ‘Stop-Go Controls’ where the road narrows to one lane in places. Plus plenty of stops for juice, snacks and leg-stretching for the hungry hordes. Both of them. OK, all three of us.
Madness.

But the two days we spent at Sabie Park were a real chill. Just us and Dave Hill in a wonderful corner of the bushveld on the Sabie River at Kruger gate adjacent to the KNP. Big Al’s Lodge, he calls it. We gazed across the river at eles, buff, waterbuck and hippos in the park coming down to the beautiful Sabie river to drink.

That’s the Kruger Park across the river. – – – Jess spotted ele, buff, waterbuck & hippo

Next time it’ll have to be for longer, though.

——–
On 2013/04/08, steve reed wrote:
There is just nothing, nothing, nothing to beat sitting watching the other side of a riverbank with binocs, a beer and a savoury snack. It has to be an African river. I have tried it in Aussie and it’s not anywhere near the same.
S’ true!

============
I agree. I can lurk like a crocodile. Even better if one of the companions is restless and feels the need to braai nearby. I can smell the smoke, watch me birds and eat when told to.

I need to fix my telescope now. I missed it there.

============

Inside the lodge:

Big Al’s Lodge

and outside:

Sabie Park.jpg

 

Four Wild Toppies on the Old Coast

Secret Diary of a trip down mammary lane.

It wasn’t that we were actually, y’know, OLD, but . . . well, we needed a break and a brief flashback to our glory days, when the chicks used to hurl themselves at us. Well, that one. In the harbour, remember?

So we piled into a kombi and headed off to the Wild Coast, looking for That Famous Stuff they sell down there, and hoping to rendezvous with the Swedish Hockey team. OK, the Swedish Old Girls Hockey Team, who were rumoured to be doing pre-season training in Lusikisiki (or, as we called it after crawling out of The Shy Stallion shebeen) Lo-squeaky-squeaky.

As we neared the coast there was a lo-ong downhill ahead of us and I stopped the kombi and got onto Abbers’ mountain bike and whizzed down with glee. As I reached terminal velocity I did think Uh-Oh! as I felt the effects of the Black Label kicking in. At the bottom I coasted to a halt. I don’t do uphills.

It was the Black Label by the quart and sweet wine that did it, I suppose, but when we got to the actual coast where the waves break against the rugged shore, we were looking for some action. We needed a break from all the Sixties music we’d been playing, broken only by one awful interlude when Bruce snuck an Amy Winehouse CD into the player! So we lay down and had a snooze.

But Abbers had brought that borrowed mountain bike, and we no longer wondered why. Seems he wanted to get away from the competition and meet up with a longtime connection he had met when salvaging the good ship BBC China which foundered off Grosvenor back when he was but a boy in his forties. Off he went on his own, heading vaguely south, trapping that fiets stukkend.


– Check carefully: No hockey girls –

When he got back much later there was a distinct whiff of some smoky vegetation about him and the Msikaba mosquitoes avoided him like the plague. We pumped him for information, but all we got was a mumbled “Loose-titty-titty” and the fact that he had not found the now-overdue Swedish Old Girls Hockey Team, but that when we did he dabzed wrestling with the goalie.

Abbers’ head did clear after a few days and he set off fishing so as to be able to answer spouse Les reasonably honestly, give or take; but the fish were having none of it. You could actually see them giving his bait a wide berth and wrinkling up their nostrils.

~~oo0oo~~

wikipedia (to show my memory is flawless and I don’t make up this kak): MV BBC China was a 5,548 GT general cargo vessel. In October 2003 the ship was diverted to Italy while carrying gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment to Libya. In October 2004 it ran aground near Port Grosvenor, where it was declared a total loss and subsequently demolished with explosives. – BY ABBERS! See? This is true.

~~oo0oo~~

trapping that fiets stukkend – pedaling vigorously

~~oo0oo~~

Meanwhile, unbeknown to us . . . a few rivers further north, the Swedish ladies K4 paddling team was training on the Umtamvuna:

swedish rowing team

This is true. OK, they might not have been there that same weekend but they did go there! And they were Swedish. And gorgeous.

Msikaba Boys Weekend

Taking pictures was hard cos there was beer . . .

~~oo0oo~~

But Will He Wear It?

I looked on in amazement as Aitch looked at kids dress-up suits in the market in Hong Kong.

Surely he’s too old for these? I asked, knowledgeably.

She just smiled, and bought the one he would be LEAST likely to wear: A dragon suit with a hood, clawed gloves and a thick stuffed tail with scales running right down the back and long tail. Most uncomfortable if you lay on that thick tail, I thought.

Well, of course he LOVED it. Wore it for years – till it was threadbare! Both in bed as jarmies and out in public.

Moms just know.

2010Dec18 Tommy Trish Aitch.JPG

Thy Ox and My Ass

On a boys getaway weekend to Manteku on the WildCoast my kombi makes it easily down to Drifters’ camp, though I do think Uh! Oh! as we drive down, Might be interesting getting out!

Uh Oh!

Five glorious days later we pack up and head out. But it has rained and the hill is too much for the kombi. What now? We’re the only vehicle in miles and the okes who should push are way too old for the job. They sit in my fine vehicle looking at me, sipping beer and asking, So what are YOU going to do?

Luckily, our Drifters camp manager is helpful. “No problem,” he says, “I’ll get some oxen.”

Oh, the shame! My ‘friends’ roar with laughter and start preparing. To lighten the kombi? To attach the tow rope? To clear big rocks away? No. None of the above. To take pictures!

A ‘helpful’ comrade filled with empathy!
– after a false start, where the oxen made a beeline for the river, we’re now aimed right . . uphill –

To this day I am reminded of this by these helpful ‘friends’. If I mention any car trouble they helpfully tell me: “Check for ox shit in the axles.”

At the top, it’s payment time: Thanks for your time, your trained oxen and your skill!

I told the helpful owner, Verily, Thy ox saved My ass.

~~oo0oo~~

Cellphone Roamin’

I send a serious sms:

Hi all

I will be able to send and receive sms’ while in Lesotho.

I’ll be there from Thursday about 1pm to Monday about 12 noon.

Thanks Pete

———————————————————————-
and I get this:On 2012/05/28 Jon Taylor wrote:

where-ever you may roam

thru mist or snow or foam

remember that you’ll always be pissed

what you ask for the way to go hoam

. . or something like that – some fossilized song that’s hard-wired in my calcified brain.

——-ooo000ooo——-

lesotho