I Suffered

So Jimmy Buffet died yesterday. This reminded me that I met Aitch in 1985.

Being polite and needing to make small talk I suppose I did tell her about the time we rented a Lincoln Continental in Atlanta. I’m sure I only told her once, or anyway less than a dozen times, but you know how she was. I also told her once that I was not fond of country music, having had my fill in the year I spent in Oklahoma.

So of course, the next trip we go on to a game reserve in Zululand, she’s playing this song full blast on the stereo in my white 1981 Ford Cortina 2.0GL sedan:

Just cos the oke drives a Lincoln Continental!

She played it so often and so loud we both learnt the words and the choon and would belt it out on many a road trip.

he's a cheeseburger eatin', abandoned Sunday meetin'
Brand new country star
He rides around in a Lincoln Continental
No steer horns on his car

I also introduced her to my Mom’s cousin Dapper Dudley Bain who would unfailingly tell you he was born in Harrismith (ca. 1923 I guess) and the sound of turtle doves reminded him of his youth in his Scottish oupa Stewart Bain’s Royal Hotel. He had a pencil-thin moustache, so Aitch would also play:

I better not let Jess see this. She did some line dancing in her day and is prone to playing loud country music on the stereo in my white 2007 Ford Ranger 3l turbodiesel 2WD bakkie on our road trips. Her mother’s genes, I spose. The suffering continues.

~~oo0oo~~

Nselweni Bush Camp

We loved Nselweni Bush Camp on the right bank of the Black Mfolosi river in Mfolosi Game Reserve. Kinda artistic/rustic, but with everything you need; solid walls with canvas ceilings above and a canvas roof over that; a good kitchen good bathroom en-suite. Windows and doors that open WIDE.

Nice and quiet; and full of birdlife while we were there. Some bush pigs visited us nightly, giving us a good closeup look by torchlight. And – we didn’t take pics!

On the riverbed, we watched an ele having a moment . .

  • Birds seen & heard (53 species): Crowned Hornbill; Ground Hornbill; Emerald-spotted Dove; Cape Turtle Dove; Red-eyed Dove; Oriole Black-headed; Nightjar Fiery-necked; Orange-breasted Bush shrike; Gorgeous Bush shrike; White Helmet shrike; Drongo Fork-tailed; Black Flycatcher; Cardinal Woodpecker; Chinspot Batis; Scrub-robin White-browed; Boubou Southern; Water Thick-knee; Greater Honeyguide; Tchagra Black-crowned; Tchagra Brown-crowned; Golden-breasted Bunting; Pied wagtail; Puffback; Crested Francolin; Barbet Black-collared; Red-breasted Swallow; Dideric Cuckoo; Hadeda; Striped Kingfisher; Dark-crowned Bulbul; Thrush Kurrichane; Fiscal Shrike; Cape Glossy Starling; White-backed Vulture; Grey Heron; African Hoopoe; Paradise Flycatcher; Ashy Flycatcher; Pied Crow; White-bellied Sunbird; Little Bee-eater; Lesser-striped Swallow; Guineafowl Helmeted; Guineafowl Crested; African Goshawk; Red-capped Robin-chat; Striped Pipit; Three-banded Plover; Grey-headed Bush shrike; Neddicky; Wire-tailed Swallow; Stonechat;
  • Elephant; Zebra; Impala; Bush pig; Nyala; Giraffe; Buffalo; Wildebeast; Warthog; Rhino square-lip; Waterbuck; Bushbuck; Baboon
  • Heard at night: Lion; Hyena; Bushbaby thicktail; Hippo

~~oo0oo~~

An early adoption of solar energy with batteries is now derelict – lead acid batteries short shelflife! Godd to see the thinking, and hopefully new renewable energy sources are being investigated in all our parks?

Think of this and be optimistic:

Fighting Fit


Original Message Sent: Monday, July 22, 2013 Subject: Doctors!

I should get my money back! My doc told me the same thing today he’s told me for the last fifteen / twenty years:

  1. Your ‘annual’ checkup? Good, cos your last visit was three years ago.
  2. You’re fat and unfit.

And for this I must pay him?

Also, the thing is, he's wrong! Fat compared to who? and Unfit for what?

Doesn't trust me, either, the skinny endurance athlete bugger. He asked for my weight and I said 80kg, and my waist and I said 88cm. So he stared at me and insisted on measuring, wasting my time and his; then announced triumphantly: "92kg and 112cm!"

What kind of doc does that? Hurt my feelings, sort-of. And also, I wonder when he last had his tape measure re-calibrated?
'Friend' Bruce wrote: 
The older you get, 
The tougher it is to lose weight, 
Because by then,
Your body and your fat 
Have become really good friends.

What? Is he trying to make me feel better? Or older?

~~oo0oo~~

Progress! Today, eight years later, I measured again with my Stanley metal measuring tape in the garage. Only 108cm. That’s actually 107 cos the metal kinks.

No need for a checkup! Think of the money I saved.

Update 2023: Just been yet again. The verdict, a clean bill of health. Immaculate. Never seen anything better in all my years of practice, said skinny Dr Steve. I paraphrase.

Meeting our Waterloo

TomTom and Ziggy and Mbono had a housewarming braai at their new home in Waterloo, north of Durbs. Jess and I were there along with Mbono’s parents, Ziggy’s Mom, sisters, brothers, nieces and star of the show: Melokuhle, Ziggy and Mbono’s baby, my grandson. Their little 2-bedroom house with its own garden is so much nicer than their last place, a flat in a high-rise building downtown.

One niece buzzed around taking lots of pics and videos, so I’ll post some of those when I get them. Meantime, I took too few:

Ziggy organised a lovely meal under the watchful eyes of her Mom and Mom-in-law – daunting, that! Luckily my Zig is a qualified chef! The young men – Mbono and two brothers did the braai for her. Tom had marinaded the meat overnight in his special sauce.

Suddenly it was decided there were too few bowls for dessert! Mbono, his older bra and Tom hopped into his Dad’s car and roared off to Spar; Later, another crisis: Older brother’s new girlfriend wanted sparkling water! Mbono, his older bra and Tom hopped into his Dad’s car and roared off to Spar. I remember those days. Any excuse to drive Dad’s car!

After lunch the large punch bowl was just about empty and the party was getting started! I thought I’d leave the dancing to the younger crowd. So Jess and I left early to get home to Mtwalume, about 100km south, before dark. We dropped off Ziggy’s Mom and a cousin along the way.

~~oo0oo~~

  • Waterloo
    Promise to love you for ever more
    Waterloo
    Couldn’t escape if I wanted to
    Waterloo
    Knowing my fate is to be with you
    Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa
    Waterloo
    Finally facing my Waterloo

Highest Waterfall

Angel Falls in Venezuela

Unfortunately the National Geographic journalist, the first journalist to reach the falls, fell prey to the temptation of sensationalism. None was needed: Angel Falls is sensational enough as it is! She should have said: Angel Falls has the highest single drop of any known waterfall, and has the MOST amazing setting, plunging from a free-standing mountain rising above a green tropical landscape, making it way more spectacular than most high falls which are often hard to photograph.

Instead, she decided to measure the height from the lip of the falls to the river two kilometres away downstream, after cataracts and even some flowing river, including all those in her overall height. This meant the ‘drop’ was over a horizontal stretch of three km, not vertical. Hardly what we think of as a ‘waterfall.’

Silly to do that, as if you measured the Tugela Falls in the Drakensberg that way, it’s actually higher! It has a tremendous single drop and five distinct free-leaping falls.

Both these magnificent falls have great vantage points from which to see their main drops, but let’s compare what really counts:

  • Biggest single drop of Tugela Falls: 411m
  • Biggest single drop of Angel Falls: 738m
– we peer over the escarpment edge to see the Tugela Falls on a climb ca.1999 –

~~oo0oo~~

Hillbilly Oogtoets

Seventeen year-old lass comes in for a check. She’s with Dad and older sister in advanced state of pregnancy. This is some long years ago – remember BBM’s?

Kom maar deur, I say to the one whose appointment it is.

Pa and sis push ahead and squeeze in, with Pa standing right next to the chair, sis BBM’ing away, and much “ky’daar” and questions. Throughout the exam they talk away, sis BBM’ing or MXit’ing non-stop while geselsing with Pa about anything under the sun. I have to repeat everything so kleinsis understands, as she’s also listening to them. She “haai“‘s about everything I tell as though it’s the first time she’s ever heard somefing like vat – meantime it’s the third time she’s had her eyes tested by me! Pushes the phoropter away every now & then to look at me and say, “Rȇrig oom?”

Pa, by the way, is kaalvoet in black shorts with black sleeveless tanktop. The two lasses are dressed well. Good-looking girls too. Pa’s the odd one out.

Fascinating. They live in Durban, but in a parallel universe. And dof? Not so much: As we end, he asks for a driver’s screening and sis asks about her coming baby: “Doctor, I jis wanna arse: When mah baby arrahves how will I know if her arse is perfick?”

Mission accomplished! – they got their three-for-the-price-of-one.

–oo0oo~~

From Aussie, Steve chimes in: Sounds like one of my regulars when I used to work at Redbank, one of the outer suburbs of Ipswich, to the west. One of my Aussie friends, when he heard I was working there, said, “Oh no, you’re working in six finger country.” The additional digit was apparently quite commonplace out that way, though I think I only saw it once myself. Handy for BBM’ing I would imagine.

Still, quite nice. LOTS of no-shows, and arrivals when THEY thought the appointment was.

Love it when the accompanying persons shoulder through. Especially when it’s just a mate who is there for the entertainment. They get bored after three minutes though, and ask how long it’s gonna take. After that, immersed in their iPhone but then perk up when the trial frame goes on the nose and want to take a picture . . .

–oo0oo~~

oogtoets – eye exam

kom maar deur – come in

ky’daar – look at that! and that! and that!

geselsing – chatting

kleinsis kleinsus – lil sister

haai – gosh

Rȇrig oom? – really, uncle?

kaalvoet – barefoot

dof – thick

arse – ask

arse – eyes

Teenage Tenants

. . in a block of old farts

Finally heaving the fat ass of my Congolese squatter out onto the pavement of once-toney Musgrave road and throwing his double bed after him so it landed on his bald head* led me to reflect on the 29-odd years I have been privileged to own this lovely flat I bought from my now-Kiwi partner Pete.

*The truth about my only bad apple tenant is that he skived his own shady self off by disappearing quietly in the dead of night one step ahead of the sheriff, having squatted unwanted for about eighteen months – the last eight months unpaid. His long and tedious occupation of my lovely maybe-one-day home is OVER! He’s history, so let’s look back on happier memories.

All my tenants loved the flat and paid their rent. A few asked to buy it; a few phoned to say they were sad they had to leave, but life had taken them elsewhere.

One year was memorable: One year when a tenant left I took my flat off the market for a while and spruced it up. We sanded and gleamed the wooden floors, re-did the kitchen cupboards, fitted a new shower and painted the place. It looked great. The couple who renovated it for me brought in their nineteen year-old daughter to help clean at the end. She worked like a trojan and she loved the space and begged to rent it with a fellow student friend. Sure, I said, and no regrets. They were lovely. Her name was Sierra and she and her flatmate paid on time every month. Oh yes, and they drove the oldies in the building crazy with their parties!

When the moans hit a crescendo I went and spoke to the old-gentlemen-only gang on the body corporate. Moan Moan. Your tenants are loud. They have friends staying overnight. They squeal their car tyres on the road outside at midnight. Moan. Moan.

I asked, ‘What are their names?’ What? ‘What are their names?’ I repeated. No idea. ‘Oh, Did you meet and greet them when they first arrived? Did you welcome them and explain you’re mostly rather old and would like some quiet after 9pm?’ Um no, well that’s not our job! ‘Ah. How many of you have said ‘The youth of today have no manners?’ I asked, prodding hard. Then I let them out of their deserved misery. ‘Relax, they’re leaving at the end of this month.’

So now, years later, we’re renovating again. I’m hoping to get those beautiful old Oregon Pine floors (the old guy who’s gonna fix them says, ‘They’re Douglas Fir, actually’) smooth and gleaming again. Fingers crossed.

Then I’ll work on the garden.

Remote-control Photography

I got a wifi-enabled camera! My cellphone can now operate the camera remotely! I am going to set it up on a tripod and sit somewhere comfortable and take pictures of unwitting birds. No, man! Feathered ones.

Having this would also have been handy to see what the hyenas and bushpigs were doing outside our hut late at night last time we were in Mfolosi, and I always want to know what’s that snuffling around my tent when camping.

So now I finally have a camera I can set up on a tripod and take pics from my cellphone. Being a cheapskate I waited till I could do it with a cheap camera – a Canon Powershot SX620HS. It’s a tiny little compact camera so I can carry it everywhere in my shirt pocket; the biggest advantage it has over the cellphone camera is 25X optical zoom.

So now I got the camera aiming at the birdbath waiting for the first exciting shot.

Hmm, getting the camera and phone to talk to each other has taken way longer than I thought. While I was sukkeling, two spectacled weavers, a golden-rumped tinker, an olive sunbird, two brown-hooded kingfishers, a fork-tailed drongo and a speckled mousebird hopped on and grinned at me. Now that I’m rigged up, nothing so far!

Ons sal sien what comes of this! Maybe word got out in the bird world that the binocular pervert who always stares at them while they’re bathing now has a camera? This Red-capped Robin-chat showed what she thought of me at the other birdbath. And this was while I was still shooting from long range!

Once I got the setup going, I soon noticed another small problem: My attention span! This is not really a sport for someone who hops from twig to twig and makes frequent forays to the fridge and/or the kettle. One olive sunbird has been spotted and photographed, small and blurry; moving fast and olive-greenish against an olive-greenish backdrop. Meantime various ostriches and vultures might have taken gulps while my attention was elsewhere. I wouldn’t know.

I can see I need auto-shoot with a movement detector so I can leave it and go to sleep and then see what happened in my absence. And so the drive for ever-more expensive equipment starts!

Other challenges: Battery life! After waiting a few hours the whole setup suddenly switches off: “Re-charge Battery” it commands. And mine only operates with wifi – I’ll need bluetooth to be able to do this in the wild, far from wifi.

So whenever you see a great bird picture, take your hat off to the patience, perseverance, skill and equipment required to get those shots!

I now remember the stories Neville Brickell used to tell me about how he got his bird pics. Something along these lines: He would find a spot where his target bird was likely to be. He would give a big bag of the right seed or feed to someone living nearby and ask them to put a handful out every day for a few weeks. He would set up a hide in a good position and place likely perches with good backgrounds. Later he would return, enter the hide and wait. If all went to plan he would get his picture! His resident feeder would be rewarded for that ultimate success so he had a reason to keep up the feeding. A lot of work and patience! Of course, he also sometimes caught birds and photographed them in cages with controlled light and backgrounds.

~~oo0oo~~

I finally started getting a few fun pics – better anyway than I could get with my little camera from my stoep 30m away. And I could play with the images:

– purple-crested turaco –

and I could zoom in:

Once when I was setting up, this Yellow-rumped Tinkerbird landed a metre away and asked What You Doin’? So I shot him right there, free-hand.

Now that I’ve sold my home and am wandering around, I really need to get going on an alternative system. Fingers crossed. One day . .

Update: I picked Lee Ouzman’s brain and our last thought was Get Another Cellphone and let them talk to each other. So for now I think that’s what I’ll do. I’ll need to mount one on my Manfrotto tripod . . .

~~oo0oo~~

I was Born to be a Kayaker . .

. . just not a very good one. *

Actually ‘born to be’ . . ? Yep. Check it out here.

I love rivers and river valleys; water, especially water rushing downhill – the direction I wish to go; big water, we call it; hairy rapids; fun and scary and I enjoy the . . let’s call it excited, tense anticipation. Yeah, fear. My approach to scary rapids is logical / statistical: I know that big water is high perceived danger, but low real danger and that driving to the river is low perceived danger, but high real danger. So I’d reassure myself with that, have a pee, then fasten my splashy and push off into the current. Of course once you’re there on the riverbank, ‘scouting your line’ through the rapid, peer pressure does have a bit to do with it! You going? Yeah? So’m I.

I love little rapids too. As long as the water is flowing I’m happy. If I can do much of the trip with my arms folded and the current schlepping me downstream, I’m in paradise. Still water may run deep, but it’s hard work – no progress unless you’re paddling. And the wind is always agin ya!

Perspiration? Not so much. On many a trip my crazy paddle mates would paddle back upstream to where I was drifting in awesome wonder and ask, ‘What’s Wrong Swanie?’ Nothing was wrong, the day was long. My thought was, What’s the hurry?

In big water my mate ace paddler Chris Greeff would say ‘If you ain’t scared, you ain’t havin’ fun!’ a quote he got from Cully Erdman. ** Now Chris – he was a very good one. And also a FreeStater who was ‘born to be’ a kayaker. Like me, he grew up on the banks of a Vrystaat river – the lesser Vile (Vaal) as opposed to my mighty Vulgar (Wilge). I used to give him good advice but he’d ignore it and win races. He has no handbrake; He won just about every race you can win except the one South African laymen ask about. And he nearly won that one, despite short and reluctant legs. These things are hard to verify, but if there was a combination trophy for the highest beer consumption the night before, coupled on the tote with winning the race the next day, I reckon the only other paddler who would maybe come close was Jimmy Potgieter, a decade earlier.

He should write a book.

~~oo0oo~~

* I saw this lovely basketball quote –

‘I was born to be a point guard, but not a very good one’ by Pat Conroy

seen on Dr Mardy’s Quotes

** fear quotes:

Closest I can find are –

‘It ain’t brave if you ain’t scared’ by Victor J. Banis in Deadly Nightshade

‘If you ain’t scared you ain’t human’ by James Dashner in The Maze Runner.

~~oo0oo~~

Ama Criminal Record

I was on the phone to an ancient friend named Owen as I neared Port Alfred when a lady invited me to join her at the side of the road. I did so with alacrity. She was a traffic gendarme in Ndlambe. The ticket she wrote tells me I was pulled over in Voortrekker Street ‘opposite the Lunch Box.’

May I see your drivers licence? asked the friendly lady in the every-stitch-on-duty uniform. ‘Sure,’ said I, ‘You will notice it has expired.’

Tut tut, she tutted me and wrote out that ticket. Five hundred bucks cos I “Drove a M/V on a Public Road with Expired Driver’s Licence.” Not quite true, as my driver’s licence is for life. What she meant was my proof of having a licence had expired. The card had expired. That was true. The driver on the other hand, he was still fresh.

I forgot about it till today and so now I have just paid it online. I hope the good people of Ndlambe municipality accept the cash, as I see I am past the deadline date!

I don’t want a criminal record! I was reminded of such often on our journeys, as it’s one of Jessie’s songs she plays as we buzz along the byways of Southern Africa.

Ama Criminal Record – by Blaq Diamond. Long before the song is over – it’s a long one – I usually ask Jess: ‘Earphones please my love!!’

Mtwalume Cottage

A quiet time in the cottage. Except when Tommy joined me for a few days! Then there was action, fires, big meals and a much fuller bin bag for the rubbish truck on Wednesday.

~~oo0oo~~

Cape Passes & Poorts

Normal people may find this post boring.

As Jess and I whizzed southwestward in search of clear skies to dry out the tent on my lorry after the floods in the Kruger Park at the beginning of the year and the soaking rains in Mpumalanga, Free State and KZN which kept my canvas damp. It got so bad I started thinking there wasn’t a sky in the cloud. On the tar roads we passed numerous signs saying some or other pass. You notice the lovely scenery, but the passes pass with no effort, so we seldom stopped for photos. Thanks to the amazing website run by the geeks, nerds and – worse – engineers of mountainpassessouthafrica.co.za anyone can go on a virtual drive over these passes. I used them gratis for a bit, then subscribed. Well worth R465 a year in my view, even if you’re only doing one trip with one pass – you’ll get so much more out of the trip once you’ve read the amount of info these guys post about each pass. A narrated video of the route, angles, altitudes, distances, directions, gain, gradient, history, can you take a Fiat Uno or do you need a Unimog, ens. Fascinating.

I had some well-known and challenging passes on my to-do list for this trip, and on those I did take pics which I’ll post.

Wapadberg Pass – On the tarred R61 between Cradock and Graaff Reinet; 17km long; On YouTube here.

Carlton Heights Pass – On the tarred N9 between Noupoort and Middelburg; 7km long; On YouTube here. It was here I remarked to Jess, ‘Look, not a cloud in the sky!’ We had found our dry blue skies to dry out my tent! We stopped for a pic and saw there was one wee cloud to the south, no bigger than a man’s hand, just like in the Bible.

Now four passes on the tarred N9 north of Graaff Reinet. Heading South, as we did, they are: Naudesberg Pass; Paardekloof Pass; Goliathskraal se Hoogte Pass; Perrieshoogte Pass; All tar, all beautiful, but none caused us to stop and take pics. Also near – almost in – Graaff Reinet are van Ryneveld’s Pass and Munniks Poort. Some of these passes were Andrew Geddes Bain passes, the famous road- and passbuilder whose reputation I accuse my ancestors of appropriating when they got to Natal!

In Camdeboo National Park we found the first pass, mountain and valley I had long wanted to see: Camdeboo Pass leading to the Valley of Desolation! Back in 1972, fresh from a wonderful Veld & Vlei adventure, I’d been invited on a Boy Scouts patrol leader camp to the “Valley of Desolation near Graaff Reinet.” The camp was cancelled, but my imagination had been fired up and I always dreamed of seeing this mythical place one day. Now, a mere fifty one years later, I was driving up the pass. – – (virtual drive it on YouTube here and here)

— Jess halfway up the pass; and the tent on my lorry nice and dry —

Next we headed to the Karoo national park outside Beaufort West, my old mate Louis’ stamping ground. Inside the park there’s the Klipspringer Pass built with great effort and care. Being in a declared nature reserve, rocks were sourced from outside the park, ruins of old houses and kraals eg. and local labourers dry-packed them by hand to minimise the damage to the area. Jess chose to loaf back at camp while I drove it. She missed out.

After Beaufort we headed for Oudtshoorn to visit Louis and Gail – and what a welcome we received! Good friends indeed. Louis told of us of Meiringspoort, saying It’s Beautiful! and he was right. We crossed Droekloof Pass on the way, then took our time in the poort, stopping at every picnic spot and walking up to the waterfall. — (the feature pic at the top shows the mighty Ford Ranger on the Meiringspoort road).

Reluctantly leaving Louis n Gail’s hospitality we headed north towards a must-do pass – the famed Swartberg Pass. After passing through Schoemanspoort near the Cango Caves we started up the pass, stopping at Kobus se Gat to get Jess her 100th hot chocolate (! approx). Ahead lay 24km of Thomas Bain’s finest road engineering. The boffins at mountainpassessouthafrica.co.za rate it so special they have made eight videos to cover it! See a shorter video here, showing north to south, opposite of our direction. Swartberg could actually be called multiple passes and multiple poorts!

~~oo0oo~~

A pass goes up or down or over a mountain. A poort goes through – often following a river course. Often you drive with high mountain walls on both sides, whereas on a pass there’s usually a wall on one side and a drop on the other.

Thanks to mountainpassessouthafrica.co.za; tripadvisor.com; and princealbert.org.za for pictures

I Thought the Book . .

. . was about her husband and his friends.

Turns out it wasn’t about us at all. Not nearly as interesting. But besides that, a lovely book and a fine achievement, Terry! Proud of ya!

Men in dresses, men in hats. Being Terry, though, the sterling – often leading – efforts of women were mentioned too, in this story of her church and its centenary. It was her parents’ church and hers for all of her life – that’s well over . . . um, many years and some decades. Not the full hundred though.

I got a nice message from the author in my copy:

terry book
I got the author to autograph it!

Glad she acknowledges my underrated acting abilities!

~~oo0oo~~

My Mom on the Titanic

Mom was watching the movie Titanic when the frailcare nurses came mid-movie and hauled her off to bed. Well, it was nearly 5pm.

Ever co-operative, dear old Mom sighed and accepted. The next day she asked two fellow inmates who had stayed on: “What happened!? Did it sink all the way to the bottom, or did it land on an iceberg and drift to safety?”

“They gave me a blank look,” she tells me. “Looked at me as though I was mad.” “Oops,” she says, “They didn’t get my little joke.”

Undeterred, she tells me with a chuckle , “Next time I’ll ask them what happened with Cain and Abel. Did Cain kill Abel in the end?” I’ll ask them.

~~o00o~~

Disclaimer: Mom Mary was only born in 1928, a full decade after the Titanic hit the bottom, OK?