Cape Town. Random Urban Memories.

Dear Readers. Welcome to South Africa. Welcome to Cape Town. If there is a friendly city competition CT should enter. Everyone was sound, helpful and generally pretty chilled out.

As Ciara has already expressed, we were pretty shocked and excited by stuff to do, restaurants and shops. So excited and shocked that we forgot to do touristy things half the time. We ate. Ate a lot. We drank shed loads. Met some cool people (special mention for Caitlin, Laura and Esther) We got the car fixed. 

I am sharing some photo's with you and hoping to give you some extra insight. You know, there is always more to a photo than you might think.

We did do more than this. Table Mountain and the ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW  (which was hilarious) for example. We don't think you need to see a photo of the Toyota garage that fixed Ravlon or the shop John bought his new specs.  

Bray struggles to contain his emotions as Julia finally (after 9 years of love and 2 weeks of attempts to glue them together AGAIN) throws away her boots.

Stellenbosch. you might think this is simple. We are comparing chocolate and wine here of course. Posh cmjjjing.
NO. Julia is in fact trying not to vomit in her glass due to the pretty horrific hangover's we were all sporting.

Ciara has a problem with wine. She may as well just have it on an IV drip. This attempt at theft didn't end in success but she did not let this hold her back,

remembering to be tourists at Cape of Good Hope. Pretty water isn't it. Bray may be smiling. He is actually crapping himself because its like, far, to the beach.

Bray, observing tourists. Searching for Whales. We thought we saw hundreds. We saw jack S***. They were rocks.

Simply a moment of shared laughter caught on camera?  No, Bray crippled Cross by gently touching his knee. Wimp. and the finger. well that belongs to Dave.

Meet Dave.  Our friendly tour guide. He was a nice man. a little quirky. Our favourite quotes and sights he pointed out.
Simons Town Police Station and its Chubb security sticker.
Rocks that look like Baboons.
South African Navy knowledge.
His Toyota.

and the never ending fish hook conversation... I still don't know if Cross was winding him up or just being a bit vacant.
Dave : 'I will drop you off in fishhook, more trains there, I live there'
Cross: I like fishing
Dave: No I live in fishhook, the village
(5 minutes later)
Cross: So is there much fishing here Dave? We want to do some fishing. Do you fish?
Dave: I live in fish hook, I don't really fish
Cross: do you fish from the beach around here ? or on a boat
Dave (now quite exasperated): I said... I live in fish hook. I don't fish myself.
Cross: oh.

Fish River Canyon = One scared Dad

Thanks Ciara for those pics of the Namib from our hot air balloon flight and, not forgetting, the champagne breakfast (thought I'd just remind you all of that).

Moving on...

Before I put together a piece on our Fish River Canyon (FRC) adventure I figured I would just add alittle information about each member of the CMJJJ group. This is mainly for the random viewers from Russia that seem to be following our blog.

Julia 'Mother Hen' Bach - Our friend from New York is caring, physically aggressive and, currently (as of 20/07/2013) single - please comment on the blog with your name, age, some spiel about yourself and a picture for a chance to win her heart.

LIKES: Burning puppies, early morning/late night walks, washing, cleaning, packing.
DISLIKES: Staggering home drunk, being woken up at half 4 in the morning, sitting still, saying 'please'.

Ciara 'O'Donomug' O'Donoghue - The Kerry princess is a member of the famed O'Donoghue mafia of Killarney. She is fun, usually asleep and likes nothing more than sitting down for a good read. Ciara is also a GRAMMER NAZI and, so, I will put, lot of, commas, in and disspelling loadsa, words, to wind her up.

LIKES: Correcting grammer, sleeping, reading, drinking pinotage, itineraries, swearing.
MISLIKES: Bruises, penetrative banter, cricket, being awake in the car, the idea that this trip will eventually come to an end.

John 'Stallion' Bray - The northerner is hardest to understand for Julia even though he likes to talk VERY LOUD. He is/comes across as being organised and is a natural leader. John is crap at table football - FACT. He is also very scared of heights and so has proven himself to be brave as we have encountered a number of high-scary situations so far.

LIKES: Sport (good lad), talking very loudly, buying new glasses, driving, fishing, losing shit, snoring.
DISLIKES: Heights, letting Julia drive, table football, being called 'Dad', getting punched hard in the arm, the ABSA bank machines in J-Bay.

James '_______' Cross (me) - Charming, handsome, a legend.

LIKES: Eating, sport, being a jock, farting.
DISLIKES: Littering, snatching and Julia not saying 'please'.

____________________________FRC_________________________________________________

So the drive from Sesriem and the Namib to FRC was a discontinuation of the marvelous scenery that had been on show in Namibia. The main road south is rather dull. However as we neared our desination things once again looked up. I serious advise anyone to check out Namibia, it is simply stunning on the whole.

We arrived just as the sun was going down and jumped out of the car to take our places on the lookout post for a grand old tourist view of the canyon proper (arguably the largest in africa and, perhaps, the second most impressive in the world after the Grand Canyon, apparently). WOW! What an amazing place! Bray very scared of the edge, the wimp.

Campsite was awesomely dark when the lights went out, we have been spoilt rotten by star-filled skies in Namibia. Following day we woke and headed an hour south to a place called Ai Ais where some hot springs were promised (cue huge excitement from the girls). Sadly we were unable to find the hot springs and so had to settle for a dip in the campsite pool which was warm as it was fed by the hot springs but also contained way to many children for a group of teachers on holiday...from kids.

Did get to access the canyon itself (it is closed to walkers apart from at the Ai Ais end were you can technically go quite a way in until you get told off. You can do the 90km hike over the course of a week but you have to book and to be honest, it would get mega boring after day 2) and so headed up for a few kilometres on the sand and rock of the canyon floor. Awesome scenery. Ciara lost her shades for the second time on this tour and Bray won two beers for finding them (Ciara you still owe him these).

Got back and had a quick bite to eat and catch up with the cricket on tv (get in!) before heading back for another look at the canyon at dusk.

That is pretty much the canyon. It was just HUGE!

Next day we left early for Cape Town after deciding that we would just smash it (Maguire et al, 2013.). That is a lot of kilometres let me tell you and the Ravster was beginning to sound like wanted to curl up in a nice metal and rubber ball and just die. Will CMJJJ make it to Cape Town in one piece, or indeed, at all? Will Bray let Julia drive at any point on the journey? Will Ciara spend the whole journey asleep and dribbling? Will Julia get the chance to buy herself a new pair of walking boots (much needed) in CT? Will I finally manage to get my lips around a fine double cheeseburger from maccy d's? Find out the next time someone can be bothered to update the blog.

Cape Town shopping list: BRAY - Glasses, JULIA - Walking boots, CIARA - Haircut, ME - Shades.

Ciao

Hot Air Ballooooooooooooon!

Because we're posh and really rich, we decided to do a hot air balloon trip over the Namib Desert. 

Feckin' AWESOME. 

We were a little bit worried for a while

but then it was ok..

Bray was calm and collected as per usual

We bullied monkey. I feel bad about that now.

Balloon Shadow!

'Sports Landing': when you land sideways and bounce around a bit.

Of course, all balloon rides over deserts just MUST be followed by a champagne breakfast in the sand dunes.

How far we have CMJJJed so far...

I think we've done very well. And no one has gone mental - yet. Well not really anyway. Maybe slightly. Are those my legs??? LOL!

So after the relative isolation of desert and delta, we are experiencing extreme culture shock here in Cape Town. They have restaurants and shops and fancy cars and cinemas and bars and GUINNESS ON TAP! And we get to sleep in BEDS! And for the first time in 22 days - we're NOT reeking of campfire. Although Cross still smells like fart.

GREAT SUCCESS!

GERMAN FOOD AND BEER AND NEW SOCK THAT ARE AMAZEBALLS!

Boom.

 Top nosh but shame about the hangovers.

Great. Just great.

Etosha Pan. 1st and 2nd June.

Writing as we drive from Halali camp to Namutoni camp at the eastern gate for our second nights camping in the Etosha National park.
It has been and is amazing. Chilled, enjoyable, accessible and a super high animal spotting success rate. It is a strange mixture of incredible landscapes, thousands of animals (reckon we've seen most of the 18,000 Zebra) and South African family camping holidays.

Our campsite last night was a bit random. 30 odd sites for camping all full with 4*4's and trailers that turn into small houses.

The safari's have been proper cool. The herds are huge and it is a really easy place to get around. I guess some purists might be put off by that but we've found it brilliant.
The park is enormous and is based on waterholes connected by a network of gravel roads.
The openness and scrub landscape make it feel quite barren, but bathed in sunlight it was beautiful. The pan itself is like a brown and green sea from a distance. It drew us back plenty to just look at it.

As we knew our readers would want it confirmed, Cross and Bray took one for the team and tested the pan. We also dont just believe what we read and wanted to know whether it really was salty.
There were very different styles. Bray went for selecting a rock and tasting. Cross a full press up position licking arrangment.
Same outcome. Salty.
The pan also gave us some photo opportunities we felt we couldn't miss. Animals wise we will let the photo's tell that story. pretty successful though.

Fitness regime. German Style. 30th June.

The CMJJJ attempts to stop our muscles from atrophying are aided by the presence of uber jock James Cross. In the oddest and most german campsite yet, we even went for a 'jog'. Notable for the sunset and a cracking chicken madras. Camp food smashed again.

Botswana to Northern Namibia. 30th June I think.

we were nailing it down gravel roads to get moving. Every now and again stuff just appeared.

 We are getting good at lunches.

it may be bigger and have a tent on the roof, but Ravlon is still the top  car in Africa.

Meat Smuggling. 30th June.

So you are heading off into a new country. Namibia. You have ahead 4 nights of cooking for yourself on open fires and exploring national parks and the least populated parts of Africa we will encounter.

Of course you do your shopping carefully. You make sure that you buy plenty of energy food such as beef and chicken to keep you going. Meat = Food, and Cross and Bray refuse to eat without its presence in dinner.

Turns out Namibia has a region (the north, of which its border is where we were travelling from) which isnt allowed to export its meat products raw. We of course had no clue. It isnt in the bradt guide anyway.
Having crossed the border the day before we did our shopping in Rundu and drove on again, aiming at Etosha pan.
We quickly arrived at the vet control checkpoint.

The vet control guy and his police side kick started by asking to share John's chocolate (crunchy no less) which is never gonna happen and just annoyed Bray. Crossy was more polite/soft and caved in to sharing his chocs with the dude who then cheerfully conned us into telling him we were travelling with contraband.

Basically we could either cook it there and then or they would take it away and destroy it. Now as we had no previous knowledge of this perfectly applicable law and Bray was still off on one about his chocolate, we debated the point somewhat.
Just to clarify we were hardly driving around with half a cow bleeding away in the boot. We are talking about  packaged / shrinkwrapped meat products from a supermarket in plastic and everything.
To be fair their official response was consistent. Simply pointing to the HUGE sign on the huge and rather official looking checkpoint. So crossy whipped out the old stove and we had 9:30 am pepper steak and sausages.
Why smuggling we hear you ask? Aside from it being a potentially pun tastic title, if we told you, we would be breaking the oldest rule going. What goes on tour, stays on tour. CMJJJ 1- 0 Bureaucracy.

Okavango Delta. Planes, Makoro's and Automobiles. 27th - 29th June.

We're obviously travelling in the coolest car in Africa but away from the road, travelling by plane was pretty damn good.
500 feet above the ground, flying over the delta was pretty amazing. we were all buzzing (johns fuzzy head aside).
Saw big herds of Buffalo and elephant and plenty else. It was cool just to see the scale of the delta. We hardly scratched its surface. Would love to go back.
We got to watch the sun setting over Botswana on the return journey and the colours were amazing. The changes as the sun is going down and the long shadows are immense and so different to the day.  I have big memories of sunsets in Africa. The delta looked amazing.

If plane travel was cool, Makoro travel was chilled. We spent a night out in the bush and travelled by speed boat and makoro. It included long walks among Zebra, Elephant and Wildebeest. Good fun and seriously relaxing.  As you can see from the photo's, Monkey was well involved and Ciara had started playing with different camera functions.