Taking you on a road trip...

Our last day of work at the NMF was on Saturday, July 31st - the day of the NMF's Annual Lecture. The following Monday morning, Jill and I left on an eight-day road trip, which took us through eastern South Africa and Lesotho. The scenery was beautiful, the people were kind, and driving on the left was not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be...although I spent most of my week dodging cows, goats and minibus taxis.

The Nissan we rented.

Let's begin with Lesotho...dreary, oh man was it dreary. It poured rain the entire time we were there which did not help. Known for their weaving, we visited a shop to purchase some products from some local women in Hlotse or Teyateyaneng - can't remember which place. The weaving was beautiful and well done. Upon leaving the shop, we discovered a herd of cattle had surrounded our rental car! If it hadn't have been pouring, and if the weaving ladies had not dragged me back into the shop, I would have taken a photo. I wish I had as in retrospect it was quite funny.

These "public phones" were a common sight...

...as were donkeys wandering along the roadside.

Leaving Lesotho, we drove to the Drakensburg Mountains, which were beautiful. Professor Doug Thompson told us that we simply HAD to go hiking in the mountains and not just look from the car/bar. So, we did. We felt we had to and I must admit if it had not been for his email, I probably would have simply looked from the car. From the car though, it was still spectacular.

This was the view from our B&B in Underberg. We desperately tried to get up the Sani Pass with no avail. As this 'donkey road' was too much for our wee Nissan, we decided to take a tour. The Sani Pass takes you into Lesotho via the mountains and while there, we were going to go to the highest bar in South Africa. Mother nature must have sensed some Canadians were en route as the night before our trip it snowed to beat the band and the border into Lesotho had to be closed. Days later we heard that there were some South Africans were trapped there for days because of the snow so I suppose it was not meant to be. Next year the Sani Pass will be paved and it therefore would have been neat to go up while it was still a donkey road.

This is one of my favourite scenic shots of Kwazulu Natal, taken near the Valley of the Thousand Kings. The fields of sugar cane were so lush and green, which was such a nice contrast to the winter yellow fields of central South Africa.

St. Lucia was a wonderful little town on the east coast. It was a welcome relief from the hustle and bustle of Durban. The scenic shot above was taken in the St. Lucia Wetlands Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The other shot was taken out of the B&B we stayed at in St. Lucia, where we stayed in a "Leopard" themed room. This room even had a leopard carved into the door, which at the time seemed cool, but now, I realize was quite gaudy. Maybe it was an omen because within two days, we had a very up-close and personal encounter with a leopard in the Umflozi Game reserve. I think I now prefer the leopard carved in the door.

St. Lucia is known for its hippos that wander throughout the town at night, which we did not encounter. Upon leaving St. Lucia, however, we did come across a herd of elephants by the roadside. Apparently this was not a common occurrence as many locals joined the tourists in the mad frenzy of photo taking.

Visiting the Umflozi game reserve was a great way to end the trip. We saw tons of giraffe and zebra, my favourite, but there were two moments of the visit that stand out in my mind. The first was the EARLY morning walk with a ranger where we came within five feet of a leopard. The second were the monkeys that got into our tent, threw all of my cosmetics about and made off with my toothpaste. Little buggers. Although the leopard was too fast to catch a photo of, here are some other animals.

And to end, my favorite...

That will probably be it for tales of South Africa. Thanks for reading and enjoying the experience with me. Now it is back to the books.

Cape Town and Cape Point

Cape Point was BEAUTIFUL. I only thought that the St. Peters Bay R.C. Church was one of the most windy spots in the world. The wind literally "moved us," but after our ascent, we were rewarded with beautiful scenery.

This was taken en route to the top of table mountain in Cape Town. I thought of my mother while on this thing, recalling her description of a gondola in Banff as a "helicopter on a string."

The view from Table Mountain, overlooking Cape Town. I now know why it is called the "Mother City" of South Africa...and yes, it does somewhat resemble Cape Breton!

From inside Mandela's former prison cell on Robben Island.

Thanks y'all

I really had no idea until I got back to FIS, how many of my fellow students had been visiting my blog all summer. Thanks so much for the comments and I am glad that you all seemed to enjoy the photos so much.

Now that Jill I have done our presentation at FIS, I am going to load a whole bunch of more photos onto this blog. I enjoyed the talk and sharing all the memorable moments from my summer's travels and work. Thanks again to FIS and the NMF for such a wonderful opportunity.

Rare Books

Wow, have I not posted since July? To put it mildy, friends have been pestering me to death to add more postings about my summer in South Africa. To this, I make a promise to add some more photos soon, but not until after the 12th of October. For on this date, Jill and I will be making a presentation to faculty, fellow students and perhaps even a few friends about our summer's adventures in southern Africa. Mark it on your calendars folks:

When: Thursday, 12th October 2006
Where: FIS, 7th Floor Lounge
Time: 4:10pm - 5ish

I want to have some "never seen before" footage/photos for this presentation, thus no more postings until after that date.

Today I began my practicum at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto. I spent the majority of my day leafing through old dusty ledgers and papers and was completely in my element. At the end of the day, the director of the library gave us a little tour...which turned out to be more than just a little tour. It left fellow archives student Lindsay and myself, well, nerding out over almost everything we saw. This included a five-page letter written by Galileo, a clay tablet written in 1798 BC, and Banting's Nobel Peace Prize. Oh yes, we also got to hold Banting's medal. I will surely never hold that much gold consecutively in my hand ever again.

Stay tuned....

Swaziland

As promised, here are some more photos of Swaziland. For those of you like myself who did not know, the King of Swaziland currently has 13 wives. Every year there is a traditional reed dance held in late August. Only the childless, unmarried girls may participate in this dance. The ultimate aim of course is to catch the eye of the thirty-seven year old King!

I knew very little about this custom before we went, and was surprised when the women I saw carrying the reeds appeared to be, well a little long in the tooth. I took way too many photos of women and reeds, although many of the women seemed to be happy to get their photos taken. I wasn't sure what to say to them - "Good Luck" or "God Help You." Am still not sure. Anyway, we found out later that day that the women who took part in this dance were older women, who were in fact dancing for the Queen Mother and not the King. Nevertheless, it was an impressive sight and the cultural highlight of our trip. Carrying these reeds are not for the faint of heart.

Another highlight for me was visiting the Ngwenya glass factory. My boss Verne Harris has a little glass elephant from this factory on his desk, and I just fell in love with it. So, I had to go and get myself one. Then I fell in love with the glass hippos, glass rhinos, agh! One only has so much room in one's carry-on I am afraid.

Later that day, we visited the Mantega Cultural Village. This village was built to represent and display traditional aspects of Swazi life. There was a small outdoor theatre where the cast below put on a beautiful performance of both singing and traditional dancing. What was unfortunate was that they made us dance with them...

Saturday is out last day at work - hard to believe. On the 29th is the Foundation's annual lecture. This year, South African President Thabo Mbeki will be giving the address. On Monday morning, we are leaving for a week long trek through the eastern provinces of South Africa, as well as Lesotho. If any of you have driven through the Sani Pass in Lesotho, we could use some advice. Are we crazy to attempt it in a rental car? It looks spectacular, albeit a bit of a donkey road.

En Route to Swaziland!

The drive to Swaziland was beautiful. Shadrack was very patient and stopped about, oh, ten times along the roadside for me to take photos. It was interesting to see the terrain change the closer we got to Swaziland. The hills and valleys resulted in gorgeous scenery and I finally got some shots of the traditional round houses with thatched roofs. Here are just a few of the scenic photos I took last Friday. Thanks again Shadrack for the trip and your patience! More to come from the Swaziland trip next week....

Botswana part II

Elephants anyone?

The game drive that we went on in Botswana presented us with our first opportunity to see elephants. Below Jill and I pose at the end of the game drive and we were nearly frozen! The photo was taken at about 6:45pm, and as you can notice it is getting quite dark.

Botswana

Last weekend, Jill and I tagged along with Shadrack to Gaborone, Botswana. He left us in the capable hands of his friend Mavis Koogotsitse and we had a fantastic weekend with her. Below is a photo of her family, who we had the pleasure of visiting on Saturday afternoon. The great thing about this weekend is that we were actually able to get out of the city and visit the villages in the countryside. Donkeys, cows and goats strolled about freely and the people we met were incredibly warm and generous.

Jill and I with the Koogotsitse Family

We also experienced two flat tires in two days! En route back into Gaborone Saturday afternoon, the car blew a tire. Now, I was a car owner for almost seven years and I never had a flat tire. I went to Botswana and had two flats in two days. LOL!! Four men on a donkey cart came to our rescue on Saturday (below). On Sunday, the bus blew a tire fifteen minutes into the six-hour bus ride back to Johannesburg.

I am psyched that I finally saw some Zebra....The one animal I wanted to see here. As soon as my next film is developed I will post some photos of elephants we also saw on this game drive.

Cape Town and Cape Point

What a beautiful city!! Table Mountain and visiting Robben Island were the highlights of this trip. We had beautiful weather and therefore a beautiful view from Table Mountain. The above photo was taken en route back to Cape Town from Robben Island. We went to the Island to visit the prison where Nelson Mandela was held for seventeen years. As the tour books predicted, the 2.5 hour tour of the Island was woefully short. An ex-political prisoner took us on a tour of the interior of the prison and offered a very touching personal account of his life and time on the Island. We stood in Mandela's cell. Below is the window from his cell that looked out onto the courtyard of the prison.

Cape Town is much warmer than Johannesburg. We, well, it was actually my decision to walk to the cable car station on Table Mountain. Between the heat, steep slopes, and my chest cold, I was nearly dead by the time we reached the station. One bonus is that I actually happened upon "Rossiter Street" en route. I had come across "Rossiter Street" when I was searching the National Archives database in Pretoria. What are the chances?

We also toured the peninsula, the highlight being "Cape Point." The drive there provided us with incredible scenery - but was not for the weak of heart. The roads down to the Point crawled around cliffs and more than not, there was no guard rail. Thankfully, I was so full of cold medicine and cough syrup, my nerves were calmed for me. Above is Hout Bay, taken from the roadside.

At Cape Point, we crawled up to the look off at the light house. I say crawled, because the wind was so strong, we were literally hanging on for dear life at times, almost crawling up the seemingly endless stone steps to the lighthouse. Once there, we were rewarded with some spectacular views...

Some random shots...

For my fellow archive students, this is Verne Harris. This shot was taken in the NMF archives after the madness of the Black Eyed Peas visit earlier this month.

On the left are Ethel and Boniswa, our co-workers from the Foundation. These photos were taken at the Apartheid Museum at Gold Reef City in Johannesburg.

That same day we visited the Apartheid Museum, we also visited Alf Kumalo's museum in Soweto. He is one of the most famous photographers in South Africa and a personal friend of NMs. His photos were amazing and it was one of the best museums I have ever visited (It helped that he walked us through and explained every photograph to us!!). A very kind man indeed.

The NM Foundation buildings and grounds.