First Hike

This was the road toward Long Hill mountain. Jess, Verna and John wanted to go hiking and were kind enough to ask me along. I of course said yes, forgetting that I had just completed a 30 hour trip from Toronto. I was pumped. I came to Africa to see and to do, not to lie around. So off we went.

South Africa is well south of the equator as well as being in the southern hemisphere. The seasons are backwards to ours. It was winter there, but as you can see from the picture, they were definitely having a warm spell. The nights tend to be cool -- maybe down to 5 degrees or so, but the days when we first arrived were getting up to
23 degrees (that's Celsius of course) It has cooled off since and I'm glad I brought the tights and long-sleeved shirts that I did. The buildings don't have central heating and they are built to be cool in the 40 plus degrees of summer. Consequently, it is often cooler inside that it is outside during the winter months.

In the background you can see some housing. There is a various huge and obvious economic gap in South Africa. We are housed in a more affluent part of town, not dissimilar from a Canadian small town, with the exception of right hand drive in vehicles. The South Africans have the British style. I have to remind myself which way to look when I'm crossing a street because it's the opposite of what I've had to do all my life. There aren't any sidewalks -- kind of like some of the streets in south Etobicoke. There's just grass and the drainage ditch. The houses where we are living seem to be made of brick with stucco, as in many hot climates in the world. There is no insulation or even central heating. The emphasis is on staying cool, so in the winter months people resort to space heaters and electric heating pads for the bed!

To the right you see a home under construction. This house was located at a high point on a big hill and would be the highest building in town. The pictures shows what it is supposed to look like. It was being built by the manufacturer of a South African soft drink who is very wealthy. We walked past on our way on a hike up the Long Hill mountain where we hoped to see monkeys.

We didn't see monkeys, but as we walked up the hill we saw other animals, I don't know what it is called, some type of antelope or gazelle. But it was a surprise, when out of the woods we saw a few of them grazing. We tried to get as close as we could without scaring them away and were able to get some pictures. The place where we were walking was actually a game reserve and the animals were protected. There were zebra, but we didn't see any that day and I'm not sure if anyone saw any monkeys scurrying out of sight.







You can kind of see the houses in the background. This was the amazing part. We had walked maybe 40 minutes or so and we were seeing wildlife so close to human habitation. The vegetation was very dry. There has been a drought in the area and the grass is brown and even the cacti are looking kind of dried up. But even so there was brilliant colour here and there and life was flourishing. This is also winter in South Africa so many of the leaves have long ago dropped from the trees, giving it the barren look of a Canadian winter, only without the snow.





















As we continued our walk, we noticed some music and heard the sounds of people. As we approached, my companions realized that the group of people were probably high school matric students having their dance in a lovely natural surrounding. They were beautifully attired, had their portable sound system playing and their home made food adorning the benches. As I slowed down, they called us over because they wanted to take some pictures. It reminded me of China, only this time I wasn't the one who stood out!!