South Africa: My First (and Only) Bungy Jump

After being harassed baboons but before being hunted by elephants, I did my first bungy jump from the Bloukrants Bridge on the Garden Route in South Africa.

With a height of 216 meters, it is one of the highest jumps in the world - and an excellent excuse not to do more jumps. "Naah, I will only be dissapointed jumping 192 meters".

The jump took approximately five seconds, but felt more like twenty. Falling through the air was definitely worth it!

Africa: Running from Elephants and Keeping the Blog Alive

Here is a video of some elephants from the trip in Africa 2014. 

Highlights: 

• 1:24 I'm chased by an angry elephant
• 1:40 The person in the tree next to the elephants.
• 2:13 The cutest elephant kid ever!

Most of the photos/videos are from the Kruger National Park in South Africa.

I've been focusing on genealogy lately, so the blogging has been suffering. I will resume the blog and keep it updated at least twice a month. The contents will be photos/videos, programming, trains and perhaps some genealogy.

Maputo, MZ: The Maputo Railway Station

This station is considered to be one of the world's most beautiful stations, and with its beautiful architecture, I can agree to that.

It was built 1916 but the architect wasn't Gustave Eiffel (Eiffel Tower and Statue of Liberty) as I heard when coming to Maputo. That station has been featured in films such as Blood Diamond

Mocambique has a fragmented railroad system with three lines that are separated from each other: the Nacala railroad (north), the Beira railroad (mid) and the Maputo railroad (south).

CFM stands for Caminhos de Ferro de Mocambique, the iron roads of Mocambique. The URL of CFM is: http://www.cfm.co.mz/ The web page is only in portugese.

Victoria Falls, ZW: More monkey business

We met some more monkeys that were much cuter than baboons, Vervet Monkeys, in St Lucia and later in Pilansberg, Victoria Falls and Great Zimbabwe.

The background music is from Youtube Audio Library.

As I have lots of things to do at work currently, I'll keep the blog in Idle Mode until the middle of June.

Southern Africa: Monkey Business

Wild animals are hard to spot, as they generally leave the area as soon as they hear humans. This is not the case of wild animals that got used to humans.

At Cape Point, a baboon saw a tourist bus stopping and people leaving the bus. After one minute or two, that baboon approached the bus and tried to open the handles, as you can see in the picture. "Whatever humans can do, baboons can do it better."

The operation was successful and very funny. It was not quite as funny (or yes, later we laughed at it) when another baboon raided our bus with some people inside it. The people inside left the bus quickly and the baboon stole some food and left some "remainings" on the seats.

I've compiled a video of some baboons behaving as monkeys. My first Youtube video ever. I got the audio track from https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary, that is providing free music for Youtube videos

In a earlier trip in the Philippines, we saw some aggressive monkeys too (Puerto Princesa):

Cape Town, ZA: Climbing the Table Mountain

The mountains are dominating the sky line of Cape Town. The most remarkable mountain is the Table mountain (Taffel in Afrikaans), and the name is obvious when you see the mountain - it looks like a table. When there are clouds over the mountain, they form a table cloth, falling over the edge in a very beautiful way.

I and some co-travellers secided to climb the mountain from the lower cable car station to the top (from 350 meters up to 1050 meters at the top) 700 meters to climb!

It was a very exhaustive climb in the sunny and warm weather, and I drank some three liters of water during the two hour climb to the top.

That day, there were no cloth clouds so the view was spectacular, one kilometer up. We saw some dassies and some beautiful black birds with orange feathers at the back.

We waited for the sunset - and it was worth waiting for.

Cape Town, ZA: Township Projects - My Impressions

During the first day in Cape Town, we visited two different society projects in Khayleisha, one of the biggest townships in Cape Town, housing more than 1M residents.

Before the visit, I had some thoughts regarding my visit to that township:
Did I exploit the citizens of the township as a priviligied westener with one day of charity? How would the residents think about us, who are able to enter and escape poverty any time?

After the visit, I may not be wiser, but I have some more realistic perspectives. Yes - there is poverty and some serious social problems.

But my strongest impressions from that visit is hope, empowerment and ambition.

The first visit was to Iliso Care Centre in a township house. Lunga presented the child group, the computer training room and the soup kitchen. Gagela and Lunga were very proud of the centre - and they should be. They asked me to spread information about the centre. Their URL is www.iliso.org

The second centre, Philanti, has a clinic that visits and assists pregnant women and women with small children. We visited a class with small children and we bought some bags that women in the centre produced, singing a beautiful song for us. Stembile and Cynthia were operating the sewing machines.

In that huge township, I met strong, comitted and positive people with strong networks - neighbors helping each others.

When discussing societies and poverty, it is important trying not to be too biased by ones previous understandings.

I will post more pictures and thoughts later.