216 metres is a long way down!

Wow! Did the world's highest bungee on Tuesday, which was an incredible experience beyond words. Some stats for you (I'm a maths teacher, I can't help it!): the bridge was 216m off the ground (that's about 100 storeys of a building), the bungee went down 150-180m, and I reached a speed of around 120-150 km/h - straight towards the ground! I want to rave about how amazing it was, but I genuinely can't really find words to describe it (just look at the pics - do a slideshow). The only problem is now, how can I top it? I'm going to start by trying an abseil down the side of table mountain in Cape Town (where I am now). The abseil is 150m or so, but it's at a height of 1000m over the city!

The day after the bungee I went for a 22km bike ride through the national park in Storms River, which was beautiful. Two slightly unhinged dogs that lived at the hostel decided to follow us in, and then wandered off and didn't follow us back, so I managed to lose the hostel's beloved dogs! They did find them eventually, but only after searching and phoning around all night!

I jumped off a bridge over 200m high! Just thought I'd mention that again.

Holy Wheel Nuts!

OK, so I shouldn't have complained about the minibus taxi journey to Port Shepstone. While I was there, I met a couple of other travellers who also needed to get to Coffee Bay the next day, and I reassured them that the minibus taxis would be a great way to do it. Oops. The supposedly 2-leg, 4 hour journey ended up as an eventful 9 hour journey, in 5 different taxis - speeding round mountain roads in torrential rain. One event that sticks in the memory is a baby, sitting on the lap of his mum opposite me, that kept turning round to look at me, and then crying (much to my companions' amusement). After a while, the mother kindly explained to me that the baby was scared, because "he's never seen someone that looks like you before" - i.e. a non-black person!

The highlight of the trip was in the second taxi, when every so often we'd hear a noise, and the driver would stop, get out to look at one of the wheels, then carry on. Eventually found out that the noises were the nuts flying off the rear left wheel, and our intrepid captain finally decided to abandon ship when the wheel was only being held on by one nut! Maybe he thought we had divine protection, judging from the African 'Jesus is our saviour' music that had been blasting out of the speakers the whole journey.

In Coffee Bay I stayed in a hostel called the Coffee Shack - if you ever come to SA, make sure you stay there, it's an unbelievably great hostel (I'm not on commission, honest). I was planning to try and find Luzie Drift school, that is linked to The Compton (where I was teaching in England) - but actually I would have had no hope of finding it (it's tucked away in the mountains). So the staff at the hostel phoned around for me and got hold of the headteacher's mobile number, and I gave her a call. I didn't visit, instead I'm heading to Cape Town first then after Cape Town I'm going to Luzie Drift for a few weeks, to do some teaching or just help out. I'm quite excited to go somewhere with absolutely no tourists and experience a genuine African village life - and she sounded excited to have me visit too. I'm going to try and learn Xhosa while there (the first language in that area), but will have to get my tongue round the clicks first!

While in Coffee Bay I spent one night at a local village. It was a really interesting experience, a poor rural village in the mountains, not touristy at all and a real insight into how most South Afriacns live. The highlights were the food (blnd and stodgy, all they eat is maize - but they can't afford anything else), helping them bring in the cows, and brushing my teeth with grass. I got some good pics, in my online albums.

I'm in a beautiful beachside place called Cintsa at the moment, going to head to Jeffries Bay for some surfing, and Storms River to do the worlds highest bungee jump (213 metres!) on the way to Cape Town. Going to travel by nice, safe, reliable backpacker busses. By the way, I'm not getting as much feedback on this blog as I was at first - are people still reading it? Anyone out there?

I found Nemo! (and I also saw Crush, and Bruce)

If you have no idea what the title means, I've just spent the past few days scuba diving in Sodwana Bay and Unkomaas (which are apparently among the top 10 dive sites in the world), the highlights of which were seeing a turtle, and my first ever shark (not a dangerous one). Unfortunately the shark was in the distance so I just saw a silhouette. It didn't stick around and I tried to swim after it, but sharks can swim a little bit faster than I can! I also saw lots of other cool fish, and while in the boat to the dive site there were 3 humpback whales swimming about 10 metres from our boat!

I'm now in a quiet seaside town called Port Shepstone, on my way to Coffee Bay, another quiet seaside town but with some great scenery and lots of surfing, local villages and other stuff to do. From there, in a couple of days I'm going to try and find Luzie Drift - a school in the middle of nowhere, that The Compton is linked to. They don't know I'm coming, so hopefully I can find it, and hopefully they'll be happy to see me!

I've been travelling the past few days on minibus taxis, which are like little buses. They're very cheap and fast (a little too fast at times), but can be quite frustrating. Today I sat on one for one and a half hours, waiting for a 30 minute journey, while the driver waited for it to fill up. I then sat with my big heavy rucksack on my lap, and a woman with two kids on her lap squashed up against me. At least I'm experiencing an authentic side of South Africa!

I'm gradually falling in love with South Africa - but at the same time I'm realising that the country has serious issues: crime, poverty, AIDS, and there's still segregation and racism (in my opinion worse than the others, as it's a purely manmade and avoidable evil). It's not unusual to meet a seemingly lovely and reasonable person, who is quite racist.

For example: in Sodwana Bay, I was chatting to a friendly and helpful shop assisstant in a surf shop, who was probably about 30. I asked if she lived in Mbazwana (the nearest town; I didn't realise that people also lived in Sodwana Bay itself, and that Mbazwana is predominantly black). The conversation then went: "Mbazwana? Oh no, I would never live there. I live in Sodwana" (with a mixture of mild shock and disgust) "Oh, I didn't realise people actually lived here" "Oh yes, there are about 200 white people living in Sodwana". Another example was the dive instructor who led me in Unkomaas today. When I told him which dive operator I used in Sodwana, he said "Oh yes, they're very good" - then, after a pause - "They have too many black skippers though". Incidentally he was from Middlesborough originally, but 11 years in South Africa seem to have had an influence.

Of course, this is in no way representative of all white South Africans - and I haven't been here long enough to judge how wide spread it is. But there definitely seems to be a general separation of roles in society, and a lot of mistrust between the races.

Whoa, sorry - I got a bit heavy there! That's all for now, next account will be of whether I made it to Luzie Drift or not.

ps: Compton people - hope the special visit went OK today!

Swaziland

Sorry again about not updating often enough - cheap and fast internet isn't that easy to find in South Africa (and it seems that the slower it is, the more expensive!). After Jo'burg I went to Swaziland, which is a separate country, surrounded by South Africa - so another stamp for my passport! Was staying in a nature reserve, so ostriches, warthogs, zebras etc wandering around - but I'm a bit over animals already. There's a different vibe in Swaziland to S.A. - the people are more chilled and friendly. It seems they've got less baggage, having been spared the worst of Apartheid.

The main reason for my visit was to see the Reed Festival, which was last weekend. The festival happens once a year, and begins a week earlier when all the eligible (i.e. supposedly virgin) girls go out to collect reeds. They then arrived on Sunday at the king's palace to deliver the reeds for any repairs needed to his mum's house (in Swazi culture, the man is in charge of the village and his mum is the village elder - so v. important). This amounted to about 30,000 girls in procession, aged about 4 to 20, all singing, chanting and dancing with their reeds. They delivered their reeds and then went and danced and chanted some more in a field which had seats for spectators.

The next day, there were no reeds but just lots of dancing and singing in the field. This time, the king went down to the field, surrounded by his warriors, and had a boogie amongst the girls. If any of the girls took his fancy, he had the option of adding them to his collection of 10-15 wives. Noone seems to be sure exactly how many wives he has (his dad had over 100) - I think this is because he sometimes chooses a girl, keeps them as a girlfirend for a while, then decides not to marry them. And doesn't even call! Incidentally, any men in Swaziland can have more than one wife, but due to poverty most can't afford to. You need to pay the girl's father 18 cows to marry her, or 15 cows if she's a middle child - so some men just have lots of girlfriends until they can afford to get married. And then if the wives have to share, they might have a couple of boyfriends on the side. Which helps to explain why over a third of Swazi adults are HIV positive.

I don't know whether he chose anyone - even the girl won't know, until the king's warriors turn up on her doorstep and tell her it's time to go. Unsurprisingly, I was told that the girls don't actually want to be chosen, despite the 34 year old king being the richest king in Africa. However, they absolutely love the day - it's like one huge girl power parade, and you can see they're all really proud and have put lots of effort in. It was a bit wierd as a Westerner that most of the girls were topless, and wanted pictures taken of them (they even uncovered their breasts especially for photos) - but breasts aren't considered such a sexual part of the body for them, they're just for feeding babies.

All in all, it was amazing to witness an event that was so traditional and authentic and huge - lots of colour and noise, and a couple of days I won't forget. I took loads and loads of photos, which I've uploaded - but due to their semi-nudity I've not made them public so you won't find them if you click on the usual link to my photos. To see them, click on the link below, then use the user name "sjtravelpics" and password "Photos". Click on the link with my name, then 'sets'. It's easier than it sounds, and the pics are woth it. Here's the link.