080808-20808 - South Africa

so, this is a bit of a back-dated blog.. (currently in Cairo)

The flight over was the same as usual.. try and sleep, cheap food, so on. though, this time I couldn't get good and drunk. Instead I had to take aspirin every few hours and drink lots of water. It did mean that I talked to a bunch of people though, I got a good run down on safety and such by a nice lady called Shawn from Jo-burg.

Snazzy picked me up from the airport and we went for dinner. WOW everything is cheap in Australian dollars!!! Mazzy and I had 2 drinks each, entre and mains (MUH-HAS-IVE mains) for about R280 (about $30AU) at a fairly swanky restaurant. Even with tips it was cheap (you have to tip everywhere).

Monash SA is pretty nice. Rooms are fairly spartan, but quite standard for collage. I can see why Snazzy wants to get her own place.
Security is everywhere, it's just a way of life. At home we lock the door at night, there they have a fence. Driving wasn't ANYWHERE near as bad as I expected.

Next morning, we went to the Cradle of Mankind. Cools caves with an underground lake. We then went to the next place over that had an "underground boat ride". Hoping it to be a boat ride through a cave-lake, it was actually an educational theme-park. It did have some very cool fossils though.
That night we went and saw "African Footprint", a Bollywood style interpretive dance of the history of South Africa.

On the Sunday we went out to Pilansberg National Park, about 180km from Monash. Priscilla and Lisa came along. It was VERY cool, we spotted Zebra, Giraffe, Rhino, Wilderbeast, Buffalo, Hippo, Warthog (not as ugly as you'd think, the girls thought they were cute :p ) and heaps of birds. No big cats though :(
We drove past some townships on the way up, there is a lot of work to do in Africa yet... towns of corrugated iron opposite construction sites for FIFA 2010.
I'd definitely like to do Suweto on my next visit.
The trip back was a crack-up of really bad jokes. Lisa does the most awesome Afrikans accent! Had a simple dinner when we got home.

On Monday Snazzy, Lisa and I went to the local Lion and Rhino Park after hitting the shops with Lisa. Stocked up on clothes and some other essentials.
The Lion and Rhino park is much more "enclosed". Got some good photos of Zebra, a heap of different "bucky-thingy" animals (wildebeast, Springbock, etc), Rhinos and so on. We went through the Wild Dog enclosure (one of them started to try to steal Lisa's numberplate...) and the big cats. Great photos of Lions, Cheetah, white lions.
The highlight was the baby-animal creche. Not what we have at home.. the only baby-lambs here would be for dinner :)
Got some photos of tigers so close I could have touched them. Cheetah that was pacing with us on the other side of the fence, purring. Leopards lounging in some trees...
AND BABY LIONS!!! we got to play with them, rough-house with them, tease them with squishy toys.. lots of photos :D
One of them was hugging my leg, licking it... which was funny till I realised how rough its tongue is, that its claws were getting sharper... and that now there is a lion out there that has my scent, and will forever pine for my flesh.
~AWESOME~

Had dinner that night with Marianne's Boss, Simon, his charming wife and AWESOME kids. Lots of wine and a most excellent dinner.

Hung out with Snazzy on Tuesday morning before getting the Uni transport to the Airport. Had tea with her colleagues while she was giving a tutorial. Collin and Kim had some excellent ideas for involving the uni in local and national development. David talked a heap about Jo-burg, the area Marianne wants to move to. Stocked up on trinkets at the airport, which was a heap cheaper than the other gift shops I'd seen.

In summary, I think I like South Africa more than Marianne does :p it will be very hard to top this stage of the trip.. It is just that awesome.
I definitely want to come back here in the future. Yes, safety and security is something that you must always be conscious of, always take hand of and NEVER assume someone else will pick up the slack. You can never go ANYWHERE unless you know how you will get home. That said, it is not that different from Perth. Outside of Jo-Burg, it may as well be the Australian bush.
If I had the opportunity, I'd very much like to study at Monash SA. I have been *THAT* impressed.

Mum and Dad HAVE GOT TO have a holiday here. The weather, people, animals, everything. You could have the most OUTRAGEOUS holiday of your life for 2 weeks and not spend more than $5000. It has been EXCELLENT.