An attempt at a Cape Town catch up

Time simply doesn't allow to do all things I want to do, and to write about them. As of the last post my life has been taken over by the online courses I mentioned, and this means working till 2 most mornings to get through the material while having a normal time in the department during the day. I wrote the following when waiting for my plane in Cape Town, and while it's by no means a polished blog post, I want to post it before I disappear again tomorrow morning for Copenhagen. The next 3 days are part of an absurd trip which has been in the planning for several years and will come to its climactic conclusion on Thursday with lunch at NOMA.

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I find myself once again sat in a cafe, in an airport, waiting for another 12+ hours of plane flights. This time I'm in Cape Town, waiting to go via Johannesburg back to Munich. Another overnight flight, another night of watching others loll in and out of sleep as I wander the aisles trying to get tired enough to ignore the discomfort of folding my frame into a spasm-inducing gap.

Anyway, the above sounds a bit negative perhaps and the rest of the post, I hope will not be. I've met enough interesting people on flights now to know that flights have the possibility to be as enjoyable as they are ghastly.

I've spent the last three weeks in Cape Town, my second time here, and each extra day I spend here makes me realise even more what a wonderful place it is. Scenically it is almost unrivalled for a city. With the sea surrounding it and the mountain defining its geography, you are never away from a spectacular view. I've been for a couple of sundowners (a phrase I'd not heard before but means, unsurprisingly, drinks drunk during sunset, generally with a majestic view to accompany them) which have been wonderful evening highlights, a time to really sit back and appreciate.

The city itself is made up of an incredible diversity of populations and cultures, the mixing of which is often not present but always available. I've met some incredible people here, in taxis, in shops, in cafes, from refugees of Rwanda to ex-militants who fought in Umkhonto we Sizwe, the spear of the nation, the group that was the force behind the ANC when talks and peaceful action only managed to tighten the grip of Apartheid. Everyone here seems to have a story to tell and I've met so many people who are actively pushing to make the situation better. In many ways South Africa has come a long way since Apartheid, but in others it has gotten nowhere. There are many embarrassments of the current social and political situation but there are people out there who are really trying to make a difference in a non political context. One of the taxi drivers I met also worked as a coast guard guarding the local ecology from abalone poachers, who often come armed with guns during the night. This is a man who puts himself in a place of enormous danger because he cares - lessons to take from this, for sure.

I am in no way qualified to make judgement calls on the current situation but I can recommend these books that I've read over the last couple of years to give some picture of South Africa's history and recent developments. Sadly time does not allow for in depth reviews of any of them but I can say that from the point of view of someone who knew very little about Africa or its politics, these are great starters (Thanks to Ben for all of these recommendations):

The State of Africa - a history of the states of Africa since independence
Country of my skull - a journalist's eye view of the truth and reconciliation commission
My traitor's heart - a white man with a difficult family pedigree coming to terms with his place in Africa
The shackled continent (don't read this without reading The State of Africa as it will give you a terribly biased view) - a view of why things have not improved since independence. As I say, this does not give anywhere near the whole story and for the reason behind these reasons you have to read more.
Long walk to Freedom - Mandela's pre-freedom autobiography.
The autobiography of Ghandi also gives some very interesting insights into the relatively recent history of South Africa.

The trip has been as eclectic a mix as the city is and I've been both giving seminars as well as starting some collaborations with the string theory group. I gave my atmospheric optics talk to the undergraduates which is always a pleasure, though I still struggle at times not to include too much material in this talk. After this I gave a series of lectures on a particular method of machine learning as applied to neuroscience. This was my first time lecturing on a non-physics subject and it was a great experience. The subject is fascinating and thankfully there were a huge number of questions which I find always make a lecture course a lot more enjoyable. It also makes me, the lecturer, understand the topic much better when you have a lot of intelligent people giving you questions that perhaps you would never have considered.

Some light photo relief:

 The outrageously beautiful University of Cape Town campus

Ivydene guest house, where I would sit and work at the weekends under the tree with the dogs and cats resting in the garden. This is without a doubt my favourite guest house having stayed at many over the last decade or so. Lucille, who runs it is absolutely fascinating and introduced me to a slew of amazing people while I was there. Her daughter Jackie and son-in-law Rob also make the place feel like family.

And finally I gave a couple of talks about one of my last string theory papers which again was a lot of fun. The group ranges from those working in emergent geometry (how space and time can emerge from some other theory which don't include space and time as input) to AdS/QGP - how we can use string theory as a tool to understand the internal constituents of the nucleus in particular conditions. It's always good to have a diverse audience like this because, again, you get a great range of questions, from the abstract to the very practical. The outcome of this was some really nice ideas for future investigations which I hope to continue remotely.

and apart from a little socialising my life has been almost entirely overtaken with the online courses that I discussed in the previous posts. As an information addict these are truly fatal. How can I turn down a perfectly good course on automata theory given by a world expert, even if it means sleeping a few hours less a week.

The first round of courses on computer science finished a couple of weeks back which I can highly recommend, CS101 for those without much experience in programming and CS373 for the more advanced and those who may be interested in control theory and dynamical programming.

The course on natural language processing (NLP) is now over half way through and is the best taught and most instructive from the point of view of programming assignments and problem sets, of the Coursera courses I've been taking. Right now I'm struggling, along with most of the rest of the class to write our own English language parser (how do you write a computer program which can work out the logical structure of a sentence - ie. which nouns do which verbs and prepositions relate to - in the sentence "fish people fish tanks" does the word people correspond to a verb or a noun - does the second 'fish' correspond to a very or a noun, etc. These are the sorts of question that an automatic parser would try to answer in a probabilistic fashion (ie. it will find various ways to break down a sentence and give probabilities for each possibility)).

The NLP course also ties in very nicely with material in the automata course and the programming languages course from Udacity. The link being finite state machines and Markov networks.

Probabilistic Graphical Models is also very good, but it really does need 10-15 hours a week to truly understand the material. This is a large investment and something that I will probably split over two runs through the material.

In other news, the publication I was working on about Malaria has now been accepted for publication which is great to have finished. More work is ahead on this front and there are some very exciting possibilities in the pipeline. Through the same link that gave me the Malaria connection (many thanks Victor!) we've started also on another investigation into an area called medical ethnography - a subject whose existence I was unaware of until I dove into some data analysis on a related project. This area is related to the interaction between society, ethnological behaviour and medical practice and is so far very interesting to work on.

So, with the above I have very little time for a normal life right now. I work until late at night including at weekends on these projects and courses, which is great in terms of learning and in terms of the excitement of pursuing new areas of investigation but I am aware that this is not a sustainable pace. I am also aware that I am out of a job in 7 months and am desperately trying to mold a future which will be interesting, sustainable, economically viable and will allow for some constancy in my life. Most of these factors are falling into place, it's just the small matter of economics which may be the biggest hurdle. It's easy to find people with whom I can work on interesting projects, it's not so easy to get them to pay me for it. The thinking cap is on and I have a few ideas as to how to construct this Rube-Goldberg machine of a life out of gaffer tape and fuzzy felt.

Down South

It's likely that the full details of the last few days, including a trip up Table Mountain, a pot-luck couchsurfing dinner, Eurovision madness and some pretty hairy cab rides will have to wait for a while. In the mean time I'll leave you with a picture from a trip today to the Cape of Good Hope with three couchsurfers who are living here. I'll have to lighten the water a little but given that it took me such a long time to get the panorama set up, I'm not going to do that just now, so here's an outrageously big panorama (this thumbnail is roughly 1/30th the size of the full size version):

A little light and magic

(written mostly on Sunday)

It's been a funny old weekend, and I'm pleased to say that after the last post I've spent a lot of time walking around the city with less worry, but almost as much caution, as I had before.

Saturday was another spectacularly sunny day and I made my way towards town in one of the local mini-buses, packed in with 25 others, as the driver tore through the streets and his friend called out and whistled to passersby seeing if we couldn't shove another half a dozen people in the back. We passed an area that I'd heard of before, so I called and jumped off the bus, and started wondering Woodstock, a pretty rundown neighbourhood, but one which I'd heard had hidden treasures. It didn't take long to find the old biscuit mill, which now, every Saturday, plays host to a fantastic food market, with delicacies made freshly but originating from around the world. I tucked into a great smoked salmon in rice paper wrap and wonderful seared swordfish with passion fruit and avocado. I also got the first decent cup of coffee I've drunk whilst in Cape Town before tearing my way away from the food tents and walking around the extremely artsy-looking home-stores, clothes shops and photography galleries.

I took another treacherous journey in a local minibus (here called taxis) into the centre of the city and wandered around the rather unappealing looking streets until I found a nice square to bask in the sun, read a book and work out my next move.

Though they may seem overly touristy, I've started using the open-topped bus tours as a way to get to know a city if given only a short time in it. The two hour tour took me through most of the important districts in the city, including the infamous District 6, up to the cable station of Table Mountain and on around the beaches to the West where the rich and famous sun themselves. I took this from round the corner of one of the most exclusive areas to live in Cape Town:

Getting back to the small but rather historic guest house, I met the owner and her daughter, whose boyfriend was there with an old school friend of his and his girlfriend. Soon another guest arrived, and on inspection I found myself to be in the company of an international rugby star, a world famous paleontologist and a TV star/top model/DJ. We chatted for a while and watched the rugby which was being played down the road, before I headed off to get something to eat in one of the local restaurants. I didn't manage to explain my thoughts on the holographic principle to the model, though I have no doubt that she would have been fascinated!

Sunday I headed off for a walk in the forest at the foot of Table Mountain which boasts one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world. It's a really stunning area with such a variety of ancient flora (mostly being made of of a plethora of ferns) that you seem to be moving from one continent to another as you walk through the undergrowth.

Getting out of the forest we headed to Montebello's, one of the areas famed lunch venues and sated our appetites on a strange sushi rice based concoction, wasabi'd to perfection, before heading back to the guest house. I spent the afternoon getting on with work and chilling into the evening.

The rest of the week so far has been a push on the project which has taken a few u-turns but we have some concrete calculations to look at for now. Today was a bit of a break as I gave my talk on atmospheric optics as a departmental colloquium. I had a good reception and the number of questions after and display of photos with a variety of cloud formations and optical effects which people quizzed me with was a great sign. I'll be happy to give this in other departments in the future and it looks like I have one lined up for Chile in August.

In fact the weather played its part today as we had a rather lovely solar halo over the campus through the morning (and now a fine lunar halo). I played my usual part and pointed it out to random passersby who gave me a much warmer reaction than that which I've received in any other country. It's not the greatest solar halo ever, but it is the best timed!

This on the other hand is a mystery to me. As I headed out of the department on Monday I was greeted with a strange light around the top of Table Mountain which stayed pretty stationary, though faded as the clouds moved swiftly across the peaks. Within five minutes it was gone, but I have a feeling it was as much to do with the position of the sun as the cloud formation. My only guess is that there may have been two layers of lenticular clouds which let through a perfect sliver of light. Any other suggestions would be gratefully received.

This, by the way, is the magnificent campus view of Table Mountain (actually Devil's peak) directly behind the main UCT hall.

A strange mix

Life in Cape Town can so far be described as paradoxical. It is a beautiful city, with stunning scenery surrounding it, great food, great wine and some of the friendliest people I've met anywhere, but juxtaposed with this is the constant fear of violent crime. You just don't go out on the streets at night. Some people would even consider going round the corner a risk, though the woman running the guest house told me not to worry as I cautiously crept around to the main street this evening to get a take-away - a meal I would normally have eaten in the restaurant, but by the time I would have finished it would have been completely dark and the park along which I had to walk seems rather notorious. I hurried home, steak and pate in hand.

The dichotomy is further confused when I try to compare the lifestyle here with that of Santiago, one of the safest places I've ever been, where women don't think twice about walking home alone at any time of the night, even in the most remote parts of the city. However, as I tried to find some jeans which go all the way to my ankles (no easy task) in a nearby shop earlier today I was amazed when the woman behind the counter told me that she was getting off work soon and if I could wait she would drive me somewhere that they might have my size (no such luck in the end). Still, the idea of someone opening up so quickly to a stranger in Galicia is not something I've ever come across before.

Later this afternoon (the work hours are shifted here, partly to take into account that you don't want to be getting home after dark and so people often work from 7am -5pm or so) a taxi driver told me of the horror stories in his part of the city (I shan't repeat them here) that have taken place over the last couple of days.

The cafeteria in the university adds more to the confusion, as signs flicker up on the walls asking you if you've secured your valuables, know where your bag is, have seen any suspicious behaviour, etc. etc. in blinking red dots. This added to the panic buttons placed around campus make this feels like some futuristic horror. These signs, I have little doubt, add more to the sense of paranoia than to people's caution levels - a subtle differentiation which I think is very important.

This all being said, one of the researchers here regularly heads into the townships to the bars where he has a great time and hasn't ever encountered any problems. It seems that the streets around the university which are empty at night are the perfect place to prey on the one or two students who happen to be coming home alone (several students murdered in this area recently - out too late after a party, or starling a burglar).

But people seem willing to adapt their way of living to deal with such things if they get to live in such a wonderful city and indeed the attitude of the people is easy going and extremely friendly, and right now they are all really looking forward to the month long hiatus which is going to mark the world cup coming to town.

Anyway, so I sit here in my guest house again this evening finishing off some notes on the current work, unable to venture outside. I'm hoping to meet up with some Couchsurfers in the next couple of days (I've already bumped into a Norwegian Couchsurfer I met in Seoul two years ago, while 'enjoying' a coffee on campus - enjoying is a bit of an overstatement, given the insipid brown fluid which you get when you order a coffee), and given a firm destination I should be able to take a taxi to meet people outside the confines of the street I'm staying on very soon.


I'll do my best to update shortly.

Anticrepuscular rays over the Western Cape

Rays coming out from the point of the setting sun are a common sight, as the light is blocked by clouds, but as these rays diverge over the zenith they can sometimes be seen to reconvene at the antisolar point. These less common rays are described as anticrepuscular and as we went for a walk on the beach this evening after work we got a wonderful display of them:

The shadow of myself and Jeff and Amanda to my left can be seen heading off in the same direction.
These same rays can be seen above the kelp which had washed up on the beach and was being bounced around on the tide-line:

and in this photo (click for a huge version) the Eastern edge of Table Mountain can be seen to the right with the clouds literally spilling over into the bay:

and a little colour to end, from the beach huts looking out to the shark-filled waters:

I'll be giving my first talk here tomorrow morning. It's the same talk I gave in Santiago a week or so ago which seemed to go down pretty well. The crowd here is a combination of string theorists (who know a huge amount about what I'm talking about - they have written some wonderful papers on this work) and cosmologists who have a pretty good idea about AdS/CFT and are likely to ask lots of great questions. It should be fun, but I'm not expecting an easy ride!

Arrival in Cape Town

We come to the end of the craziest week in some considerable time, as I sit in the 'tree' (only by name) apartment in a self-catering guest house a short walk from the University of Cape Town and in the shadow of Table Mountain.

The week started off with my first Tango lesson, which passed without too much bloodshed or too many twisted ankles. Sadly as I'll be traveling pretty constantly for the rest of the year, this is only going to be a very occasional occurrence but I'll see if I can get in a couple more lessons before going to Buenos Aires in July.

Tuesday saw my first ever performance on the Geiger Counter at the quantum music festival in front of a crowd of several hundred

videos to follow. While Wednesday and Thursday evenings saw music courtesy of Emir Kusturica and some fine blues players in Dado Dada.

Friday the fun began for real.

Friday afternoon I headed over to Paris to meet up with a good friend from Beijing, who, five years ago got me involved with the Couchsurfing scene. I've since hosted well over 100 people in my place in Santiago, thanks to this connection and it has been a fantastic aspect of life since then, getting to know people from all over the world and, something which has been an added bonus, to be able to explain many aspects of my work and science in general to a huge audience of people who are interested but generally come from non-scientific backgrounds. Being able to share the passion of what I do is a real pleasure and in return I find out about cultures from every corner of the world, usually accompanied by some fine local cooking.

Anyway, so I spent the night in Paris, going out to a few bars and meeting a very international crowd in the Richard Lenoir and Oberkampf districts, before getting up slightly woozy headed on Saturday, making my way to CDG airport and flying to Istanbul. I was advised by the air stewardesses that I wouldn't have time to go into the city but I got the name of a good restaurant from them and, with newly acquired visa in hand, I took a taxi to the banks of the Bosphorus to the site where the first light house sits, on the inlet from the sea of Marmaris as the river makes its way into the city.

I sat watching the sunset and had an excellent meal (though outrageously overpriced - had I had more time I would definitely have gone somewhere a lot, lot cheaper) before heading back to the airport and waiting for another four hours as the flight was delayed (in the mean time I bought the most expensive cup of coffee I'd ever bought - at over 5 euros I thought I must have been mistaken but sadly it was already in my hands when I discovered that this was truly the price!

From Istanbul I flew with Turkish airlines (who served some of the best in-flight meals I've ever had) to Johannesburg where we waited for an hour to refuel before coming to Cape Town where I sit now in a beautiful apartment and wait for sleep to roll over my tired eyes.

It's going to be a very busy couple of weeks here but I'll do my best to update when possible.

Africa beginnings and endings

Tomorrow I head to Paris for the night, followed by a mammoth trip via Istanbul and Johannesburg to Cape Town where I'll be spending a couple of weeks working with researchers and friends in the UCT who specialise on topics in applied AdS/CFT and especially the area of emergent geometry. This is something that I've recently started working in and is a fascinating topic.

I thought that, even if only briefly, I should try and finish off the stories from the Africa trip last month before starting a new adventure.

Last I wrote we were on tofu playa, near Inhambane, a few hours north of Maputo in Mozambique where we had arrived after a 19 hour non-stop road trip. We'd swam with dolphins and attempted to do the same with whale sharks, some with more success than others, and we'd been generally chilling in the wonderful beach hut, sampling the local fish (from the outrageously overfished waters) and getting ridiculous tan-lines as we did it (despite the constant applications of factor 50).

30 seconds in the life of six travelers and expats in Mozambique:

On the third day we headed into one of the main populated areas to grab a bite to eat in a black metal shack in the middle of the day where we quickly became far hotter than the food (which was pretty hard to compete with, having been doused in firey piri-piri sauce!). The fan which was brought to the table when it became clear that we were probably going to pass out from the heat failed to turn, but we were told for 10 minutes to have patience (and possibly faith) and that in its own good time it would start working. Indeed such patience was met with the help of a guy sitting at a table next to ours, who, on seeing our plight, came over, removed the safety cage from the fan and cranked it up by hand - a beer was duly sent his way to the applause of all at his table.

A game of petanque outside a French bar saw in the dusk as we spoke Spanish with others talking in Portuguese, with reasonable success.

It has been a while since I was in Portugal but I find the Mozambiquan Portuguese much easier to understand than that of our Iberian neighbours. The slow lilt of it is rather similar to Gallego and once you understand the basic mappings, it's pretty simple to understand for a Spanish speaker from Galicia.

Anyway, having spent a few days chilling on the coast we made our way back down to Maputo, to stay with our friends (from South Africa and Galicia) who have been living in the city now for a few months and who were the primary cause of this trip.
Some sights on the way back:

The seven hour trip down passed with far less terror than the trip up that we had made through the night and we arrived tired by happy in a buzzing Maputo. The promise of a great apartment, and, especially noteworthy, a fully functioning elevator, was only half fulfilled as we trudged up 11 flights of stairs with our fully laden backpacks, only to collapse at the top and quickly make our way down again to get some food in one of the most famous restaurants in the area (Piri-Piri's). The piri-piri chicken was spectacularly hot (perfect for me), though I was rather ashamed when the dessert arrived and I simply wasn't able to manage the whole slice of chocolate cake, which must have weighed in at well over half a kilo: my first culinary defeat since at the age of 12 or so, a giant sea snail had shocked me into submission.

The next day we did the tour of the city, the atmosphere of which is still very much influenced by the colonial buildings from the Portuguese era. We visited the train station, designed by Eiffel, and also his ingeniously useless metal building, which may be perfect for a more temperate clime, but in the heart of Africa is truly a folly of unrivaled proportions.

In Mozambique it's quite common to ask someone waiting by the side of the road to look after your car as you go into a restaurant or a shop, and to give them a few Meticals afterward. Normally you get a few offers of such a service wherever you stop.

As we stopped in front of the old parliament building, nobody was around to provide such a service at the time, so we dropped the car off and headed to look at the old fort and a few other local points of interest.

On arrival back at the car however, a man almost too drunk to stand up came up to us and demanded that we pay him for his vigilance as we had made our tour. It became pretty clear pretty quickly that he didn't have a leg to stand on in terms of his claims as our car was no longer in possession of its wing-mirrors. They were presumably already sitting in a market stand somewhere nearby, or allowing some guy to have his morning shave.

Given that we didn't have more than 24 hours in Maputo, going to the police was not going to be an option (the bureaucracy in Mozambique is some of the fiercest in the world, and the queues are those that any Englishman would be proud of). We drove around extremely carefully, aware that the police are legend at catching you for the slightest infringement, but made it back to the flat without encountering any cops on patrol.

In the evening we headed to a local bar and a Thai restaurant, to have our last meal out in Mozambique.

The next morning we got up at the crack of dawn, breakfasted on local fruit and bread and took off back towards the border that had given us so many problems on our way into Mozambique.

The other way round (Mozambique to SA) turns out to be much much easier and we were in and out within half an hour, heading back on the much more comfortable roads of South Africa on our way to Johannesburg.

We arrived safely in Johannesburg and attempted to go to the Apartheid museum, curiously placed on the grounds, so it appears, of a theme park. Unfortunately the museum had just closed so we went straight to the parents of Ben, with whom we had been traveling and staying in Mozambique, for a spectacular dinner and several hours of fascinating conversation, before hitting a couple of bars nearby, returning before it got too late, and rising early again the next day for our flights, leaving time to explain to the car hire company what had happened to the wing mirrors!

It seems that had we not pointed it out, the car hire company probably would not have noticed the lack of mirrors, but having confessed and explained our lack of police statement there wasn't much they could do. As they looked up how much it would cost us, we were somewhat taken aback when they quoted us a little over 500 euros for the pair! Pleading with them (though knowing that the insurance for the car didn't cover glass, wheels, undercarriage, or any incident in which another car was not the primary cause), they suggested that we explain to the police in the department at the airport. We went along and stated our case only to be laughed at, quoting, unsurprisingly, that whatever crimes take place in Mozambique have nothing to do with them.

Cutting a long story short, the car hire company very helpfully got the police to write an affidavit which was apparently enough documentation to drop the cost to us to less than 200 euros and we department a little poorer but happy given what the possibilities could have been!

The flights from Johannesburg back through Dubai were uneventful but painful given the lack of emergency exit seats and I passed most of the night stood up at the back of the plane.

On landing in London we headed to Bethnel Green where we spent an enjoyable few hours wondering this area, which I'd never explored before, met up with a few friends for lunch and dinner and crashed out before a 4.30am start to catch the bus back to Stansted on our way to Spain.

I've never had a holiday on which I've risen before 7am for so many days (I think that we only slept in past 7 on two occasions on the whole trip) and on returning to Santiago I was refreshed in mind, but not in body! Since then I've kept up with the swim routine I'd promised myself in Mozambique and have been swimming 3 km every week since then. I'll see if I can continue while in Cape Town.

I'm not sure there will be much of a chance to blog for a while, but this depends largely on the internet situation in the guest house I'll be staying in for the next two weeks.

I'll let you know....

The crossing of Crocodile Bridge

As promised, despite the volcanic activity which temporarily held up the release of this video, I can now post the video of the tentative steps we took in crossing crocodile and hippo infested waters on a flooded bridge, the true damage of which was unknown to us. It doesn't look like much, but the sound of the rushing water and the knowledge of its contents made for a slightly nerve-wracking few seconds:

African adventure, part V, South Africa to Mozambique

and so began the most ridiculous day of the trip, if not the decade...

We knew that it was going to be a long day so we arose at 6, and were packed and in the car by 6.30, ready to leave the Lower Sabie camp in Kruger National Park where we had spent the last three days. It was good friday and the storm from the night before was easing off, but hadn't completely ceased. The roads were wet and we feared that this might mean trouble later on as we headed into Mozambique.

We didn't count on the trouble arising quite as soon as it did. We went South to the Crocodile bridge exit of the park and an hour later, after saying our final farewells to the giraffes, elephants and herds of impala (having failed to see a single rhino in the trip) we draw close to the gate. Between us and the gate however was Crocodile bridge, a bridge unlike any I had seen before, submerged as it was in water in the middle section, the river surging over it for a good few meters. In our non four-wheel drive such a sight filled us with dread. The only other way out of the park would mean a couple of hundred extra kilometers, so we sat, watching the water flood over the bridge and working out our possibilities. M suggested getting out of the car to take a look at how deep the central section was submerged but reminding her that crocodile bridge was so named for good reason put this plan out of the picture.

Thankfully ahead of us were a few other cars, also working out their plans of attack. First a couple of 4x4s braved the water and got through safely, the wheels submerging in the center by a good foot or so of racing waters. After this another estate made it through, tentatively but safely and so, with baited breath we made our way towards the torrent. We have a video of the moments driving through the floodwater, as the possibilities of a single slip raced through our minds but the video is not in my possession at the moment, I'll attempt to upload it as soon as possible. Anyway, thankfully we did make it through without any problems but with slightly heightened blood pressure and pulse-rates.

After a little bureaucratic arguing (lack of certain necessary tickets etc.) we made it out of the park and back onto the public roads of South Africa, making our way towards the boarder control between SA and Mozambique. We had been told to expect chaos and delays of up to a couple of hours, but there were factors that we hadn't taken into account.

It took another hour or so to get to the border control, or at least close to it, with pretty reasonable road conditions and only minor drizzle along the way but as we draw closer a thought dawned on us. This was not just any day but Good Friday, a public holiday in South Africa and a day that many would be traveling for a weekend break into neighbouring Mozambique. The queue that greeted us was truly monumental and we ground to a halt in a completely stationary line more than a kilometer from the border itself. Trucks, families in 4x4s, businessmen, South Africans, Mozambicans and holiday makers from abroad filled the road with an exodus of vehicles of biblical proportions....and nothing was moving save for a line of cars which seemed not to care about the thousands in front of them and would simply drive along the other side of the road only to be turned back at the frontier.

We got out to speak to people and find out what the situation was, a friendly South African woman walking with me to the front of the line to see what was going on. The gun-toting police at the front-line were pretty friendly and helpful given the situation and explained that we simply had to be patient and that we should sit tight for the next few hours.

A couple of photos of the queue, and us, sitting patiently:

After walking to the front of the line and trying to get through the pedestrian section (as advised by our helpful SA lady) and getting turned back by a rather less friendly man with a gun, we spent the next couple of hours in the car getting to the first post.

Eventually we made it in and started the bureucratic process of exporting ourselves and the car into Mozambique. K dealt with the car's paperwork and was sweet-talked by a guy who very kindly helped him fill in the forms for the car, pushed into the line for us and promptly disappeared, telling us that he would see us on the Mozambican side with the correct pieces of paper. Having been scammed enough times in my life it seemed sensible not to go with this option so K filled in the forms himself, stood in the queue and got a new copy of all the relevant documents. We had a little trouble later on on the other side when we claimed to know nothing about the guy waving a duplicate copy of our documents and asking for money. Thankfully this didn't deteriorate into anything worse.

So, SA side dealt with we made our way into no-man's land and towards the Mozambican side of the border control. At this point things took a turn for the crazy. It turns out that Mozambique is the only country in the world to have weapon on its flag, and they have wisely chosen an AK-47. These you see all over the place and although these days the country is relatively peaceful, there is a constant reminder of the violent past that it has been through, devastating the land (there are still areas of the land unsafe to walk on because of the landmines), the infrastructure and the economy along the way. At the border control you are met with a difficult situation, not wanting to put a foot out of line, but simultaneously realising that you simply can't take the kosher route.

The black/white divide is of course enormous and as soon as you arrive as a car load of white people you are approached by dozens of Mozambicans offering to help you out. At first we turned all of these down, making our way to the queue, and wanting to go through all of this in the most official way possible, but it soon became clear that the chaos would make this almost impossible, with a dozen lines all merging and circulating to different desks with a plethora of forms, punctuated by perplexed looking white-folk and helpful looking Mozambicans. After getting thoroughly confused for a while we found a 4x4 full of Afrikaans South Africans who had just successfully had their documents sorted out by one of the badged unofficials. We figured that if they had got through the process in one piece this way then it was probably the best option, and indeed this seemed to be the way that 99% of the SA holiday makers were getting through the controls, only a small fee being paid at the end.

We handed over our documents to the guy who seemed friendly and completely unofficial and saw him disappear into the distance. I walked around for a bit, bumped into the woman who had helped us out on the SA side and asked her if what we were doing was sensible. Yes, she replied, as long as you don't lose sight of your passports! My heart sank, realising what it would mean to lose our passports, sat in the middle of no-man's land without an embassy in sight and a million other people dashing around. The ease with which someone could have taken our passports was frightening and so we ran to find the guy who had our identities in his hands. Thankfully it didn't take too long to find him and he was busy filling in the forms for us. From this point on, we stayed with him, making chit-chat and keeping an eye on our passports at every second.

After an hour of filling in forms and waiting for him in various queues we were ready to go, paid him his fee, took a deep breath and headed towards the point where we would have to give the forms at the very border itself. Thankfully this passed completely without incident, as the woman took the forms without looking at them and placed them on top of the large pile of other forms which had collected through the morning.

By this point 6 hours had passed since we left the camp and we were only at the border - we had expected to be at this point within a couple of hours at the most.

As we drove into Mozambique the contrast with what we had previously seen was startling, with huts dotting the hillside along the road, people all over the streets, selling foods cooked in pots precariously placed on mosquito infested puddles and police all along the roadside stopping anyone they thought might not have the right documents, or at least who might have enough cash to improve their lunch options. We had been warned that the police would stop you for the slightest possible speeding violation or traffic infringement, but through some miracle we weren't stopped at a single control point.

We also noticed quickly the number of trucks and cars stopped by the side of the road with punctured tyres, and as we sped along in our polo estate the possibility of the same happening to us didn't do much to still our anxieties.

Having traveled a reasonable amount, I've never really experienced shock at arriving in a new country, always prepared for stark differences, but the immediate chaos and contrasts on going from SA to Mozambique was really quite astounding. I simply hadn't expected such a distinction, though knowing the history of the two countries, I probably should have.

We made our way towards Maputo, where our GPS was guiding us on the way up through to Inhambane, further North on the coast. The roads, though busy were not slow and we stopped by the side of the road to get something to eat, having eaten almost nothing since the night before. We stopped into a gas station and picked up some fairly tasteless meat sandwiches, but at this point we were fussy.

We passed around the outskirts of Maputo and it quickly became clear that we had not escaped the worst of the Good Friday traffic as those in the capital having a half day left for work and headed out of the city. we ground to a halt in the chaos of the ring-round going around the city and edged forwards for the next 3 hours, attempting to avoid hitting anyone or being hit by one of the kamikaze local mini-buses packed like sardines and tilting dangerously to one side or the other. These mini-buses would cause us no end of stress for the remaining journey.

Getting out of Maputo at around 3 we started on our way to Xai-Xai, the next major stop along the way. The road between the two was pot-holed and full of people and the crunches which we had to endure every time there was no way to get around a collection of holes in the tarmac jarred our spines at every encounter.

We were due to meet our friend Ben up in Inhambane and with the GPS had no worries about getting there, but we had no address, and the lack of mobile signal left us rather worried. Buying a local sim-card didn't seem to help either as it refused to work in any of our phones.

We took the route to Xai-Xai in the fastest time possible given the conditions and arrived there around 7 in the evening, exhausted from being on the lookout for pot-holes literally every second of the way. We stopped into another gas-station and filled up on terrible sliced cheese and even worse croissant (this wasn't our will to disregard the local fare, but simply the only obvious option available at the time). Eventually we found a small shop in a hut which had a phone an I used by best Portuñol (Spanish with a mock Portuguese accent and a few noted phenomic transformations thrown in when appropriate) to ask to call out. We got through to Ben, hoping that he would tell us that we should stay in Xai-Xai for the night and make our way to Inhambane the next day, but he said that it was worth pushing on - the tiring option but probably the best.

We got back in the car and drove for the next two hours on something akin to a pot-holed beach, attempting to avoid falling into ditches, crashing into other cars (something that others didn't quite manage as there were a couple of horrific accidents along the way), or getting stuck in the sand. During the day, passing the slower trucks had been ok as one could normally see how far away the oncoming cars were. The darkness brought with it new dangers as it was impossible to gauge the distance and the sand and dust thrown up by the trucks made this doubly difficult. After this we had another few hours but at least the worst of the major road had been dealt with.

We played games and sang songs to keep ourselves awake and alert and somehow made our way safely up North. As the time drew on it became increasingly difficult to stay awake but the promise of a bed and a bite to eat at the end was enough to keep the sparse quantities of energy recycling. Finally a little after midnight we made our way into Inhambane, having avoided all the drunken partygoers who had lined the streets at the local drinking shacks along the way. At this point the GPS was as tired as we were and started to get confused with where to go and our final destination was not on the system at all. We managed once more to get through to Ben who gave us directions to get to the beach hut and we headed out of Inhambane and onto the dirt tracks. An hour later we knew we were in the right area but phoning and finding that we had taken a wrong turn drained our last ounces of energy. Ben, Ryan and Ode drove to us and guided our final kilometers to the beach hut where, after 19 hours on the road, with a total of a half hour break we were finally able to collapse in what appeared to be a little piece of paradise.

19 hours on the road where every second you are watching out for animals, drunkards, potholes and oncoming maniacs is outrageously tiring and it took a good couple of days of doing nothing to recover from this. The fact that K had driven the whole thing without anything but vocal help and encouragement makes the man a true hero. K, we salute you!!!

After the chaos of the drive up,  we'll have a few photos from a far more relaxed few days!

African adventure, part IV

Final photos from Kruger, I promise! After this we move on to Mozambique...

A couple more from the roads around Lower Sabie, of wilderbeest, and a bull elephant, framing itself nicely in the trees.

The last night in Kruger we headed for a night drive. The tour took us out at around dusk and we spent  a good couple of hours being driven by a guide with quite incredible eyesight. At regular intervals he would stop the truck and point out a chameleon in a tree, or a tiny wild cat hidden in the undergrowth, absolutely invisible to the untrained eye.

The highlight of the trip was certainly a leopard with its cub that had been spotted close to the side of the road. The leopard probably came within about 15 meters of the jeep, which, being open-sided leaves you feeling rather exposed. I would love to have had more chances to photograph the big cats, but they are pretty elusive creatures, and we were extremely lucky to see the mother and child. I'll post it again just for good measure:

As the sky darkened, many of the night animals came out and we spent a while seeing birds of prey, sitting in the trees by the side of the road. These fish eagles and owls were rather beautiful to see, certainly in comparison to the vulture that we saw earlier in the evening (no decent photo of the vulture I'm afraid):

The largest species of owl in the world, an eagle owl:

And so, the next day we arose at 6 in the morning, to the passing edge of a storm, and unaware of the events that would unfold in the following 24 hours. This to come, perhaps tomorrow...

African adventure, part IIb

I have a few minutes now to add an update on the adventures in Kruger National Park. We had arrived late in the evening, almost being shut out of the camp site, but with some luck and a large dollop of looking like possible lion food we had been let in.

The next day we rose around 4am, ready for a morning walk. We started off in an open sided truck, heading off in the pitch black to our starting spot, intercepting the hyena (posted here) before arriving as the sun was beginning to lighten the sky and it was no longer too dangerous to walk around.

With our two guides we had a briefing session, were told to walk in silence (sadly one of the others on the walk ignored this important point, probably scaring off a lot of the animals) and in single file behind the two gun-wielding rangers.
From K's album:

The walk lasted a couple of hours and for the first five or ten minutes, the idea of being out in the wild, with rhinos, elephants, hippos and lions on the lose was quite an intimidating one, but once we got into the rhythm of walking the alien sensation went away. Along the walk the rangers pointed out a large variety of animal tracks and droppings, with which we could identify rhinos, elephants, a few different antelope and more. For a while we tracked a herd of water buffalo but sadly they got wind of us before we found them. A few water bucks stared us out for a short while and a herd of zebra found their way into our path, but nothing terribly dangerous showed itself while we were walking.

Finally we took a break on a rock, overlooking a small waterpool where a male hippo was taking a break after its night time excursions, coming up and going down to cool and take air every few minutes. A lone croc was also in evidence but the two lay in the water calmly as the day heated up

We were back to the camp by about 9am and made our move South to the next site where we would spend the following two nights, Lower Sabie, one of the most popular spots and one of the best for seeing wildlife.

The trip down was our first day of driving in the park and we saw a huge number of interesting animals on the way, from a pack of lions, hiding from the heat under a tree, to a dozen giraffes munching by the side of the road, baboons and macacs, and lots of elephants through the day.

Just next to the lower Sabie camp we also found an artificial dam, which had plenty of animals cooling off. We spent some time photographing the pelicans, the hippos and the crocs in the distance before noticing that there was a crocodile just a couple of meters from the car, waiting for someone stupid enough to put a foot outside the vehicle. My hanging out of the car with the camera had probably got its attention but thankfully it didn't get any closer!
Around the base of the tree in the very largest version of this photo you can make out the resting hippos:

The croc, just waiting to get a bite:

OK, enough for now, I still have a large number of photos from the park to go through and the processing takes quite a while. Tomorrow I hope to update with some strange behaviour from pairs of giraffes, antelope on the run and a night time excursion into the wilderness.

African adventure, part IIa

I have a horribly early start tomorrow morning so no time to write, but the pictures more or less speak for themselves. This is, give or take, the photos from the first 24 hours in Kruger plus a couple of random ones from later on. I have another dozen or so to process and will do so when possible. Click on the photos to see them on the flickr site.

African Adventure, part 1

We begin back in London, two weeks ago where I have already given a detailed overview of the gastronomic treats that met us in perhaps the most multicultural city I've explored in detail. I'm going back to this stage to catch up with a couple of photos from London and to introduce the other key players on the adventure over the last two weeks.

Having gone to Borough market and tried a variety of wicked cheeses in Neal's Yard Dairy we took our wild boar pie and sat on the South Bank between the Globe theatre and the Tate Modern, with St Paul's in the background. Here are my traveling companions M and K sitting on the South Bank enjoying their first pork pies:

We would later have gone to look around St Paul's but the extortionate cover charge put us off completely. The same was true at Westminster Abbey, though Westminster cathedral was free to enter and a lot more peaceful that the Abbey appeared.

After London we spent a night at my parent's place in Oxford and sampled some of the most traditional of Oxford's nightspots including the Turf and Freud's for a few pints of ale and a cocktail for good measure. From Oxford to Heathrow and Heathrow through Dubai, 16 hours later we were in Johannesburg, taking a taxi to a friend's place. Dinner with our friend's mother gave us a chance to realise quite how ill-prepared we were for the coming voyage as she donated binoculars and a half dozen books on the wildlife we would later see at Kruger, both of these are absolutely vital!

Early mornings quickly became routine on this trip with only a few days where we slept in past 7 am. The next day was no exception as we picked up our hire car at the airport and made our way North East to one of the entrances to Kruger National Park. K was driving the whole journey, and getting used to the left hand side of the road was made harder by a potholed path leading the 7 hours or so to the park. After a few nasty sounding crunches K became used to the width of the car and on this stretch of road at least we made it through relatively painlessly.

The road between Johannesburg and Phalaborwa on the mid Western side of the park is pretty stunning and takes you to the North of the Blyde river canyon, which was one of many places we didn't have time to visit, though given more days I would love to take a canoeing trip through it.

A couple of the stops we made along the winding road which takes you from the plains surrounding Johannesburg to the mountainous terrain which leads towards the park:

We had a leisurely lunch outside the park and made sure we had enough supplies to last a couple of meals before heading to the gate and discovering that we were far too late to get to our booked accommodation. A misunderstanding of the timetable meant that we could get in, but would have to spend the night in the car in the middle of the park with no protection from wandering hippos. Luckily we managed to get space in a different camp and as the sun set and the moon rose we made our first tentative steps, metaphorically speaking, into the park.

It was only a few minutes until we came across our first wildlife, a jackal out on an early evening prowl as the air cooled and the night time animals started to stir. It took me a little while to get used to taking photos from the car so the first hour or so didn't produce anything terribly remarkable. It was only a few minutes later that we came to our first really big surprise as K slammed on the breaks in order to stop us hurtling into the side of an elephant, crossing the road with its calf. We stopped, excited as little kids but not quite knowing whether this was a normal sight, or whether we had been very lucky, or indeed whether the fact that there was mother and baby together made this a dangerous situation. In fact it turned out that elephants are all too common and need to be regularly culled these days in order to stop them devastating the rest of the park, and in general unless you get between mother and calf you're not in too much danger.

It's not the greatest elephant shot by any stretch of the imagination, but given that it was the first it has some historical significance.

We raced on quickly after this, aware of the possible price of arriving late at the gates and paused only to watch the moon rise over the tree-lined hills in front of us.

Arriving finally at the camp, the gates were closed, and it's only now that I realise our idiocy as we got out of the car to call the guards. Still, they came and realising that we were probably stupid enough to get eaten if they didn't have pity on us they opened the door and let us into the Letaba camp site.

We paid our dues and set up a morning walk for the next day. Realising that it would mean a 4am start we made our ablutions, had a quick bite to eat and tucked down for the night, malaria pills consumed and mosquito spray covered.

For now I'll just set the scene for the next day as we got up in pitch darkness and made our way out into the camp in a large, open sided truck with a couple of rangers, guns in hand, ready to lead us into the jaws of whatever lurked in the bush. Within a few minutes the light from the truck reflected off the coat of a hyena, the brightness shining off the eyes as it stared us down. Hyenas have an enormous pair of front legs and chest, with incredible musculature and teeth which crush bone. The latter being noticeable in their white, calcium-filled droppings.

 

So, that takes us around 36 hours into our African adventure and there's plenty more to come. I'll slowly process the photos as I have time and will post them up here as soon as I can.

Back in town

I've just arrived back in Santiago after the most incredible couple of weeks in South Africa and Mozambique. Lots of stories to tell and a huge number of photos to go through. Over the last three days I've clocked up a total of 5 hours sleep so I'm going to try and catch up a little this afternoon before things start again in earnest tomorrow morning in the office.

For now I'll start the ball rolling with a shot (one of around 300 I have to go through) from Kruger National Park in the East of South Africa at the beginning of a night drive when a leopard came out of the underbush to look for its cub. I fired off a series of shots and got this as she stared right back at us. Many more to follow:

In Johannesburg

We landed in Johannesburg this morning after a 16 hour marathon trip through Dubai with a total of half an hour shut-eye door to door. We're staying with a good friend here in the city until we head off tomorrow very early in the morning for a 6 hour drive to Kruger national park. We've been treated so far to fantastic South African hospitality with an unexpected family dinner this evening, sating us perfectly, ready for a good night's sleep. I guess internet access will be flakey at best until we get to Maputo some time later in the week. We've just been inundated with books and binoculars to see us through the wildlife in Kruger and I'm sure that this will add to coming blogposts, so, until then...

Santiago-London-Johannesburg-Maputo and back again

Yesterday I felt, for the first time in a long time, the fibers of my body, without the flow of energy which usually accompanies such filaments. This week was an exhausting push to get a paper finished, which culminated in three days of virtually non-stop work, coding, writing, calculating, talking over syntax and interpretation, figures, angles and resolutions. A piece of Mathematica code I had written a few weeks ago was cut down by several hundred lines, a great satisfaction, simultaneously frustrating in the realisation that I had been complicating matters until then. But now I am drained. As the adrenalin left my body yesterday, a vacuum was left in its place, a scant few molecules of ATP keeping things ticking over.

Anyway, last night I slept a good 6 hours and I'm feeling refreshed this morning, back into the normal weekend routine as Santiago once more treats us to a downpour.

And now what? Now we have more to do for the next installment on this work but first I have a holiday coming up. Last year a couple of good friends I know from Santiago moved to Maputo in Mozambique where one of them has a job working as a governmental consultant. I promised that I would visit the Easter break here seemed the perfect time. So, on Thursday I head off with a couple of other friends, via London for a couple of days, through Dubai and into Johannesburg where we will pick up a car, drive through Kruger National Park and make our way into Mozambique. Until today I've barely had time to think about it, but right now I just can't wait! We will have less than two weeks in Africa but I'm thoroughly looking forward to the experience.

So, for now, lots to get ready and plenty of papers to print out to take along for the beaches of Mozambique! I'll do my best to blog from the trip and update with pictures wherever possible.