Since Durban is right on the Indian Ocean, it is quite conducive to doing water sports. Surfing championships are often held here, the water is warm for swimming, and the conditions are great for Scuba diving. I missed out on the first dive course through the school’s dive club, but I still really wanted to learn. Since my exams were scheduled early, I was able to book a private course on my days off to get my PADI certification.
My teacher was fantastic, so I was really comfortable with my pool sessions. I had to swim a few laps before I began, after which my first experience getting into a wetsuit was a bit challenging: note to self, always dry off first, otherwise your fingers will bleed from trying to pull the suit on wet.
We went to nearby UmKomaas, which has a fantastic site to dive at called Aliwal Shoal. It’s a marine protected area, and is very serene. I was worried about being motion sick on the boat, but it wasn’t much of an issue since we were driving so fast to get out to the site. It was so busy on the beach though - the sardine run hit this area that day, and the people came out in droves to come and see the water become thick with the silvery fish. Of course, people aren’t the only ones interested in these tasty morsels: dolphins and sharks were having a great time in the bay. We saw the dolphins swimming happily beside the boat on the way to my first open-water dive. I happily dove in, and was greeted by a colourful array of fish. It was hard to regulate my buoyancy at first, but I figured it out without too much trouble (or damage to the coral!). After doing the requisite mask clearing (filling the mask with water, and then emptying it underwater), we were able to enjoy water. There was a strong current, but I didn’t know that since I had never been diving before. We came upon two small Ragged-tooth sharks, who had a truly intense presence. When I say small, they weren’t when compared to me - at least 2m in length! What a great first dive! After we surfaced, we boated along the shore to see more sardines. I saw a Whale shark jump out of the water to get a big mouth full of fish. Cool! My second dive we also saw some sea turtles and some other cool fish.
My next dives allowed me to increase my time underwater because I was better at controlling my breath. My first dives were about 30 minutes long, and my third was 60 minutes! I stayed down for longer than most of the others on my boat, which is pretty sweet. I couldn’t believe that all of the sardines were gone already though! I guess I would be fast if I had sharks chasing me. On my fourth dive, my instructor found me a tooth from one of the ‘Raggies’ to keep as a souvenir. I’m now officially certified as an open-water diver, and I can’t wait to go again! Anyone care to join me?
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Xenophobia
Some of you may have heard of the recent violence that has erupted in SA. Here is the basic primer: during Apartheid, the population was separated into 7 ethnic groups, based entirely on appearances. (Even if you had lighter skin than your parents, you could be classified as a different race than them. For example, the pencil test was used to determine if you were black or coloured - if a pencil stuck in your hair, you were black, if it slid through, you were coloured) People here are still (not surprisingly) obsessed with these distinctions, now with four main groups: White, Black, Indian, and Coloured, which is a non-derogatory term here for people of mixed race. These distinctions go further though - tribal differences are extremely important. It is said that the President of the governing party, who has been accused of rape and is currently being prosecuted for fraud, was chosen because he is Zulu and not Xhosa.
Poverty is a huge issue in this country, with a large proportion of the population living in crowded townships with high levels of unemployment. Daily life can be a struggle here, so it is understandable that resentments may arise when foreigners come and find work. They are happy to find any work in a country where employment is challenging to find, even if they get paid less than the worth of the position. This makes it harder for the locals to get the jobs, as well as results in lower wages because the employers know they can employ foreign workers for less.
Another reason that foreigners are getting the jobs is that they are better trained. Refugees from Mozambique and Zimbabwe have much higher levels of education than South Africans from similar backgrounds, and thus it is easier for them to get jobs. There is a shortage of skilled labourers in this country, the solution to which is either foreign labour or education, and the latter is much more expensive. Foreigners are fulfilling a need, which may be one of the reasons the government has not tried to keep track of the number of illegal immigrants that arrive in the country daily.
There are many reasons why there are tensions between people in this country, but it is unclear why violence against foreigners has erupted so violently lately. Xenophobia, which is defined in this context as the fear of foreigners, has calmed down lately, but is still a huge issue. The townships outside of Jo’burg were enflamed with hatred first, but this spread to other areas, including Durban. Foreigners fled from their homes with nothing because of the violence - threatened and real. The news coverage here is much more graphic, so stories and pictures of people being beaten with axe handles and cement posts, and then being burned alive, were plastered in the media. Police stations became refuges for people, many of whom are refugees from their own countries in the first place. Even though the violence has calmed down lately, there are still people who do not feel safe enough to go to their homes, camps were set up, with care taken to situate people of similar backgrounds together.
Xenophobic violence has not been directed at me, but my friends from Zambia and Zimbabwe have been harassed. One test that is performed to determine if a person is from SA is to ask them what the Zulu term for elbow is. Since it is such an uncommon term, a non-native would not easily respond, resulting in harassment. This has happened on campus, which is scary.
The situation has calmed down since the violence first arose, even though the government has chosen not to address this issue. With the Red Cross and community groups organizing aid for those affected by the violence, the perception is that foreigners are continuing to get better treatment, continuing the resentment between SA nationals and others. It has been eye-opening to be present for the development of this issue: at home I would sympathize, but feel separated from it. Now that I know people who have been touched, it is much harder to do that.
Poverty is a huge issue in this country, with a large proportion of the population living in crowded townships with high levels of unemployment. Daily life can be a struggle here, so it is understandable that resentments may arise when foreigners come and find work. They are happy to find any work in a country where employment is challenging to find, even if they get paid less than the worth of the position. This makes it harder for the locals to get the jobs, as well as results in lower wages because the employers know they can employ foreign workers for less.
Another reason that foreigners are getting the jobs is that they are better trained. Refugees from Mozambique and Zimbabwe have much higher levels of education than South Africans from similar backgrounds, and thus it is easier for them to get jobs. There is a shortage of skilled labourers in this country, the solution to which is either foreign labour or education, and the latter is much more expensive. Foreigners are fulfilling a need, which may be one of the reasons the government has not tried to keep track of the number of illegal immigrants that arrive in the country daily.
There are many reasons why there are tensions between people in this country, but it is unclear why violence against foreigners has erupted so violently lately. Xenophobia, which is defined in this context as the fear of foreigners, has calmed down lately, but is still a huge issue. The townships outside of Jo’burg were enflamed with hatred first, but this spread to other areas, including Durban. Foreigners fled from their homes with nothing because of the violence - threatened and real. The news coverage here is much more graphic, so stories and pictures of people being beaten with axe handles and cement posts, and then being burned alive, were plastered in the media. Police stations became refuges for people, many of whom are refugees from their own countries in the first place. Even though the violence has calmed down lately, there are still people who do not feel safe enough to go to their homes, camps were set up, with care taken to situate people of similar backgrounds together.
Xenophobic violence has not been directed at me, but my friends from Zambia and Zimbabwe have been harassed. One test that is performed to determine if a person is from SA is to ask them what the Zulu term for elbow is. Since it is such an uncommon term, a non-native would not easily respond, resulting in harassment. This has happened on campus, which is scary.
The situation has calmed down since the violence first arose, even though the government has chosen not to address this issue. With the Red Cross and community groups organizing aid for those affected by the violence, the perception is that foreigners are continuing to get better treatment, continuing the resentment between SA nationals and others. It has been eye-opening to be present for the development of this issue: at home I would sympathize, but feel separated from it. Now that I know people who have been touched, it is much harder to do that.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Township Tour
One of the guys in my rez, Tulas, is from a township north of Durban, and he wanted to give the international students a taste of what South Africa is really like. Many of the students who I have met are not actually South African, but from Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Botswana. It is still difficult for black students here to overcome the social barriers and go to post-secondary.
We all packed in to a minibus taxi, and started our tour driving on a road that we are quite familiar with – the way we travel to the mall. During apartheid, the distance between us and the mall was covered with sugarcane. This was a tool that was used to separate the racial groups: white areas had several kilometres of sugarcane between them and the Indian area, and then more sugarcane would follow to separate them from the coloureds (that’s the acceptable term here for mixed race), and then more sugarcane, followed by the black area. The idea behind this is that, if the blacks wanted to attack, there is a large distance to cover between them and the whites, so by the time they organized anything, the whites would know about it and be able to suppress it.
The sugarcane areas are now mostly taken over by illegal settlements, where people have moved from rural areas or townships closer to their work in the city. This is different than the government housing which is also being built on the former sugarcane areas. This housing is subsidized and is still rapidly being built. Unfortunately, the areas where this housing exists is not prime: the place that we visited is under a power line, where there is a higher likelihood of miscarriage, deformities, and cancer.
One of the flats we toured housed 9 people, who lived in a one-bedroom unit. The entire complex is provided with 200 litres of water, after which the tenants have to purchase more. The power here is prepaid via cards that are bought at gas stations. The codes on the cards are punched into the power machine in each flat, and power is supplied. However, during load shedding, these power customers are shut down just like the rest of us.
Load shedding is a colloquial term for scheduled blackouts, which affect the entire country. There is a power shortage in South Africa, and the current solution is to have rotating blackouts. You can imagine the affect no power can have on business, where companies are paying staff for many unproductive hours due to this lack of power. We were lucky not to be on the schedule, but our luck ran out last week when a new, more all encompassing schedule (now even hospitals and the biggest port in Africa are included) put us on the list. We now have class in dark rooms, and often larger lectures are cancelled because there are no windows. There was a new schedule this week because people complained that certain areas were being favoured with better blackout times. Now, we have blackouts at night, which sucks a lot. 6-8:30 pm Mondays with no power: no cooking, no light (it gets dark here earlier now), no nothing.
Our next stop was kwaMashu, which is one of the largest black townships in South Africa after Soweto. There is a train that connects this township to Durban, and I was shocked to see how many people live in shacks along the tracks. Besides the obvious noise concern, fire is a real danger for people who live in these areas. If one shack starts on fire, the entire area is gone is seconds. In Soweto there is a special orphanage for children who have been affected by fire.
There are also other houses in this settlement, and that is where we went to have lunch. Tulas’ mother (well, she is actually his stepmother, but Zulus aren’t concerned about these qualifications. We all called her Gogo, which is an endearing term that means grandmother) welcomed us. We all sat (separated by sex) in the front room, which shows respect to the ancestors. The furniture in their house was given to them by former employers. This was a common occurrence when employers were moving: they would give away their furniture to their staff instead of moving it.
Gogo’s son is a Sangoma, which is someone who mediates with spirits. He did some rituals to ensure the spirits were satisfied with us being in their house, and then did some dancing and drumming. One of the rituals that we had to take part in was drinking Zulu beer out of a shared container. Gogo then showed us some beadwork that she had made with other women in the area. Business innovation is very important here, where jobs are very difficult to come by. We were then served a traditional Zulu meal, which included tripe, sweet potatoes, yams, steamed bread, creamed spinach, chicken… the list goes on. It is customary to have the men be served first, which was challenging to observe. Zulu culture is still very misogynistic: the men are served hand and foot while the women do all the work. It is still quite common for Zulu men to have several wives, but that can get expensive because the families set bride prices that the men must pay, in terms of a number of cattle, in order to ‘earn’ the bride.
Before we left, we noticed a gathering down the hill of people dressed conservatively in all white. We ventured down to find out it was a celebration of the 12th Apostolic Church of the Pentecost. We were observing from afar, until someone noticed us and brought us to the front to have a better view. I’m sure we were pretty easy to notice, being a bunch of white kids. We made our way up to the front, with the entire congregation singing and waving to us, welcoming us to the party. Once we were at the front, we witnessed several people who were overcome by the Holy Spirit come forward and prophesize. Tulas translated some of it for us after: anyone who wasn’t a follower would burn in hell at the Second Coming. I’m sure it had nothing to do with us.
We all packed in to a minibus taxi, and started our tour driving on a road that we are quite familiar with – the way we travel to the mall. During apartheid, the distance between us and the mall was covered with sugarcane. This was a tool that was used to separate the racial groups: white areas had several kilometres of sugarcane between them and the Indian area, and then more sugarcane would follow to separate them from the coloureds (that’s the acceptable term here for mixed race), and then more sugarcane, followed by the black area. The idea behind this is that, if the blacks wanted to attack, there is a large distance to cover between them and the whites, so by the time they organized anything, the whites would know about it and be able to suppress it.
The sugarcane areas are now mostly taken over by illegal settlements, where people have moved from rural areas or townships closer to their work in the city. This is different than the government housing which is also being built on the former sugarcane areas. This housing is subsidized and is still rapidly being built. Unfortunately, the areas where this housing exists is not prime: the place that we visited is under a power line, where there is a higher likelihood of miscarriage, deformities, and cancer.
One of the flats we toured housed 9 people, who lived in a one-bedroom unit. The entire complex is provided with 200 litres of water, after which the tenants have to purchase more. The power here is prepaid via cards that are bought at gas stations. The codes on the cards are punched into the power machine in each flat, and power is supplied. However, during load shedding, these power customers are shut down just like the rest of us.
Load shedding is a colloquial term for scheduled blackouts, which affect the entire country. There is a power shortage in South Africa, and the current solution is to have rotating blackouts. You can imagine the affect no power can have on business, where companies are paying staff for many unproductive hours due to this lack of power. We were lucky not to be on the schedule, but our luck ran out last week when a new, more all encompassing schedule (now even hospitals and the biggest port in Africa are included) put us on the list. We now have class in dark rooms, and often larger lectures are cancelled because there are no windows. There was a new schedule this week because people complained that certain areas were being favoured with better blackout times. Now, we have blackouts at night, which sucks a lot. 6-8:30 pm Mondays with no power: no cooking, no light (it gets dark here earlier now), no nothing.
Our next stop was kwaMashu, which is one of the largest black townships in South Africa after Soweto. There is a train that connects this township to Durban, and I was shocked to see how many people live in shacks along the tracks. Besides the obvious noise concern, fire is a real danger for people who live in these areas. If one shack starts on fire, the entire area is gone is seconds. In Soweto there is a special orphanage for children who have been affected by fire.
There are also other houses in this settlement, and that is where we went to have lunch. Tulas’ mother (well, she is actually his stepmother, but Zulus aren’t concerned about these qualifications. We all called her Gogo, which is an endearing term that means grandmother) welcomed us. We all sat (separated by sex) in the front room, which shows respect to the ancestors. The furniture in their house was given to them by former employers. This was a common occurrence when employers were moving: they would give away their furniture to their staff instead of moving it.
Gogo’s son is a Sangoma, which is someone who mediates with spirits. He did some rituals to ensure the spirits were satisfied with us being in their house, and then did some dancing and drumming. One of the rituals that we had to take part in was drinking Zulu beer out of a shared container. Gogo then showed us some beadwork that she had made with other women in the area. Business innovation is very important here, where jobs are very difficult to come by. We were then served a traditional Zulu meal, which included tripe, sweet potatoes, yams, steamed bread, creamed spinach, chicken… the list goes on. It is customary to have the men be served first, which was challenging to observe. Zulu culture is still very misogynistic: the men are served hand and foot while the women do all the work. It is still quite common for Zulu men to have several wives, but that can get expensive because the families set bride prices that the men must pay, in terms of a number of cattle, in order to ‘earn’ the bride.
Before we left, we noticed a gathering down the hill of people dressed conservatively in all white. We ventured down to find out it was a celebration of the 12th Apostolic Church of the Pentecost. We were observing from afar, until someone noticed us and brought us to the front to have a better view. I’m sure we were pretty easy to notice, being a bunch of white kids. We made our way up to the front, with the entire congregation singing and waving to us, welcoming us to the party. Once we were at the front, we witnessed several people who were overcome by the Holy Spirit come forward and prophesize. Tulas translated some of it for us after: anyone who wasn’t a follower would burn in hell at the Second Coming. I’m sure it had nothing to do with us.
Easter Break 2008
Many people had planned their spring break trips for weeks, and some of us were blissfully ignorant that flights, buses, and backpackers (hostels) were booking up. A couple weeks before Easter, I had only a few choices left: Mozambique via a flight with only one seat left; Cape Town, which I would like to give more than a week of travel time to; and the Ukhahlamba Drakensberg mountains, which was going to house the biggest music festival in the country. Splashy Fen music festival and the mountains won out, and were my destinations for Easter weekend.
We came to the realization that buying camping equipment for just one weekend is not the most economical or environmental decision. Instead, the festival had a ‘tent hotel’: they set up tents, beds with linens, hot showers and breakfasts, and all we had to do was show up. I was sold! I rented a car, filled it with four of my friends, and we were off.
I was excited to drive again. Being so dependant on my car at home, it has been strange to wait for cabs, mini-bus taxis, or friends to drive me around Durban. I was nervous about doing the whole driving on the ‘wrong side’ of the road thing though. My mantra during driving was “left, left, left”, which I think helped, since my passengers didn’t ever have to remind me to switch lanes.
We departed from Durban later than expected on Thursday. We picked up some groceries and visited the liquor store before we left town, only the essentials. The problem was that no glass bottles were allowed, so we filled plastic bottles and got a good selection of boxed wine.
Our first stop was the Hilton hotel for a pit stop. It didn’t quite meet our expectations though – apparently there is a town called Hilton, and it has a hotel there.
Our next stop was further into the mountains in Bulwer, where they served us tea (it’s cold in the mountains here, too!), tasty homemade soup, and sandwiches. The cool kind of sandwiches here are bacon and banana, which I hear are pretty tasty. I can’t complain about the food here at all, it’s just the desserts that need some work. Perhaps because ovens aren’t very common here, so people don’t know how easy it is to make wicked cakes and cookies, and are satisfied with mediocrity. (In an exciting side note, one of the guys in rez has a toaster oven that we have used with great success to bake cookies!)
By this time, it was very dark, and the clouds had moved in. Since it is so mountainous in this area, when it is cloudy, you are IN the cloud. Let me tell you, it’s not so fun to drive when you can see about a metre in front of you due to the rain and fog, and you must be careful to avoid livestock. By the time we made it onto the dirt road, my nerves were shot. The setting for the festival is on a farm, which is lovely in prime weather conditions, but gets really muddy really fast when it rains. In fact, the road out of the festival was closed the following day because cars were sliding down the hills.
None of us were really prepared for the rain. I was told that everyone comes back from Splashy burnt, so I was ready for the sun: shorts, tanks, and sunscreen. Unfortunately, no one sent us the memo about the torrential downpours and knee-deep mud that are the norm at the festival. Perhaps the name ‘Splashy’ should have tipped us off. Everyone was modelling the latest varieties of gum boots (rubber boots), skinny jeans, sweaters, scarves, and vests. The winter displays at the mall made more sense after I experienced this weather! I have never been so cold in my life – flip flops, capris, and thin shirts just didn’t cut it when I had to walk through massive red puddles of mud in the rain. The hot showers alone were worth the cost of the hotel at this point.
The music was fantastic – it was all South African artists, ranging from yodelling to emo to metal to folk to house; something for everyone. The food was worth the trip in itself though: mulled wine, hot mini-donuts covered in chocolate (this might be the only exception to the dessert limitations here), falafels, crepes, curries, homemade pasta… the list goes on! Next time, we won’t need to make a grocery store stop before coming here.
It dried up a bit by the time we were ready to leave, and we made our way to our next stop, the Sani Pass. Potholes were created from the rain on the weekend, so we often bottomed out. Our mantra this time was “Rental!” after every scrape; I’m glad we didn’t have to worry about ruining someone’s car under those horrific conditions!
We met up with some other friends at the backpackers, making our group 8-strong. It was nice to be in the country to chillax. The crime rate appears to be much lower where we were staying, since there wasn’t and barbed wire or security guards to protect the property. In this province, farmers are often killed in land disputes, so it apparently this was not one of those areas.
The following day we did a day-trip to Lesotho, the country that is entirely surrounded by South Africa. We accessed this ‘country in the sky’ through the Sani pass, which is the only border crossing to Lesotho from this province. The road is unlike any I have seen before. It seemed bad even by bike trail standards – hairpin turns, boulders, and waterfalls going over the road. I was glad to have the front seat, since it was such a bumpy ride.
It was so gorgeous making our way up the pass. Halfway up we arrived at the South African passport office, and then at the top of the pass, we made it to Lesotho. The passport control is a little different here than what I’m used to: you get both entry and exit stamps when you get there, so you don’t have to tell them when you leave the country.
Lesotho is quite different than South Africa. The people still wear traditional clothing, and maintain their roles from many years ago. The shepards are usually teenage boys, who enjoyed talking to us on our lunch break. One of them tried to impress us with his limited English “What’s up motherfuckers?” which we thought was pretty hilarious. The next entertainment during lunch was watching some drug smugglers trek up the pass – TIA.
The next day we had a lovely time going horseback riding in the lowlands of the Sani pass. Of course, I got the dud horse that wouldn’t go anywhere. They told me that I had to be forceful, but I can only kick so hard. Every once in awhile my horse would look at me like “Yes, I’m going to eat these flowers, and then stop in the middle of the river, and you better be grateful that I haven’t kicked you off already.” The beauty of the surroundings made up for it though!
The next day we drove back to the Durbs on the speedy N3. The highways here are amazing! They are toll roads, but it is totally worth it to travel on the ridiculously fast, nicely paved roads. People are cautious to stay to the left here (that is the slow lane here), which might have something to do with the inordinate number of road rage incidents here. It worked well for me though!
We arrived safe and sound back in Durban, ready for the next term of school to start.
We came to the realization that buying camping equipment for just one weekend is not the most economical or environmental decision. Instead, the festival had a ‘tent hotel’: they set up tents, beds with linens, hot showers and breakfasts, and all we had to do was show up. I was sold! I rented a car, filled it with four of my friends, and we were off.
I was excited to drive again. Being so dependant on my car at home, it has been strange to wait for cabs, mini-bus taxis, or friends to drive me around Durban. I was nervous about doing the whole driving on the ‘wrong side’ of the road thing though. My mantra during driving was “left, left, left”, which I think helped, since my passengers didn’t ever have to remind me to switch lanes.
We departed from Durban later than expected on Thursday. We picked up some groceries and visited the liquor store before we left town, only the essentials. The problem was that no glass bottles were allowed, so we filled plastic bottles and got a good selection of boxed wine.
Our first stop was the Hilton hotel for a pit stop. It didn’t quite meet our expectations though – apparently there is a town called Hilton, and it has a hotel there.
Our next stop was further into the mountains in Bulwer, where they served us tea (it’s cold in the mountains here, too!), tasty homemade soup, and sandwiches. The cool kind of sandwiches here are bacon and banana, which I hear are pretty tasty. I can’t complain about the food here at all, it’s just the desserts that need some work. Perhaps because ovens aren’t very common here, so people don’t know how easy it is to make wicked cakes and cookies, and are satisfied with mediocrity. (In an exciting side note, one of the guys in rez has a toaster oven that we have used with great success to bake cookies!)
By this time, it was very dark, and the clouds had moved in. Since it is so mountainous in this area, when it is cloudy, you are IN the cloud. Let me tell you, it’s not so fun to drive when you can see about a metre in front of you due to the rain and fog, and you must be careful to avoid livestock. By the time we made it onto the dirt road, my nerves were shot. The setting for the festival is on a farm, which is lovely in prime weather conditions, but gets really muddy really fast when it rains. In fact, the road out of the festival was closed the following day because cars were sliding down the hills.
None of us were really prepared for the rain. I was told that everyone comes back from Splashy burnt, so I was ready for the sun: shorts, tanks, and sunscreen. Unfortunately, no one sent us the memo about the torrential downpours and knee-deep mud that are the norm at the festival. Perhaps the name ‘Splashy’ should have tipped us off. Everyone was modelling the latest varieties of gum boots (rubber boots), skinny jeans, sweaters, scarves, and vests. The winter displays at the mall made more sense after I experienced this weather! I have never been so cold in my life – flip flops, capris, and thin shirts just didn’t cut it when I had to walk through massive red puddles of mud in the rain. The hot showers alone were worth the cost of the hotel at this point.
The music was fantastic – it was all South African artists, ranging from yodelling to emo to metal to folk to house; something for everyone. The food was worth the trip in itself though: mulled wine, hot mini-donuts covered in chocolate (this might be the only exception to the dessert limitations here), falafels, crepes, curries, homemade pasta… the list goes on! Next time, we won’t need to make a grocery store stop before coming here.
It dried up a bit by the time we were ready to leave, and we made our way to our next stop, the Sani Pass. Potholes were created from the rain on the weekend, so we often bottomed out. Our mantra this time was “Rental!” after every scrape; I’m glad we didn’t have to worry about ruining someone’s car under those horrific conditions!
We met up with some other friends at the backpackers, making our group 8-strong. It was nice to be in the country to chillax. The crime rate appears to be much lower where we were staying, since there wasn’t and barbed wire or security guards to protect the property. In this province, farmers are often killed in land disputes, so it apparently this was not one of those areas.
The following day we did a day-trip to Lesotho, the country that is entirely surrounded by South Africa. We accessed this ‘country in the sky’ through the Sani pass, which is the only border crossing to Lesotho from this province. The road is unlike any I have seen before. It seemed bad even by bike trail standards – hairpin turns, boulders, and waterfalls going over the road. I was glad to have the front seat, since it was such a bumpy ride.
It was so gorgeous making our way up the pass. Halfway up we arrived at the South African passport office, and then at the top of the pass, we made it to Lesotho. The passport control is a little different here than what I’m used to: you get both entry and exit stamps when you get there, so you don’t have to tell them when you leave the country.
Lesotho is quite different than South Africa. The people still wear traditional clothing, and maintain their roles from many years ago. The shepards are usually teenage boys, who enjoyed talking to us on our lunch break. One of them tried to impress us with his limited English “What’s up motherfuckers?” which we thought was pretty hilarious. The next entertainment during lunch was watching some drug smugglers trek up the pass – TIA.
The next day we had a lovely time going horseback riding in the lowlands of the Sani pass. Of course, I got the dud horse that wouldn’t go anywhere. They told me that I had to be forceful, but I can only kick so hard. Every once in awhile my horse would look at me like “Yes, I’m going to eat these flowers, and then stop in the middle of the river, and you better be grateful that I haven’t kicked you off already.” The beauty of the surroundings made up for it though!
The next day we drove back to the Durbs on the speedy N3. The highways here are amazing! They are toll roads, but it is totally worth it to travel on the ridiculously fast, nicely paved roads. People are cautious to stay to the left here (that is the slow lane here), which might have something to do with the inordinate number of road rage incidents here. It worked well for me though!
We arrived safe and sound back in Durban, ready for the next term of school to start.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Life at UKZN
I was warned ahead of time about the dorms here – no wireless, questionable security, etc. So far (other than the internet issue), life has been great in residence. A 5-minute walk up the (many) steps sure beats the hour commute at home. And there are so many international students in my dorm!
The first week of actual classes was pretty hectic, and no one seems to know quite what is going on. The lecture schedule is pretty crazy here – some classes start at 7:45! So you can imagine that it might be frustrating if you got ready for class at that time on a Monday, and found out your class was cancelled (for the day, or in some cases, the whole semester!). I was lucky – my first class was at a decent hour. I was confused when I arrived to my African psychology class though – our lecturer started with “Welcome to Abnormal Psychology”…huh? Apparently, some classes are divided even further into terms. So, my class won’t begin until the second term this semester. MORE BEACH TIME! And, we needed groceries, which took longer than expected to buy, so I accidentally missed the first lecture of my other class (oops!).
The second day of class was about as successful as the first – the students organized a strike over housing problems (Many students who confirmed housing arrived, only to find out that they had nowhere to stay. Some rooms are housing 7-8 students in them until they sort things out.). The rooms aren’t so big, but they suit my needs well: a bed, a sink, a desk, a wardrobe, and some shelves. Okay, at times, my room smells a little off, but I have adapted and bought an aromatherapy oil burner, so now it just smells like mango or coconut! Well, that’s when it doesn’t smell like propane from the stuff they sprayed in my room to control the cockroach and ant population (which luckily, I haven’t seen any signs of!). They came around at about 10am, and I happened to still be sleeping, so when they knocked, I sleepily opened the door. The guy seemed surprised that I was around, but even more surprised that I was still sleeping. Sleeping in (as in, after 5:30am) seems to be a faux pas. One of my professors was describing his lazy neighbour who smokes pot all day and sleeps in until 9am! So, the pest control guys told me to open my windows and they proceeded to spray around the edges of my room with some toxic chemical, and left. Since I had just woken up, I didn’t have anywhere I could go, so hopefully the chemicals that detract cockroaches (which can survive a nuclear holocaust) haven’t killed too many brain cells!
I have had some other cool visitors in my room though! And this isn’t the time when my mom needs to stop reading the blog – I’m talking about moths, bee-like creatures that don’t buzz, praying mantises and FROGS! Luckily, no monkeys yet – they are really messy when they get in your room. The moths here are gigantic. Like 8-10cms long. That’s what was in my room on one of the first nights and I thought was a bat. And they make noises here. The frog was the coolest – a bit shocking when I grabbed onto the curtain and my hand wrapped around its little body, but fine once I convinced myself that I didn’t just touch a poisonous dart frog. (You know the arrows that have poison on them in Indiana Jones-esque movies? That’s from a dart frog, which I had just seen the day before at Sea World. Yeah.). I didn’t realize that Praying Mantises don’t bite, so I might have ‘accidentally’ squished it in my curtain. What? I get random bug bites all the time, and I have no idea where they are from! The main bug that I’m not a fan of is gnats. Why gnats, you might ask? Well, they’re in my fridge, which doesn’t actually work, we just pretend it does. The freezer works great! Until a couple of weeks ago, we didn’t have a food cupboard, so we kept all of our dishes in there, too. I did get some strange looks when we washed dishes and then put them into the freezer. The main drawback of using the freezer as a cupboard is that you actually have to dry the dishes.
Anyway, back to class. So, I’m only taking two classes right now until my third one starts some time after Easter (no one actually knows when, they just say “after Easter.” It’s strange when you talk to people who you think have somewhere in their job description “know how to do this,” and they have no idea what you’re even asking them. Like, when I wanted to know what the address of the school is so that I can receive mail: the international student support office, which is the location to pick up said mail, could not tell me what the address is. Seriously. I just found out the address from a friend of mine who finally got his mail…just in case anyone wants to send me anything??).
I’m taking criminology, which is a first year course, and literature and journalism, which is a third year course. The bachelor degrees are three years long here, so when I tell people that I’m in my 5th year, they look at me with respect and think that I’m almost done my Master’s, which is quite a change from at home, where people just wonder why I’m so slow!
My first impression of classes is that it’s like high school. They actually take attendance, and if you don’t attend a certain percentage of class, you don’t get your ‘duly performed’ certificate, and can’t write the final. This is a challenge in lecture halls that contain 300 giddy 18-year-olds. That’s another aside: everyone is young here. No one takes time off between high school and college to get a job because jobs are so hard to get. If you found a job, you wouldn’t quit it to go to school, because the aim of school here is to get a job; if you have one, what’s the point in school? So, at 21 people graduate and try to get good jobs, get married and have children. When my friend was doing a survey at a shoe store, she told her age (25), and the lady told her to go back home to Sweden and find a man to marry – she’s getting old!
My favourite class so far is English. We started the semester off discussing a magazine from the 50s that was geared towards the black population: Drum magazine. It was so interesting to learn more about what life was like before and during apartheid. I felt out of place when people were discussing particular uprisings and events, but my professor assured me that just because the other students are from this country doesn’t mean they know any more about what was going on in the 50s here than I do. It would be unfortunate it that were true.
Studying here is an issue. And, I can’t always blame it on my lack of motivation (these grades don’t count towards my GPA, I just get a completion mark): there are no places to study! With the exception of this chilly weekend (it went down to a bone-chilling 23C in my room last night! I was seriously cold and it woke me up. Tomorrow I will buy a duvet.), normally air conditioning is necessary. So, my room isn’t the place to get anything done – the rez can get a little loud anyways. The café only stays open from 9-4, which is shocking. With classes that start so early, I would think that caffeine would be necessary at an earlier hour for those addicts among us. I’m told that the coffee here is gross, so I guess it’s not surprising that you have to look hard to find a coffee shop – it’s not good enough to get addicted to. No Starbucks to get cozy and study at. And the library? You can’t bring bags into it – not even purses! So, that’s a bit of a hassle. It does have a/c though, so when I’m done dripping sweat in the computer lab (they turn the a/c off at the same time as they unblock Facebook every night), I can chill in the library. I’m lucky I haven’t had a research paper yet – people actually use books here to research! Imagine! I have never taken a book out at home; everything is online.
I had my first test on Friday, and it took me back to high school finals. It was only a midterm, but apparently it was a pretty serious one because it was in a different venue: an auditorium filled with desks from an era gone by. It was only 45 minutes long (just like the classes here – it’s amazing! At home, most of my classes are 3 hour lectures. Here, if you’re late, there is really no point in coming at all. Well, except that you have to sign the register!), and it was super easy (had I studied).
Shockingly, I have just completed my 5th week of classes here! Time has gone by so fast. We always seem to be on the go during the week, and the weekends are full of parties and clubs (and sometimes even laundry and homework). I feel like it’s my duty to explore the culture here, which includes going to (CHEAP!) movies, shopping to excess, eating copious amounts of foreign candy (which is sooo good! It’s a good thing there are lots of stairs and hills here!), and going to new clubs every week.
Alcohol deserves a new paragraph. The cider is sweet and tastes like fresh apples, unlike the dry stuff we have at home. The wine is fantastic! I haven’t had any white, just because South Africa is known for its reds, and I now know why. I can’t wait to tour some wineries when I visit the Western Cape. At home I have seen Amarula at liquor stores, but I hadn’t tried it until I got here. Every time we go to a movie (which is every week!) there are commercials for it, which makes us all salivate. It’s made from Marula fruit that, according to the commercial, elephants like to eat only at its supreme ripeness, which is when it is harvested. I’m sure the elephant helps with that part, too. The classic SA shot is Amarula mixed with Springbok, a minty liqueur that is named after the SA soccer team.
The currency here, the rand, is losing its value compared to foreign currency due to some problems in the SA economy. This is very GOOD news for me though! When I arrived, one Canadian dollar could buy 6 rand, and now I can buy 8! So, when I pay 7 ZAR for a cider, I’m a pretty happy lady. Still, I have managed to learn how to barter, if only with the cabs. It’s a lot easier now that I know what everything should actually be costing us. We avoid metered taxis at all costs, unless we want a tour of Durban before we get to our destination. Flat-rate cabs are usually pretty decent, except for the time that we agreed on a decent price and got in, only to find out that it was just some guy’s car, and not a real cabs. Sketchy!
Without a car, we depend on cabs a lot. Luckily we have found a grocery store within walking distance, which is good because food here goes bad really fast, so we have to go to the store every few days to restock. Groceries here are a bit of a hassle, especially with a broken fridge! Also, the stoves work on a rotating basis – they seem to rotate every time we try to use them. What I have found here to survive is Woolworth’s food, which does amazing prepared salads. We also have lots of food stands on campus, and with the large Indian population, vegetarian food is really easy to find. Also, the fruit here is spectacular, it almost makes up for the lame vegetables. They don’t know anything about bakery items though. Perhaps because ovens aren’t the norm, so people don’t know just how easy it is to bake things that are a hundred times better. I miss baking, especially on a cold day like today! I suppose I should be savouring the cold weather though – it should be sweltering for the music festival that I am going to over Easter weekend!
Love to all!
The first week of actual classes was pretty hectic, and no one seems to know quite what is going on. The lecture schedule is pretty crazy here – some classes start at 7:45! So you can imagine that it might be frustrating if you got ready for class at that time on a Monday, and found out your class was cancelled (for the day, or in some cases, the whole semester!). I was lucky – my first class was at a decent hour. I was confused when I arrived to my African psychology class though – our lecturer started with “Welcome to Abnormal Psychology”…huh? Apparently, some classes are divided even further into terms. So, my class won’t begin until the second term this semester. MORE BEACH TIME! And, we needed groceries, which took longer than expected to buy, so I accidentally missed the first lecture of my other class (oops!).
The second day of class was about as successful as the first – the students organized a strike over housing problems (Many students who confirmed housing arrived, only to find out that they had nowhere to stay. Some rooms are housing 7-8 students in them until they sort things out.). The rooms aren’t so big, but they suit my needs well: a bed, a sink, a desk, a wardrobe, and some shelves. Okay, at times, my room smells a little off, but I have adapted and bought an aromatherapy oil burner, so now it just smells like mango or coconut! Well, that’s when it doesn’t smell like propane from the stuff they sprayed in my room to control the cockroach and ant population (which luckily, I haven’t seen any signs of!). They came around at about 10am, and I happened to still be sleeping, so when they knocked, I sleepily opened the door. The guy seemed surprised that I was around, but even more surprised that I was still sleeping. Sleeping in (as in, after 5:30am) seems to be a faux pas. One of my professors was describing his lazy neighbour who smokes pot all day and sleeps in until 9am! So, the pest control guys told me to open my windows and they proceeded to spray around the edges of my room with some toxic chemical, and left. Since I had just woken up, I didn’t have anywhere I could go, so hopefully the chemicals that detract cockroaches (which can survive a nuclear holocaust) haven’t killed too many brain cells!
I have had some other cool visitors in my room though! And this isn’t the time when my mom needs to stop reading the blog – I’m talking about moths, bee-like creatures that don’t buzz, praying mantises and FROGS! Luckily, no monkeys yet – they are really messy when they get in your room. The moths here are gigantic. Like 8-10cms long. That’s what was in my room on one of the first nights and I thought was a bat. And they make noises here. The frog was the coolest – a bit shocking when I grabbed onto the curtain and my hand wrapped around its little body, but fine once I convinced myself that I didn’t just touch a poisonous dart frog. (You know the arrows that have poison on them in Indiana Jones-esque movies? That’s from a dart frog, which I had just seen the day before at Sea World. Yeah.). I didn’t realize that Praying Mantises don’t bite, so I might have ‘accidentally’ squished it in my curtain. What? I get random bug bites all the time, and I have no idea where they are from! The main bug that I’m not a fan of is gnats. Why gnats, you might ask? Well, they’re in my fridge, which doesn’t actually work, we just pretend it does. The freezer works great! Until a couple of weeks ago, we didn’t have a food cupboard, so we kept all of our dishes in there, too. I did get some strange looks when we washed dishes and then put them into the freezer. The main drawback of using the freezer as a cupboard is that you actually have to dry the dishes.
Anyway, back to class. So, I’m only taking two classes right now until my third one starts some time after Easter (no one actually knows when, they just say “after Easter.” It’s strange when you talk to people who you think have somewhere in their job description “know how to do this,” and they have no idea what you’re even asking them. Like, when I wanted to know what the address of the school is so that I can receive mail: the international student support office, which is the location to pick up said mail, could not tell me what the address is. Seriously. I just found out the address from a friend of mine who finally got his mail…just in case anyone wants to send me anything??).
I’m taking criminology, which is a first year course, and literature and journalism, which is a third year course. The bachelor degrees are three years long here, so when I tell people that I’m in my 5th year, they look at me with respect and think that I’m almost done my Master’s, which is quite a change from at home, where people just wonder why I’m so slow!
My first impression of classes is that it’s like high school. They actually take attendance, and if you don’t attend a certain percentage of class, you don’t get your ‘duly performed’ certificate, and can’t write the final. This is a challenge in lecture halls that contain 300 giddy 18-year-olds. That’s another aside: everyone is young here. No one takes time off between high school and college to get a job because jobs are so hard to get. If you found a job, you wouldn’t quit it to go to school, because the aim of school here is to get a job; if you have one, what’s the point in school? So, at 21 people graduate and try to get good jobs, get married and have children. When my friend was doing a survey at a shoe store, she told her age (25), and the lady told her to go back home to Sweden and find a man to marry – she’s getting old!
My favourite class so far is English. We started the semester off discussing a magazine from the 50s that was geared towards the black population: Drum magazine. It was so interesting to learn more about what life was like before and during apartheid. I felt out of place when people were discussing particular uprisings and events, but my professor assured me that just because the other students are from this country doesn’t mean they know any more about what was going on in the 50s here than I do. It would be unfortunate it that were true.
Studying here is an issue. And, I can’t always blame it on my lack of motivation (these grades don’t count towards my GPA, I just get a completion mark): there are no places to study! With the exception of this chilly weekend (it went down to a bone-chilling 23C in my room last night! I was seriously cold and it woke me up. Tomorrow I will buy a duvet.), normally air conditioning is necessary. So, my room isn’t the place to get anything done – the rez can get a little loud anyways. The café only stays open from 9-4, which is shocking. With classes that start so early, I would think that caffeine would be necessary at an earlier hour for those addicts among us. I’m told that the coffee here is gross, so I guess it’s not surprising that you have to look hard to find a coffee shop – it’s not good enough to get addicted to. No Starbucks to get cozy and study at. And the library? You can’t bring bags into it – not even purses! So, that’s a bit of a hassle. It does have a/c though, so when I’m done dripping sweat in the computer lab (they turn the a/c off at the same time as they unblock Facebook every night), I can chill in the library. I’m lucky I haven’t had a research paper yet – people actually use books here to research! Imagine! I have never taken a book out at home; everything is online.
I had my first test on Friday, and it took me back to high school finals. It was only a midterm, but apparently it was a pretty serious one because it was in a different venue: an auditorium filled with desks from an era gone by. It was only 45 minutes long (just like the classes here – it’s amazing! At home, most of my classes are 3 hour lectures. Here, if you’re late, there is really no point in coming at all. Well, except that you have to sign the register!), and it was super easy (had I studied).
Shockingly, I have just completed my 5th week of classes here! Time has gone by so fast. We always seem to be on the go during the week, and the weekends are full of parties and clubs (and sometimes even laundry and homework). I feel like it’s my duty to explore the culture here, which includes going to (CHEAP!) movies, shopping to excess, eating copious amounts of foreign candy (which is sooo good! It’s a good thing there are lots of stairs and hills here!), and going to new clubs every week.
Alcohol deserves a new paragraph. The cider is sweet and tastes like fresh apples, unlike the dry stuff we have at home. The wine is fantastic! I haven’t had any white, just because South Africa is known for its reds, and I now know why. I can’t wait to tour some wineries when I visit the Western Cape. At home I have seen Amarula at liquor stores, but I hadn’t tried it until I got here. Every time we go to a movie (which is every week!) there are commercials for it, which makes us all salivate. It’s made from Marula fruit that, according to the commercial, elephants like to eat only at its supreme ripeness, which is when it is harvested. I’m sure the elephant helps with that part, too. The classic SA shot is Amarula mixed with Springbok, a minty liqueur that is named after the SA soccer team.
The currency here, the rand, is losing its value compared to foreign currency due to some problems in the SA economy. This is very GOOD news for me though! When I arrived, one Canadian dollar could buy 6 rand, and now I can buy 8! So, when I pay 7 ZAR for a cider, I’m a pretty happy lady. Still, I have managed to learn how to barter, if only with the cabs. It’s a lot easier now that I know what everything should actually be costing us. We avoid metered taxis at all costs, unless we want a tour of Durban before we get to our destination. Flat-rate cabs are usually pretty decent, except for the time that we agreed on a decent price and got in, only to find out that it was just some guy’s car, and not a real cabs. Sketchy!
Without a car, we depend on cabs a lot. Luckily we have found a grocery store within walking distance, which is good because food here goes bad really fast, so we have to go to the store every few days to restock. Groceries here are a bit of a hassle, especially with a broken fridge! Also, the stoves work on a rotating basis – they seem to rotate every time we try to use them. What I have found here to survive is Woolworth’s food, which does amazing prepared salads. We also have lots of food stands on campus, and with the large Indian population, vegetarian food is really easy to find. Also, the fruit here is spectacular, it almost makes up for the lame vegetables. They don’t know anything about bakery items though. Perhaps because ovens aren’t the norm, so people don’t know just how easy it is to bake things that are a hundred times better. I miss baking, especially on a cold day like today! I suppose I should be savouring the cold weather though – it should be sweltering for the music festival that I am going to over Easter weekend!
Love to all!
Pietermaritzburg
We wanted to get out of town for the weekend, and Pietermaritzburg is so close that it would be unforgivable if we didn’t see it. Also, it’s such a small town that it’s a perfect weekend getaway. We left really early on Saturday morning (some of us regretting attending the campus party the night before. They had pretty weak security standards though, considering we just drew stamps on our arms with a pen, and they let us in free). Our favourite cab driver A. Kay, who some of us consider our SA dad, picked us up and brought us to the minibus taxi stand downtown. It’s the kind of place that you don’t stand in one spot for too long so that you keep the items in your bag and pockets safe. Luckily, our minibus left really quickly. You always have to double check where they are going, because they are never labelled.
The 45 minute trip cost 35 ZAR, which we passed up in the usual manner, telling the person in front of us how many people the amount was supposed to cover, and having them pass the money up to the driver to count. All the conversations were in Zulu, but it was pretty clear that something wasn’t right when the drive passed everyone’s money back, except mine, Zane’s and Taylor’s. And then the driver pulled over on the freeway and started ranting in Zulu. It was at this point that I wasn’t as glad that I agreed to this transportation option over the higher class Greyhound. Apparently, he was 5ZAR short, which it was pretty clear that one of the guys in the taxi pocketed. He later ‘found’ the amount, and we were on our way again.
Once we arrived in the town, we got off the taxi at an early stop. That wasn’t as important as the fact that the person booking the Backpackers didn’t bring the address. Once that was sorted out, we used my map to figure out how to get there. Unfortunately, all the streets have been renamed since my map was printed, so it was more challenging than expected to get there. Renaming the streets has been controversial, but despite protests and questions over cost, it has gone through. The point is to get rid of all the street names that have connections to the harsh past, and move on with names that have more positive associations.
We were able to find our hostel, drop our things, and with surprising amounts of energy, venture off in search of a good meal. My guide had suggested a place, which was tricky to find because it, too, had been renamed. It was situated in the top floor of the Tatham Art Gallery, which was filled with art through the ages. It wasn’t until 1990 that Zulu art was featured in the building, which is itself a relic. PMB is known for its late-Victorian architecture, which was gorgeous to see. The whole downtown is filled with red brick buildings, including the city hall, which we gave ourselves a tour of.
After our full day, we decided we deserved ice cream, so we headed to the nearest KFC. I was glad to see that there were bars that separated the lines so that we wouldn’t get pushed out of the way like we always do at school. Unfortunately, they were out of ice cream, so it didn’t matter anyway.
We headed back to the Backpackers to relax, and ended up staying in the entire night! Apparently, since PMB is a small town, they don’t have much going on in the evenings, so we just had a party at the hostel instead.
The next day I was excited to use a gas stove again - omelettes for breakfast! We hired a cab to take us to the sights in the town – the biggest horse statue in the country, and then the botanical gardens. The horse was actually a pegasus, and it was as tacky as expected. The botanical gardens were breathtaking. It was the perfect place for a picnic, but we ate at the café, that served the best soup ever! Soup still tastes surprisingly good when it’s over 30C.
We headed back to the hostel early the chill by the pool, and then we walked over to wait for our bus. I was glad that we took the Greyhound home. Even though it was late, it was comforting to be on a vehicle that I could rely on, and where they spoke a language that I could understand. It was much classier than the Greyhounds at home – they served tea, coffee, and cookies, and they made announcements like airplane attendants do: “please remain seated until we come to a full and complete stop.”
Pietermaritzburg was a lovely break from the hectic pace of Durban. (Pictures to follow when the internet is faster)
The 45 minute trip cost 35 ZAR, which we passed up in the usual manner, telling the person in front of us how many people the amount was supposed to cover, and having them pass the money up to the driver to count. All the conversations were in Zulu, but it was pretty clear that something wasn’t right when the drive passed everyone’s money back, except mine, Zane’s and Taylor’s. And then the driver pulled over on the freeway and started ranting in Zulu. It was at this point that I wasn’t as glad that I agreed to this transportation option over the higher class Greyhound. Apparently, he was 5ZAR short, which it was pretty clear that one of the guys in the taxi pocketed. He later ‘found’ the amount, and we were on our way again.
Once we arrived in the town, we got off the taxi at an early stop. That wasn’t as important as the fact that the person booking the Backpackers didn’t bring the address. Once that was sorted out, we used my map to figure out how to get there. Unfortunately, all the streets have been renamed since my map was printed, so it was more challenging than expected to get there. Renaming the streets has been controversial, but despite protests and questions over cost, it has gone through. The point is to get rid of all the street names that have connections to the harsh past, and move on with names that have more positive associations.
We were able to find our hostel, drop our things, and with surprising amounts of energy, venture off in search of a good meal. My guide had suggested a place, which was tricky to find because it, too, had been renamed. It was situated in the top floor of the Tatham Art Gallery, which was filled with art through the ages. It wasn’t until 1990 that Zulu art was featured in the building, which is itself a relic. PMB is known for its late-Victorian architecture, which was gorgeous to see. The whole downtown is filled with red brick buildings, including the city hall, which we gave ourselves a tour of.
After our full day, we decided we deserved ice cream, so we headed to the nearest KFC. I was glad to see that there were bars that separated the lines so that we wouldn’t get pushed out of the way like we always do at school. Unfortunately, they were out of ice cream, so it didn’t matter anyway.
We headed back to the Backpackers to relax, and ended up staying in the entire night! Apparently, since PMB is a small town, they don’t have much going on in the evenings, so we just had a party at the hostel instead.
The next day I was excited to use a gas stove again - omelettes for breakfast! We hired a cab to take us to the sights in the town – the biggest horse statue in the country, and then the botanical gardens. The horse was actually a pegasus, and it was as tacky as expected. The botanical gardens were breathtaking. It was the perfect place for a picnic, but we ate at the café, that served the best soup ever! Soup still tastes surprisingly good when it’s over 30C.
We headed back to the hostel early the chill by the pool, and then we walked over to wait for our bus. I was glad that we took the Greyhound home. Even though it was late, it was comforting to be on a vehicle that I could rely on, and where they spoke a language that I could understand. It was much classier than the Greyhounds at home – they served tea, coffee, and cookies, and they made announcements like airplane attendants do: “please remain seated until we come to a full and complete stop.”
Pietermaritzburg was a lovely break from the hectic pace of Durban. (Pictures to follow when the internet is faster)
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Zululand
The trip was fantastic. On the weekend, we went on an excursion organized by one of the professors who wanted us to have a more varied experience in this province. We took a bus
for a couple hours north of Durban (stopping at a gas station to stock up on candy, which is AMAZING here. I’ve done my best to get a full South African experience, and thus have tried many varieties.), finally arriving at our destination, the Veyane Cultural Village. We weren’t given many details about the trip, so it was a great surprise when we turned up, and we were in a Zulu village full of little huts for us to sleep in. Before we could unpack much, 
we were invited to get dressed up in traditional Zulu attire (which are in photos that you will never see!) and 
watch/participate in Zulu dancing. The dancing is super intense – they kick their leg way up above their head, and then abruptly hit their foot down on the ground. Quite moving to see.
Then we were provided with a traditional Zulu mean, which was really good! It kind of felt like Thanksgiving dinner, because all I am able to eat on both occasions are the carbohydrates, which worked out well for me! They made different kinds of sweet potatoes (white with black skin), cassava, spinach mixture… the list goes on. And, Rooibos tea to finish it off! It’s so nice to be in a place where Earl Grey is not the standard kind of tea. Rooibos is only grown in South Africa, so we were truly getting the full experience.
After watching an interesting film about the land rights situation in the country (in this province alone, one white farmer is killed every month), we went to bed early. Upon arrival in our hut,
there was a massive bug greeting us. With nothing to squish it with, we sprayed it with bug spray, which I presumed made it angry, but it hid somewhere, so all night I could just hear it clicking away while I stayed packed into my many blankets in the 30C hut to avoid its plotting. I seem to have developed a rash this week – no sure if the two events are related.The reason we had an early bed time is that we were up at 4am to get on the bus and see the Hluhluwe Game reserve. We saw WAY more
animals than I expected – zebras, giraffes, lions, monkeys (which are old news, since I often see them on campus), rhinos, wart hogs, the list goes on! Totally impressive how they have managed to keep that many animals safe on the reserve.
Next we went to see a project that the professor, Blessing, was working on at an AIDS drop-in centre for children. We had a benefit lunch there, where they sang, danced, and read us poetry. It’s difficult to be a spectator at an event like that. I wanted to have fun and just play with the children, but in the back of my mind I was questioning what their future would hold. The number of people infected in South Africa is 34%, but in this province, KwaZulu Natal, the numbers are the highest in the country at 42%. Heavy stuff.
Then we visited the St Lucia wetlands park, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Here we boarded a cruise boat and slowly went down the large stream to see crocodiles and hippopotamuses. So cool to be cruising down a stream in the African sun.
That evening, we decided to stop at a hotel bar and I’m still struggling to figure out Africa time. Everything that we have attended so far has been at least 15 minutes late, and people tend to be late to show up, too. But whenever I try to be late, everyone else is always early! According to my South African friends, my trip to Zululand was a prime example of how timing works here. We left about an hour late, but everything during the trip kept to schedule. Except when it came time to leave, and our coordinator was the one that kept on saying ‘5 more minutes’.
The next day we visited a rural town, which has been relocated several times due to conflicts with the gum trees that are evident everywhere we went. They remind me of eucalyptus trees
in Brazil, in that they are both huge monocultures that allow no other growth on the ground, and take extreme amounts of water, that then create droughts for the people, who are without jobs because they can’t afford cars to get into town where they work has migrated. Big problems here, too. I didn’t have any suggestions for them, it was just too overwhelming. We did play a great game of soccer with the local youth, though. The girls won their game for the first time in the 7 years that Blessing has run this trip (all due to my mad skills, I’m sure).
I
came back from the trip appreciating the beauty that the culture and the country has to offer, while at the same time uncertain about the future here.
First Week in the Durbs
Last week was still full of orientation-related activities. 
They started us early on Monday morning with a campus tour. Since I am in South Africa, I expect it to be warm, even hot at 
times. So, you can imagine my surprise when I walked out of my residence building and was cold! 
It was 22C, which is freezing here! Not only that, but it was the first time since I got here that it rained, so I think we got the abbreviated version of the tour (“See that building over there? That’s the library; and that big one beside it – that’s a lecture hall. Have a good day!”). We did learn that the lecture halls will be hard to find. The maps are useless, and no one seems to know where anything is, AND there are no clues as to which building on campus the rooms are. So, if you have a class in Lecture 3, your room could be in several buildings. 
Once we were done that enlightening experience, I went to the bank to get some cash out. Carrying large amounts is not recommended in South Africa (or anywhere, I suppose), but after BOTH of my cards didn’t work during my shopping trip, I have taken to carrying some with me, just in case. However, this can get expensive, since the bank charges $5 for every transaction, and it won’t allow more than 1000 Rand per withdrawal (about $130).
We were still dealing with the school administration at this point, which is not a fun experience. Everyone sends you to someone else, and won’t do anything for you until you are able to tell them that someone else told you it was their job. This process was made especially difficult by the fact that this day was the first that everyone else at the school could register. The line-up to pay fees was more than 4 hours long.
Cooking is not my favourite thing to do here. There is no oven, and our pots are too small (as in, the size of a cereal bowl), and we don’t have a cupboard, so everything is stored in the freezer. Now, I have to defrost my veggies and my dishes! I think I’m going to be eating a lot of salads here.
The next day we had was free of school commitments. Still, we were troopers and got up really early, all in the name of fashion. The malls here are pretty outrageously large, and they close at 5 or 6pm, so to make sure that we weren’t stressed with closing time, we made a day of shopping! And, all of us were serious about it – Taylor and I made it for 6 hours! The prices are great, but taking a taxi everywhere can get expensive. Well, if I priced out how much it took (RIP) to keep my car running, it might be on par, but it’s different when the cash is upfront!
Bugs: they’re bigger here. A lot bigger. I found a spider camouflaged in my cup one night, which
wasn’t my favourite surprise after I had already drank from the cup! Luckily, mosquitoes haven’t been such a big challenge. They do have moths here, though. And, they’re the size of birds. One night when I fell asleep with my light on, I woke up to a bat-like creature squeaking around my light fixture. I wasn’t taking my malaria medication yet, so sadly, I wasn’t hallucinating. It hid somewhere in my room, so I woke up periodically to the twitching of an unknown creature somewhere in my room (illogically or not, I closed my windows so that no more would come in). There are some pretty nasty looking cockroaches, too, but I haven’t seen them anywhere near my residence, so that’s a bonus.
The next day we went on a double-decker bus tour of the city. It sounds glamorous, but it was a
city bus with cracked windows, and every once in awhile, our guide would yell a fact about an area we passed (“This is north beach…this is south beach…”etc.). More interesting, I think, would have been a tour where the guide told us what was a good place to visit (“This is an area that you should never go in; this is an area that is only safe in 
groups over 10 people during the hours of 10 and 2…”etc.). It was nice to have a better idea of what the town looks like, though. It is a beautiful, historic downtown. We also drove on some of the Grand Prix route – it’s happening on Feb 24th, I believe. 
Then, I signed up for the diving club! They have lots of clubs here, including fencing, sailing, and yoga (although this yoga club is some kind of religion, so I avoided eye contact as I walked past their table). Anyhow, I’m pretty excited about the diving. They take us up the coast to do our training, as well as arrange dive trips to Mozambique and other cool places. To get my dive certification with so many amazing places to go at my fingertips is pretty sweet. That, and they had a free ‘wine tasting’ to accompany their weekly braai (traditional barbeque) this week. That went over well, considering the wine here is some of the best in the world!
Our next activity was a tour of community outreach sites. We took a bus through
the beautiful Valley of 1000 Hills and visited one of the few rural AIDS orphanages. For some reason, the government won’t fund the rural orphanages, only the urban ones. Unfortunately, the kids were all at school, so it was an odd tour through the rooms of some African children who weren’t there to connect with. Next on the tour, we tried to visit a community library that is just down the hill from my school. It’s in the centre of a ‘settlement’, which is similar to the shantytowns on the outskirts of the city (where 2 of the 3 million people in Durban reside), but it’s unsanctioned, and it’s in the middle of town. Unfortunately, due to the load shedding (which is another way of saying blackout. They are having an energy crisis, so often lights will be off for about 2 hours at a time) the gates wouldn’t work to let us in, so our tour ended rather abruptly. This was our last activity organized by the school for the exchange students, so we are free to arrange our own events now.
Actually, I should clarify what an international student is. We had an (emergency) residents meeting last night, because they were organizing the students strike due to housing problems, and they wanted some input. I found out that there are many international students here, but “some are considered more international than others.” So, for the students, like myself, that have schools with partnerships with the University of KwaZulu Natal, there are activities, transportation from the airport arranged, etc. But for those who are not from South Africa, but are not on an exchange, they are on their own.
We had another braai this week at the dive club, but this time, it was combined with a FREE South African wine and cheese! Oh man. That is the best club ever.
They started us early on Monday morning with a campus tour. Since I am in South Africa, I expect it to be warm, even hot at 
times. So, you can imagine my surprise when I walked out of my residence building and was cold! 
It was 22C, which is freezing here! Not only that, but it was the first time since I got here that it rained, so I think we got the abbreviated version of the tour (“See that building over there? That’s the library; and that big one beside it – that’s a lecture hall. Have a good day!”). We did learn that the lecture halls will be hard to find. The maps are useless, and no one seems to know where anything is, AND there are no clues as to which building on campus the rooms are. So, if you have a class in Lecture 3, your room could be in several buildings. 
Once we were done that enlightening experience, I went to the bank to get some cash out. Carrying large amounts is not recommended in South Africa (or anywhere, I suppose), but after BOTH of my cards didn’t work during my shopping trip, I have taken to carrying some with me, just in case. However, this can get expensive, since the bank charges $5 for every transaction, and it won’t allow more than 1000 Rand per withdrawal (about $130).
We were still dealing with the school administration at this point, which is not a fun experience. Everyone sends you to someone else, and won’t do anything for you until you are able to tell them that someone else told you it was their job. This process was made especially difficult by the fact that this day was the first that everyone else at the school could register. The line-up to pay fees was more than 4 hours long.
Cooking is not my favourite thing to do here. There is no oven, and our pots are too small (as in, the size of a cereal bowl), and we don’t have a cupboard, so everything is stored in the freezer. Now, I have to defrost my veggies and my dishes! I think I’m going to be eating a lot of salads here.
The next day we had was free of school commitments. Still, we were troopers and got up really early, all in the name of fashion. The malls here are pretty outrageously large, and they close at 5 or 6pm, so to make sure that we weren’t stressed with closing time, we made a day of shopping! And, all of us were serious about it – Taylor and I made it for 6 hours! The prices are great, but taking a taxi everywhere can get expensive. Well, if I priced out how much it took (RIP) to keep my car running, it might be on par, but it’s different when the cash is upfront!
Bugs: they’re bigger here. A lot bigger. I found a spider camouflaged in my cup one night, which
wasn’t my favourite surprise after I had already drank from the cup! Luckily, mosquitoes haven’t been such a big challenge. They do have moths here, though. And, they’re the size of birds. One night when I fell asleep with my light on, I woke up to a bat-like creature squeaking around my light fixture. I wasn’t taking my malaria medication yet, so sadly, I wasn’t hallucinating. It hid somewhere in my room, so I woke up periodically to the twitching of an unknown creature somewhere in my room (illogically or not, I closed my windows so that no more would come in). There are some pretty nasty looking cockroaches, too, but I haven’t seen them anywhere near my residence, so that’s a bonus.The next day we went on a double-decker bus tour of the city. It sounds glamorous, but it was a
city bus with cracked windows, and every once in awhile, our guide would yell a fact about an area we passed (“This is north beach…this is south beach…”etc.). More interesting, I think, would have been a tour where the guide told us what was a good place to visit (“This is an area that you should never go in; this is an area that is only safe in 
groups over 10 people during the hours of 10 and 2…”etc.). It was nice to have a better idea of what the town looks like, though. It is a beautiful, historic downtown. We also drove on some of the Grand Prix route – it’s happening on Feb 24th, I believe. 
Then, I signed up for the diving club! They have lots of clubs here, including fencing, sailing, and yoga (although this yoga club is some kind of religion, so I avoided eye contact as I walked past their table). Anyhow, I’m pretty excited about the diving. They take us up the coast to do our training, as well as arrange dive trips to Mozambique and other cool places. To get my dive certification with so many amazing places to go at my fingertips is pretty sweet. That, and they had a free ‘wine tasting’ to accompany their weekly braai (traditional barbeque) this week. That went over well, considering the wine here is some of the best in the world!
Our next activity was a tour of community outreach sites. We took a bus through
the beautiful Valley of 1000 Hills and visited one of the few rural AIDS orphanages. For some reason, the government won’t fund the rural orphanages, only the urban ones. Unfortunately, the kids were all at school, so it was an odd tour through the rooms of some African children who weren’t there to connect with. Next on the tour, we tried to visit a community library that is just down the hill from my school. It’s in the centre of a ‘settlement’, which is similar to the shantytowns on the outskirts of the city (where 2 of the 3 million people in Durban reside), but it’s unsanctioned, and it’s in the middle of town. Unfortunately, due to the load shedding (which is another way of saying blackout. They are having an energy crisis, so often lights will be off for about 2 hours at a time) the gates wouldn’t work to let us in, so our tour ended rather abruptly. This was our last activity organized by the school for the exchange students, so we are free to arrange our own events now.Actually, I should clarify what an international student is. We had an (emergency) residents meeting last night, because they were organizing the students strike due to housing problems, and they wanted some input. I found out that there are many international students here, but “some are considered more international than others.” So, for the students, like myself, that have schools with partnerships with the University of KwaZulu Natal, there are activities, transportation from the airport arranged, etc. But for those who are not from South Africa, but are not on an exchange, they are on their own.
We had another braai this week at the dive club, but this time, it was combined with a FREE South African wine and cheese! Oh man. That is the best club ever.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Durban
After an exhausting 13 hour flight to Durban, we arrived. I flew out of London, where I met up with the other student, Taylor, from Calgary who was flying to Durban. Unfortunately, I was not upgraded this time, and there is a huge difference between the service that you get when you pay a student price. No longer referring to me as madam, or apologizing for running over my foot, or pushing my chair. It wasn't a very relaxing flight - my pillow and blanket stolen from under my seat.... I could go on.... but the flight ended well - I arrived safely in South Africa!
We were picked up from the airport from our University of KwaZulu Natal representatives, and whisked away to our campus at Howard college, a lush, green area at the top of a hill that overlooks the port and the ocean. This college was an English college, so the architecture is representative of that influence. We arrived at our dorm, only to throw our things in the room, and then join the other international students across campus for our orientation to begin. It's so hard to remember everyone's name and where they are from when you are meeting so many people all at once. Our first activity was shopping at The Pavilion, which is a mall on the opposing hill that just happens to be the biggest in the southern hemisphere. We had soo much to buy, but since we hadn't visited our rooms too much yet, we had no idea just how much we needed. No dishes, no hangars, no nothing. The most essential purchases of the trip were a new cell phone, and a fan, which has been in constant use since I bought it. We are encouraged not to buy an expensive phone, because they are stolen so often. This has proven to be very true, since 3 international students have already had theirs stolen.
After dealing with both my debit card and credit card not working during these crucial purchases, were were allowed to go back to rez for awhile to deal with the aftermath of travelling for so long. It was fun to unpack and make my barren room more my own. We are provided with a desk, wardrobe, bed, and sink, so it takes some creativity to make it look homey. I'm still working on it - I've been to the mall two times since then, though, and I feel like no matter how much more I buy to stock up, I will still need to spend more. The prices are verrrrry reasonable here (as in designer shirts for $40!). The translation is hard to do, though - the translation is 6 Rand to $1, so I have gotten pretty good at dividing by 6 lately. That evening, we went out to a club, which was pretty similar to clubs at home - super fun!
The next day was full of actual in-class orientation. One of the more difficult topics was the HIV clinic's lecture, who mentioned that their mission is to get more people to graduate, and not die first. This is the reality here.
After being overwhelmed by hours of orientation, we went to a Braai (traditional barbeque) by the campus pool. My first experience with South African food was salad in a bun (no plates available). It's lovely getting to know the other international students here. Many of them are younger than me, but some are older - still, we get along well already.
The next day was the registration saga. So, they have hardly any internet access here. No wireless, and only one small computer lab with really slow lans. As such, class registration isn't online, it's in person. And in order to get course approval, you must go to each faculty head and get their signature before submitting it. And after you are all sweaty from going up and down hundreds of stairs, it's time for your ID card picture! Yay! This card goes with you everywhere, it is the access card to the campus, the rez, the school, the lan, everywhere! So, having a decent picture would be nice, but I guess it doesn't happen for anyone here, after the huge process that we had to go through. The international students are lucky because we got to do registration on Friday, instead of all of next week, when the rest of the school registers. Life on campus is going to change very soon, with lots more people arriving at the residences this weekend. The girl's side of my dorm resembles a prison, with a large open area in the middle. I can imagine that it gets pretty loud in there. I'm glad to have my ipod in case I need to block out the noise. I haven't used it yet - with the windows open, it is loud with jungly noises, but that's still charming at this point. We saw a snake on the way back to rez yesterday, and the way here, we saw a monkey! Another girl has trouble sleeping at night because they are so loud outside her window.
On Friday night we went out to another club, but this time it had a more African focus, with the music and the clientele. The creepy guy saga continues here.
Saturday was beach day! We took a koombi (aka taxi) that is public transit here. You go out to the stop at the bottom of the hill, and make sure the minivan is going to the right place, and then pile in. Then you give your money to the person in front of you, letting them know how many people it includes. It is all handed up to the driver, who counts the money and makes sure it is all there before he lets anyone off. Quite the experience!
It was super fast to take this taxi to the beach - about 15 minutes, and less than a dollar later, I was viewing the Indian Ocean. We all spread out and dove right in - huge waves that make you crave surfing (which I am totally trying, eventually). The water was a lot warmer than anywhere else I have been, and the sand was so fine. Mmmhmm. 15 minutes away from me!! Amazing. Just as long as I put more sunscreen on next time. Compared to the other international students, I did pretty well (as in not quite lobster red) despite putting cream on all the time.
Belongings are to be watched at all times on the beach, I was told, but I didn't know just how tricky the thieves can be. The couple sitting next to our group was distracted by one man in front of them, while the other crawled sneakily behind them and grabbed their stuff. They weren't smart enough for me though - once I noticed, I walked over, yelling "excuse me!!", which helped the couple to realize what was going on, and stop the theft. It is sooo common here, I haven't brought my camera with me much. I need a safer purse before I do that - another trip to the mall, I guess!
Last night we went to Joe Cools, which is the beachfront place to eat in the day, and the place to drink/dance at night. Alcohol is so cheap here. We paid a 40 Rand covercharge for an open bar! That's like $6 for all you can drink! International students know how to party.
Today we took it easy for once. After we went shopping at a different mall (I'm going to be soo poor!), we came back to have some time to chill. Our week starts with more orientation tomorrow bright and early. It is great living on campus so that my commute time is only as fast or slow as I want to go up and down the many stairs (watching out for monkeys on the way!).
Love to all!
We were picked up from the airport from our University of KwaZulu Natal representatives, and whisked away to our campus at Howard college, a lush, green area at the top of a hill that overlooks the port and the ocean. This college was an English college, so the architecture is representative of that influence. We arrived at our dorm, only to throw our things in the room, and then join the other international students across campus for our orientation to begin. It's so hard to remember everyone's name and where they are from when you are meeting so many people all at once. Our first activity was shopping at The Pavilion, which is a mall on the opposing hill that just happens to be the biggest in the southern hemisphere. We had soo much to buy, but since we hadn't visited our rooms too much yet, we had no idea just how much we needed. No dishes, no hangars, no nothing. The most essential purchases of the trip were a new cell phone, and a fan, which has been in constant use since I bought it. We are encouraged not to buy an expensive phone, because they are stolen so often. This has proven to be very true, since 3 international students have already had theirs stolen.
After dealing with both my debit card and credit card not working during these crucial purchases, were were allowed to go back to rez for awhile to deal with the aftermath of travelling for so long. It was fun to unpack and make my barren room more my own. We are provided with a desk, wardrobe, bed, and sink, so it takes some creativity to make it look homey. I'm still working on it - I've been to the mall two times since then, though, and I feel like no matter how much more I buy to stock up, I will still need to spend more. The prices are verrrrry reasonable here (as in designer shirts for $40!). The translation is hard to do, though - the translation is 6 Rand to $1, so I have gotten pretty good at dividing by 6 lately. That evening, we went out to a club, which was pretty similar to clubs at home - super fun!
The next day was full of actual in-class orientation. One of the more difficult topics was the HIV clinic's lecture, who mentioned that their mission is to get more people to graduate, and not die first. This is the reality here.
After being overwhelmed by hours of orientation, we went to a Braai (traditional barbeque) by the campus pool. My first experience with South African food was salad in a bun (no plates available). It's lovely getting to know the other international students here. Many of them are younger than me, but some are older - still, we get along well already.
The next day was the registration saga. So, they have hardly any internet access here. No wireless, and only one small computer lab with really slow lans. As such, class registration isn't online, it's in person. And in order to get course approval, you must go to each faculty head and get their signature before submitting it. And after you are all sweaty from going up and down hundreds of stairs, it's time for your ID card picture! Yay! This card goes with you everywhere, it is the access card to the campus, the rez, the school, the lan, everywhere! So, having a decent picture would be nice, but I guess it doesn't happen for anyone here, after the huge process that we had to go through. The international students are lucky because we got to do registration on Friday, instead of all of next week, when the rest of the school registers. Life on campus is going to change very soon, with lots more people arriving at the residences this weekend. The girl's side of my dorm resembles a prison, with a large open area in the middle. I can imagine that it gets pretty loud in there. I'm glad to have my ipod in case I need to block out the noise. I haven't used it yet - with the windows open, it is loud with jungly noises, but that's still charming at this point. We saw a snake on the way back to rez yesterday, and the way here, we saw a monkey! Another girl has trouble sleeping at night because they are so loud outside her window.
On Friday night we went out to another club, but this time it had a more African focus, with the music and the clientele. The creepy guy saga continues here.
Saturday was beach day! We took a koombi (aka taxi) that is public transit here. You go out to the stop at the bottom of the hill, and make sure the minivan is going to the right place, and then pile in. Then you give your money to the person in front of you, letting them know how many people it includes. It is all handed up to the driver, who counts the money and makes sure it is all there before he lets anyone off. Quite the experience!
It was super fast to take this taxi to the beach - about 15 minutes, and less than a dollar later, I was viewing the Indian Ocean. We all spread out and dove right in - huge waves that make you crave surfing (which I am totally trying, eventually). The water was a lot warmer than anywhere else I have been, and the sand was so fine. Mmmhmm. 15 minutes away from me!! Amazing. Just as long as I put more sunscreen on next time. Compared to the other international students, I did pretty well (as in not quite lobster red) despite putting cream on all the time.
Belongings are to be watched at all times on the beach, I was told, but I didn't know just how tricky the thieves can be. The couple sitting next to our group was distracted by one man in front of them, while the other crawled sneakily behind them and grabbed their stuff. They weren't smart enough for me though - once I noticed, I walked over, yelling "excuse me!!", which helped the couple to realize what was going on, and stop the theft. It is sooo common here, I haven't brought my camera with me much. I need a safer purse before I do that - another trip to the mall, I guess!
Last night we went to Joe Cools, which is the beachfront place to eat in the day, and the place to drink/dance at night. Alcohol is so cheap here. We paid a 40 Rand covercharge for an open bar! That's like $6 for all you can drink! International students know how to party.
Today we took it easy for once. After we went shopping at a different mall (I'm going to be soo poor!), we came back to have some time to chill. Our week starts with more orientation tomorrow bright and early. It is great living on campus so that my commute time is only as fast or slow as I want to go up and down the many stairs (watching out for monkeys on the way!).
Love to all!
I love Paris in the Winter
I began my adventure in Paris, where my friend (more like sister) is doing her study abroad. It was hard to say goodbye to family and friends at home, but with the excitement of a big trip, it wasn't so bad.
The trip began well - my ticket was upgraded! I was given a taste of first class, which was great for a long haul flight. AND, I was under the weight limit for my baggage! 22.2 kgs, baby! So, For anyone not used to preordering meals, I would absolutely recommend it. I got my food about 45 minutes ahead of everyone, which was sweet, except I think that's why the guy beside me wasn't too chatty.
Hanna met me at the airport terminal, which seemed to be modelled after a UFO landing site or something, with parkade style cement columns and glass tubes to walk through. She took me right to my hostel, which was amazing!! Well, amazing for a hostel. Free sheets AND towels! And I was upgraded, yet again, to a smaller room (only sharing with three others instead of 6). Nice. And only on the 1st floor (instead of lugging everything up to the 5th floor - no lifts, dontcha know.) However, here the numbering system is such that the main floor is not 1, it's 0, which can get to be confusing in malls and such.
After I got settled, we walked up to Hanna's apartment, which was a very short (but very steep) jaunt up the hill. If you are familiar with Montmartre, she is on it. And the metro stops all end at the bottom of the mountain, not at the top. We worked off all the pastries that we ate just by going back to her place! Her apartment is pretty typical for Paris - very small. It is fun to visit, though, with the interesting addition of a bathtub to the kitchen. Nice artistic touches.
Next we went off for some food, which we found near Pigalle, close to Moulin Rouge! For those who haven't been there, that means it's in just about the worst part of town, and as such, this is where my encounters with creepy men began! Guys here are very forward - as in, make eye contact, and they will follow you. Even if you do your best to bitch them out. However, turns out Fuck off is a pretty international term! We took a taxi home that night, which seemed like a good idea, until the guy went for ages in the wrong direction, and then stopped to look at a map of where we wanted to be. Super.
My first full day in Paris began like everyones should - a visit to the Lafayette Market for some food. This is where I tried my first macaroons, which are nothing like at home. Picture two soft meringue cookies squished together with different fillings. Mmm. Our next activity was getting a metro pass, which was pretty cool. You get your picture taken at a booth, and then buy a pass. I totally felt like a local using it, which was wicked.
Then we made our way to Champs Elysees, which was busy as ever. Can I recommend people not visit the Starbucks there? 5 Euro for a tall frappucino isn't worth it, even if you are craving familiarity and a clean bathroom.
In the evening, we went off the La Marais, which is a lovely district for restaurants. The weather was pretty consistently hovering around 7C in the day, and 3C ish at night. We watched some ice skating next to the river for awhile, before finding some food. As usual, when Hanna and I get together, eating seems to be our main activity. So, you can imagine us set free in the land of pastries and cakes on every corner!
The next day, we were a bit more intellectual, and went to Musee D'Orsay. It is gigantic, and impressive, and totally worthwhile, even with the Louvre as competition. On our way to the next eating establishment, we happened past a pretty intense rally at la bastille, which we couldn't figure out, but it had an impressive number of people at it. Next stop: shopping, which was incredibly disappointing. Isn't Paris known for fashion? Not where we were looking, apparently. Then, we went off to see La Defense, which is a gigantic modern version of the Arc de Triomphe.
Our next cultural excursion was to the Paris nightlife. We tried out a local bar, which was great, but expensive. Then we were off to sample club life. The one we chose was a house club (and that's house music, a type of electronic music) set in a large red barge on the banks of the Seine river. Unfortunately, when we arrived at around midnight, it was suuuper creepy - you could hear it creeking, and there weren't many people there yet. So, we decided to check out another club - luckily the metro was still working until 1ish, and we made it to Le Rex, another (probably cooler) house club in the city. It goes from midnight until 6am, which we were troopers for and stayed for. At first, it was really strange - it reminded me of zombie aerobics - people were all facing the dj, and totally in a trance with the music, moving slowly to the beat. Once I got over how strange that was, it was totally cool. To finish off the night, we did it Parisian style and had crepes with nutella, the BEST post-dancing food. By the time we were done, it was daylight, and the metro was working again.
The next day was rather chilly - we tried to be intellectual, despite our exhaustion, and see the Musee Rodin, but it was closed when we arrived. So instead, we went to a cafe for the best hot chocolate I have ever had, and stuck bites of the pastries that we had bought across the street. A perfect way to warm up in Paris. We visited Centre Pompidou on the way back from our activities, which was quite a sight. More glass tunnels that look like the transport tubes from the Jetsons, just stuck on to the side of the building. Very cool.
That evening, we met up with Hanna's roommate and her friends for an evening at a Brazilian club near her house - I was so jealous that all the places we were visiting will be so close to Hanna during her stay in Paris. We tried to do some things that she would be doing while she's there - I visited my first laundrymat, which was interesting. It's kinda clausterphobic though, because if you are stuck talking to anyone creepy, you can't just leave, or you will have wet clothes to look forward to.
We finally made it to see Rodin's Thinker statue, which was exquisitely beautiful. Then, off to refresh my memory of Notre Dam. That evening, Hanna introduced me to the exciting world of soccer (or football, which I will have to learn to call it - everyone here knows and loves it). We watched an Italian league game in the only bar in the city that was playing it, so you knew that everyone there was a true fan of the game and the team. It was there that I tried an amazing pizza - the French know their cheeses, and this pizza had blue cheese on it, which was soooo great! Definately trying that again.
Pere Lachaise was an interesting excursion - you don't often tell people, or get excited about, seeing the remains of dead people, but we sure did. We were glad to have bought a map of the cemetary, because otherwise we would have been so lost, which can get creepy when you are walking among mausoleums.
Then we went off to see Saint Chapelle, which is an exquisite (you guessed it) chapel with stunning stained glass. Usually churches are free, but this one is sooo special that you have to pay for it. Our next meal was found at the Bon Marche, which every city should have. It's as big as a department store, and it's all specialty food. From there, we took a bus to see the Eiffel Tower. It was freezing, but beautiful. I love that building!
For our last evening together, we went to a great Indian restaurant in the Abbesse, which is a great district close to Sacre Coeur (you may remember it from the movie Amelie). We visited a pub afterwards, and had the greatest cider! When I was in Finland, we had wonderful pear cider there, but in France, I'm all about apple cider.
The next day, I was the annoying person in my room that was packing things at 6am. No matter how slow you zip them, zippers are really loud, A bit like candy wrappers during a play, zippers are really loud, no matter how slow you zip them. For breakfast? Cake, of course. I decided to change it up from my usual croissant. It gave me the energy to deal with the post office, which was just short of being a nightmare. There was already a lineup at 9am. The only reason I survived was that I had my translator with me. Otherwise the two women swearing at each other over who would sell me the post box would have been rather distressing.
And then, off to the airport. Paris was fantastic. We were doing the things that many tourists don't get around to doing, which allowed me to see the 'real' Paris.
Pictures to follow - African internet sucks.
The trip began well - my ticket was upgraded! I was given a taste of first class, which was great for a long haul flight. AND, I was under the weight limit for my baggage! 22.2 kgs, baby! So, For anyone not used to preordering meals, I would absolutely recommend it. I got my food about 45 minutes ahead of everyone, which was sweet, except I think that's why the guy beside me wasn't too chatty.
Hanna met me at the airport terminal, which seemed to be modelled after a UFO landing site or something, with parkade style cement columns and glass tubes to walk through. She took me right to my hostel, which was amazing!! Well, amazing for a hostel. Free sheets AND towels! And I was upgraded, yet again, to a smaller room (only sharing with three others instead of 6). Nice. And only on the 1st floor (instead of lugging everything up to the 5th floor - no lifts, dontcha know.) However, here the numbering system is such that the main floor is not 1, it's 0, which can get to be confusing in malls and such.
After I got settled, we walked up to Hanna's apartment, which was a very short (but very steep) jaunt up the hill. If you are familiar with Montmartre, she is on it. And the metro stops all end at the bottom of the mountain, not at the top. We worked off all the pastries that we ate just by going back to her place! Her apartment is pretty typical for Paris - very small. It is fun to visit, though, with the interesting addition of a bathtub to the kitchen. Nice artistic touches.
Next we went off for some food, which we found near Pigalle, close to Moulin Rouge! For those who haven't been there, that means it's in just about the worst part of town, and as such, this is where my encounters with creepy men began! Guys here are very forward - as in, make eye contact, and they will follow you. Even if you do your best to bitch them out. However, turns out Fuck off is a pretty international term! We took a taxi home that night, which seemed like a good idea, until the guy went for ages in the wrong direction, and then stopped to look at a map of where we wanted to be. Super.
My first full day in Paris began like everyones should - a visit to the Lafayette Market for some food. This is where I tried my first macaroons, which are nothing like at home. Picture two soft meringue cookies squished together with different fillings. Mmm. Our next activity was getting a metro pass, which was pretty cool. You get your picture taken at a booth, and then buy a pass. I totally felt like a local using it, which was wicked.
Then we made our way to Champs Elysees, which was busy as ever. Can I recommend people not visit the Starbucks there? 5 Euro for a tall frappucino isn't worth it, even if you are craving familiarity and a clean bathroom.
In the evening, we went off the La Marais, which is a lovely district for restaurants. The weather was pretty consistently hovering around 7C in the day, and 3C ish at night. We watched some ice skating next to the river for awhile, before finding some food. As usual, when Hanna and I get together, eating seems to be our main activity. So, you can imagine us set free in the land of pastries and cakes on every corner!
The next day, we were a bit more intellectual, and went to Musee D'Orsay. It is gigantic, and impressive, and totally worthwhile, even with the Louvre as competition. On our way to the next eating establishment, we happened past a pretty intense rally at la bastille, which we couldn't figure out, but it had an impressive number of people at it. Next stop: shopping, which was incredibly disappointing. Isn't Paris known for fashion? Not where we were looking, apparently. Then, we went off to see La Defense, which is a gigantic modern version of the Arc de Triomphe.
Our next cultural excursion was to the Paris nightlife. We tried out a local bar, which was great, but expensive. Then we were off to sample club life. The one we chose was a house club (and that's house music, a type of electronic music) set in a large red barge on the banks of the Seine river. Unfortunately, when we arrived at around midnight, it was suuuper creepy - you could hear it creeking, and there weren't many people there yet. So, we decided to check out another club - luckily the metro was still working until 1ish, and we made it to Le Rex, another (probably cooler) house club in the city. It goes from midnight until 6am, which we were troopers for and stayed for. At first, it was really strange - it reminded me of zombie aerobics - people were all facing the dj, and totally in a trance with the music, moving slowly to the beat. Once I got over how strange that was, it was totally cool. To finish off the night, we did it Parisian style and had crepes with nutella, the BEST post-dancing food. By the time we were done, it was daylight, and the metro was working again.
The next day was rather chilly - we tried to be intellectual, despite our exhaustion, and see the Musee Rodin, but it was closed when we arrived. So instead, we went to a cafe for the best hot chocolate I have ever had, and stuck bites of the pastries that we had bought across the street. A perfect way to warm up in Paris. We visited Centre Pompidou on the way back from our activities, which was quite a sight. More glass tunnels that look like the transport tubes from the Jetsons, just stuck on to the side of the building. Very cool.
That evening, we met up with Hanna's roommate and her friends for an evening at a Brazilian club near her house - I was so jealous that all the places we were visiting will be so close to Hanna during her stay in Paris. We tried to do some things that she would be doing while she's there - I visited my first laundrymat, which was interesting. It's kinda clausterphobic though, because if you are stuck talking to anyone creepy, you can't just leave, or you will have wet clothes to look forward to.
We finally made it to see Rodin's Thinker statue, which was exquisitely beautiful. Then, off to refresh my memory of Notre Dam. That evening, Hanna introduced me to the exciting world of soccer (or football, which I will have to learn to call it - everyone here knows and loves it). We watched an Italian league game in the only bar in the city that was playing it, so you knew that everyone there was a true fan of the game and the team. It was there that I tried an amazing pizza - the French know their cheeses, and this pizza had blue cheese on it, which was soooo great! Definately trying that again.
Pere Lachaise was an interesting excursion - you don't often tell people, or get excited about, seeing the remains of dead people, but we sure did. We were glad to have bought a map of the cemetary, because otherwise we would have been so lost, which can get creepy when you are walking among mausoleums.
Then we went off to see Saint Chapelle, which is an exquisite (you guessed it) chapel with stunning stained glass. Usually churches are free, but this one is sooo special that you have to pay for it. Our next meal was found at the Bon Marche, which every city should have. It's as big as a department store, and it's all specialty food. From there, we took a bus to see the Eiffel Tower. It was freezing, but beautiful. I love that building!
For our last evening together, we went to a great Indian restaurant in the Abbesse, which is a great district close to Sacre Coeur (you may remember it from the movie Amelie). We visited a pub afterwards, and had the greatest cider! When I was in Finland, we had wonderful pear cider there, but in France, I'm all about apple cider.
The next day, I was the annoying person in my room that was packing things at 6am. No matter how slow you zip them, zippers are really loud, A bit like candy wrappers during a play, zippers are really loud, no matter how slow you zip them. For breakfast? Cake, of course. I decided to change it up from my usual croissant. It gave me the energy to deal with the post office, which was just short of being a nightmare. There was already a lineup at 9am. The only reason I survived was that I had my translator with me. Otherwise the two women swearing at each other over who would sell me the post box would have been rather distressing.
And then, off to the airport. Paris was fantastic. We were doing the things that many tourists don't get around to doing, which allowed me to see the 'real' Paris.
Pictures to follow - African internet sucks.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Cuba 2007/2008
Our journey began with a stop in Winnipeg, and then through Toronto to our destination, Havana. Airport security was an issue for the first time – I have carried my Swiss Army Credit card in my wallet through security in Europe, the US, and domestically, and I haven’t had a problem – until this trip. The cool things were confiscated (even though I claimed the knife was just a dull nail file), and then I was wanded and given a ‘random’ pat-down.
From the look of Cuban customs, I was nervous for a similar experience. You must go through each window as an individual, not as a family, and they all looked very serious. There is a do not cross line that is strictly enforced by government personnel, who look intimidating, but it’s hard to take anyone in sweat pants too seriously.
Pepe, our driver, met us and took us to our sweet hotel, the Telegrafo. There, we began the festivities with a mojito on the patio looking onto central park and the sweet 50s cars circling past. We went for a walk in what we would later learn is an unsafe neighbourhood. Everyone knows how to ask “where are you from?” but they don’t know any other English. Learned quickly that social rules are much different – as in don’t look at anyone, or they will think you are interested in them. And they talk about you. A lot. And they stare. A lot. It was a challenge to keep my eyes looking low when I wanted to take in the sights of central Havana. At times it looked like a formerly war-torn city, with lots of reconstruction work going on.
We walked along the Malecon, which is the beautiful street beside the ocean. This is where some sneaky kids threw a gigantic spider at me. Well, they wanted me to think it was a spider – they looked devious, so I knew something was up. They got close (personal space is also much different here) and screamed ‘BLEH!’ and threw a rubber spider replica at me, which this arachnophobe just calmly walked away from. I’m sure they must get some pretty sweet reactions from tourists, but not this one!
Another challenge on our first day was dealing with traffic. In Cuba, pedestrians have no rights (legally true or not, that is the reality), so crossing the street is a caution. We made the mistake of crossing at the lights on our first night, which is a rather complex setting that is best to be avoided at all costs – there are cars going all directions at ALL times, apparently. So, when I tried crossing the street and quickly realized that a car was going to hit me, I turned back, only to have my foot run over by another speeding vehicle. Many firsts happened on this trip – being run over was one of them. On an unrelated note, there are a large number of three-legged dogs in Havana.
After the excitement, we decided to stay at our hotel for dinner, even though we had heard that Palodares (home-based restaurants) are the only place you will find good food. Our experience verified that statement. I was not expecting to have much luck with eating good food in Cuba, but I had a surprisingly difficult time finding any vegetarian food, especially in a place where the national diet is rice and beans! Salad here meant shredded cabbage, cucumber, canned beans, some sliced tomatoes, and oil and vinegar if you’re lucky. Cabbage was in season, and, like all produce here, is made in an organic community garden. Still, that doesn’t get me too excited about it. Our dessert was another common item – crème caramel, which was paired with chocolate ice cream (that tasted like soy ice cream. Ugh. Ice cream is very popular here, but they would never turn back if they had tasted my homemade ice cream.)
We got an early wake-up call (no alarm clocks in any of our rooms in Cuba), which called twice. Apparently, real people make wakeup calls here, and not automated voice systems. They must have thought we were pretty rude to have hung up on them, twice!
Breakfast included many savoury items like salads and cold-cuts, which we quickly stuffed in before our bus arrived to take us to the southern city of Trinidad. Like many things, the bus arrived on Cuban time – late. It was decent, though. Not a 50s bus, but a Chinese bus! The headrests were about a foot too low, but we survived. We made a few stops a touristy coffee venues. To my mom’s dismay, milk is not served with coffee – it’s either strong and black (and caffeinated), or nothing. They just can’t understand why anyone would drink coffee if it didn’t have caffeine in it. Another interesting experience is public bathrooms, where you pay for 1-ply, and no toilet seats, and the doors are about 5 feet tall.
We disembarked from the bus at the wrong location in Trinidad, and were quickly surrounded by hoards of casa touts trying to get us to stay at their houses. Casa Particulares are something like bed and breakfasts, but the breakfast is not always included. Through my mom’s Cuban contact Jorge (pronounced Hore-hey), we booked a casa with Jesus.
Pretty sweet, considering it was Christmas and all (I stayed with Jesus at Christmas!)… okay, so you pronounce it Hey-Zeus, but still, pretty sweet. Once he came and rescued us from the touts (he was waiting for us at the bus station, of all places), we arrived at his gorgeous home. We walked, because our luggage alone filled the taxi. We chilled out on their rooftop patio overlooking the city, with freshly squeezed OJ in our hands. The home had an open concept, with a large mango tree growing in the middle of the kitchen! Like many people here, they have a caged bird, in addition to the many wild birds that enjoy chilling out in their courtyard.
Once we settled in, we walked around the old part of town, which is a UNESCO world heritage site. Very lovely cobblestone streets, which cars are forbidden to drive on. Everywhere was very clean – people sweeping their sidewalks and washing everything down. Lots of dogs wandering around everywhere. Most of them are small, like wiener-dogs, probably because that is the threshold of size that can survive on scavenging here. They never barked, unless they saw a dog they didn’t know inside a house. That was the only time our casa owner’s dog, Mealy, barked – it was at the strays. I’m sure their dog’s name has some pleasant translation.
The drinks are ALWAYS strong in Cuba. One popular drink here is a Canchanchara, made with Cuban honey, lemon, and rum. Still, I continued my quest to find the best mojito in town, and found it at their most popular tourist location – Casa de la Musiqua. We spent many nights here on the expansive stone steps that were filled with people listening and dancing to the bands. The dancing that they do is unbelievable! It made me wish that I learned to Salsa before I arrived.
Sometimes children approached us for bonbons (I brought Chicklets with me, which went over well). I totally don’t blame them, though. Despite their thriving sugar-cane industry, there was nary a candy in sight. They make some gross chocolate, but no actual candy. The confectionary store is full of cookies (as in digestive biscuits and ice wafers) and rum. I think I would beg people for candy, too, if that was all that was available.
We sampled a few paladares for dinner, and the food was a bit better than the restaurant – the seafood eaters did well here. Black bean soup was good, served with rice, salad, fried plantains, and tortillas (which are, disappointingly, omelettes). For dessert, fruit plates are the norm. The fruit here is exquisite. Every morning we would be given a plate mounded with mini-banana slices, oranges, papaya, pineapple, and guava. Mmm. This was always served with omelettes, fresh buns and honey, and freshly squeezed OJ, or on special days, fresh pineapple juice (drool).
Their portions here are a bit out of hand. I thought they served us big portions because they think Canadians like to eat a lot, but when we met with Jorge, we found out that the portions are that size because that’s the way Cubans like to eat! No wonder it’s hard to find a place to eat for lunch – they are still stuffed from breakfast, and can look forward to eating a gigantic meal at dinner. Well, that might not be true for all Cubans – they are very skinny! Everyone is provided with monthly rations of various beans, rice, flour, sugar, etc. This is generally enough to eat well for 20 days, so some creativity is used to make it through the other days.
We had luck with finding food in Trinidad one night, after we ventured into a restaurant. This is different than a Paladares because it is government owned, while some Paladares are not legally sanctioned, and thus don’t pay taxes. This worked well for us when we invited
some people that my Dad met to have dinner with us. They didn’t know a lot of English, but were very lovely to get to know. My minimal French background came in handy when trying to decipher some Spanish phrases. All three of them ordered the seafood platter, which included lobster. After further interpretation, we found out that it is illegal for Cubans to eat lobster (as in, you get put in jail if you are caught eating it) – it was the first time one of them had ever eaten lobster. I was curious why they don’t hate tourists – we come to their beautiful country, and they give us everything they have, even things they can’t have themselves. I’m pretty sure I would resent that.
Our Christmas eve was much different than normal. We decided to have a Scandanavian tradition, and open our stockings that night, instead of our standard Christmas morning tradition. We set up on the rooftop patio, and ripped into our gifties and ate chocolate, before going out to listen to more Cuban music at a club. We left my dad at the club and decided to venture into a Catholic church for midnight mass, another first for us. This Catholic service was like no other – rockin’ music, clapping, parrots decorating the nativity, skanky dress code etc. They had a procession of the baby Jesus, carried by a very obviously pregnant teenaged ‘Mary’.
Trinidad is up the hill from Ancon, a peninsula with some all-inclusives on it. The beach is beautiful! The water was colder than expected – Varadero was warmer – but it didn’t have any waves on it, which was great to swim in. On Christmas we ventured out to the coral reef to do some snorkelling, which was amazing! When I went snorkelling in the Dominican Republic, I found myself occasionally saying – ‘Look! A fish!’. In Cuba, there were fish everywhere! Lovely colours and shapes – sea urchin, sea cucumber, brain coral, and the cool black and white stripey fish like in ‘Finding Nemo’. I often felt like the snorkeller in that movie, observing the fish as they did the same to me. Except I wasn’t quite as g
raceful – every once in awhile I would get a mouthful of salt water and have to take a spit break before continuing my observations. Seawater is so hard to get used to!
Back on the beach, a caution: sand flies. They are about as big as a grain of sand, but they have a huge impact if many of them bite you. I was spotted with itchy bites for days after our beach adventures.
Another jaunt that we made out of Trinidad was to a nearby sugar plantation. We walked around and found a ’55 Chevy Taxi that took us to the plantation for a huge sum of money – average Cubans make 20 CUCs/month, and we paid 40CUC for a 15KM trip! They didn’t seem too eager to take us, perhaps because it wasn’t an actual taxi (totally illegal, we later found out, after he took the taxi sign off the dash), perhaps because they thought it was such a cool car. Who knows.
Our pimpin’ driver dropped us off behind the plantation (which probably had something to do with it being an illegal trip), and we hiked up to the Mansion and watchtower at the plantation. Beautiful view from the top of the tower, which was probably built to watch slaves, but the story says that it was built because the plantation owner bet he could build a tower higher than the depth his brother could dig a hole. It was pretty clear it was not the latter – no one has found this fabled hole, and it would be pretty hard to miss – this is a big tower! We drank fresh OJ serenaded by a charming musical group that was my favourite of the whole trip. One of the members used to be a high school teacher, but quit because he needed to make more money, and could as a musician.
Money in Cuba is in CUCs for tourists (tourist pesos), and the locals have their own Cuban Pesos. Unfortunately for locals, no one accepts Cuban Pesos. So, when Cubans get paid, they must go to the exchange agent and get tourist pesos so they can buy things. We had to exchange Canadian money for CUCs a few times – the lines get long because both locals and tourists need to get different currency.
The internet here is miserable at best. Takes about 5 minutes to load each page, no exaggerating. The internet is illegal for Cubans, except those who have a permit to have it for their place of work. Some people, like Jorge, find ways around this. When we were waiting in line at the internet café, a local cut in line due to her connections with the moderator, and wrote like crazy, constantly looking behind her to see if anyone was coming.
We found surprisingly little to no military presence here. We saw a cop driving by on a motorcycle as we were being dropped off at the beach by our illegal taxi guy, which made me nervous, until our pimpin’ driver said not to worry – they were friends – and the cop drove right by and waved!
Transportation in Trinidad is not limited to old cars – there are newer ones, too, including Russian, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese cars. Also, they still have horse and carts clopping through the cobblestone streets, and bikes are very popular, too. We took a newer car to go up into the hills behind Trinidad to see a fabled waterfall (only 2 of the 4 of us actually made it). A horse would have been the preferable mode of transportation on this trek!
From the look of Cuban customs, I was nervous for a similar experience. You must go through each window as an individual, not as a family, and they all looked very serious. There is a do not cross line that is strictly enforced by government personnel, who look intimidating, but it’s hard to take anyone in sweat pants too seriously.
Pepe, our driver, met us and took us to our sweet hotel, the Telegrafo. There, we began the festivities with a mojito on the patio looking onto central park and the sweet 50s cars circling past. We went for a walk in what we would later learn is an unsafe neighbourhood. Everyone knows how to ask “where are you from?” but they don’t know any other English. Learned quickly that social rules are much different – as in don’t look at anyone, or they will think you are interested in them. And they talk about you. A lot. And they stare. A lot. It was a challenge to keep my eyes looking low when I wanted to take in the sights of central Havana. At times it looked like a formerly war-torn city, with lots of reconstruction work going on.
We walked along the Malecon, which is the beautiful street beside the ocean. This is where some sneaky kids threw a gigantic spider at me. Well, they wanted me to think it was a spider – they looked devious, so I knew something was up. They got close (personal space is also much different here) and screamed ‘BLEH!’ and threw a rubber spider replica at me, which this arachnophobe just calmly walked away from. I’m sure they must get some pretty sweet reactions from tourists, but not this one!
Another challenge on our first day was dealing with traffic. In Cuba, pedestrians have no rights (legally true or not, that is the reality), so crossing the street is a caution. We made the mistake of crossing at the lights on our first night, which is a rather complex setting that is best to be avoided at all costs – there are cars going all directions at ALL times, apparently. So, when I tried crossing the street and quickly realized that a car was going to hit me, I turned back, only to have my foot run over by another speeding vehicle. Many firsts happened on this trip – being run over was one of them. On an unrelated note, there are a large number of three-legged dogs in Havana.
After the excitement, we decided to stay at our hotel for dinner, even though we had heard that Palodares (home-based restaurants) are the only place you will find good food. Our experience verified that statement. I was not expecting to have much luck with eating good food in Cuba, but I had a surprisingly difficult time finding any vegetarian food, especially in a place where the national diet is rice and beans! Salad here meant shredded cabbage, cucumber, canned beans, some sliced tomatoes, and oil and vinegar if you’re lucky. Cabbage was in season, and, like all produce here, is made in an organic community garden. Still, that doesn’t get me too excited about it. Our dessert was another common item – crème caramel, which was paired with chocolate ice cream (that tasted like soy ice cream. Ugh. Ice cream is very popular here, but they would never turn back if they had tasted my homemade ice cream.)
We got an early wake-up call (no alarm clocks in any of our rooms in Cuba), which called twice. Apparently, real people make wakeup calls here, and not automated voice systems. They must have thought we were pretty rude to have hung up on them, twice!
Breakfast included many savoury items like salads and cold-cuts, which we quickly stuffed in before our bus arrived to take us to the southern city of Trinidad. Like many things, the bus arrived on Cuban time – late. It was decent, though. Not a 50s bus, but a Chinese bus! The headrests were about a foot too low, but we survived. We made a few stops a touristy coffee venues. To my mom’s dismay, milk is not served with coffee – it’s either strong and black (and caffeinated), or nothing. They just can’t understand why anyone would drink coffee if it didn’t have caffeine in it. Another interesting experience is public bathrooms, where you pay for 1-ply, and no toilet seats, and the doors are about 5 feet tall.
We disembarked from the bus at the wrong location in Trinidad, and were quickly surrounded by hoards of casa touts trying to get us to stay at their houses. Casa Particulares are something like bed and breakfasts, but the breakfast is not always included. Through my mom’s Cuban contact Jorge (pronounced Hore-hey), we booked a casa with Jesus.
Pretty sweet, considering it was Christmas and all (I stayed with Jesus at Christmas!)… okay, so you pronounce it Hey-Zeus, but still, pretty sweet. Once he came and rescued us from the touts (he was waiting for us at the bus station, of all places), we arrived at his gorgeous home. We walked, because our luggage alone filled the taxi. We chilled out on their rooftop patio overlooking the city, with freshly squeezed OJ in our hands. The home had an open concept, with a large mango tree growing in the middle of the kitchen! Like many people here, they have a caged bird, in addition to the many wild birds that enjoy chilling out in their courtyard.Once we settled in, we walked around the old part of town, which is a UNESCO world heritage site. Very lovely cobblestone streets, which cars are forbidden to drive on. Everywhere was very clean – people sweeping their sidewalks and washing everything down. Lots of dogs wandering around everywhere. Most of them are small, like wiener-dogs, probably because that is the threshold of size that can survive on scavenging here. They never barked, unless they saw a dog they didn’t know inside a house. That was the only time our casa owner’s dog, Mealy, barked – it was at the strays. I’m sure their dog’s name has some pleasant translation.
The drinks are ALWAYS strong in Cuba. One popular drink here is a Canchanchara, made with Cuban honey, lemon, and rum. Still, I continued my quest to find the best mojito in town, and found it at their most popular tourist location – Casa de la Musiqua. We spent many nights here on the expansive stone steps that were filled with people listening and dancing to the bands. The dancing that they do is unbelievable! It made me wish that I learned to Salsa before I arrived.
Sometimes children approached us for bonbons (I brought Chicklets with me, which went over well). I totally don’t blame them, though. Despite their thriving sugar-cane industry, there was nary a candy in sight. They make some gross chocolate, but no actual candy. The confectionary store is full of cookies (as in digestive biscuits and ice wafers) and rum. I think I would beg people for candy, too, if that was all that was available.
We sampled a few paladares for dinner, and the food was a bit better than the restaurant – the seafood eaters did well here. Black bean soup was good, served with rice, salad, fried plantains, and tortillas (which are, disappointingly, omelettes). For dessert, fruit plates are the norm. The fruit here is exquisite. Every morning we would be given a plate mounded with mini-banana slices, oranges, papaya, pineapple, and guava. Mmm. This was always served with omelettes, fresh buns and honey, and freshly squeezed OJ, or on special days, fresh pineapple juice (drool).Their portions here are a bit out of hand. I thought they served us big portions because they think Canadians like to eat a lot, but when we met with Jorge, we found out that the portions are that size because that’s the way Cubans like to eat! No wonder it’s hard to find a place to eat for lunch – they are still stuffed from breakfast, and can look forward to eating a gigantic meal at dinner. Well, that might not be true for all Cubans – they are very skinny! Everyone is provided with monthly rations of various beans, rice, flour, sugar, etc. This is generally enough to eat well for 20 days, so some creativity is used to make it through the other days.
We had luck with finding food in Trinidad one night, after we ventured into a restaurant. This is different than a Paladares because it is government owned, while some Paladares are not legally sanctioned, and thus don’t pay taxes. This worked well for us when we invited
some people that my Dad met to have dinner with us. They didn’t know a lot of English, but were very lovely to get to know. My minimal French background came in handy when trying to decipher some Spanish phrases. All three of them ordered the seafood platter, which included lobster. After further interpretation, we found out that it is illegal for Cubans to eat lobster (as in, you get put in jail if you are caught eating it) – it was the first time one of them had ever eaten lobster. I was curious why they don’t hate tourists – we come to their beautiful country, and they give us everything they have, even things they can’t have themselves. I’m pretty sure I would resent that.Our Christmas eve was much different than normal. We decided to have a Scandanavian tradition, and open our stockings that night, instead of our standard Christmas morning tradition. We set up on the rooftop patio, and ripped into our gifties and ate chocolate, before going out to listen to more Cuban music at a club. We left my dad at the club and decided to venture into a Catholic church for midnight mass, another first for us. This Catholic service was like no other – rockin’ music, clapping, parrots decorating the nativity, skanky dress code etc. They had a procession of the baby Jesus, carried by a very obviously pregnant teenaged ‘Mary’.
Trinidad is up the hill from Ancon, a peninsula with some all-inclusives on it. The beach is beautiful! The water was colder than expected – Varadero was warmer – but it didn’t have any waves on it, which was great to swim in. On Christmas we ventured out to the coral reef to do some snorkelling, which was amazing! When I went snorkelling in the Dominican Republic, I found myself occasionally saying – ‘Look! A fish!’. In Cuba, there were fish everywhere! Lovely colours and shapes – sea urchin, sea cucumber, brain coral, and the cool black and white stripey fish like in ‘Finding Nemo’. I often felt like the snorkeller in that movie, observing the fish as they did the same to me. Except I wasn’t quite as g
raceful – every once in awhile I would get a mouthful of salt water and have to take a spit break before continuing my observations. Seawater is so hard to get used to!Back on the beach, a caution: sand flies. They are about as big as a grain of sand, but they have a huge impact if many of them bite you. I was spotted with itchy bites for days after our beach adventures.
Another jaunt that we made out of Trinidad was to a nearby sugar plantation. We walked around and found a ’55 Chevy Taxi that took us to the plantation for a huge sum of money – average Cubans make 20 CUCs/month, and we paid 40CUC for a 15KM trip! They didn’t seem too eager to take us, perhaps because it wasn’t an actual taxi (totally illegal, we later found out, after he took the taxi sign off the dash), perhaps because they thought it was such a cool car. Who knows.
Our pimpin’ driver dropped us off behind the plantation (which probably had something to do with it being an illegal trip), and we hiked up to the Mansion and watchtower at the plantation. Beautiful view from the top of the tower, which was probably built to watch slaves, but the story says that it was built because the plantation owner bet he could build a tower higher than the depth his brother could dig a hole. It was pretty clear it was not the latter – no one has found this fabled hole, and it would be pretty hard to miss – this is a big tower! We drank fresh OJ serenaded by a charming musical group that was my favourite of the whole trip. One of the members used to be a high school teacher, but quit because he needed to make more money, and could as a musician.Money in Cuba is in CUCs for tourists (tourist pesos), and the locals have their own Cuban Pesos. Unfortunately for locals, no one accepts Cuban Pesos. So, when Cubans get paid, they must go to the exchange agent and get tourist pesos so they can buy things. We had to exchange Canadian money for CUCs a few times – the lines get long because both locals and tourists need to get different currency.
The internet here is miserable at best. Takes about 5 minutes to load each page, no exaggerating. The internet is illegal for Cubans, except those who have a permit to have it for their place of work. Some people, like Jorge, find ways around this. When we were waiting in line at the internet café, a local cut in line due to her connections with the moderator, and wrote like crazy, constantly looking behind her to see if anyone was coming.
We found surprisingly little to no military presence here. We saw a cop driving by on a motorcycle as we were being dropped off at the beach by our illegal taxi guy, which made me nervous, until our pimpin’ driver said not to worry – they were friends – and the cop drove right by and waved!
Transportation in Trinidad is not limited to old cars – there are newer ones, too, including Russian, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese cars. Also, they still have horse and carts clopping through the cobblestone streets, and bikes are very popular, too. We took a newer car to go up into the hills behind Trinidad to see a fabled waterfall (only 2 of the 4 of us actually made it). A horse would have been the preferable mode of transportation on this trek!
I left Trinidad wanting to meet more of the locals. Everyone we met had such joie de vivre (we haven’t found an appropriate Spanish equivalent to that saying yet). I have much to learn about their appreciation of life.
We left early the next morning for a bus trip up to Varadero for a few days of indulgent excess.
This time, our luggage was carried by two bicycle taxis, as we walked along beside. The bus ride was quicker than our trip from Havana. Except when the drivers started doing their errands on the way – buying banana plants, oranges, sandwiches, fresh juices, etc as we looked out from the windows at them. Once we got into town, they became our taxi, and drove us down to our resort, the Iberostar Playa Alameda (the best on the strip, donchaknow). It was clear that they hadn’t done this before, because they stopped several times to ask where it was. After one of these stops I saw an accident that will make me think more than twice about driving a moped – seeing one stuck under a bus, with a sneaker lying beside it. The day got much better after that, though – our resort was beautiful! We lounged around until my Aunt Carole and Uncle Duane joined the party, and we went to the enormous buffet for dinner. It was my kind of heaven – wheels of blue cheese, decent salads, and a dessert buffet! 
At the resort we spent lots of time relaxing by the beach, pool, and getting into the activities with the entertainment staff. The water aerobics, salsa and merengue lessons got us warmed up for the evening entertainment – nightly shows put on that should have had parental discretion advised. No, they should have advised everyone – these are tacky displays that embarrass everyone involved. Nearing the end of one of the performances, an older audience member even went up and interrupted the show to share her disgust.
Later, we ventured off to the town for a short visit, only to confirm our speculation that it was nothing more than touristy garbage for sale. It was too hot to investigate further, so we took the sweet double-decker bus back to the resort.
Our adventure continued with our trip back to Havana, which included a stop for the BEST Pina Colada EVER! Our driver was lovely. He wanted to get home early though – it was New Year’s Eve, which is also a celebration of the revolution – it is the 49th anniversary. This event seems like our Christmas Eve, which involves lots of family time. On New Year’s Day, many shops and museums were closed.
Once we arrived in Havana, we waited for our hotel room at the luxurious NH Parque Central, which was received in Cuban time. In the mean time, we went up to the rooftop pool to take in the sights and have some less-than-stellar food. And, we had to pay for it, which was an adjustment from the all-inclusive.
That evening, we had a 7-course meal at the hotel restaurant, which had a special menu for New Year’s Eve. Then we walked through old Havana, and watched a band and heard canons fire into the ocean to ring in the new year. It was pretty memorable. As was the walk home. They have a tradition of throwing buckets of agua off the balconies as a metaphorical way to cleanse for the new year. Another interpretation is throwing buckets of water because it’s funny to watch people run around trying to avoid it! It would mostly be tourists, too, because all the locals stay in and celebrate with family, and watch Castro make speeches.
Later in the week, it turned cold (17C ish!), but we still did a fair bit of walking around, venturing to the Hotel Nacional (where Al Capone once rented an entire floor of rooms), around the university, and around the cultural district of Vedado. This area is a bit of a distance from old Havana, where our magnificent hotel was, so we took a horse-drawn carriage
to get there. Everyone seemed to be pointing and laughing at us, presumably because of the ridiculous weather we chose to ride a horse in (the Malecon was closed because the waves were coming over the road and flooding it), and the fact that we were holding up traffic for blocks, but it turns out the attention was more likely because the driver was poised precariously at the rear of the horse. There was definitely more of a government presence in this area, with police or military personnel on every corner. They were just chatting though, they didn’t have guns or anything. Still, they were there.
We also took in a couple museums, including the Museum of Fine Art (Cuban edition), and the Museum of the Revolution, housed next to the preserved boat that Castro
used in his foiled surprise attack. Later we did some touring around Havana, renting a driver and guide (Del Toro, translated as The Bull) to take us to Pinar del Rio, a beautiful valley district. We stopped at an orchid garden on the way, and then ate lunch at the base of a limestone mountain, where a (somewhat tacky) mural of civilization had been painted. There were many caves around this area, and we ventured into one of them, which we boated through.
Along the highway there are propaganda billboards about supporting the revolution and the people, etc. The highways were empty of cars, but not of people. Many people were standing on the side of the road, waiting to hitchhike. And many times, cars that were not full (and full here is not two people, it’s 8) will pick people up.
Public transit in Havana consists of semi-trucks pulling cattle carriers filled with handles in the roof, to make sure you have something to grasp so you don’t fall over. However, I never saw any that weren’t so packed that you could just stand in the middle, and be held up by the pressure of other people. Personal space rules are different here! Still, people are respectful for the most part.
Women in Cuba have good status – they were an integral part of the revolution, and have maintained respect since then. Still, guys make comments and noises as you walk by. Once I got back, it was a bit of an adjustment not to be catcalled. But I never questioned my safety in Cuba. In fact, I felt much safer in Havana walking at night than I do in downtown Calgary.
We made our way back to Havana for dinner, passing one of the vegetarian restaurants in town, which is called The Rock. Del Toro mentioned that the name had something to do with the fact that rocks and vegetables are all they serve there. We didn’t test his theory. Instead, we found an Italian restaurant that served really delicious food. Everywhere we ate, it was fancy (as in, more forks than you know what to do with, fancy). But at this restaurant, it made more sense to be fancy, because the food that was served was above par. So much so, we ate their twice!
We left early the next morning for a bus trip up to Varadero for a few days of indulgent excess.
This time, our luggage was carried by two bicycle taxis, as we walked along beside. The bus ride was quicker than our trip from Havana. Except when the drivers started doing their errands on the way – buying banana plants, oranges, sandwiches, fresh juices, etc as we looked out from the windows at them. Once we got into town, they became our taxi, and drove us down to our resort, the Iberostar Playa Alameda (the best on the strip, donchaknow). It was clear that they hadn’t done this before, because they stopped several times to ask where it was. After one of these stops I saw an accident that will make me think more than twice about driving a moped – seeing one stuck under a bus, with a sneaker lying beside it. The day got much better after that, though – our resort was beautiful! We lounged around until my Aunt Carole and Uncle Duane joined the party, and we went to the enormous buffet for dinner. It was my kind of heaven – wheels of blue cheese, decent salads, and a dessert buffet! 
At the resort we spent lots of time relaxing by the beach, pool, and getting into the activities with the entertainment staff. The water aerobics, salsa and merengue lessons got us warmed up for the evening entertainment – nightly shows put on that should have had parental discretion advised. No, they should have advised everyone – these are tacky displays that embarrass everyone involved. Nearing the end of one of the performances, an older audience member even went up and interrupted the show to share her disgust.
Later, we ventured off to the town for a short visit, only to confirm our speculation that it was nothing more than touristy garbage for sale. It was too hot to investigate further, so we took the sweet double-decker bus back to the resort.
Our adventure continued with our trip back to Havana, which included a stop for the BEST Pina Colada EVER! Our driver was lovely. He wanted to get home early though – it was New Year’s Eve, which is also a celebration of the revolution – it is the 49th anniversary. This event seems like our Christmas Eve, which involves lots of family time. On New Year’s Day, many shops and museums were closed.
Once we arrived in Havana, we waited for our hotel room at the luxurious NH Parque Central, which was received in Cuban time. In the mean time, we went up to the rooftop pool to take in the sights and have some less-than-stellar food. And, we had to pay for it, which was an adjustment from the all-inclusive.
That evening, we had a 7-course meal at the hotel restaurant, which had a special menu for New Year’s Eve. Then we walked through old Havana, and watched a band and heard canons fire into the ocean to ring in the new year. It was pretty memorable. As was the walk home. They have a tradition of throwing buckets of agua off the balconies as a metaphorical way to cleanse for the new year. Another interpretation is throwing buckets of water because it’s funny to watch people run around trying to avoid it! It would mostly be tourists, too, because all the locals stay in and celebrate with family, and watch Castro make speeches.
Later in the week, it turned cold (17C ish!), but we still did a fair bit of walking around, venturing to the Hotel Nacional (where Al Capone once rented an entire floor of rooms), around the university, and around the cultural district of Vedado. This area is a bit of a distance from old Havana, where our magnificent hotel was, so we took a horse-drawn carriage
to get there. Everyone seemed to be pointing and laughing at us, presumably because of the ridiculous weather we chose to ride a horse in (the Malecon was closed because the waves were coming over the road and flooding it), and the fact that we were holding up traffic for blocks, but it turns out the attention was more likely because the driver was poised precariously at the rear of the horse. There was definitely more of a government presence in this area, with police or military personnel on every corner. They were just chatting though, they didn’t have guns or anything. Still, they were there.We also took in a couple museums, including the Museum of Fine Art (Cuban edition), and the Museum of the Revolution, housed next to the preserved boat that Castro
used in his foiled surprise attack. Later we did some touring around Havana, renting a driver and guide (Del Toro, translated as The Bull) to take us to Pinar del Rio, a beautiful valley district. We stopped at an orchid garden on the way, and then ate lunch at the base of a limestone mountain, where a (somewhat tacky) mural of civilization had been painted. There were many caves around this area, and we ventured into one of them, which we boated through.Along the highway there are propaganda billboards about supporting the revolution and the people, etc. The highways were empty of cars, but not of people. Many people were standing on the side of the road, waiting to hitchhike. And many times, cars that were not full (and full here is not two people, it’s 8) will pick people up.
Public transit in Havana consists of semi-trucks pulling cattle carriers filled with handles in the roof, to make sure you have something to grasp so you don’t fall over. However, I never saw any that weren’t so packed that you could just stand in the middle, and be held up by the pressure of other people. Personal space rules are different here! Still, people are respectful for the most part.
Women in Cuba have good status – they were an integral part of the revolution, and have maintained respect since then. Still, guys make comments and noises as you walk by. Once I got back, it was a bit of an adjustment not to be catcalled. But I never questioned my safety in Cuba. In fact, I felt much safer in Havana walking at night than I do in downtown Calgary.
We made our way back to Havana for dinner, passing one of the vegetarian restaurants in town, which is called The Rock. Del Toro mentioned that the name had something to do with the fact that rocks and vegetables are all they serve there. We didn’t test his theory. Instead, we found an Italian restaurant that served really delicious food. Everywhere we ate, it was fancy (as in, more forks than you know what to do with, fancy). But at this restaurant, it made more sense to be fancy, because the food that was served was above par. So much so, we ate their twice!
To sum up, I had a spectacular trip. I would totally recommend going to Cuba, especially venturing out of the resort districts and meeting Cubans, who, along with my family, made this a very special trip. 
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