19 days to go

(Have I mentioned there are elephants everywhere?)

This whole "we're leaving Botswana in three weeks" thing is really distracting. I feel like every day is sort of sliding by with very few noteworthy accomplishments (I did fix the internet in our apartment all by myself today, though). So many big things are happening whether we like it or not--we have to pick an apartment this week, I have an interview for a job I'm excited about, and we're theoretically selling our car.

And at the same time it feels like we are so close to leaving Botswana with (fingers crossed!) no major problems to speak of, except one shotgun wedding, one broken rib, and one week stranded in the Namibian desert.

I think my tendency now is to sort of curl up and keep my head down and try to just get through the rest without screwing anything up.

*

Probably that is why my major concern today is chickpeas. Specifically, dried chickpeas. Does anyone else have trouble with these?

I'm trying to get through all the it-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time purchases in the pantry, like risotto and dried beans, before we move to Penn housing.

But every single time I try to plump up dried chickpeas they're still "al dente" (as A says) by the time I give up. I started boiling these yesterday morning, turned off the heat and let them soak 10 hours, then boiled again, turned off heat, let them soak another 20 or so hours, and now they've been boiling for an hour and a half (on high! in fresh water!) and they are. still. hard.

Is it because I used them as gelt in a game of dreidel last Hanukah?

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There's some kind of theater festival going on and Friday evening we had the option of going to one of three different plays. Needless to say, we were so overwhelmed by these possibilities that we spent the night at Fego and then watched The Wire in bed.

Cape Town, baby!

Last Friday, A and I took off for Cape Town, our LAST big trip of the year. We met up with A's friends J and B, who were still on their marathon adventure through Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa!

We also met up with their friends J and C, who were wonderful hosts during our week in Cape Town. The very first thing we did Saturday morning was climb Table Mountain, which we kind of underestimated as being no big deal.

Actually, it was so hard that I was forced to wear this extremely dorky visor to protect myself from the sun. I can't believe I wore this visor for any amount of time. It might look good on someone lithe and athletic but it made me look like a soccer mom.

The views from the top were nice. Above you can see Lion's Head in the distance and closer, some people rappelling. And there was a really well-air-conditioned restaurant at the top, too. It was nice to look at Table Mountain all week and be like, I have conquered you.

Sunday was wine day! We headed out to Stellenbosch, one of the wine towns. On the way out, we passed a lot of townships. It was a really strange contrast--the city, which is sort of glitzy and LA-like and these third-world remnants. Not to mention us, zipping along in a private bus on our way to spend an entire day drinking wine.

Luckily, nothing wipes away white guilt like drinking at 10am!

(Don't I look romantic?)

We visited four vineyards throughout the day, plus a fifth one where we had lunch. The scenery was beautiful, and the wine was delicious. We had a lot of fun hanging out with friends of friends and seeing all the different styles of wineries. My favorite was the really old one covered in cobwebs and spiders. Now I want to do this again in Northern California! Of course, the difference is that these tastings were either $3.50 or free, whereas in NorCal they'd probably be a lot more.

(He cut off the top of the champagne bottle with a sword. Whatevs.)

By the third winery, A and I were wine-d out. So we did a chocolate and brandy pairing at the third place, and then skipped the tasting at the fourth place and went for a romantic walk under the trees. Who would have thought wineries are so romantic?

That night, we headed out for a kosher dinner, as we hadn't had any meat since November. I have to say, those chicken kebabs were the most succulent, perfectly seasoned, amazing things I have ever eaten in my entire life. Omigoodness, my mouth is watering. When did I turn into such a carnivore?

The following day we paid penance for our luxurious wine day by visiting Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela and other members of the resistance movement were held during apartheid.

(Leaving Cape Town's charming waterfront)

The trip to Robben Island required an especially nauseating ferry ride. As we sped away from Cape Town, it disappeared into the fog, until you could just barely make out the top of Table Mountain. I conquered you, I thought, trying not to vomit.

Once we had our land legs back, we made our way onto a tour bus. The first part of the trip is a narrated bus tour of the island, and we had an awesome tour guide. While he was never held at Robben Island, like most tour guides there, he was a big player in the anti-apartheid movement and he was also a really dramatic and funny host and performer. (I can't remember if he was IKP or PAC. Does anyone who was there remember?)

(Adam looked great on Robben Island.)

After touring the island, which has been used variously as a leper colony, military base, and prison, we headed back to the 20th century prison that was used for political prisoners under apartheid. But not before passing a revolting rotting whale carcass on the beach. This evoked by far the most dramatic response from the passengers on our bus, who all jumped up to take photos of it.

Our guide at the prison was a former prisoner who spent five years living there. I could not get over how new all the buildings were, like wait a minute, you guys JUST did this? You're kidding me.

(I think if I was ever imprisoned I'd be really claustrophobic, because I was claustrophobic just touring this prison, even though we were allowed to leave.)

As we were frequently reminded, the reason so many former prisoners work as tour guides is Not because they want to hang out there more, but because it's a steady job at a time when South Africa is experiencing high unemployment.

This sign was in the bathroom on the ferry. Don't ask me why they felt the need to specifically warn against flushing g-strings. Perhaps the intense emotional impact of a visit to Robben Island causes people to want to rip off their clothing and make love to the next person--white, black, or coloured--that they see, in a orgiastic celebration of racial diversity?

I don't know why they can't just take their g-strings with them afterward, though.

After our morning at Robben Island, we headed to downtown Cape Town, where we experienced the wood-oven-baked pizza and ethnic market offerings of the city. Then some of J and C's South African friends hosted a braai (a barbeque) and we got to have more. kosher. meat.

Tuesday was our last full day in Cape Town and we decided to head down to the Cape of Good Hope. This is not the furthermost southern point on the continent, but it is the farthest south I've ever been.

I wore that pink shirt I always wear in photos for the occasion.

We hiked up to Cape Point, which was just okay, and then took a dramatic and beautiful hike from Cape Point to the Cape of Good Hope itself (no I have no idea what the difference is). On the way, we passed this gorgeous small stretch of beach, where I took dramatic and beautiful photos of cliffs and waves.

In a surprising turn of events, after going down many, many stairs to get to the beach, we then had to climb all the same stairs to get back to the path.

(A and J. BFF. I made A carry my purse.)

On the way back from Cape of Good Hope, we stopped at Boulders Beach, where there is a colony of penguins that you can hang out with! They were really, really silly.

And that was our trip to Cape Town! Now we're back in Gabs (for another 32 days) and just chilling and enjoying being in one place for a while.

Two more countries to check off the list

After a couple of weeks of "real" life, we were ready to go on vacation again with some friends. First to arrive were J and M. J went to college with A; M is his lovely girlfriend. We had a great time showing them the iced coffee-related sites of Gabs, visiting the airport to see if their bags would ever arrive, and going to an actually really awesome comedy show that I will cover in another post. I did not take any pictures of them, because they are hideously ugly.


They left after one day to head to the Delta and then my sister E and her husband P got in a few hours later. We took them to Mokolodi to pet a cheetah, ate at Fego, and had a delightful brunch at Sanitas. We also went to our first rugby game! Could not follow the game for the life of me, but I enjoyed beer and sitting very much.


On Monday, the four of us headed up to Kasane, the base for visits Chobe Game Reserve. There we met up with A's college friends B, J, and J, which is when referring to people by their initials became overly complicated and was abandoned. We started our trip with a sunset safari by boat on the Chobe River. It was awesome! Probably one of our favorite activities this year.


Immediately, we understood why everyone says Chobe is the place to see animals. We saw tons of elephants, hippos, crocodiles, baboons, and more.


In the morning, we went on a game drive through the park and saw even more!





Later that day, we headed for the Zambian border. We took the ferry into Zambia (they are building a bridge, but currently trucks must travel one by one on the ferry, which is insane). It was pretty much immediately clear that Zambia is way more African than Botswana. People tried to sell us stuff, the currency was wildly inflated, our Motswana taxi driver warned us that the Zambians would try to rip us off, and in general there was a frenetic energy that is missing in Botswana.

Just when we became convinced that we were really in Southern Africa, we ended up at a restaurant called Fez Bar.


That naturally served Mexican food.


With our understanding of Zambian culture now firmly established, we headed for the falls!


Which were even more impressive when we zoomed out!


We hiked around the falls a bit, and got completely drenched. I seriously have never been so thoroughly soaked in my life. When the mist briefly cleared, we could glimpse the power of the falls. Luckily my sister's raincoat provided some protection for camera, passports, etc, but it took the rest of the trip for everything to dry. Which is partly why I did not take any photos of the Zimbabwe side.

We also hiked way way down to the river (and way way back up again) to see something called the Boiling Pot, a place where different streams of water meet to create an awesome-Lord of the Rings-type tempestuous whirlpool.

That night we started a nightly tradition of playing "Hats" also known as "Naked" which is a Charades-based game. It's great!


The following morning we headed into Zimbabwe for the day. We walked across the bridge to get there, and then hiked around the park on that side. The views were definitely better from the Zimbabwe side...but we still got drenched. Lesson learned.


Zimbabwe was full of tourists, all of whom were us. The tourism police, who apparently are not just people trying to rob you, followed us all around town, and literally wouldn't let us go anywhere without them. That's always a reassuring feeling.

The place seemed dead. But it didn't matter because we only had one place in mind--the distinguished, colonial, creepy Victoria Falls Hotel. We finished off our day in Zimbabwe with high tea and cocktails on the terrace of the hotel, overlooking the view of the bridge you see above.

On our last morning in Livingstone, we went on a walking tour with a guide from the Livingstone Museum. It was really nice to see the town and not just the falls. We asked him to show us the old synagogue, which still has a big Jewish star painted on it. We also bought fabric for a wedding project I'm working on because I've turned into one of those people who is obsessed with their wedding.


Back in Gabs, we FINALLY hiked Kgale Hill, the big hill in town, with the three boys from college. It was extremely hot and difficult, and we ended up hiking in the middle of one of the hottest days of the year. I don't want to exaggerate, but I nearly died. When we finally made it back down, we each drank an orange Fanta, which tasted exquisite. It literally took us all day to get back to normal, as I think we were all really overheated and dehydrated. Would definitely do this hike differently if we ever do it again! There were also giant baboons everywhere!

Saturday night we had a Setswana cooking lesson with our old housekeeper and ate dinner with her family and some of the dermatologists. If you want recipes for Zimbabwean/Setswana food, like spicy beans, spinach, porridge, dumplings, chakalaka, etc., let me know!


Sunday night we headed to jazz at the Gaborone Sun golf course with sister and brother-in-law. It's a fun time. We also went for a tour of the grounds, including a lovely playground where the kids worked off some steam.


On Monday I took E and P to see the orphanage and to get a tour of "downtown" Gaborone...and to eat at Nando's again. We ate at Nando's four times in a week. It was intense. 33 hours of travel later, they were safe and sound at home in LA. Meanwhile, J and B are still traveling (!) in Namibia and are meeting us in Capetown tomorrow. The adventure continues!

All in all, we had an amazing vacation. Traveling with 9 people is the way to go.

Solitaire, together (Part 1)

(Daisies only make me think of wedding planning--sick.)

I've been meaning to post about our adventures in Namibia for a while. These actually took place over the end of December 2010 and New Year's 2011. But let's pretend it was last week or something. What's the difference to you anyway?

A and I drove to Namibia with our friend D. It takes 12 hours to drive from Gaborone to Windhoek, Namibia's capital city. The scenery doesn't change much, but it's quite pretty.

(Artsy rear-view mirror shot. Did I mention the drive took 12 hours?)

(Either that's a giant bunny in the sky or we were losing it.)

At a rest-stop called Kang halfway between Gabs and the Namibia border, D, who grew up here, ran into someone he knows. They said hi, and then just moved on, like it was no big deal to see a random friend in the middle of nowhere. Botswana really is a small town.

Windhoek was pretty nice, although it seemed to have been abandoned (apparently most people leave for the beach during the summer break). We spent the night there and ate at a West African restaurant for dinner. The food was amazing.

There were two roaches in our hostel dorm room and it was about 100 degrees in the room. Gross.

(Obviously, we're at brunch. Do you see Namibia in the background? Also, look, I'm wearing that pink shirt!)

In the morning, we had brunch and then got on the road again and headed for Swakopmund. As we drove, the scenery became more and more desolate, until there was nothing but sand.

(Already less green than Botswana.)

(Palm trees?!)

Swakopmund is a charming coastal town, that all the guidebooks say is "more German than Germany." I don't know about that (never been to Germany), but it was pretty cute and could not be more different than Botswana. We watched the sun set over the rotten-fish-smelling ocean and the following morning, we went sandboarding.

(Charming D and charming A check out charming Swakopmund.)

(A romantic, fishy sunset.)

(Dunes! Or as D said with his weird Irish-Botswana accent, "djunes!")

Sandboarding was totally sweet! At first it was quite scary (also exhausting to climb those dunes), but there were some little (6 and 8 years old) kids in our group who were fearless. After they went down, how could we be scared? I went both the fastest and farthest of anyone in our group, because I excel at things that aren't quite sports. We rode down the dunes on our tummies, but some people did more like snowboarding in sand.

The sandboarding day was probably the best day of our trip (foreshadowing). After sandboarding, we went to our hotel and washed off the buckets of sand we'd acquired on every surface of our bodies. We took a leisurely walk through downtown Swakopmund, stopping at a bookshop, a cafe, and a shop that sold really neat antique stamps from Southern Africa. We got a couple of old Botswana ones, and some that said "Rhodesia." We mailed a couple of postcards that have still not made it to our families in America. We walked down to check out the old Lighthouse, then got ice cream that didn't suck for once AND German pastries that definitely did not suck, and finally made our way to a great wood-burning oven pizza place for dinner. It did not suck.

While we were sitting at the cafe, we ran into another Doris Duke fellow, who is based in Durban this year. She was traveling with her family and they were also heading down to Sossusvlei next to check out the dunes (remember this for later).

(Did I mention my entire blog is an advertisement for Penn's study abroad programs?)

The next day we went on a boat tour. We saw hundreds of seals, a few dolphins, some weird-looking pelicans, and a family of racist Afrikaaners!

(D feeding a seal. Please don't feed the racists.)

The Afrikaaners actually came right on our boat and talked to us about how black people don't take care of their women and children, don't have "our morals," and how when you see the violence in South Africa today, you start to "understand why we had Apartheid." That and the smell of seal poop made me a bit seasick.

(D and A took turns taking naps like this.)

In the afternoon, we went to the snake park. It was full of snakes. Did you know how many poisonous snakes inhabit Southern Africa? And how many D's mom has found in his backyard? Apparently, they're everywhere! Great!

On our last morning in Swakopmund, we were riding high. We got some groceries and frozen fish to grill that night when we went camping near the Sossusvlei dunes (one of the charms of Namibia was the availability of fish, unlike in Botswana). We drove out of the city and A blasted Bon Jovi as we enjoyed the scenery of sand dunes on our left and ocean views on our right.

A couple of hours later, we hit some really weird scenery. These huge rocky hills were everywhere, and meanwhile the road was getting worse. We started sliding back and forth in the dirt.


At one point, we saw some people stopped on the side of the road. They were watching a group of completely camouflaged zebras nearby.

We drove on, and on, and on. The road was rocking us up and down and back and forth. Suddenly, D said "Uh oh, the engine's overheated." He pulled over immediately, popped open the hood, and yanked out a piece of shredded black rubber. Then he made a pronouncement that would change our plans quite a bit for the next week or so.

"The fan belt's shot."

(To be continued sometime when uploading photos isn't taking so freaking long...)

The Sites of Gaborone

We have visitors this week in the form of A's parents, so we're taking them to see the key sites of Gabs:

1. Fego--the decent Italian restaurant inside of the oddly shaped Square Mart building.
2. Sanitas--a garden restaurant--great for brunch and allegedly the best ice cream in town.
   
3. Cafe Dijo--feels like you're in an American cafe, decent lattes.
4. Equatorial--probably the best place to sit and work at Riverwalk, assuming their internet's working. Best lattes in town.
   
5. Chutney's--best Indian food if you can deal with it doing a number on your digestion for a few days afterward.
   
6. Bull and Bush--safari themed pub with decent tomato soup and cheesy bread.
   
7. Fresh Cafe--great lunch place.
   

This way we can make sure they're getting the full Gabs experience.

How we entertain ourselves.

(Cooking is messy!)

Well, mostly with Indian food. Have I mentioned how much Indian food we eat here? It's okay with me, because I love Indian food. Much more than Setswana food.

(I wear this shirt at least once a week.)

Our favorite weekend activity is eating out at Chutney's, a South Indian restaurant that is by far the most delicious Indian food I've ever eaten. We are going there tonight with A's parents, who are visiting! It's always full of Indian customers, too, which is a good sign, I think. Then there's Moghul, and Embassy, and the Indian place at the Gaborone Sun golf club...

We also cook a lot of Indian food. We live in the Indian part of town, so our grocery stores have a lot of Indian spices and mixes and specialty items.

And one of our best friends here is Indian and was getting ready to move back to the States. Before she did, we did some cooking.

First I drank half a bottle of wine out of the bottle. That helped loosen the brain cells for cookery.

We made vegetable biryani, chana masala, paneer butter masala, and aloo gobi.

Then we ate it.

(I got tired of uploading photos, sorry.)