South Africa - Cape Town to Jo'burg

We've been ripping around the country for the past 2.5 weeks in our little "Marco the Polo" (VW Polo Vivo), exhibit A:

Starting in beautiful Cape Town we did a little city tour with a new local friend and ate some delicious seafood before making our way to wine country around Stellenbosch. One word sums it up: STUNNING... some of the most beautiful countryside we've seen on our trip so far. If we'd had the time we could've stayed in the area for a week! We opted to leave Marco at the hostal and jump on a wine tour, to ensure an optimal tasting experience :) We visited four wineries throughout the day throughout the Stellenbosch & Franschhoek regions - Simonsig Estate, Fairview (home of La Capra & Goats do Roam), Dieu Donne (amazing views!) and Boschendal. We had a great time sampling wine & cheese and enjoyed a delicious lunch in Franschhoek.

From Stellenbosch we drove back to Cape Town and up Signal Hill for a great view of the city then made our way around Cape Point spotting African Penguins, a few types of Antelope and Ostrich running wild. We spent a day in Hermanus watching the Southern Right Whales laze around Walker Bay and drove along the coast through little fishing villages, capping off the day with wine & a couple new friends from Calgary!
Our next stop was Oudtshoorn, home of the Cango Caves & numerous Ostrich farms, where we were able to sit on the ostriches but due to wet weather conditions, we couldn't ride them.

We stayed in Plettenberg Bay for a night then made our way to Addo Elephant National Park where we kicked off the animal-sighting-festivities with a Game Drive at night. We were lucky enough to see a sleepy Lion, who looked like roadkill on the side of a pathway, and was (luckily) completely uninterested in our presence. We also saw hyenas, buffalo, zebra, kudu, and a bunch of smaller animals. The next day we drove through the park for 5 hours in our little car which got a bit scary as the elephants (we saw over 150) roamed very close, among other very large animals - we saw three of the "Big Five".

After Addo we headed back toward the coast and ended up in a town called Bathurst at a restaurant/pub/hotel called "The Pig & Whistle" which turned out to be the oldest standing pub in South Africa- what a treat it was to socialize with the locals :) We took in the sights around Port Alfred the next morning before making our way to Coffee Bay, which was surprisingly lacking in good coffee but made up for it in cafe-side livestock. We spent the night in uMzumbe and the next day in Warner Beach where we sat in the sun and watched the local surfers from our great hostal on a hill, while reading and working on getting our tans back.

We spent a bit of time in St. Lucia where we went on a river-boat tour to spot crocs & hippos in the estuary, which was awesome. I just loved how the hippos twirled their little ears, yawned with their giant mouths, and trotted across the bottom of the river disappearing & re-appearing despite being terrible swimmers.

We then drove through the uMfolozi Game Reserve where we were lucky enough to see Rhinos & our first (and only, so far) giraffe!

Since then we've been making our way up to Johannesburg, stopping for a night in Shaka's Rock on the coast. Tomorrow we fly to Ethiopia and have no idea what we're doing there... the adventure continues!
(Here is a link to a full album of photos: Stunning South Africa)

Southern Bolivia - Salt, Desert, Lakes, Volcanos, Flamingos

The Uyuni Salt Flats are the largest in the world formed by prehistoric saltwater lakes; they are really spectacular and recently hyped for being the world's largest source of lithium. We did a 3 day jeep tour with a Dutch couple, a Scot & a Kiwi and enjoyed a lot of laughs while trying to stay warm. Aside from visiting the salt flats we also saw red and green mineral-rich lakes with flocks of flamingos, steaming geysers & hot springs, and drove through barren volcanic desertscapes with amazing rock formations.
Here's the story in photos:

Abandoned locomotives on a sunken track outside Uyuni

Outside of a primitive salt processing plant

Entering the Uyuni Salt Flats; salt piles ready to be loaded onto the trucks

Naturally occuring honeycomb patterns left by moisture as the salt dries

 

the famous 'perspective' photos - not as easy to perfect as we thought

sunset on the Solar

our group of cheesy, talented jumpers

the hotel on the first night was made entirely of salt - the tables, chairs, beds, walls...

Vicuna's, the prettiest of the lama family

wee!

hundreds of flamingos

"Ladies of the Desert" rock formations

sunrise ("Sol de Manana") view of the Geysers

mmm, the smell of sulfur...

7am dip in the hot springs - the air was way too cold to take off my 7 layers of clothing and get in, however

cruising through the Dali desert, close to the Chilean border

at Laguna Verde with Licancabur Volcano in the background

We finished our trip at the Chilean border and crossed into Chile where we spent one day/night drinking delicious wine and touring the dusty town of San Pedro de Atacama. Over the next few days we made our way via three long buses to Buenos Aires - what a great city! We spent four days eating the world's best steak, drinking wine and visiting the various city highlights before catching our flight to Cape Town :)

In the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle

We packed up our Belgians and loaded the four of us on a sketchy 19-seater plane to the Amazon jungle. We chose to do a 3 day "Pampas" tour which is basically a river tour where you sit in a boat all day and look for wildlife; taking the easy route after some of our recent trekking tours was enticing. This was the 'airport' we arrived to:

Our journey started in the town of Rurrenabaque, Bolivia from where we took a 3-hour jeep ride to the river; the rain a few days prior made this a messy drive and we had to get out and trudge through the mud at a few points (bare foot) while our jeep powered through.

The rain set in when we finally made it to the boat so we poncho'd up and kept our eyes peeled for wildlife as we made our way to the lodging. Here are a few of the sights during that first afternoon (don't ask me what any of them are called!):

 

 

 

Later that night we went alligator/caiman spotting with our flashlights in the pitch black; you know you've found one when you see two eerie orange dots peering at you in the distance. We got scary-close:

The next morning we went hunting for anacondas through a swamp by foot, while fending off the relentlessly irritating mosquitoes; unfortunately, we didn't see any anacondas but my face was successfully eaten alive and my right foot was water-logged due to a hole in my gumboot...

We saw a bunch more wildlife that afternoon then went fishing for piranhas, which we threw back of course (they're endangered in these parts). The sunset was beautiful on the river and we stopped at a little thatch hut on the shore for a sunset-beverage.

 

 

 

 

 

On the agenda for the third morning was swimming with pink dolphins. Pink Dolphins in a river in the Amazon? Yep. There was no way I was getting in the same water where we'd seen alligators, caimans and piranhas! Although apparently they steer clear of the dolphins so three of the guys apprehensively braved the murky water where the dolphins playfully swam with and around them.

 

We saw more wildlife and beautiful scenery as we made our way back to the dropoff point before another wild Jeep-ride back to town.

 

 

Our Jeep ride back to town was interesting - the drive was a maniac and was driving on a bent wheel frame at excessive speeds on a dirt road. At one point we stopped for about an hour while he tried to hammer it back into place and eventually used tie-wire to hold it on for the rest of the drive - Oh, and he also drove off leaving our guide, Jody, & I on the side of the road while we were 'using the bathroom'... here we are chasing after him, TP in hand!

Made it back to town, safe and not-so-sound - this is the tire we drove on for 3 hours...

Back in Rurrenabaque we celebrated Jody's 29th birthday with a good dinner and drinks with friends. We spent the next morning basking in the sun at a pool/restaraunt overlooking the town and the jungle before catching our flight back to La Paz.