Karoo to Cape Town

We seemed to have done nothing but rush since we left Johannesburg on Tuesday. We headed towards Lesotho, crossed into the Karoo and dashed across the veld, passing three National Parks. We even visited one and stayed the night in another. Unfortunately Addo, where we were going to see elephants (Elephants!!!) got dropped off the list due to not enough time. The problem is still the fact that my visa is about to run out, and although I keep saying that I don't mind trying to cross the border into Namibia with an expired visa (what's the worst that can happen, I get thrown out?!?!) we are still on a roll to get to the border, leaving beautiful sights like the Garden Route, Oyster Festival, Cape Town museums, in the dust. Ho hum.

We did see some lovely sights, though, so it's not all been rush rush rush: We drove through the endless and lonely Karoo, where the windmills pull up what little water there is to feed the skinny cows and water the occasional ostrich farm. The landscape is sparse and wild, also freezing cold at this time of year. Mountain Zebra National Park was a bit of a find, a small area that holds the other kind of zebra found in South Africa, as opposed to the more common Burchell's Zebra. These guys are more chunky and a lot more shy, but they seemed to get on well with the Red Hartebeest and Blesboks, the Black Wildebeest and Oryx we saw there. We were also lucky to catch sight of a Black-backed Jackal as he crossed the road, stopped to give us the evil eye and them loped off into the high grasses. There were also vervet monkeys and baboons messing about, picking food off the ground while the kids generally made a nuisance of themselves pushing each other off branches. This was Merryl's first African wildlife experience, so there was much photographing and squealing. That night we fetched up in Addo, but not the elephant park, rather a one horse town, nothing more than a police station and a dusty shop with a petrol pump attached. We had a taste of African supermarket simplicity, as the only veggies on sale were potatoes, squash and pumpkins, plus a pallid-looking range of import tomatoes that had been sitting in a cooler for too long. The rest of the shop was filled with dusty tins and bashed washing powder boxes along with fridges filled with sugary drinks (what is it about the fizzy drink consumption in these parts?) and processed cheese. Other than that the take-away counter held mangled pies of indeterminate providence and chemically enhanced cakes. The caravan park we stayed in was run by an Afrikaans couple with a penchant for crazy garden statuary. It was hard to walk for the nymphs stretching after a nap, gnomes sitting on benches, and dog figures marking the burial spot of the owner's favourite pet. There was surprising amount of racket after dark, although the town didn't look capable of producing so much engine noise, there were shunting trains and breaking lorries all night. Yesterday we climbed down from the chilly heights of the Karoo towards the famous garden route. The landscape changed completely: all day a line of hills followed us on our right, first as a row of distinct peaks, pointed like the line on a heart rate monitor, later joining together, growing ever higher into a cloud capped range. On our left we occasionally glimpsed the Indian Ocean, its coast line frequently marred by retirement villages. The land went from brown and spare to lush and green, the light from harsh bright to cloudy grey, easier on the eye after days of relentless blue skies. At one point the sun came out of the clouds to make a milky white, translucent light, smearing soft charcoal shadows on the green fields. We also had the first rain of the trip, a smattering sweetened by a faint rainbow over our left shoulder. The country here reminds me of the Wairarapa coast, cloudy hills and empty farms; or the Scottish lowlands, a comforting landscape, easy for us Europeans to understand. There are of course still townships by the roadside, and black fruit pickers slogging home from work, and remote Boer farms, but at least we can understand the shape of the land.

Parcel Service

We lately had occasion to stress test the South African post office and it's international connections. Since we are leaving on a long journey without access to a postal address we made sure we did any online ordering and receiving of credit cards, etc, before we left. We have previously lived in the Middle East, where postal delivery is a futuristic concept that may one day be implemented, and house numbers change with the seasons, so we thought we were pretty prepared for haphazard services. Not so:

We were waiting for four parcels:

1. Merryl had her dive gear sent from New Zealand, via NZ Post with tracking
2. Stuart was waiting for replacement credit cards from the UK, sent by his parents via courier
3. I ordered an underwater camera housing from the US, which promised EMS courier shipping
4. Mark was sending an insured parcel from Germany, containing my camera and a load of Amazon purchases. This was shipped via DHL

The result was:

1. Merryl's parcel, while trackable, sat in the Northland post office for 6 days as no-one attempted delivery or bothered calling the contact number to arrange pick-up. Apparently the post office doesn't like to make calls to mobiles as that costs money...
2. The credit cards arrived within 4 days, a record, although it was lucky Stuart was home when the delivery was made, as the driver couldn't work out our address (which is written on the side of our building in large letters). Then again, at least the parcel was trackable all the way.
3. Amazingly, although it first seemed that the parcel would be delayed and I never received a tracking number, the parcel arrived from the US within a week. Again the delivery driver, even with the help of one of the numerous security guards that inhabit Melrose Arch, was about to leave as he couldn't identify the address.
4. The DHL parcel was the most fraught, as it contained some electronics we needed for the car as well as my repaired camera we needed for the doc, and most importantly Merryl's tent. Without it she might have slept in the open. The first sign of trouble came when Mark tried to deliver the parcel to the DHL office. Three trips later he had wrapped the parcel variously with twine and sticky tape and even bought some sealing wax to make it customs proof. Apparently no-one had a clear idea what the rules were, but everyone had an idea how to fulfill them. The real surprise came when I went to track the parcel online using the tracking number prominently displayed on the receipt. No such number. Hmmm. Calling the customer service centre I find that not only does this tracking number not work online, but that the parcel can't be tracked once it has left Germany. Apparently the parcel you really care about, the one that you insure, the valuable one, is the one that can't be followed and may disappear into the void for days (as happened to mine), "for security reasons". By the time I had received the item (this one wasn't delivered either), it had gone through four tracking numbers, none of which showed up in any publicly available system.

Lessons learnt for future overseas parcel posting:

• When paying for tracking, make sure that means international tracking all the way, and ensure that you know which tracking number to use.
• Always put a contact number on the parcel. It likely won't get used, but you never know, you might actually be contacted when your parcel arrives.
• Call the customer service centre with your details every day, well before the parcel is due. It might help your mail delivery karma, and if you're lucky someone can tell you where your parcel is currently stored.
• Shipping from the ex-imperial centre to it's ex-outposts seems to be more efficient than shipping from some other country (see speedy delivery of the credit cards from the UK to South Africa), even from an efficency hub like Germany.
• Pay more, send early!

The Digital Divide

Getting Internet access in South Africa has been relatively effortless even compared to visits to Germany or the UK. Mobile data on the iPhone is a doddle here even with my pre-pay phone. But now I am wonderig how that will change as we leave this country. Will we use local SIMs, will we be able to get data access? Will there be wifi hotspots or will we need to visit dingy Internet cafes? I am trying to keep up with the blog, post to Flickr, upload the occasional short film clip, but I have no idea how successful that will be.

This article from Ars Technica does not bode well:

"Broadband represents the most extreme example in the gulf between the 'haves' and the 'have nots'," said TeleGeography Executive Director John Dinsdale. "Less than 2 percent of African households have broadband compared with 68 percent of North American homes."