South Africa Trip part 2

[Note: Some of the pictures may be of horrible quality. I apoligize for that. It wasn't until about halfway through my two weeks away from Nampula that I discovered my cell phone camera was set on low quality. It took me another three hours once I got home to figure out how to put those pictures on my computer for all of you to see.]

Once getting into South Africa it feels like entering a foreign country. I know that statement should be obvious, but after living in Mozambique for 6th months the contrast is all the greater. I enjoyed every minute of being able to eat McDonalds, enjoy low-priced dairy, speak English with everyone I met, and renting videos that don't have Chinese subtitles and that have been in theaters sometime in the last 5 years.

The biggest contrast that I felt was the sheer amount of wealth compared to Mozambique. In Nelspruit, the town we stayed in, there seemed to be an even exaggerated level of wealth compared to the rest of SA we visited. It also had a higher number of white people than the other places we visited (South Africa is still a very divided place). Still, rightly or wrongly, its kind of like the Aspen of South Africa.

For instance, on the highway into town there's a rest stop. This rest stop has its own private game park!

The animals were carefully hidden from us non-paying passers by.

And something I found really weird is that the rest stop had all these metal painted antelopes in front of it, and they were all painted like flags. I found the only non-African flag and blew it up here.

Go figure. And go Canucks.

Passing into town, after the McDonalds, there were far more blantant signs of economic prosperity. Quaint little shops with names like...

...BMW...

...Fiat...

...and I wasn't fast enough to snag pictures of the Land Rover, Range Rover, Peugeot, and Ferrari dealerships. And they were all in a row right next to each other.

Even their smoke shops sound expensive and elitist.

Either elitist or 300 yrs old. Its anybody's guess.

Their grocery stores were a grand display of riches as well. Here is their pork aisle.

I'm not even kidding. And it excludes bacon! Bacon has its own aisle!

Here's Jon next to the meat cooler. It was like watching Fred Flinstone order a Bronto-Burger.

While being in an English speaking country felt familiar, there were many things the were completely unfamiliar: Learning the lingo to use when ordering food at a restaurant, parking attendants at EVERY parking lot to keep your car from being stolen, hearing people talk about the bonnet (hood) of the car, and certain products/items on store shelves. Items like this little gem I spied in the pharmacy. Its "Grandpa's Headache Remover". Funny, because in my family the headache remover is usually removing Grandpa.

Oh, come on. I know you all were thinking it :)

But things aren't all rosy and perfect in South Africa (just ask folks in the townships). The trip had a few downsides for us. Like the incredible amount of rain we got afternoon/evening. About 5 inches (125mm) fell in a couple hours. Its was a massive and incredible amount of water that halted everything. We were trapped in a shopping mall that started leaking everywhere. The next day I took a little excursion to the Nelspruit Botanical Gardens (it's sounds a little girly, I know, but everybody gets a freebie once in a while). While at the gardens the main river in town was spilling over any resemblance of a bank with all the water from the day before

That tiny little fence on the left above the water to keep people out is 6ft high, just so you don't go thinking this is only a 6ft high waterfall.

We also ventured into Johannesburg for the day. Passing by the airport we spied the new Airbus A380. It was disappointing only being able to see the back half of it, which is till bigger than some planes.

That row of windows is the upper deck.

Also disappointing was not getting a good picture of the town water tank. For the world cup the country tried to paint a good picture of itself (literally) by de-emphasizing the thousands of people removed from settlements to build stadiums and doing fun little public works project like painting this giant icosahedral water tower.

That's 20 sides for those of you that never studied greek or played Dungeons and Dragons.

I was also disappointed that no matter how many Seattle Coffee Co's I went to they never gave me a discount for being from Seattle. And we went to quite a few trying this out.

This one was number 3.

After all was said and done it was a great little vacation and just about the break I needed. By the time we hit the road I was ready to get back home to someplace familiar (while the bacon aisle was like a dream come true, it was not familiar in the slightest).