Posts Tagged ‘Travel’

November Holiday Pt. 2: USA (7 – 14 November)

Monday, December 9th, 2013

After coming back from Kruger Park, we said goodbye to my brother who was traveling onward in South Africa, and then had about a day to prepare for the rest of the trip. On Thursday 7 November, we flew out to Austin via Atlanta, to attend a wedding of two INSEAD classmates. Especially the first leg of this flight was extremely long with more than 16 hours on the plane – but everything worked out like a charm.

The wedding was beautiful, and we were so happy to be part of this and also get to see a couple of INSEADers from Europe and the Americas (and even though we had the longest journey there, some others flew in from Europe just for the weekend, which is pretty insane). Austin itself was nice, even though J was disappointed that it wasn’t Texan enough… Maybe next time we should go to Dallas 🙂

The next stop on our trip was San Francisco. I had never been there before, and was quite amazed by the city. Not only can you tell that this is the technology capital of the world (paradise for a geek like me :)), but also the amount of city life that is going on, with shops and bars and culture just at every corner felt very refreshing in comparison to Johannesburg – which is very nice to live in, but for the most part at least in those areas that we spend most of our time in is just very suburban.

In SF, we met up with a bunch of INSEAD classmates (for a board game night at Yammer, which was a lot of fun) and some other friends. Also, in addition to just walking through different neighborhoods and taking in the vibe of the city, we rented bicycles one day and cycled across the Golden Gate Bridge, and then took the ferry back, passing Alcatraz on the way. Despite being very touristy, this day trip was very nice, and the bridge is indeed quite an impressive sight.

Some pictures follow.

 

Cape Winelands (August)

Saturday, November 23rd, 2013

It’s been a while since I last posted! That’s mainly because I’ve been busy, but also due to the fact that we haven’t done a lot of traveling since June until now. However, there were some small things before our current bigger trip so I’ll just try to catch up.

During the winter, J was working in Cape Town for a while and I used the opportunity to fly down twice to explore the Winelands around Cape Town somewhat. Both times we were lucky with the weather – the Cape winter rains stopped for the weekend so we were able to enjoy the outdoors. The region is very Afrikaner-dominated and with its vineyards and little towns really feels more like Europe than like Africa. Obviously, most of South Africa isn’t “real” Africa, but the Cape even less so than for example Joburg.

Given that we were mostly driving around by car, we didn’t do that much wine tasting. Instead, we tried to find as many good cheese as we could, which was also great and right down our alley. South Africa actually has a lot of very good artisanal or semi-artisanal cheeses, you just have to know where to look. A lot of the cheeses come from the Cape so we were right at the source.

In addition, we drove down the whale coast to Hermanus, which is a very pretty scenic drive along the ocean in any case, but made even better by the fact that you can see Southern Right Whales splashing around in the water there in the winter months – the whales come there to have their babies in the protected coastal waters, and swim out to the open waters in summer to feed.

On one of the weekends, we also had a small INSEAD meetup in Cape Town since a classmate normally based in the Middle East was stopping by – which was a very fun (and late) night out 🙂

Other than that, we didn’t do much – enjoyed the amazing scenery and the fantastic and still very affordable food 🙂 All in all, those two weekends were definitely worth it!

Namibia (15 to 22 June)

Thursday, June 27th, 2013

From 15 to 22 June, we managed to get a week of leave at the same time and decided to go to Namibia. The trip was booked rather spontaneously, and Namibia seemed to be a good choice since flights were cheap and it was the ideal time to go there – it is dry season, so the animals are out at the waterholes, it is not too hot in the daytime, and it is not high season either.

We flew to Windhoek and rented a fully camping equipped 4×4 (a Nissan Single Cab). Camping equipped meant in that case that it came with a collapsible tent on the roof of the car, plus everything that you need, including a gas cooker, a fridge, dishes and cutlery, bedding, and even two camping chairs. We used the car quite extensively, driving more than 2,300km in the seven days we were in the country – mostly on unsurfaced roads, since only the main axes in Namibia are surfaced. However, in a such sparsely populated land of only two million inhabitants, even the unsurfaced roads were mostly in good condition and you could still go 80 or 100 km/h (with a few exceptions where the road was really terrible for dozens of kilometers).

It is really an interesting thing to drive through this country, since it is mostly desert, with the road often going straight without a curve as far as you can see. And desert is not equal to desert – there was sandy desert, rocky desert, moon landscapes, red mountains, …

From Windhoek, we drove up to Etosha National Park (with a stop in Otjiwarongo for the night). The National Park is centered around the Etosha Pan, which is a huge salt lake that is dry for almost the complete year. Due to the salty ground, nothing grows in the pan. We stayed at Okaukuejo Camp, which is one of several camp sites/lodges that have been built next to one of the waterholes, so that you can watch animals even after dark, when you are no longer allowed to drive around the park (generally driving after dark is not recommendable in Namibia due to the amount of wildlife that is around). The National Park was amazing. We spent a day and a half just driving around the park, and stopping at waterholes or wherever we saw animals – and we saw a lot of them: elephants, zebras, giraffes, ostriches, springboks, oryxes/gemsboks, kudus, and even in the very end a lion (we didn’t see it at first, and were wondering why so many cars were stopped, when we saw it taking a nap under a tree!).

In Etosha, we also had our first flat tire – we must have punctured it when we were driving through the park, as it was flat when we woke up. However, with all the necessary tools, and one of the two spare tires easily accessible at the back door of the car, it took no more than 15 minutes to change it.

After Etosha, we went back south and stopped for a night at the Spitzkoppe – one of the many names from which you can still see the history of having been a German colony for about 30 years until 1915. The Spitzkoppe is a stunning group of red granite peaks sticking out from the surrounding plains, and the campsite was quite amazing too – the individual sites are scattered around the base of the mountain, with just a long drop toilet at each site, so we had a place just for us with the next campers multiple hundred meters away, just between the rocks. The scenery was absolutely amazing, especially at sunset. At night, however, we witnessed the drawback of that spot: It was quite windy, which being somewhat elevated from the plain around didn’t make any better, and the rocks created some kind of wind tunnel, so the tent was violently flapping in the wind all night, and neither of us slept very well.

Thankfully, we didn’t have a very long way to go the next morning. We were only making our way down to Swakopmund on the coast, but on the way, we stopped on the Welwitschia Plains. Welwitschia (named after the Austrian botanist who first accounted for them) are strange plants that only grow on the elevated gravel fields in Namibia and Angola. They look a bit like huge, dried-out cabbages, and have only two long leaves that spiral around the center. However, due to the harsh climate, parts of these leaves usually dry out and break, so that it looks as if they have more than two leaves. The biggest of these plants can be more than 2m in diameter, and up to 2000 years old.

From the Welwitschia Plains, we then made our way down to Swakopmund. Swakopmund really still feels like a German outpost, and could at first sight be mistaken for a town at the North or Baltic Seas. Lots of shops have German names, and even some of the old street signs are still visible (e.g., Kaiser-Wilhelm-Straße). The town itself was very sleepy and relaxed, which is at least partly due to the fact that it is not the high season – I have read that 40% of tourists to Namibia are German speaking, and it is quite telling that the only flight connection to Windhoek’s small airport outside of Southern Africa seemed to be Frankfurt.

After Swakopmund, our next destination was the Namib-Naukluft National Park, more specifically the Sossusvlei. The way there was quite long, and had the worst stretch of road of our trip which was extremely bumpy for probably around 100km. Also, we had our second flat on that stretch of road – thankfully we had bought a new tire in Swakopmund to replace the flat one, so we didn’t have to worry about having to drive around without a spare tire.

At Sossusvlei, we stayed at Sesriem Camp, which is the only camp site behind the gates to the Park, which means that you can leave about 45 minutes earlier then everyone else to be the actual Sossusvlei for sunrise. However, since our car got stuck in the deep sand on the last few kilometers, we had to turn around and take one of the 4×4 shuttles that the National Park operates (with better tires, less weight through all the camping equipment, and an experienced driver). The Vlei itself was amazing – lots of big red sand dunes surrounding the dried out clay and salt pans, in which there is no life, just a few dead and weirdly eroded trees. We climbed some of the dunes and walked around in the morning light – it was just stunning.

After the Sossusvlei, we made our way back to Windhoek, stopping close to Solitaire for a night. The last night we spent in Windhoek: after having returned our car, we had the first night back inside, in an apartment and not our tent. Although the tent was very comfortable, and not too cold either, what got to us a bit was the dust. The drivers cab was clean, and so was the tent, but everything else, including the inside of the back of the car where our luggage and all the camping equipment was, got completely dusty from driving on all those unpaved roads. So whenever you would unpack something from the car, or open or close the tent, or anything, you would get dusty.

Windhoek itself wasn’t super exciting – it is just a small town, with no real attractions. We had some nice food there, but other than that, Windhoek is definitely not the major draw to come to Namibia. We flew back to Joburg on Saturday afternoon, so that we could still have a relaxing Sunday before going back to work.

All in all, the trip was amazing. We definitely want to go back, since we couldn’t do all of the country this time around – especially the Skeleton Coast and the Kaokoveld in the North West of the country sound amazing too.

Some pictures follow.

Swaziland (1-2 June)

Sunday, June 23rd, 2013

On the first weekend of June, we went to Swaziland, which is about four hours from Joburg by car. Our first trip outside of South Africa since we got here! We made use of the fact that our friend Marco from INSEAD was still staying in Mbabane, where he had been volunteering for a few months since the end of the MBA. In addition, there was the Bushfire festival going on that weekend, which made for another good reason to go check it out.

We left Joburg very early on Saturday morning and drove all the way to the border, where we thankfully didn’t have to wait to get in. Marco picked us up shortly behind the border and took us to his apartment where we were going to stay. After some resting, we then went to the Bushfire festival grounds, where we stayed for the rest of the afternoon, chatting and meeting some of Marco’s friends, watching the acts on the main stage, enjoying the food and the rest of the activities at the festival. The probably most impressive thing we saw was a traditional Swazi dance performance. It consisted basically of ongoing rhythmic drumming and sometimes also singing/chanting and then different groups of dancers doing their individual dances (old mamas, kids, women, and men). All of the dances looked different, but most had a common element: A high kick in which the leg went up to the forehead or even beyond (on the side of the head)! Very impressive.

On Sunday, we wanted to leave in the early afternoon so that we wouldn’t catch the rush hour of all the leaving festival visitors at the border, so we didn’t have too much time for other activities – but we did manage to go to Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary and have an hour-long horseback safari, which was awesome – our first “real” African wildlife other than the Wildebeest we had seen from afar in Golden Gate park: Zebras (the Zebras native to Swaziland are shorter than other Zebras), Kudus, Bonteboks, more Wildebeests, and even some Hippos from afar (that we wouldn’t have been able to distinguish from rocks if the ranger hadn’t pointed them out to us).

After the park, we went to Swazi Candles, a shop that Marco recommended where you can watch them make candles in animal shapes, and then we took off back to Joburg.

Some pictures follow.

Durban (16-20 May)

Tuesday, May 21st, 2013

Last weekend, we went to Durban – we both took Monday off and already flew down on Thursday evening, so we had plenty of time.

Friday, we still both had to work, but we found a very nice Café (Freedom Café) where we could plug in our laptops, have some nice juice and lunch and work – definitely beats sitting in the office! The weather on Friday was not very nice (it even rained a bit), but we didn’t mind since we had to work anyway. In the evening, we went to a Japanese restaurant called Daruma and had some delicious, freshly grilled seafood.

On Saturday, the weather was great – just in time! With the sun out, it was really warm and did not at all feel like winter is coming (which I think never really happens in Durban). After we had checked out the beach just in front of our hotel, we took our rental car north to see some of the other beaches. It is really a very nice area, and in the summer is surely packed with people. There are lots and lots of huge hotels, but thankfully on a random weekend outside high season like this one, there are not too many people. From the coast we then went inland a bit to visit kwaDukuma (Stanger), which is were Zulu king Shaka is buried. There is also a small visitor’s center that shows an informative movie about his life and achievements – he was quite the warrior, unifying quite a big territory under his power. However, he did not realize what threat the European colonization forces meant. Back in Durban in the evening, we went to a nice Indian restaurant called Vintage India. Durban has supposedly the largest accumulation of Indian people outside India due to the masses of indentured labor that the British brought over. The food was very delicious (and one of the things I miss about INSEAD in Singapore is the Indian food in the cafeteria or the food court next door, which was always good!)

On Sunday, we then went to look at Durban itself a bit. We strolled through the quite big Botanic Gardens, and then went to Wilson’s Wharf to have a drink and look across the bay towards the port, which is South Africa’s major container port (and also the port where our own container arrived a couple of weeks back). From the waterfront, we went into the city center to look at some of the colonial buildings (even though there are only very few, the center of Durban is definitely less pretty than that of Cape Town). The City Hall is quite impressive, and houses a small museum of Natural History (including T-Rex model) and an Art Gallery, both of which are free, and were nice and quick visits. After the town, we went to get Bunny Chow. Bunny Chow has nothing to do with bunnies and is a local fast food specialty – basically hollowed-out bread, filled with curry. Quite an interesting concept, but a bit hard to eat without spilling curry everywhere. In the evening, we went to get some more seafood, Thai/Japanese style at The Green Mango.

On Monday, we had to leave already in the afternoon, but we still had time for a long stroll along the beach, including watching a number of surfers enjoying the waves of the Indian Ocean, and also an extended visit to another nice restaurant called Market, which is very beautifully set in a courtyard, with tables and trees surrounding a fountain.

All in all, it was a very nice, relaxing weekend that really felt like a summer holiday.

First Time in Cape Town

Tuesday, May 21st, 2013

Before we moved to South Africa, everyone kept raving about Cape Town – so of course we didn’t wait for too long before we went there ourselves to check it out. Our first trip happened only over a weekend (19-21 April), so we didn’t have time yet to check out too much of the surroundings, but we got a pretty good idea of the city, Table Mountain, and the cape itself.

We flew down on Friday night after work, so we got to our guest house in Bo-Kaap quite late and couldn’t really see anything of the town yet. On Saturday, we slept in, had breakfast on the lovely terrace of our guest house overlooking the city, and then went to check out a bit of the city close to our guest house, including the Bo-Kaap area with small colorful houses and cobblestone streets, Long Street, and Greenmarket Square.

In the afternoon, we then brought out our newly purchased hiking boots and hiked up Table Mountain. There are a number of ways that you can go up the mountain, including the lazy option of the cable car, and the most popular hiking route, Platteklip Gorge, which is described as steep, not very scenic, and crowded. Since we didn’t feel like taking the most crowded route up, we did a bit of research and opted for a slightly longer option, the Diagonal Route. It started not very steep, but after a while we had to scramble (i.e. use our hands to climb up some rocky bits) quite a bit. Moreover, it was not quite clear all the time whether we were still on what was meant to be the path – there was not really any signage. The vistas were quite amazing though, as we climbed higher and higher. We were also quite lucky with the weather – while we had left Joburg in the pouring rain, there was nary a cloud in Cape Town, not even the so called “table cloth” which hangs on Table Mountain a lot of the time and makes climbing up there less worth a while. Once we had reached the top (the “flat” part) of the mountain, it was much easier again to find the right way since it is much more of an actual path. We were also much much faster up there since we didn’t have to climb anymore (the few steep parts actually had ladders and ropes). To go down, we then took the cable car, which rotates around its axis so you can see in all directions – and it took only about five minutes to go down the same altitude that it had taken us more than three hours to climb up.

Quite exhausted, but also happy about our achievement, we went home to shower and relax and then went out to the V&A Waterfront to have some seafood for dinner – after all, one of the major drawbacks of Joburg is that it is not near any body of water.

On Sunday, we went down to the actual cape – which is quite some distance outside of the city itself. First, we visited the penguin colony at Boulders – they are such funny little creatures, awkwardly waddling around on the beach but super swift and agile when they are in the water.

Then, we went down to Cape Point, looking out on the two oceans (even though I learned since that the defined boundary between the Atlantic and Indian ocean is in fact a bit further east). Unfortunately, we had very limited time since our flight back was in the afternoon already, and we still planned to get lunch in Simon’s Town, so we had to rush. Said lunch then still had to be skipped due to a construction site induced traffic jam that took us half an hour, so we just had time for a quick sandwich on the way.

All in all though, it was a very nice weekend. Some pictures follow.

Easter Trip to the Drakensberg

Tuesday, April 9th, 2013

Over the long Easter weekend, we did our first proper trip out of Joburg (other than the short one to Pretoria) and went to the Drakensberg and Clarens, which are roughly five hours south(-east) of Joburg. The Drakensberg is a huge mountain rage that stretches for around 1000 km, but its most famous part is between the South African province of kwaZulu-Natal and the kingdom of Lesotho.

For three nights, we stayed in a very nice bed and breakfast in Champagne Valley, which is in the so-called Central Berg area. From there, we drove up to Monk’s Cowl and to Royal Natal in the Northern Berg, and did hikes in both areas. The scenery of the Drakensberg is really stunning, with an extremely high mountain ridge that basically constitutes the border between South Africa and Lesotho. Words can not quite describe the sights we took in there, so you have to look at the pictures for yourself. Our B&B was great too, we had a little terrace with mountain view and our own Braai that we cooked our dinners on.

For the last night, we drove via the Golden Gate Highlands National Park to Clarens, which is a nice little town in the eastern part of the South African province Free State. The park, where we did a couple of scenic drives, is another spectacular mountain sight (also in the pictures below). The town of Clarens itself has lots of pretty little restaurants, art galleries, etc., and was a very nice last stop for the trip.

All in all, we had a very good time and saw some beautiful nature – mostly mountains, but also wildlife such as baboons, a black wildebeest, and lots of birds.

Some pictures follow.

5 Continents in P6 Pt. 8: Getting Settled in Johannesburg

Thursday, February 21st, 2013

After a brief pit stop in Germany (mainly to pick up our luggage and our visas, which thankfully arrived in time), we flew to our fifth and final continent over the course of two months: Africa. This time, however, the destination was more permanent, as we are both going to start working in Johannesburg in March. That also means that our daily program in the first few days here so far consisted less of sightseeing and more of sorting out the practicalities – finding an apartment, getting a bank account, and buying cars. Johannesburg is a car city, there is only very limited public transport and the city is quite spread out, so you need a car. So far, it looks like we are making good progress on these tasks.

We really like the city as far as we can tell up to now. It is really green (the guide book says it “must be the largest man-made forest with six million trees”), the climate is really nice (not too hot but quite pleasant, and the winters are also supposed to be rather mild at least in the day time), and the food is really good and quite affordable. Safety-wise we were a bit concerned in the beginning, but as long as you are watching out it seems to be quite alright. We are definitely both very excited to be here and spend the forseeable future here!

5 Continents in P6 Pt. 7: Toronto, Washington (Again)

Monday, February 11th, 2013

From Washington, we took a plane to Toronto — we wanted to see another country on our trip and neither of us had been to Canada before. We had been worrying that it would be way too cold up there, but it actually wasn’t too bad, and the first two days we had quite nice weather. On the first day, we visited the CN Tower, a Toronto landmark that between its construction in 1976 and 2007 (when Burj Khalifa overtook it) was the tallest freestanding structure in the world. With a cloud-free sky you could see quite far from up there, but more interesting than the view to the sides is the view down — the observation deck has an area with a glass floor, and even though it should be perfectly safe you get kind of dizzy just looking down through it. After the tower, we went to Toronto Music Garden, a garden designed after J. S. Bach’s First Suite for Unaccompanied Cello (which is quite an interesting concept, and makes for a nice garden, even though it would probably be more beautiful in summer), and walked around through the city bit.

The next day, we went to Niagara Falls. We had booked a tour that was gonna pick us up in the morning, and we were expecting it to be a bus — instead it was a black stretch limousine, with only three other people! Traveling far outside the peak season does have its advantages sometimes! The falls themselves are amazing, especially the ones on the Canadian side (the Niagara river separates Canada and the US, and there are two falls next to each other, separated by an island that belongs to the US). The Canadian falls are shaped like a horseshoe, and enormous amounts of water are thundering down so that the falls are always covered in a cloud of mist. With temperatures well below freezing, that meant that all the trees and plants in the proximity were covered with a thick layer of ice — quite an amazing sight! After the falls, we went to the small and cute (albeit somewhat touristy) town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, which actually was the first capital of Upper Canada (which now is Ontario) in the late 1700s. After we spent some time walking around the streets there (and getting a hot tea to warm ourselves up), we then as the last stop of our tour went to a winery, where we tasted some of the local wine, especially the ice wine which the region is famous for. In the evening after the tour, we went for dinner with some INSEAD students who are now in Toronto — which was great fun.

Starting Thursday evening and running all through Friday, we had a big snow storm, which meant that we spent most of the time just relaxing in the hotel. By Saturday, when we were supposed to fly out to Boston, the storm had left Toronto… but collided with another one in the north east of the US to form the massive blizzard “Nemo”, which hit especially Boston really hard. Of course, our flight got cancelled, but we also thought that it simply might not be a good idea to fly there even a day later when probably the city would still be cleaning up the damage and potentially be without power or public transport. So instead — we ended up going back to Washington because we found a cheap flight. In Washington, we basically only spent the night, to then on the next day go back to my relatives in Chadd’s Ford, PA. In effect, instead of our planned five-city loop we ended up retracing a four-city itinerary, since after Chadd’s Ford we will go back to NYC and fly back out to Germany from there.

Some pictures follow.

5 Continents in P6 Pt. 6: Philadelphia, Washington

Sunday, February 10th, 2013

After New York City, we headed out to Philadelphia – well, sort of. We actually went to visit my relatives, who live far our in the countryside west of Philadelphia, in Chadd’s Fort (which apparently is one of the best school districts in the area). There we witnessed some of the typical American idyllic lifestyle – huge houses with two-car garages, no sidewalks because you have to drive everywhere anyway, shopping of super sized items at Costco, etc. It was interesting to experience that, too, especially after the busy, crammed and crowded streets of NYC. And of course it was also nice to catch up with my family.

We also went into Philly proper for a day, to check out the city and meet a friend of J’s. The city is certainly not as exciting as New York, but it features some important landmarks of US history, namely Independence Hall, the site at which both the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the Constitution in 1787 were drafted and signed, and the Liberty Bell, which serves as a symbol of American freedom. Especially the visit to Independence Hall was thought-provoking — these men crafted a document more than 225 years ago, forming the first modern democracy, and even though it certainly has its flaws and needed some amendments too, it still lies at the core of the world’s most powerful nation. Other than these sights, we also visited the Wanamaker organ, which is a huge organ, located in a department store (now Macy’s, but it used to be owned and operated by name-giving John Wanamaker, who was an organ lover), ate the famous Philadelphia cheese steak, and wandered around the streets for a bit. In the evening, we had dinner with J’s friend and went to a Jazz club.

Before we left Chadd’s Ford, we went to Gettysburg with my relatives, which is about two and a half hours by car from their place. J and I both didn’t know much about the American Civil War, but the museum at Gettysburg was very good and informative — both about the war in general and about the battle of Gettysburg in particular, and why it was so important. It also showcased Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address, which he gave on the occasion of the opening of a war cemetery a few months after the battle. Interestingly, back then the speech didn’t elicit unanimous praise — on the contrary, some even ridiculed the short speech.

Our next stop was Washington, D.C. As a city that is completely planned and centered around the government buildings and the National Mall, it is quite impressive. Just walking around between all the monuments, memorials, the White House and Capitol Hill gives a sense of the power that these institutions have. On top of that, there are of course the museums, most of which are free and huge — you really have to pick and choose if you are only there for a few days. We visited the Museum of American History, the Holocaust Museum, the Museum for Natural History, and the Air & Space Museum. We also took a tour of the Capitol and went into the Library of Congress, the Supreme Court and the Folger Shakespeare Library – a pretty tight schedule for two days!

Some pictures follow.

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