FOTOS

Our treehouse....

Baboons on the street in Krüger Park

Our favourite african buffalo

Cape Town 25.8.- Home

The second day in Cape Town we did a trip to the Cape of good hope. It is about 2 hours with the car from Cape town plus a walk to the real cape of good hope. People say that there the atlantic and indian ocean meet, but it seems to be not very clear. On the way back we had lunch (the first time not a good one) in Fishoak (??) and relaxed in the hotel.
Also the next day we spent at the pool, getting some sun to relax before going back home to do the "normal" life again! The flight was good, beeing a night flight we slept almost all the time and I already talked to Martina, she got home well but without her backpack. They left it in Amsterdam! Better now than on the way there.......
It was a great trip, everything went as we planned and we got along very well! I ll put some pictures up as soon as I have them more organized.

Cape Town 24. - 25.8.

We took the route next to the ocean instead of the highway and stopped in Bettys Bay to watch the pinguin colony, which is living on the coast there. They were very cute! In general it was a beautiful road, it reminded me of the way to sitges (Christins comment).
The traffic changed when we came closer to Cape Town and it was pretty crowded and the first time a little difficult to drive. We found the right way to the hotel, lost it and found it by accident again and we were really happy when we arrived in our fantastic (like the british would say) hotel with a great view of the table mountain. We had dinner in a FUSION restaurant, it was pretty interesting, uncountable courses and every course had a different wine.
Today we almost climbed the 1050m of the table mountain, after seeing a snake right in front of us we got confused and took the wrong way and found ourselves walking down again ;-)
Afterwards we took the cable car return trip and it was also nice. The view was pretty good today, usually there is a lot of clouds around the mountain and there is a big chance that you can not see anything.
We also went downtown, saw the Waterfront (like a harbour) and Long Street. It was a nice but very tiring day (walking and running through crazy traffic lights in Cape Town).

Hermanus 23. - 24.8.

Hermanus!
Its famous for whale watching. You can just sit at the rocks close to the ocean and if you are lucky you can see them.
So we took off in Robertson early in the morning and on the way we stopped in Caledon to check their hot water pools (now its a SPA, but they use the hot water from the natural pools) and one is really hot, 49 degrees!
Then we came to Hermanus and it was a pretty crowded Backpackers but we decided it was the nicest town we visited, because of its beautiful rocks, ocean and the small and cute city. So we had oysters again and didn't see whales yet, but the next morning we had breakfast at the seaside and we saw a few of them!! They were far away but we could see them jumping into the water and blowing the water up in the air. Finally we visited a market with typical african art and took our way to Cape Town.

Robertson 20. - 23.8.

Hello all!
First thanks for all your comments!
We haven't been writing since a while because we had a relaxing time in Robertson (by accident).
To start from the last entry, we had a great austrich steak for dinner and the next morning we took the route 62 (very beautiful mountains) into the famous wine area in south africa to Montagu because we wanted to do a canu tour on the river there. Actually the hostel was full and there was no possibility to do canu in this town. So we decided spontanious to go to Robertson, 20 min. from there and we found a very nice backpackers. Kevin and Lynda are the owners and do it by themselves so it was very cosy and family like. They have a maroccan room with a cocktailbar and two very cute dogs. There we spent 3 nights, relaxing, having dinners in their kitchen and we did a wine tour with Kevin as a guide - visiting 4 different vineyards with a lot of wine to try, always starting from different whites to different reds :-)
We also went hiking to a creep and a waterfall. Finally we decided to leave the 23rd, because there was the last stop before Cape Town waiting for us......

Oudtshoorn - 19.8.2009

The Oysters were very good and afterwards we got a great grilled fish and meat (surf'n turf). We spent the rest of the evening a the campfire at our hostel with some americans, irish and australian people.

Next morning we got up early like always (it is getting dark at around 18h and at 21h it feels like in the middle of the night and at 22h you find us usually in our beds) and went to the beach. Two hours later we arrived at the backpacker in buffalo bay really closed to the wild beach and 15km far from Knysna where we had a township tour at 14h (it was interesting but poor as expected). The landscape around is very beautiful with huge beaches, lagunes and waves for surfers. Since it is wintertime here it is a great time to travel not to busy and overcrowded. We got a fantastic dinner at the hostel for around 6 euros with big salad, lamp chops, something like "Hirse" called pap with warmed tomatos and a sweet corn (Kolben don't know the name). There was a storm at night and wo got up even earlier than normal. Christin almost drove me crazy with her activism :-) (remark Martina)

After breakfast we went to Oudtshoorn. The stop in wilderness was supposed to be the lunchbreak but after arriving there 1 hour later it was kind of too early (ok we will study the map better next time).
We visited already the cango caves and a wildlife ranch where we saw cute lions, crocodiles and more. This area is famous for its austrich farms so guess what we will have for dinner tonight.

Cheers mates

P.S.: The treehouse was actually really that one we slept in we did not managed to upload the pictures yet (but you are welcome to our 5-10 hour presentation after the holiday ;-)

Stormriver/Plettenberg Bay 16. and 17.

On the 16th we picked up our rental car - a nice KIA (don't ask which type but the size of a golf). After getting used to driving on the left, we went to stormsriver (about 170 km from P.E.). It is a very small village and gives the impression of being like in a western movie, one dirt road with coloured houses on each side. Our Hostel was 2 km far from that place, very nice bedrooms with beds made out of brenches, a big place to sit upstairs and downstairs was a fire place with lots of hangcocks (???), a frog city (unfortunately we couldn't find them) and an empty Jacuzzi on the first floor outside.

In the afternoon we did treecanopy - you slide on ropes from tree to tree, more or less 30m hight, the longest rope was about 90 m and that was all in the rainforest, really great and thrilly (you can buy a dvd for 5 euros when we are back home ;-)
Pizza for dinner in the hostel while watching skidive and bungeejumping vidios. In general in this area you have a lot of possibilities to do extrem sport and scary things.

Next to stormsriver is the highst place to bungeejump in the world, 216m (from a huge bridge) - but we do not need every type of thrill. We just went there this morning to watch crazy people doing that. Afterwards we went to our hostel in Plettenberg Bay, we are actually the only guests here and have a big room for ourselves with seaview. We spent the day with hiking around robberg peninsula and we saw dolphines and seals and big waves - was a great tour! Now we are going for oysters.

Tomorrow we are heading for Knysna.

Goodbye

Port Elizabeth - 15.8.

Hey again!

We arrived in Port Elizabeth and we survived!
Yesterday we had to take the train from Jo'burg to PE and were pretty scared before, because some people told us about the dangerous train station. We took a taxi from the Hotel to the park station and actually it was a little weird, because there were no white people neither in the city nor in the station. But we found the ticket office and everyting was fine with the booking and we got the tickets (other people had big problems!) and had a two person sleeper compartment. Next to our waggon was the restaurant ans you can imagine where we spent most of the time...... :-)
After 21 hours we arrived today in the morning and went to Longile Backpackers which is a very nice place. We spent the day in the Bays World (snake parc, ocenarium, museum), saw the beach and had a nice dinner closed to the beach. Martina tried Springbock (not too bad).
Tomorrow we will move on - direction stormriver.
TSCHUS

Safari- second day

The second day in the camp was another full day safari. We were only five this time, an italian couple and Robert, who is german, just moved to switzerland and went with 18 years old alone to South Africa! We didn't see many animals in the morning, but we saw a lion, the missing part of the big 5! It was a female laying in the sun also pretty far away but cute. A few minutes later our driver Lory van den Berg (the only female guide of that company) couldn't start the car any more. And that in the middle of the Kruger Parc with no cellphone reception! Actually people are not allowed to leave their vehicles only in emergency cases but never when there is predators in the area. We were lucky because there weren't predators and another car stopped to help us. The starter was broken and a guide pushed the car until it worked. The car had to be fixed as soon as possible so we were that nice to offer the italian to change into another car who didn't have enough room for all of us.  Robert and us went back with our guide to a station where we had to wait for the rest of the group. We had the chance to talk about south africa with our guide. She is africaans and a guide for a long time, knows how to shoot and told us about her dangerous experiences in the Kruger (one time her car burned completely and she was alone in the bush and had to get help without having a weapon). 
In the evening we had the typical Braai (south african BBQ) and a lot of fun!
After discussing a lot about it, we finally decided to do the bush walk the next morning (getting up at 5.30h). We are happy that we did it, we learned about tracks, poopers, trees and african culture from our guide. It was pretty cute to find a shape of a small hand in the sand and found out it was from a monkey. Luckily we didn't see the rhinos from which we found fresh tracks and fresh droppings (they are also very aggressive). 
Now we are safe! : -) 
See you later alligator!

After Safari -

Hola a todos, 
por falta de tiempo y posibilidades de internet no podre escribir en castellano y aleman, escribire en ingles y si uri tiene tiempo despues de su viaje a lo mejor podria traducir algo..

Today we came back from the safari (Kruger National Parc) and we are in the hotel in JNB again. 

The flight was better than we thought, each of us had his own television and we could choose the movies to watch. Actually it was quiet easy to find the shuttle bus to go to the hotel and it was a very nice room. 

The next day we got picked up from VIVA SAFARIS, driving around 6 hours to a game lodge next to the Kruger Parc. We were a group of ten people, two couples from UK (boring), a familiy from Korea, Robert from Germany and us. Arriving at the first game lodge we had a sunset drive outside the parc and we saw girafs, zebras, monkeys and elefant poopers which we had to touch and smell. Later on the brought us to the real camp, the Marcs Treehouse Camp (who the fuck is Marc? - nobody knew him...) and moved in our treehouse number two. It was pretty nice, three brenches went through our bedroom and we had a nice balcony. Our personal toilet and shower were outside on the ground, pretty open and without doors. This is a safari ;-)
At dinner at the bambo (the place where the fire is and the people eat and talk) they told us about the buffalo herd which lives in the camp. They are predators and one  of the Big 5 and pretty agressive. So we had to be careful walking around. Since then we were pretty scared to go to the treehouse. The food was very good (pea soup, stew, desert). 

The 11th we had to wake up pretty early, shower in the cold and had a good breakfast right next to the waterhole, where you can see lots of monkey and impalas (they get pretty annoying after a while because you see them a lot). We had a whole day of safari, beeing in an open vehicle with our group and we already saw that day 4 of the big 5 (elefant, rhino, lepard and buffalo). Furthermore we saw hippos, girafs, crocodiles, birds, wild pigs and lots of impalas. Martina says the safari is like searching for mushrooms, its not that easy to find all these animals. Often they are very hidden and since you are driving you have to watch carefully and stop the driver. We really liked it because everything is so real, and it feels like being in Africa. When we arrived at the camp  there was a buffalo next to the swimming pool. They actually go there to drink the water and they told us that one felt inside and had a hard time to get out. Going back to the treehouse we had the herd in front of us crossing the path and got pretty scared. Also everybody tells you something different, you should stand still, go and pass them with distance or run. So we were not sure what to do! We survived :-)
Dinner was very good, vegetable soup, rice with chicken and some time chatting at the campfire.

Anteayer llamaron después de llegar y el viaje muy bien.
Un poco asustadas de tanta presión que les dimos sobre la delincuencia y casi no le hacen caso al chofer del autobus del hotel, pero llegaron bien.
Hoy (martes) he recibido este SMS:
Hi schatz no phone no net safari is great and our treehouse 2
everything impresive wish u could be here (...)jejeje...
Write Papa (Werner)...

The day before yesterday they called saying that the trip was very good.
A bit impresed for what we told them about delincuence there so that they would not listen to Hotel driver, but finally all perfect.
Today I've got this SMS:
(See top)

Uri

Jetzt gehts los!

So, es ist 3.30h in der Früh´und gleich gehts auf zum Flughafen....letztendlich hab ich es vorgezogen, nicht zu schlafen, nachdem Uri und ich essen waren und es spät geworden ist..
Ich hoffe, dass wir bald wieder die Gelegenheit haben, etwas zu berichten (keine Ahnung, wie die internet Möglichkeiten auf der Safari sein werden).
Drückung an alle und ein dicker kuss an meinen Schatz!

Son las 3.30h por la mañana y ahora vamos al aeropuerto...al final he preferido no dormir, porque fuimos a cenar y después hablamos y se ha hecho tarde..
Espero poder escribir pronto (no sé que posibilidades vamos a tener en el safari con internet).
Un abrazo a todos! un beso muy grande a mi schatzi

Ya es viernes y después de una jornada muy intensiva de trabajo (por suerte he podido ir a comer con mis compis Inés y Carlos) se ha acabado este año y me voy de vaaaaacaciones! Como es viernes, un video y una canción muy chula que trata de.......AFRICA

Nun ist es Freitag und nach einem langem und intensiven Arbeitstag (glücklicherweise konnte ich mit meinen Kollegen Inés und Carlos Mittag essen gehen) ist dieses Arbeitsjahr endlich vorbei und ich habe Ferien! Da heute Freitag ist, ein cooles Lied mit Video, natürlich über AFRIKA

the first days

Am 9.8. geht es los! Wir fliegen nach Johannesburg und verbringen die erste Nacht in einem Hotel in der Nähe vom Flughafen.. am nächsten Morgen werden wir ganz früh abgeholt und es geht auf eine 4-tägige Safari in den Krüger National Park. Anbei ein Foto von einem Baumhaus, wo wir die drei Nächte schlafen werden. Ist doch voll cool, oder?

El día 9 de agosto nos vamos...iremos a Johanesburgo y dormiremos la primera noche en un hotel muy cerca del aeropuerto. El día siguiente nos recogen alli para ir a nuestro primer safari! Durara 4 dias en el parque kruger. Arriba podéis ver una foto de la casa de arbol donde pasaremos estas 3 noches. QUE CHULO!