Went into Sydney today and managed to take the ferry over to Manly Beach (despite the labour stopage that prevented ferries from running between 10 am – 2 pm!). Saw the Opera House (from the outside – hope to do a tour tomorrow). Lots to see!
Arrived in Australia last night. Perfect weather today – really hot (compared to what I’m used to – fairly cool for the people here, though!). Spent some time with my dad’s friend Denis in the ‘placid’ waves at South Cronulla Beach (near where the riots were a little while ago) before driving through the Royal National Park. I was amazed by the size of the park (so close to a city!) and the diversity of the trees (but I haven’t seen a kangaroo or koala, yet).
Arrived in Singapore early this morning – first place with free Internet access so far this trip! Flights were fine, but I feel tired now – it’s not even midnight Canadian time but the night is over for me already…hope I can keep sleeping on this leg of the trip!
After Kruger, we stayed in Pilgrim’s Rest – a ‘living museum’ (a little like spending the night on the set of Anne of Green Gables). Quite different than the rest of the trip, to say the least!
Then on to Johannesburg, which we all seemed to like. I was way more impressed with this city than I thought I would be (I’d been nervous about visiting it). It actually reminded me of Montreal (and I never would have expected that!).
We managed to visit the Apartheid Museum before Cullen and I caught our flights away.
On our way to Kruger Park we spent the night in a town called Glencoe (where people seemed very surprised to have tourists stop). We stayed at the LaLaLaPha Hotel and were treated to 10 C temperatures! This was shocking – we weren’t prepared for this! Cullen and I played pool and embarassed Canadians everywhere with our poor skills. Most of our competitors only spoke Afrikaans, so that made for a slightly different experience than usual (although I can’t say that was responsible for my terrible playing).
Next we went to Nelspruit, where Cullen redeemed himself by winning at Blackjack at Casino Emnotweni…
Almost at Kruger, we stayed one night in a lodge at Hazyview…
Then on to Kruger where we slept in rondavals (round huts with thatched roofs) and got to have about 2 days of driving through the park. This ended up being a whole lot more fun than I think any of us expected. We saw a lot of animals (and got pretty good at seeing them before being told what was there). On our last morning, our guide was quite pleased to finally be able to bring us to where the lions were…
And, the weather was hot! Really hot! We weren’t used to this! The experience was great. I hadn’t known that it would be so relaxing to be that close to animals (and that I would really find it exciting to see a giraffe in the trees!).