Meh

Righto, well, I'm still sick. Not as sick as The Trucker tho. And I probably could've done with a day off work to spend in bed .... but having been on training for the last 4 days of last week, the office already thinks I've been off since I haven't been around to do my normal work.

So here I am. Anyway, the weekend was okay. I'm a bit blue this morning so excuse the lack of enthusiasm.

On Friday evening The Trucker & I headed to Schwabing for one of his friend's birthdays. I dunno why everyone loves the place. I find it decidedly average and don't know that I would ever go back if people didn't keep arranging things there. Guess it's all about the boy-sized schnitzels and beer. But it is nice enough I guess if you have a large group. Anyway, neither of us was feeling 100% and we left at about 21h30. I will say I was super grateful for the Gluhwein I was drinking :)

On Saturday we did some admin - I've decided I need to fence the bunnies off the non-grass bits of the garden for winter because they are chewing thru the plants at an alarming rate and the plants just can't keep up. Sadly this hasn't worked out very well because Coal & Lily have already managed to get themselves under the fence but then can't get out again and I have to chase them around till I can catch them. Which doesn't make them love me very much at all :(

We spent Saturday afternoon very quietly on the couch watching Get Him to the Greek. Apparently not knowing the Stroke the Furry Wall song was a gaping hole in my life experience ;) Pretty mindless entertainment, just what we needed!

On Saturday evening we headed thru to Pretoria to try out a Turkish restaurant called Ala Turka with @Toxic_Mouse & his girlf. Dreadful website: you have to click on (apparently not the food) menu to get to the rest of the navigation and the sound re-switches back on on every new page. It was pretty cool. I really enjoy getting a vast selection of meze to share. But then I had no space for mains (luckily I had only ordered another meze dish). The entertainment was okay, there were 2 Belly Dancers dancing with fire & swords. It's a bit difficult for them to navigate all the tables, I guess. And the bill was astronomical for a table for 4. Worth the experience, but I doubt we'll be trekking all the way back there again.

On Sunday we had a quick breakfast at home and then The Trucker went off to cricket (he shouldn't have) and I went shopping. I have decided to split my house stuffs into bite-sized chunks. At the moment on my list is my main bedroom so I was off hunting for light fittings. Went to a bazillion shops and couldn't find what I wanted - sigh. And then I went grocery shopping because I was in the mood to try out my old bread recipe which I haven't made in years (tis the season to dunk bread in soup, you know) and I planned to try out Mac n Cheese in my new slow-cooker.

We had a very lazy Sunday afternoon, The Trucker slept for most of it. We finished off the last ever episodes of House and ate my Mac n Cheese. Hmmm, it's not saucy like usual but the flavour was spot on. May require further experimentation.

Splutter

Okay well there's a good reason for me only have to have put up holiday posts this week .... a) they were ready and b) I've been in training all week at work. So not much time for blogging. Although it does seem to have increased my twitter output ;)

Anyway, it's been a very average week. Leftover Prego Rolls for dinner with The Trucker on Monday evening, nice and relaxed. Tuesday evening at SCM. Dinner at Gourmet Garage with CollegeInstructor to thank him for bunny-sitting while I was in Namibia. I've discovered the trick to dinner at Gourmet Garage now. Because I consistently order the same thing: Chili Cheese Fries with a Peanut Butter Burger. And I polish of those oh so yummy fries before touching my burger and then can barely get half way and end up feeling positively stuffed. Not ideal for such delish food. So this time I asked for a 2nd plate when they brought my meal and as it arrive I cut the burger in half and split the fries down the middle and got a take-away immediately. Worked out perfectly. I enjoyed all the amazing flavours of my meal and didn't end up feeling too full at all. Just perfect. Best part was I got to enjoy all those flavours yet again at lunch on Thursday ;)

On Thursday evening I stayed home watching Series and The Trucker popped by for a quick visit before he headed off to Action Cricket. I've been feeling a little sick & snotty this week and although I did consider heading all the way to Wolves for Woodstock Mafia (a friend from my school day's brother is in the band) a quiet night in suited me far better. Oh well. Can't do everything all the time - haha.

This morning I'm feeling much worse :( Oh well. I guess I'll have to have a relaxing weekend then ;)

02 May: Luderitz to Kolmanskop to Keetmanshoop

We weren't up too early this morning, we didn't have far to go. We enjoyed a breakfast at the Guest House and then said goodbye to Luderitz and headed to Kolmanskop tour (which I'd booked in advance with Elena Travel Services).

I know, I've been to Kolmanskop before (lookit me repeating places with this boy ;) ) but, it's one of my all-time favourite places in Namibia and The Trucker had never been. It wasn't an option in my mind. We joined the 9:30am tour around the town and then spent a while wandering on our own taking plenty of gorgeous photos! Last time I went it was on about Day 3 of my 5-week long tour, so I was a little sensitive of how many photos I was taking and having enough space left on my memory card. This time I went wild! It was great fun :)


We also made a turn at the Garub Wild Horses afterwards on the drive to Keetmanshoop. As I said, we missed it yesterday afternoon, but the place has changed completely from how I remember it 8 years ago! But this time there were loads of horses (last time there were literally only 2) all around with plenty of young. We even saw a jackal.



The rest of the drive to Keetmanshoop was pretty uneventful, and we managed to get to the Quivertree Forest Rest Camp just at 4pm, in time for the cheetah feeding. It seems like there are a lot of tame-ish cheetahs living on farms in Namibia, because I got to touch cheetahs the last time I was there too. By the time the feeding was done, The Trucker & I were seriously debating our interest in setting up the tent ... especially when the maddest accommodation I've ever seen was on offer! They have 8 igloo bungalows available.


With that decision made, we headed off to wander thru the actual Quiver Tree Forest while the sun set. Gorgeous. Perfect timing :) Now, I dunno that it really qualifies as a good and proper "forest", but there were more quiver trees than I'd seen in one place before. There were also more dassies than I'd ever seen before! And cute baby ones and a mad one right in the middle of a thorn tree munching away and another one rolling around in the sandy path. They weren't terribly bothered by us, honestly. They reminding me of the bunnies, but with no ears - haha.


We braaied for ourselves after our walk (we'd made a quick stop at the Spar in Keetmanshoop) and then headed to bed. Probably our latest night in a while - haha!

28 April - 01May: River Rafting on the Orange River to Luderitz

We were up early. I didn't brave a cold morning shower. We packed up our tents, had our cooler boxes filled with ice, grabbed some breakfast (egg & bacon rolls) and hauled our gear down the hill to our boats waiting for us at the water's edge.

Okay, so the first day was tough. I've probably never spent so much as even an hour rowing non-stop in my life. Today we went 18kms before stopping for lunch. Also, there felt like there were millions of other groups on the river with us. We past some, others past us. (We were a fairly small group at only 18 people). Thank goodness they get so much of the rowing out of the way while it's still a novelty. We didn't go thru any too hectic rapids today at all so our stuff stayed safely stowed in our boats. We stopped for lunch where they made us delish tuna-mayo sarmies (was pretty hungry by this point and that may have made these the most tasty tuna sarmies I've ever eaten!!). During lunch we also got to nappy-run the rapid we had stopped next to. This means we'd pulled up our boats and floated down the rapid in our life-jackets. Great fun! Thankfully the water was a very nice temperature for our whole trip - I was a little worried about the sleeping in tents next to a river and being drenched at this time of year, but it was perfect.

After lunch we paddled another 10km. When you hear that over the 4 day trip you travel for 68km down the river, and you realise you have already done 28 of them in day one, you know it gets easier from here :)

The bit that makes it not quite so easy tho is waking up stiff and sore (my hands were aching, I think I have a pretty good idea of what arthritis is going to be like now. I could hardly bend the fingers on one hand). I also found I had to adjust my grip on the paddle over the few days as parts of my hands that had never really been used before took strain - that connecting skin between my thumb & fore finger took serious strain after day one!

Anyway, we arrived at a lovely sand bank for our evening stop. We picked out our spots and set up our tents (although at least 8 people on our trip were camping under the stars - we were recommended not to do this by a friend of The Trucker's because of the bugs, and after our experience of freezing next to the Okavango River in Bots, we weren't taking any chances of getting too cold with this river-side sleeping). We swam across the river to "The South African side" (this was a regular joke/observation of our trip) and back. We relaxed, we snacked. We had a delish dinner - I forget specifically what and won't go into much more detail about our eating on the trip, but let me tell you, Felix Unite is organised. We were treated to things like french toast and banana bread baked on the fire for breakfast. They cooked gammon on the fire one evening for the following lunch. Needless to say we ate well and I think everyone was impressed, if not amazed, at what could be made alongside the river on a fire!

We had a group of 6 guys who were traveling together having not seen each other since varsity days however-many years before and they took it upon themselves every evening to build us the biggest bonfire they could. And let me tell you they were generally quite massive!

Unfortunately the days do blur a bit and I'm sorry I was too nervous to have my camera out while we were actually paddling. There are some spectacular views. It is a beautiful experience! Sometimes the scenery looked like a painting instead of real life!



On one of the days we went down the Sjambok Rapid ... which is the most hectic of the 4 day trip. No one in our group made it down upright ... except The Trucker & I! OMG was I ever thrilled with my boy at that moment. Don't misunderstand, you get wet on these rapids, soaked even, especially as the person in front as the waves crash over the boat. But I was still not enthralled with the idea of upending everything in our boat into the river and testing out the water-proof theory of their buckets - honestly everyone's stuff seemed absolutely fine, but I wasn't keen on taking the chance.

We reckoned it's because our boat was leaking so much for the entire trip we were experienced when it came to balancing to stay upright after taking on so much water from the waves in the rapid. Haha. That or we're just super skilled!

There were bits where we had almost no current and had to paddle for long stretches, there were bits where we hopped out of our boats and floated next to them, enjoying the current pulling us thru the water. One night we camped next to a closed Diamond Mine.


On Day 3 we only paddled till lunch and got the rest of the whole afternoon to relax and walk around. On the evening of day 3 we had a lovely fire and all sat around in a circle talking ... seemed a little sad that we only got to that on our last evening together. On Day 4 we only paddled for an hour or two before we reached the pull out point at Aussenkehr. This bit got a little tedious as there are many groups leaving the river and you have to queue and wait for buses to arrive back from the main camp. We were in a particular hurry because we had to drive to Luderitz before evening and we had decided to take the 200km shorter dirt road thru the Richtersveld and we had no idea how long that would take us.

We rushed thru lunch back at the campsite and our goodbyes ... we did buy the photo-booklet tho (R380 - not like we care about the booklet, I dunno why they don't just let you buy the card that gives you the only download details for a lesser rate?!). There were some *hysterical* photos in there (they are taken as you go thru the Sjambok Rapid). The Trucker maintains a calm and joyful smile thruout ... I look terrified tho - haha. Everyone else had some really nice photos of their bailouts too.

The drive to Luderitz was actually really nice and we had the added bonus of suddenly switching to Namibian time and gaining an hour (so our worry about arriving at destination before sunset was really unnecessary). The Richtersveld is quite spectacular to drive thru. We missed the turn-off for the Garub Wild Horses (will go on our drive past again tomorrow) and eventually I could point out Kolmanskop and before we knew it, we were in Luderitz.




We checked in at Kratzplatz Guest House and then went for a drive. We headed to Shark Island and enjoyed the sunset and then went for dinner at Ritzi's. I had some delish sole and The Trucker had the biggest piece of schnitzel I have *ever* seen.

Epic Anniversary Weekend

Wow, what a weekend. Seriously. It was one of those where I found myself reminding myself on Sunday afternoon that normal life is not a "low". You know, when you have such awesome high's ... sometimes even coming back to real life leaves you feeling down and sad for no explainable reason, except that you're not feeling quite as happy and fulfilled anymore. Does that make any sense to anyone? I can't properly explain ....

Let me rather explain the awesomeness that was my weekend so that I never forget :) So, a little while ago I said to The Trucker I had an idea for our anniversary. And he was all "But aren't I supposed to plan that?". Little did I know he also had something in mind. So usually we'd probably be trying to surprise each other, but this time we shared our ideas and compromised (surprises are so much better when they aren't likely to conflict with the other's plans ;) Haha). Anyway, he was thinking Spa Weekend and I was thinking Urban Weekend.

So on Friday night he booked us in for a Full Body Massage, a Fish Spa (which I have always wanted to try!) and dinner at Kai Thai. The downside of the Full Body Massage was we weren't in the same room together, which I think would've been nice. But I was glad it washed away the awful massage experience I had in China. It was very relaxing. Next up was the Fish Spa (we were supposed to do that first because of the oils put on you during the massage but they had another booking apparently, so they just re-washed our feet). OMG it was so weird. It felt like tiny little electrical pulses on your skin (which obviously it's not, don't worry). And it was quite ticklish in the beginning, but you get used to it. Definitely worth trying, but I won't need to do it again. Can't say I've noticed any benefits either, I think it's more a novelty than anything else.

And then we had dinner. Which was nice enough. They're not my favourite Thai food spot. It was a fantastic start to the weekend :)

On Saturday we had a very lazy morning at home. The Trucker cooked up some bacon and I made french toast for breakfast and we lazed around watching TV and getting Namibia blog-posts ready. Just before 1pm we headed off to the Neighbourgoods Market. Ah, seriously, so vastly better than Market on Main. We browsed around, queued for a Balkan Burger, bought our favourite Everson's cider and then we tried things we'd never bought before (I think this is the trick to going back to these markets that never change, makes them a whole new experience) like Harissa sauce (we made prego rolls with it on Sunday evening), Honey Mead & a honeycomb and a plate of Dutch poffertjies. It was a fantastic way to spend an afternoon.

After that we headed off to the Maboneng Precinct to check into our hotel for the night. I'd booked us a night at the 12 Decades hotel :) Okay, let's get my gripes out of the way first:
1) the website. Online, on a PC, I couldn't find any listing of the decades and what the rooms looked like. But trying to find the same site on The Trucker's tablet was impossible. A completely different site came up when searching on mobile & PC ... and the mobile site is *much* better and more user friendly - although I couldn't find the nearby restaurants listing (which is what I had been looking for). Now that I've actually got the address from my blackberry search, here is the website I recommend using.
2) Reception & Parking. Okay, it was difficult enough for us to find the hotel entrance what with the street outside blocked off to cars because of a live music event (some reggae stuff which I can tell you clearly wasn't nearly as well attended as they were hoping for because most of the blockaded area was empty for the entire time we were around. So anyway, we park our car in some little side street and walk to the hotel entrance and reception. And then stand around. There is no one around. No one who looks like they know anything that could help us either. Eventually I phoned reception because I could see their phone had a call forward on and got thru to someone who said they were on their way. Now fair enough the receptionist seems to be the only person around to receive guests and show guests to their rooms, but then they really should leave a note or a sign or something. we must've waited more than 5 minutes before we knew what was going on. And then after showing us our room, she told us we could move our car to Bay 58 in the hotel parkade. Do you think any of the 3 security guards was letting us in?! Nope. Apparently you need a sticker and we hadn't been given one. So I had to take the security guard with me to the receptionist while The Trucker waited with the car. Although she told us more than one she'd phoned to tell them to let us in. Surely you think they'd know how their security works already?

But yes, other than that we had a wonderful stay there. I do think it's a bit pricey for just a room. But our room was absolutely massive and had a full kitchenette which we didn't use. We stayed in 1986 "Catwalk Customs" Designed by Black Coffee. Because I hadn't found this site before booking, I figured I'd leave it up to chance. I think if I ever ended up staying there again I'd ask to stay in 1996.

After settling into our room, we headed to the Carlton Centre to go look at Joburg from the Top of Africa. Neither of us had been before and it was pretty cool. You can't spend too long there tho. And I kinda figured we'd be able to have awesome sundowners or something there (we did buy a coke while we wandered). But it closes at 5pm (a little naive I think). I think it'd be amazing to go up there at night and see the lights! It's probably better to go around midday when the sun is above you and not blinding one side of the building. Still, it's fascinating to see Joburg from so high. At a mere R15 entrance, I highly recommend this :)

Then we headed back to the hotel to relax, watch some TV and read our books before dinner. We didn't really know what to do for dinner so took a wander around some of the nearby spots and ended up at Chalkboard Cafe for a pizza. It was really delish pizza! And while we were there we decided why not go to the 9pm showing of Otelo Burning at The Bioscope. I'd heard about it on 702 and was keen to see it. We did try hanging out in the Cafe till it started but the bad reggae got a bit much and we ended up going up to the room to wait.

We both thoroughly enjoyed the movie. I was a little nervous once I saw it was subtitled but luckily The Trucker loves South African films. Pity about the terribly uncomfy broken chairs - obviously everyone else there knew to avoid the back row. But aside from that,  I loved the whole experience and would definitely go back!

On Sunday morning, to complete our weekend we headed to my favourite, Salvation Cafe for breakfast. Yum! After that it was home & grocery shopping while The Trucker played cricket. This is when I started to come off my fluffy cloud of love and happiness back down to normal and real life and feel the Sunday Blues kick in ... we spent Sunday evening eating home made Prego Rolls (so good but quite spicy!) and watching Little Shop of Horrors. I'd never seen it before and The Trucker had only seen it as a kid. It was such a yawn. Pretty funny in places, but we fast forwarded thru all thru annoying sing-song bits. And where did they find that awful over-the-top actress? Shoowee. I wouldn't even recommend this as a stroll down memory lane!