Hashtag Grateful

"And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass"
 - Counting Crows, A Long December

At the suggestion of someone close to me, someone who I trust and admire, I started reading a book called, "The Magic."

As likely became clear in my last post, just because I've decided to return to South Africa, doesn't mean I'm not the "same old me." Clearly, I'm still vain and somewhat superficial. And, I'm still skeptical about many things, things such as higher powers, the healing powers of reiki and of course magic. 

Even though I'm practical, rational and have never cracked open a self-help book until now, I am learning quite a bit from "The Magic." I find myself thinking about the book often which means it's worthwhile and interesting.

The premise of The Magic is that there is a riddle in an ancient text, which until now has never been understood or revealed. The book claims if you understand the riddle which advises incorporating gratitude into your life, your life will change and transform for the positive. Your health, your financial situation, your relationships, everything will improve. That's the part that makes me go hmmm. But the meat of the book is practical advice and specific assignments for the reader every day for 28 days all focused on becoming someone who is truly grateful. 

The tone of The Magic, reminds me a little bit of a chain letter circa 1982. Remember those? They were all worded similarly stating something along the lines of "what could be easier, mail copies of this letter to eight people by this date and good things will come to you." But if you break the chain, and don't mail the letter, "well then....we hate to tell you this but the last person who broke the chain died. And she didn't just die, just got hit by a train and smashed to a million pieces, in fact we are still finding her body parts, and then her entire family died in a freak house fire."

Bold and unafraid even back in the 80s, I always broke the chains.  So I don't believe as the book insinuates that if I'm not grateful I will miss out on the magic and good fortune promised to those who follow the steps suggested. But I have learned there is a right way to experience gratitude and strangely enough it's not the way I was doing it prior to reading the book. My former method of gratitude was to remind myself, similar to the way a nagging friend would, how great my life is and how people live in shacks in places like Diepsloot without running water and electricity and to tell myself that the fact that I accidentally brushed up against a dirty car and got a mixture of road salt and dirt on my pants really isn't the end of the world.  I have also learned that there is so much to be grateful for in life. More than I ever considered.

As I've been in America for the past six weeks, something sort of magical has started to happen. I've begun to appreciate my unusual and somewhat unsettling situation. My limbo has transformed into something slightly magical. 

The last time I lived in America I was working and when I worked work was all consuming. Work came first. It came before fun, it came before relationships and it came before friendships. I am not sure I knew any of this at the time but in hindsight it is extremely clear to me. I can remember that even when I wasn't working, I was thinking about work and squeezing my entire life into my non-working time.  Looking back, there were too many times when I decided I couldn't go somewhere or fully enjoy something because of work. Whether I actually had to work or whether I preferred to stay home and recover from or prepare to go to work, I don't know and it doesn't much matter now. 

Now, I find myself with endless opportunity to spend time with people who are important to me. I've visited friends and family up and down the eastern seaboard over the past six weeks. I've reconnected with friends from all different stages of my life, many of whom I haven't seen in years. I've stayed with some friends at their homes for days at a time, and others I've met for just a few hours. I've been to a baby shower, a 50th birthday party and a Passover Seder. I've met the children of some of my friends for the first time. I've gone to work and grocery shopping with friends.  I collected sea glass with a friend on a cold beach in Massachusetts in February and sat on a warm beach with another friend in Florida in March. I danced to 80's tunes with a group of friends and then performed "The Gambler" for them. I braved danger and personally investigated when a tree fell on my friend's house during a snow storm. Recently, when I spent time with my parents, I had the rare chance to go to Pilates and yoga with my mom...both in the same day and then I perfectly organized the food in their new refrigerator for them. What fun! 

I am grateful. 

I am grateful that I have so many interesting, fun, unique and special people in my life who love me and have welcomed me back with such enthusiasm. I'm grateful that due to my weird circumstances that I can spend meaningful time with so many people. This opportunity will never happen again...unless of course it takes two years for my paperwork to be approved, then it might happen quite frequently, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. 

A friend of mine who I've known since I was ten, and who has no idea I'm reading The Magic, summed it up perfectly in a text message she sent me after we met one day. 

"It was so nice to see you today! On one hand I do not like that you are having to go through the not knowing how things are going to work out for you. On the other hand I am glad that we have been able to reconnect..."

So am I. 

Tanzania

"The less I seek my source for some definitive 
The closer I am to fine" - Indigo Girls

Before Mr. Deep took off for Geneva leaving me in Joburg to manage the mother of all Ops assignments, our departure, we went to Tanzania. I will get to Tanzania in a minute. I promise. I'm as tired of talking about our move from Joburg as you are of reading about it. But I do have an important update to share. The situation that I was cranky about, the job that I thought was taking us to America, St. Louis to be exact, isn't happening. Instead, the plan is for us to spend the remainder of 2017 in Geneva, Switzerland where Mr. Deep is overseeing a project. 

When I talk about our future, I sound like a journalist. I say, "the plan for us" the way a reporter might say "the alleged attacker. " I do this because I think we might end up moving to St. Louis one day. So I'm not going to go on and on about how relieved I am not to be going. Doing so would be like telling your best friend you don't like her boyfriend only to find later they are getting married. It's better to say very little and to secretly celebrate if they break up.

And now, Tanzania. 

As you read the word do you pronounce it Tan Zan Knee Uh? Or Tan Zany Uh? Mr. Deep and I always pronounced it Tan Zan Knee Uh and then we noticed that many people here say Tan Zany Uh, a pronunciation which annoyed Mr. Deep greatly. Turns out both are wrong as the locals pronounce it Tan Zon Ya the last part almost rhyming with lasagna. 

Africa is huge.  It's 30.3 million square kilometres. In comparison the USA is 9.8. Globes are fictitious representations of scale. I know how big Africa is because when we fly to Joburg from New York we reach the coast of Africa in eight hours but it takes another eight of flying time to cross almost the entire length of the continent.  Although Mr. Deep and I have done an amazing job of visiting Southern Africa, having been to seven out of ten Southern African countries, this was our first visit to East Africa and let me tell you it's another world. 

I remember when Mr. Deep and I flew to South Africa for the very first time. I was sitting in coach and he was in business class. No, that's not the point of the story but it bares repeating that it occurred. Anyway, the man I was sitting next to told me that South Africa isn't really Africa. Funny enough today in Joburg I spoke with a Spanish lady and she  informed me that Geneva isn't really Europe. Anyway, it is true that South Africa is different from other parts of Africa and so if it's real Africa that you seek, I think Tanzania fits the bill. 

We started off with a midnight flight to Nairobi, Kenya, a four hour flight from Joburg, and then flew to Kilimanjaro Airport in Tanzania. As luck would have it we were seated on the wrong side of the plane when we flew over Kili so I don't have a photo to share with you of the mountain from the air. We were picked up at the airport and driven 1.5 hours to Arusha where we stayed at Arusha Coffee Lodge for one night before going to the Serengeti.

My first impressions of Tanzania are that people drive very slowly on long two lane roads, similar to Lesotho. Also, so many men drive motorcycles. It was almost like being in Asia (not that I've been but I imagine lots of Japanese made bikes.)  Our driver told us there are so many scooter accidents that the hospital had to build a wing dedicated to treating scooter injuries. 

Not the best photo quality but you can see the bikes and I love how every man in this pic is looking at the woman. 

Coffee beans. 

The next morning, we flew back to Kilimanjaro on a small plane. This time it was too cloudy to see the mountain. We then flew to Lake Manyara and then finally to the Serengeti. It was similar to our trip to Botswana where the plane stopped multiple times and different passengers came and went. 

As we walked down the steps of the plane, we met Justice our Serengeti guide. He took us out to the parking lot and advised us he had to file our park permit paperwork and that we should wait for him. Everyone else appeared to be in the same situation as it seems the park doesn't allow the guides file until the guests arrive. Justice had set up a lovely table for us with lunch and he showed us where the cold drinks were. 

When he returned he told us that we'd spend the rest of the afternoon doing a game drive and then we'd return to camp. It was only about noon and we'd never been given the opportunity to do such a long game drive before. We were thrilled at the prospect. He also showed us a map of the park and a paper showing us the type of birds we might see. I told him that Mr. Deep loves birds and Justice said he also loves birds so I knew we were in for some birding excitement (oxymoron.) Our pilot, Gareth, also joined us for a portion of the game drive. He wasn't scheduled to fly back until the next day and was spending the night at our camp. He rode with us for a bit until another guy from the camp came and collected him.

The purpose of visiting Tanzania in May was to witness the great migration, an annual natural phenomenon in which nearly two million antelope, wildebeest and zebras travel about 2000 miles in search of better grazing. The trip is dangerous and many animals are killed by predators such as lions and crocodiles (during river crossings) as they migrate.

Viewing the migration is challenging because the animals don't follow a strict schedule meaning you can't count on them to arrive in one area on a certain day or a certain week. This is understandable as they are animals searching for nice grass, not putting on a show for humans. In order to ensure that we maximized our one chance to see the migration we booked our trip with And Beyond safari company and stayed in a mobile camp, meaning the camp moves throughout the year to put itself close to the migration. More on this camp in a future post. 

From the moment we left the airstrip, the animal sightings were incredible. We have never seen such large herds of zebras and wildebeest at one time and we had never before seen lions in trees. 

These poor zebras were so nervous, they would go in the water, drink for a few seconds, get spooked and run and then repeat over and over. It's not easy to be the hunted. 

Photo credit to Mr. Deep for possibly the best picture taken during our entire time in Africa. Bravo! 

More to come on Tanzania....

Swakopmund

This post is about our trip to Namibia. Previous posts about Namibia can be found here, here and here.

Before the flat tyre, quad bike riding extravaganza and the trip to the dunes, the first place we visited in Namibia was Swakopmund. Situated on the coast of the South Atlantic Ocean and surrounded by the Namib Desert on three sides, Swakopmund is a different kind of place. It's where the desert meets the sea and it is bursting with German influence. Swakopmund in German means mouth of the water. 

Rare sun at the beach. 

Very German except for the palm trees.

Have you ever visited a place expecting one kind of weather and experiencing another? While I try very hard not to let weather dictate my level of enjoyment, when you go to the tropics and it's cool, windy and cloudy you can feel at a loss as to what to do with yourself especially if you've just spent a few days being battered by wind in Cape Town and were seeking some hot sun. Swakopmund isn't the tropics. It has what's called a mild desert climate, something which I didn't bother to research until I wrote this post. As sitting on the beach wasn't an option due to the wind, fog and cool temps, Mr. Deep and I decided to take a guided historic walking tour of Swakopmund. 

Our guide's name was Nandi. He told us his name means "never again." Nandi is the second of five children so obviously his parents changed their minds. He said he was a breech birth so I assume by the time he came out, his mother had reached her limit on pain. 

Nandi and Mr. Deep

Nandi explained the strange weather we were experiencing wasn't really strange at all. He told us that in Swakopmund the desert and ocean air are "fighting" with each other at the coast creating fog and wind. As part of the tour we walked several blocks inland and it was quite a bit warmer and sunnier there. 

Swakopmund was founded as the main harbour for the Imperial German Colony in 1892 in what was then German Southwest Africa (now Namibia.) After WWI, the Germans had to hand the area over to South Africa. Later, under South African rule apartheid was imposed and black people were moved to townships. In 1990, Namibia became an independent nation. 

Today the Namibian economy is largely comprised of tourism and mining but unemployment sits at 40%. According to Nandi people are not content to sit around doing nothing even if they are unemployed, they will try to make something that they can sell or do something to earn a bit of money. 

One of the claims to fame in Swakopmund is the Kristall Galerie, home of many beautiful crystals including the world's largest quartz crystal. I can PROMISE you if not for the tour  Mr. Deep and I NEVER would have visited the Kristall Galerie, and we would have likely made a joke about the "world's largest house of mud."  But I'm glad we ended up stopping by and the cool weather gave us the chance to learn a few things about Swakopmund that we likely never would have known. 

Yes, we were allowed to touch the world's largest quartz crystal. 

The Swakopmund Hotel, just a few blocks from the ocean and nice and sunny! 

90% of Namibians are Christian mostly Lutheran and Catholic. This is a Lutheran church. 

German war memorial. The red paint was thrown onto the memorial by protesters earlier this year. You can read more about that here. 

One of three towers that the Germans used to transmit information from Swakopmund. You can see the other two in the background one on the left and the other on the right. 

Another interesting thing about Namibia...it's empty. There's practically no one there. 

This hotel is also an old age home. The revenue from the hotel supports the old age home. Nandi told us "black people we don't put old people in homes." And below the garden at the old age home. 

Woermannhaus and tower originally used as a lookout point. We climbed the steps to the top to enjoy the view.

Swakopmund and the desert beyond.

Unique Accommodation

Namibian sunset. 

Sometimes, I lie awake at night thinking of things in life I regret doing or conversely, not doing. One thing that bothers me is that I never wrote a blog post about The Turbine Hotel in Knysna, on the garden route.  While I can't fix every regrettable situation in my life, I can write about the Turbine Hotel now, even if we did stay there quite some time ago. 

I could also lie awake thinking about the fact that this blog post is not a literary masterpiece, but the hotels are interesting and I think the photos show that. 

I got to thinking about The Turbine because of Le Mirage Hotel and Spa, the very unique hotel we stayed at recently in Namibia.  Although these two hotels have little in common, they are both in Southern Africa (over 1700 km/1000 miles apart but still, Southern Africa.) They are two of the most interesting and memorable hotels I've ever stayed at and I've stayed in many a hotel in my life. 

The Turbine Hotel used to be a power station. It is situated on a canal in the quiet (at least when we were there in April) town of Knysna. What makes the turbine hotel special is that when it was transformed into a hotel, all of the machinery that was formerly part of the power station was restored and remains in the hotel even in the rooms themselves.

In the lobby.

Dining room. 

Front entrance. 

In the bar.

View from our room.

And below are some of the gorgeous views from Knysna which I thought I'd add while I am revisiting the subject. 

We were a bit confused as to whether Le Mirage actually was an old German fort, or it if was just built to look like an old German fort. I couldn't find any info on the website about this either. But regardless Le Mirage was gorgeous. I loved the way it just popped up in the desert in the middle of nowhere. Like a mirage.