My Thoughts From The Deep End : fishing

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Sunday, September 18, 2016

The Last of Zambia

This will be my last post about our recent trip to Botswana and Zambia. I had so many photos and stories and it took me a while to sort through it all. Hopefully I didn't bore you. Now, it's just a few more memories and some photos that I never shared before I leave this topic.

On our last morning in Zambia, Mr. Deep tried again to catch a tiger fish. He was not successful, but the guide he was with did catch one so at least I can share a photo with you.

Mr. Deep did have some great last wildlife sightings while he was out for that final fishing trip.

On our last night in Zambia during our final boat ride on the Zambezi, there was a special surprise. When we rounded a bend at sunset there was a bar set up (always a happy surprise to see) and the staff were all there to welcome us and offer us a happy hour by sunset. It was so pretty and I took a ton of photos of the same scene but played around with different camera settings.

And here is one last photo from Zambia. The Birdman and me looking happy and relaxed. Until next time Zambia.

Monday, January 11, 2016

Camping at Silver Rocks

Before I share the details of our New Years Day and weekend camping adventures, I wanted to share some exciting news. I am thrilled to let you know that this blog is now featured on the Expat Arrivals website as one of the "best expat blogs in South Africa" Yay!! Expat Arrivals is a website that is a resource for expats across the world. You can check out the page that contains links to my blog and several others here.

I also want to publicly thank my friend (my virtual friend we have never actually met) and fellow blogger Joburg Expat. Joburg Expat regularly shares my blog with her thousands of readers and also frequently comments on my blog and repeatedly tells me how funny I am. If you are moving to South Africa, Joburg Expat's blog is extremely informative about things such as schools, traffic registry and much more. And her writing is also very funny. Check out her blog here.

And now, onto the details of the New Years Camping Trip.

You might be wondering what exactly is going on here. This is a photo of Mr. Deep installing a makeshift ceiling fan to the top of our tent. He duct taped the ResQ battery (you might remember I wrote about this battery here) to the fan, plugged the fan into it and then affixed the fan to the top of our tent so it faced down on us like a ceiling fan. For some reason the way that it hung it mostly cooled me, but I'm not complaining. And I think that was Mr. Deep's whole plan, to ensure less complaining from me!

Two posts ago I recounted the horrors of trying to sleep in our own home without the air con on Christmas Eve. Fast forward to New Years Day and Mr. Deep and I were leaving to go camping for the weekend. This camping trip had been scheduled, planned and paid for in full before the scorching night before Christmas episode occurred. Because of the discomfort we experienced at home when the power went out, we weren't sure if we should attempt the camping trip. We wondered, "does anyone even camp here during the summer?" Were the staff at the campground where we booked laughing hysterically that some out of towners booked a campsite for New Years weekend? Were they opening the camp specifically for us since no South African would ever consider camping during the summer?

We decided to give camping in mid summer in South Africa a try and traveled to a place called Silver Rocks Caravan Park located near Bela Bela in the Limpopo Province. Bela Bela is known for its natural warm baths, but it would be too hot to visit warm baths during this trip. The campsite was located less than two hours from our home which was good because if we were dying from discomfort and heat stroke after the first night we could just come home early.

Silver Rocks Caravan Park is a true campground. This was not roughing it style camping like what we did when we traveled the Lebombo Eco Trail back in September. This campground has spaces for tents and campers each with electric hookups and water spouts. The campground also has a pool and full service bathrooms and showers. A nearby lodge has another pool and a restaurant. Game drives in the nature reserve are also available from the lodge.

While Mr. Deep and I do have our own tent, we decided to rent a larger canvas tent at the campground because it included cots and we thought it would be more comfortable. At the last minute we did bring our own tent along, in case the canvas tent felt more like a canvas oven.

This was our welcoming committee when we arrived at our tent. No, your eyes aren't failing you it's just a really bad picture. It's so bad it reminds me of a picture that someone would take of a supposed Bigfoot sighting. It's a scorpion in case you can't tell.

Reception area at the campground

Table tennis anyone?

Our campsite

Close up of the tent. It had a little reception area shown here.

Inside the tent

While we explored all of the great amenities at the campground, we noticed that yes, people do camp during the height of summer. And they don't just camp. They camp in full style. The campers and luxury items that our fellow campers had on the Lebombo Eco Trail is a thing. It's what everyone does. Mr. Deep and I approach camping with these thoughts in mind 1) be prepared so we don't die from exposure or injury 2) try to store and prepare food in a manner so as not to become violently ill from food poisoning and 3) try to stay somewhat clean and sanitary during the trip so that when the trip is over we are not mistaken for being homeless. Everyone else in South Africa it seems approaches camping with these thoughts in mind 1) bring a set up that rivals the style and comfort of your living room, kitchen and bedroom back home 2) have lots of electric lights including Christmas style twinkle lights to create nice and celebratory atmosphere 3) have full refrigeration and freezer capability so that you can bring and cook as much meat as humanly possible. 4) spend most of each day preparing to cook meat, cooking meat and eating meat.

Even though this time we were not competing with other campers we were once again completely outclassed. Luckily we were also the only ones who rented a canvas tent (who needs a giant canvas tent when you have a camper) so we were down the hill and not visible to the other campers and they were not aware to the degree that we were slumming it.

Other campers do it in style!

But no worries, what we lack in fancy camping equipment Mr. Deep makes up for in ingenuity!

Enjoying the fruits of his labor.

On Friday afternoon shortly after we arrived we went on a game drive. We wanted to walk to the lodge where the drive would depart from to avoid moving the jeep which was parked right near our campsite. We were told the lodge was 2k away but it was more like 3k. The guide must have been worried that we would be late so he and another guy came and picked us up as we were walking. When we got into the car the two men were talking to each other. It's not unusual here for people to talk to each other in other languages besides English, none of which Mr. Deep or I can understand. White people might talk to each other in Afrikaans and black people will talk to each other in one of the Bantu languages. So these two guys were chatting away with each other in Zulu or whatever and then one of them said, "spitting cobra" and started pointing explaining to the other guy he had recently seen a spitting cobra nearby. There was enough English interspersed that I knew what he was saying. I'm not paranoid, Mr. Deep heard it too.

Luckily this sculpture was the closest thing to a cobra or any snake that we encountered!

Thanks to the ride we made it to the game drive in time. The only big five animal at this reserve is a rhino. They used to have two rhinos but sadly one was killed by poachers.
Here are some of the best photos from the game drive.

I will never get tired of seeing this.

I should create a whole blog post dedicated to photos of Mr. Deep peering through binoculars. Like a greatest hits album.

Is there something behind me?

It was a great trip and we were not too hot or uncomfortable. The ceiling fan helped as did a huge rain storm on Saturday night. Here are some additional photos from the weekend.

On Sunday morning Mr. Deep got up very early and went bass fishing up at the lodge.

For scale this fish was 20 inches/50 cm long.

Dinner!

We did not know the campsite had an electric hook up so we did not bring along the electrical cord for our camping refrigerator. We only brought the cord along that plugs into the power supply in the jeep. Next time we will know.

In the pool at the lodge. The lodge is called Silver Streams and would make a nice getaway from Joburg for those who would rather not camp.

Happy 2016 to all!

Monday, January 4, 2016

Deep Thoughts

My apologies that the font sizes in the email version of this post were wacky. I have fixed that now. Enjoy the post!

As we kick off 2016 I thought it might be interesting to share a different perspective. You've read post after post describing my experiences and thoughts about living in South Africa, but what about Mr. Deep? What does he think about life in South Africa? What does he enjoy, what could he do without and what really annoys him about his wife? OK, that last question really doesn't have much to do with life in South Africa, but it might be interesting to find out anyway. Or, it might not be that interesting.

Before I get to our Q&A with Mr. Deep, I thought I'd share the reason that I call this blog My Thoughts From the Deep End. First, because when you are a kid, going in the deep end of the pool is a very big deal. Obviously you can't touch the bottom and you have to rely on your swimming skills to stay alive. That is how I felt about moving to South Africa. Very excited but totally outside my comfort zone. I wasn't sure if I'd be a strong enough swimmer to survive. Luckily, so far so good.

Second, on my visa I am listed as a "dependent spouse" which means Mr. Deep is my only reason for being here. As a dependent spouse I can't have my own bank account, my own cell phone account or my own any account and I can't get a job. It means South Africa tolerates my being here because they figure if they ask my husband to leave me back in the U.S. he might not come here and work.

As part of the visa application process, Mr. Deep had to sign a letter of undertaking saying he'd take care of me, his dependent, and see to all of my needs for the entire time that we are here. It's like when you agree to let your friend bring his dodgy girlfriend to your party. You say, "OK, you can bring her but you're responsible for making sure she doesn't go off the rails and if she does, you're sending her home ASAP" So I'm deep-end-ent on Mr. Deep and if I act out, he needs to send me packing to the U.S.A. Thus, the deep end.

An interview with Mr. Deep.
Interviewer: Mr. Deep, you've been living in South Africa for over ten months now. Tell me, what are some of the things that you enjoy most about life here?

Mr. Deep: Most of the time the weather. Despite the recent heat wave we've been having, the weather is usually beautiful. I enjoy being able to see wild animals in their natural habitat pretty much any time I want. I like the fact that we can live in such a nice house for way cheaper than something comparable would go for back home. I also love that beer and food are pretty cheap. I enjoy that we do things that most of the people I work with don't or would not do, like go to beer/music festivals, go on Soweto bar crawls, go to the CBD (Ed - Central Business District) to see an indie movie. Or take my Jeep out for a proper off-road beating.

Interviewer: Why do you think most people don't or won't go to the types of places that you mention?

Mr. Deep: Some have kids/families, so beer fests and bar crawls would clearly not be the first choice for something to do. Some would just not think of going to CBD/Soweto in general. I would guess it is just a cultural thing that we as expats do not have a hang-up with?

Interviewer: And of the flip side, what are some things about living here that you find difficult or that you don't enjoy?

Mr. Deep: The traffic really sucks. Not all of the time, but during the morning commute, a 15 minute trip usually takes 40 minutes. I don't enjoy running into cops looking for payoffs. Also, seeing all the poverty constantly. While I am not quite as overt in my altruism as the interviewer is, I do make it a point to pay the parking guards which many of my colleagues do not do. The load shedding is a pain in the ass and I also don't enjoy losing water for weeks at a time. The air quality also leaves a lot to be desired sometimes.

Interviewer: If someone you knew was thinking of moving to Joburg, South Africa, what advice would you give to him or her?

Mr. Deep: Have an open mind. It is tough to put yourself in anyone's shoes here as you are not from here. I try not to have opinions on certain things here, if you know what I mean. Also, don't believe everything you hear on the crime - just be careful. But car-jamming is real. You should manually double check your car is locked after you click the remote. Third, just accept that the taxis will drive where they want and cut you off. No sense getting mad about it. Unless you have a Jeep and don't mind scratching it. Then you will always win the game of "chicken."

Interviewer: Yes, I know what you mean about having opinions. I once a read a quote that said, "don't judge a book by the chapter you walked in on." So I also keep my opinions to myself because I feel like I am a guest in this country and I know I don't have all of the information and the history. And I agree the taxis are very reckless. You need to be very careful and assume any taxi you see is going to somehow break a traffic law within the next 15 seconds.

Interviewer: You go to work every day. How are you finding your job here?

Mr. Deep: A nice change from what I was doing, more hands on. Although my last role really helped me learn much about one of the company's main businesses and the project turned out to be something really important for management. Now, I am learning a new business and gaining good experience in "non-accounting-related" financial management. We have set up a lot of processes from scratch and I enjoy the entrepreneurial atmosphere. We have a small team that I am one of the leaders of and I feel like more than just a "mid-level cog at McCann." Your fans of Mad Men should get that reference.

Interviewer: Since you brought it up, did you like the Mad Men series finale?

Mr. Deep: Nice way to end the show. I liked it.

Interviewer: What do you miss about living in the U.S.A.?

Mr. Deep: Surprisingly not too much. Proximity to a few people that I care about and wish I could visit more. Friends that did not live close by are still just as close thanks to that interweb thing. I do miss having places to walk or run. This place is not very pedestrian friendly. I do miss my sports and not being able to watch my teams, although this was a great year to not have to watch them, especially the Giants. Ugh.

Interviewer: Does it bother you that your wife is not working? Do you wonder what it is exactly that she does all day?

Mr. Deep: No it does not. She deserves the break. And the interviewer well knows that I have no right to complain even if it did, given my two-year sabbatical a while back. I don't really wonder what she does all day because she blogs about it, texts me during the day and generally keeps me informed.

Interviewer: Does it bother you when you meet new people, introduce yourself as Stephen and then your wife constantly refers to you as Steve possibly confusing your new friends as to what you want to be called?

Mr. Deep: Not really. I think the stigma of the "Don't be a Steve" campaign has disappeared but I still like to call myself Stephen now. I will also answer to Steve. Just not Steven. Not sure how this works, but some people in the office address me as Steven in an e-mail, when the proper spelling is RIGHT THERE IN THE E-MAIL ADDRESS.

Interviewer: Assuming that you only have two years left before you have to leave Africa, what are some of the places you want to visit and things that you want to do before you leave?

Mr. Deep: In no particular order, Namibia, Madagascar, the Okavango Delta in Botswana, Victoria Falls whenever it gets some more water running over it, Lesotho, Mozambique, Mauritius, perhaps a safari on the Zambezi river. I would also like to climb Kilimanjaro as long as I am here. As for other things to do, catch some live Rugby and Cricket, explore some other areas of Joburg and do some more fishing.

Interviewer: Yes, you recently went fishing for the first time since living here. Tell us a little about that experience.

Mr. Deep: We were over at the neighbor's for Christmas lunch. His whole family was there so I got talking with his father and the topic of fishing came up. Next thing you know I get an invite for the next morning to go fishing at the Lonehill Dam. Dam is what they call man-made lakes. I caught some pretty big barbels, which is what they call African Catfish. I seem to remember a blog post about different words they use here. Guess you can add a couple more.

Interviewer: What else do you want readers to know?

Mr. Deep:  I am glad I am far removed from that shit-show also known as the Presidential Primaries. U.S. politics in general to be quite honest. It is quite nice to not be bombarded by that stuff 24/7.

Mr. Deep on Boxing Day with the giant barbel that he caught.

Monday, December 28, 2015

A Christmas Story

Christmas Eve was a quiet and lazy day at our house. By afternoon, I had finished up all of my housework, beauty treatments and chores. Because I had no plans and it was a hot day (90F/32C), I spent the afternoon laying around doing nothing. Mr. Deep went to work for part of the day returning at about 1:30 p.m. at which time I was on the couch watching When Harry Met Sally. Sometime after the movie ended I was washing dishes and Mr. Deep yelled down from upstairs that the electricity had gone off. We checked the circuit breaker in the garage to see if it was tripped. It wasn't.

You may have noticed from reading this blog that the utilities often don't work perfectly here in South Africa. Even without load shedding, which we haven't had in a while, the power does sometimes just go off briefly in the neighborhood without explanation. Similarly, sometimes the water just doesn't work for a few hours. So the power going off is no need for panic. We usually just wait a little while and then it comes back on.

After a few hours when it didn't come back on, Mr. Deep went down to the guard gate to check to see if it was whole neighborhood that was out or just our house. He learned that it just our house that had no electricity. That is when we started to get a little nervous.

Mr. Deep called our new landlord, who is very responsive and reliable (the complete opposite of our previous landlord) to report the problem. She promptly called Eskom, the power company.

Our landlord called us back shortly to say that it appeared our old account (under the prior owner) had been shut down and that maybe that was the cause of the outage. The new landlord had set up a new account but hadn't yet received a bill. In South Africa utility accounts are set up by the home owner, not the tenant, and then the tenant pays the landlord who pays the utility company.

By this time it was 5:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve, which is really the worst time to need any kind of important service from anyone, no matter where you live. But our landlord must have raised holy hell on the phone with Eskom because she told us that an Eskom technician would be out to our house within four to six hours.

At this point, Mr. Deep and I were pretty jolly about the whole situation. So we wouldn't have electricity for a while, we were o.k. with it. We thought of all the reasons that it wasn't a big deal. First, we didn't have a houseful of relatives visiting like many people do during the holidays. Second, we don't full on celebrate Christmas and we have no kids so we did not have to face wrapping gifts or assembling little Junior's bike in the dark. Third, we have a camping fridge that we could plug into Mr. Deep's Jeep and run off the battery, so our food wouldn't spoil. Fourth, neither one of us relies on an iron lung to live (a positive in more ways that one) so having no electricity would not put us in harm's way.

We have many guards who work in our neighborhood, but our favorite is named Lunga (loon-ga.) He is just the nicest man and refers to me as "his very good friend" such as, "How are you today my very good friend?" Lunga came over to check on us as he knew something was wrong since Mr. Deep had visited the guard gate. He was worried about us and asked "but how will you wash?" But we assured him that we had water, just no electricity.

In what seemed like a modernChristmas miracle, Eskom did send a technician. He arrived at about 7:00 p.m. He flipped the breaker in the electricity box (not sure of the technical name for this box but it is a large box located outside near the driveway that contains a meter and a breaker.) As soon as he flipped the breaker the power came back on. We were so happy! The technician drove away and within five minutes, the power went off again. It was such a short lived period that Mr. Deep called the guard gate to see if the technician had managed to leave the neighborhood but we must have just missed him. He was already gone. Mr. Deep called the landlord again and she said she would call Eskom again for us. She also, very nicely, offered that if we needed to go to stay in a hotel that she would pay for it.

You might be wondering why as head of household operations Mr. Deep was handling all of this and I was busy doing nothing. That's because I am not in charge of bill paying or finances. And since originally we thought this problem had something to do with the Eskom account and the new owner, this issue was assigned under Mr. Deep's domain and once it was assigned he was doing such a good job of handling that it seemed silly to change project ownership.

Our landlord again reported the fault to Eskom and told us that if a technician was to return that evening, it would be before 10:00 p.m. as Eskom techs were knocking off work at 10:00 p.m.for the holiday. As an aside, people here love to use the phrase knocking off to describe the end of work.

After our very short lived return of electricity, Mr. Deep and I were a lot less jolly. We began to lose hope that our power would come back on any time soon. And while it remained true that we did not need the electricity to run an iron lung, or to keep our food cold, we were beginning to really wish we had it so that we could run the air con being as our house was getting warmer and warmer by the minute.

You might think that because Mr. Deep and I moved to Africa or because we slept outside while lions roamed and roared nearby that we are very brave and very rugged. And we are, sort of. But when it comes to sleeping both Mr. Deep and I are obsessed with getting a good night sleep and sleeping comfortably. Yes, we like camping but not so much for the sleep quality and when sleeping in our own home we prefer sleep enabled by air con and lots of white noise. I am so obsessed with sleep quality and quantity that immediately when I wake up every morning I asses the length and quality of my sleep and then, based on that data, decide if I am able to have a good day (I am well rested) or a bad day (groggy and sleep deprived.)

While we could have gone to a hotel as our landlord offered, we decided to stay in the house. First, we thought Eskom might come as late as 10:00 p.m. (not likely) and second, we had plans to be at our neighbor's house the next day at noon for Christmas lunch. That invite, which we were so excited about just a few days before, was now causing us to be prisoners in our own home. If we hadn't had the invite, we could have left the house for cooler pastures as no obligations would have kept us here. As a side note, I was beginning to get nervous about my potential inability to flat iron my hair before Christmas lunch. I really didn't want to show up to Christmas lunch as giant frizzy head.

10:00 p.m. came and went and Eskom didn't arrive (shocking I know) and so we tried to go to sleep. We opened up all the windows and doors even though it was still very warm outside. Remember, we have no screens in our windows or doors. I've never seen any screens in any window or door here in South Africa so I guess they don't exist. As soon as we lay on the bed Mr. Deep immediately said mosquitoes were buzzing in his ear. He tried using his iPod to drown them out which didn't work. He then tried using his iPod paired with his noise cancelling headphones. We sprayed ourselves with huge amounts of bug repellent. Mr. Deep tried sleeping in another room, I tried sleeping with the blanket wrapped around my ear like those pictures you used to see of someone who had mumps. I tried sleeping on the couch because I thought it might be cooler and less bug infested downstairs. Needless to say we didn't sleep much and we both had and still have lots of mosquito bites which we wear as battle scars, evidence of our tough night at home. In addition to the bugs and being hot, I was missing the white noise that I usually get from my fan. Even though we live in a quiet neighborhood I learned that the fan drowns out a lot of noise such as very loud cats that seem to meow all night long, the rooster that lives across the street and starts crowing at 3:00 a.m. and the birds that make so much noise starting at about 4:00 a.m. every morning. I have not written about the birds in South Africa before, but trust me they are the largest and loudest birds known to humans and every morning begins with a symphony of screeching unlike anything I have ever heard before.

As I lay in bed, I tried to remind myself that millions of people in this country live in shacks and don't have air con or fans. I also know of some people who live in very nice and fancy homes here who don't have air con. I reminded myself that when I was a kid we didn't have air con in our house and somehow I survived. But clearly I have become soft over the years and I can't sleep well when I'm not completely comfortable. I am the princess of the Princess and the Pea. I am the princess of air con.

When we "woke up" we were cranky, we were hot, we were stiff and we were tired. At 7:30 our landlord called again to say that an electrician, Mike, was going to come over "just now." Just now is a phrase South Africans like to use meaning soon or within the next few hours. Mike had conducted the electrical inspection when the house was sold so he is familiar with us and our home. I am sure Mike was not thrilled to leave his Christmas morning festivities to have to deal with us. He arrived and tried to look at everything but Eskom had locked the electrical box outside. Yes, we could have cut the lock off but we would be fined for doing so. Lunga came by to check on us but he didn't have a key for the box either. So Mike told us to have the Eskom technician call him if needed to talk through the situation if and when a tech arrived.

At around 10:30 an Eskom tech arrived. He turned the power back on and told us that the problem could be one of two things. First, maybe the house was using more electricity than the breaker in the electric box was made to handle. Or second, the cable that runs from the electric box to the house could have been damaged by rain and might need to be replaced. He explained that this cable was the responsibility of the homeowner and not Eskom (of course) but that he could fix it on the side for us. We called Mike and he said he doubted the problem was the first issue, because we have never had any issues before, but he thought maybe it was the second, the cable. Luckily, this time the electricity seemed to be staying on. The Eskom guy kindly offered to leave the box unlocked for us (even though according to him it is illegal to do so which I'm pretty sure translates into give me some cash and I will leave the box unlocked for you.) With the box unlocked if the power did go off, we could at least have access to the breaker to turn it back on. Leaving the box unlocked would also allow Mike to return at some point to take a better look to try to figure out what was causing the problem.

We were so happy to have the electricity (air con) back on that Mr. Deep tipped the guy $50 USD. For some reason neither of us had any rand on us and so American money was the best we could do. The guy had never seen a $50 bill from America before and he kept turning it over and over in his hands looking at it, not sure what to make of it. Mr. Deep assured him that the bank could covert it to a lot of rand for him.

Now it's Sunday and the the power has remained on for over 24 hours. We had a lovely Christmas lunch with our neighbors even though we were tired and covered in bug bites. Most importantly, my hair was very flat and smooth. The irony is we have a camping trip planned for next weekend so we will be celebrating New Years outside in the heat in a tent with mosquitoes. Should be interesting.