The Return of the Blogger

Yes, it has been a long long LONG time since I updated, this might be due to work, school and other computer games. However, I have been convinced by my wonderful Tali, on our 21st monthaversary that we should put up the Cape Town pics, so here goes…

 

Day 1

We arrived at airport early Friday morning to fly off to CT. I found it amazing that people in South Africa stand in lines. The passengers lined up in single file and remained in the order they arrived in even after the boarding gate opened.

Unbelievable, the flight was pretty decent, we saw a castle on a cloud and other fun time-passing devices

 

We arrived to windy weather and went straight off to the Grand West casino with Tali’s parents.

 

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After the casino we went to drop our stuff at the flat and go feed the birds – this was an incredible experience. Throwing bread at pigeons and seagulls is very therapeutic.

 

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After the birds, Tali and I went with Michal and Aviv to the waterfront. We ate KFC before a huge Shabbos dinner – please don’t tell Diedre.

 

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We had my friend Dan over for Shabbat dinner and Tali showed her artistic side by not taking a single photo in focus.

 

Day 2

We were woken up early on Saturday morning by a retarded seagull. The alleged seagull screeched incessantly and wherever he went, the other seagulls seemed to leave. Tali and I transformed this simple act into anthropomorphic drama, where Mr. Duck’s embarrassed and the other ducks are laughing. 10 brownie points if you can correctly answer which song that is from.

Tali and I got up and went for a short stroll to the beach front. With a beautiful view in every direction we looked, I reenacted the retarded seagull’s lament.

Oh yes, the scenery…

 

We officially started the day when we got back to the house and the female made me macon

The food was good so I allowed Tali to join us on the red bus tour. We arrived at the bus stop about an hour early and occupied our time with random activities.

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The red bus company takes tourists on a scenic journey around cape town. This is what we saw:

 

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Kirstenbosch Gardens:

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The Bird Park:

 

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The touring was followed by lunch – fresh fish and chips which was awesome. Later that evening we went to the casino again. We watched a football match, a movie and had a buffet dinner at a Chinese restaurant. We also decided to play the machines a bit, Tali obviously has more luck than me – I walked in with R100 and came out with nothing, she walked in with R50 and came out with R700

Well at least I have her to win for me :D

 

Day 3

The next day, Charlie decided to sell Cape Town to us by taking us on the most beautiful scenic tour of the country side.

 

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From there we rushed off for lunch and off to the airport where I sat waiting hours for a delayed flight. All in all, Cape Town is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been to and I can’t wait to go again.

Love and thanks to Diedre and Charlie and of course Michal – who generously gave us her bed to sleep in and Aviv who provide great colour commentary throughout the trip.

Pretoria and Jack Russels or a prelude to Cape Town

Yes I know I haven’t written in a while but I work in Hi-Tech and Batman Arkham Asylum is seriously addictive.

So when we left off Tali was going to Pretoria for the night and I joined her that day. I met two of her very good friends, Tammy and Kenny, her mom’s family and Tali also took me to heaven. Yes I have been to heaven; it looks like this:

That is by far the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life.

It was awesome chilling with Tali’s friends and putting names to facebook profiles. Here are some pics from the day

Later that evening we went back to the Amlers to pick some things up and for Tali to meet my other other family in South Africa. Kari gave Tali lots of stuff and they did that women bonding thing that nobody can actually understand. While they were doing that, I was onto the second leg of heaven – a plethora of Jack Russels

Jefe: I have put many beautiful pinatas in the storeroom, each of them filled with little suprises.
El Guapo: Many pinatas?
Jefe: Oh yes, many!
El Guapo: Would you say I have a plethora of pinatas?
Jefe: A what?
El Guapo: A *plethora*.
Jefe: Oh yes, you have a plethora.
El Guapo: Jefe, what is a plethora?
Jefe: Why, El Guapo?
El Guapo: Well, you told me I have a plethora. And I just would like to know if you know what a plethora is. I would not like to think that a person would tell someone he has a plethora, and then find out that that person has *no idea* what it means to have a plethora.
Jefe: Forgive me, El Guapo. I know that I, Jefe, do not have your superior intellect and education. But could it be that once again, you are angry at something else, and are looking to take it out on me?

 

Meanwhile, back in the house, the girls did their evil voodoo stuffs

 

I had to go undercover by assuming the role of someone who is FABULOUS!

After the Amlers, we went for dinner with my grandparents and I had Karoo lamb chops which were awesome. At this point I have put on around 5 kilos and I am starting to feel like I can’t do this for much longer.

Tomorrow we’re off to Cape Town and trust me, the pics are magnificent.

Dinner with the family again and again

The evening we got back from the park we went out for dinner to my aunt Shirley. Joining us were her husband Ian, cousins Carey and Darryl and their respective significant others Berelize and Catherine.

My aunt has a reputation for spoiling her dogs. Her last dog, Bambi, had its own tea mug and whenever the kettle was switched on, demanded her own cup of brew. Bambi also had a nemesis, a sharpei named Morpheus owned by two gay guys. If that is not the premise for the greatest series ever, I don’t know what is.

Bambi is now in the great tea garden in the sky and the new pet in the house is a huge bear chow by the name of patent pending.

Since chows are the most loyal dogs in the entire multiverse, people who are not family members often get devoured by just looking at them. Thus there was no interaction between us and Chewbacca.

Dinner was a tasty home-made roast and my aunt sure knows how to fill a person up. I think that every woman in my family fears somebody starving in their house and they all take preventative measures.

  

Its nice being the tall one in the family…

After dinner we went off to Avron and Steffan for some sheesha. Tanya joined in the fun as did Jarryd and Neil

The following day we went for dinner to the family again. This time on the Bauskin side. At this point, Tali was probably relieved that this was the last bit of my family she had to meet. We ate lamb ragout for dinner.

 

Tomorrow Tali goes off to Pretoria for the night and I will join her Thursday for adventures in Pretoria Tshwane.

The Big 3/5 and other interesting specimens

The title of this blog was supposed to be “The Big 5 3 and other interesting specimens” but I can’t put strikethrough in the title, so you’ll just have to deal.

A little background information:

I love the Kruger National Park (KNP). I can recall many fond memories from the times we spent at our house next to the KNP. Several times a year we would go off for a couple of weeks to the middle of the bundu (bush) and live in paradise. One of my prerequisites when going to South Africa is a trip to the KNP. If I cannot go to the park, I cannot see a point in going to SA. This trip to the KNP almost did not happen; accommodation across the whole area seemed to be booked out as my grandparents and uncle struggled to find us accommodation. Eventually, someone cancelled and we got a place for the weekend.

Back to the story.

Day 1

We left JHB early Friday morning and hit the road for the 7 hour trip (with stops) to Mpumalanga which means “where the sun rises”. Our stops included the famous Milly’s trout farm and restaurant which used to play the funniest country music but now sadly, has lost that part of its heritage.

The next stop was Hall’s Gateway to the Lowveld. Hall’s is a farm where they make honey. There is also a shop with all kinds of amazing fresh produce from meat to dried fruit. Whenever I go there, it is a small tradition of mine to take a photo of the Malaria warning sign.

We arrived at our destination, Waterberry Hill, a small resort in a valley just past Hazyview and about half an hour from the KNP’s nearest gate. The chalet was perfectly adequate for our needs, it looked like this

   

For the 3 nights we were there, we had braaivleis, for the ignorant fools out there, braaivleis is barbequed meat. A braai is a fundamental part of being in South Africa and one must braai as often as humanly possible. Braaivleis is traditionally eaten with mieliepap, a kind of savory pudding made out of corn meal and eaten with tomato and onion relish.

The view from the resort is amazing, especially when the sun starts to set. There is nothing in this world like the setting of the African sun

 

I also taught Tali how to play Scrabble and we spent the evening outside chilling on the veranda and drinking real home-made hot chocolate

 

Day 2

For the sake of not writing a novel, I will just put up pictures with a brief description as to what we saw in the park. I will also be uploading the full album to my picasaweb album for your viewing pleasure.

The Big 5, for those keeping score

Phabeni gate was our starting point each day

Buffalo – as we entered the park we were greeted by a heard

Baby buffalo

 

Impala – the most populous animal in the park

Impala Male

Impala female

 

Red Hornbill

Red hornbill baby

Giraffe and baby

Zebra

And here is where things get interesting. Driving along the road, we noticed a helluva lot of vultures in the trees and circling in the sky. This normally means business.

Lying about a meter off of the road was a giraffe being swarmed by the vultures. We assume, based on the color of its fur, that the giraffe died of old age and the vultures were here to clean up the mess. I will attach a youtube video when I have bandwidth but for now, please enjoy the pictures. This is a very rare sight in the park, something that I have never seen before. Normally one would have to go on an organized drive with game rangers to see a sight like this – we were very lucky

 

We drove past the site for all 3 days that we were in the park. The smell was putrid but it was amazing to watch how the vultures devoured the giraffe.

Giraffe watch - Day 2:

  

Giraffe watch - Day 3

 

Back to day 1 – isn’t non-linear story-telling fun?

Kudu female

Kudu male

Bats

It was fun to watch people’s expressions as they realized the bats were above us while we ate.

Yellow hornbill

Klipspringer (Rock Jumper)

We stumbled upon another rarity on our first day, the ground hornbill or turkey buzzard. These birds look like something out of Jurassic Park and are slowly dying out due to stupidity. Only alphas breed and they lay very few eggs so to see these dino-birds is somewhat of a rarity. But what we saw was extremely rare

The two hornbills in the front left of the shot are adults. The smaller brown one behind them is a baby. It has not matured yet and has not developed colors. As you will hear, when I put the video up, the young one was crying out, I can only guess it was doing so to alert the older birds that it was there, or maybe it was hungry. I cannot speak bird, give me a break.

These are truly spectacular creatures. They are about the size of a medium sized dog and walk like you would imagine a velociraptor would.

Kingfisher

Warthog (Bonus question, how many warts would a warthog hog if a warthog could hog warts?)

Waterbuck male

Lucky little ladies at the watering holes (Bonus trivia question: Name the song)

Hatted girlfriend

 

Tarentaal

 

Sun going down at the end of day one

Fish eagle

Hopapitamus (Fun fact: The hippopotamus is the deadliest animal in Africa. The hippo kills more people per year than any other wild animal)

Elephant

Plover

Francolin

Gemsbok

Starling

Speckle-arsed sparrow

Pervert monkey

Definitely a sheep

Homo-superion (Mr. Extra Extra)

Veranda frog

Wildebees

The original 3 monkeys

A vein of the crocodile river

Zebras and wildebees drinking at the water’s edge

Crocodiles and maribou cranes

Birdbath with masked weaver et. al.

Giraffe with weird things on its face

Kudu male with weird stuff on its antlers

White rhino

Sunset on the way home

And that’s where we end the journey to the Kruger Park. It was an unforgettable experience with amazing sightings and lots of biltong. More scenic photos to come with our trip to cape town next week.

The full album will be up when bandwidth permits (when I get back to Israel).

TALI!!!!!

Hey all, sorry that my blog has not been updated for a while. Actually I’m not sorry, I am on holiday so you will just have to deal. Seriously, enough with the letters and phone calls and stuffs… one second, phone… Ok I am going out with Darko tonight. Back to the story.

My beautiful angel came down from heaven, via Israel, on Wednesday morning. Upon entering the terminal, she looked like this:

Isn’t she the cutest thing ever? So we took her off to the house to drop her stuff and we went out for breakfast where my gran told some lady that she is my fiancé. We thought this was funny. That afternoon also happened to be my other gran’s birthday so we went to chill with her, my aunt and my cousin’s son.

Later that evening we went out for dinner. Yay more steak for Adam! It was pretty cold, so we dressed like this

This look freaked out the patrons of JB’s corner, more on that later.

Dinner was great, the Steakery in Bedford Gardens have amazing Angus steaks and we indulged in them for laughable prices. I cannot remember how much they cost but each steak was huge and well under 100 NIS.

We finished dinner with a drink called a waffle which consisted of Bailey’s and Buttershot

After dinner Tali and I went to JB’s in Melrose Arch for tea/Milo. As previously mentioned, my terrorist look did not go to well with the patrons who skeefed me proper (SA slang for “Looked at me with concerned looks). I also almost lost my Amex card in an ATM, we learned that First National Bank ATMs are crap and should be avoided. Tali also met a tree

 

The following day, Tali had already made herself at home, assuming her natural role in the kitchen

Oh and by that stage, I had contracted a strange rash; an allergic reaction to the “?מה אחי היית בטיילנד” bracelet I got at Jacob’s Ladder made my wrist look like this

As of this writing I have almost healed up after discarding the bracelet in my leather jacket.

Tanya and Avron came to visit. It was mucho funo

After the visit, we got ready to go out with the Modlin side of the family. We went to the Meat Co. in Melrose Arch and decided to SUIT UP!

Damn, those are the two best looking people I have ever seen.

The dinner was awesome, we dined with two sets of aunts and uncles and half-third cousin (very rare, mint condition).

I had beef ribs and Tali had lamb shank

We listened to old stories about the fantastic adventures of uncle Martin, cousin Ashley and some dude named Ralph. Oh and the Meat Co. has an awesome wine bottle display thingy

After dinner, Tali and I went to meet Darko and Justine for drinks at the Keg in Linksfield. Joined us for a while and we engaged in conversation so secret, the camera was not allowed to take photos.

Next time on the blog that is taking the world by storm; The Kruger Park.

We apologize for the delay

Hello friendly friends. While I know most of you find my blog to be riveting stuff, I am currently unable to upload the rest of the blog in chronological order and since my idiosyncrasies will not allow me to upload out of order, I will only be able to update on Friday, once I get back to Israel.

Run-on sentences aside, I hope all is well with everyone and I look forward to seeing all of you.

In the meanwhile, please enjoy this picture of Tali and myself taken from Signal Hill.

Adam

 

 

Day 4

Day 4 was a lot shorter than day 3. Erev day 4 began with dinner with my friend Anthony. We went to JBs corner at Melrose Arch and I had a cheeseburger. There are no photos because I don’t want God to see that I ate a cheeseburger – it worked really well with Adam and Eve and I am half the man that they were.

After coffee with Anthony, I went off to see Tanya. Avron picked me up and we went to visit the Greenberg household. We also got to speak to Lara in Israel.

 

It was really awesome seeing Tanya and Natasha again and meeting the Greenberg parents. Tanya also introduced me to the cats. Their one cat named גzyק (pronunciation pending) is pretty damned fat.

The other cat, named מאto (pronunciation “cat that looks like Garfield) is a ginger cat that is easier to pick up

After Tanya’s house, we went off to Avron for tea and Nargila/Hubbly/Sheesha. We sat freezing our asses off in the cold. There is logic behind this, if you don’t get it you are n00b~!

 

 

And it was morning

The next day I had KFC. KFC is the most wonderful thing known to man, however, in Israel it costs millions to get a meal. In South Africa you can get 5 pieces of chicken for R48 or 24 NIS. After lunch, I went with Liran for coffee to Greenstone and then to see G.I. Joe at the cinema.

 

The movie was completely predictable and the acting was up to shit but the action scenes were pretty cool. I kept thinking whether it would have been worthwhile for them to drop budget on the special effects in order to employ better actors, but in the end, it was satisfactory.

We then went through to Liran’s place to say hi to his brother and dad. He has 2 yorkies and one mix, I took these photos for Tali’s mom

Tomorrow my beautiful Tali arrives and I am very excited for her to finally be with me here. It will be amazing to share this holiday with the woman of my dreams :)

Still to come… dinner with the family pt1. and a trip to the Kruger National Park. Stay tuned.

Day 3 – Friends, family and food

Hello friendly friends. I haven’t been able to go online really for the last couple of days but today I have internets. Kari, who reeks of awesomeness, picked me up so that we could work on assignments together. Yes I am in my third month of summer break and still have 2 assignments to hand in, my college obviously fails to see the point of a summer holiday. So let’s recap the last couple of days and the events that transpired.

Darko’s place

Day 3 started on Saturday evening (yes I am going biblical on your ass). Darko, along with Ash and Chris, picked me up to go over to his place. It is amazing what alcohol does for board and card games.

The first drunken board game we played was 30 Seconds. This game requires one to play a sort of verbal charades, describing a person/object/place on a card. The description cannot include words on the card or descriptions like “sounds like" or “rhymes with”. As many correct answers equals moves on the board subtracted by the dice roll or something like that. As Justine put it “0 is good and 2 is bad, if you get 0 you go more and if you get 2 you go less”, it made more sense as the drunk got nighter.

The whole scene unfolded in a tedious photography:

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The night was interrupted when Darko and Ashley transformed into Batman and Robin to drive into the night and fight crime at Ash’s house. <fiction> “You should have seen what the other guys looked like”, they told us as they limped in beaten and battered but victorious. </fiction>

After 30 seconds, we turned to a card game called Arsehole. The point of the game is to lose all your cards first. You then become the king of a nation with very low values and a failing economy. Second to fifth places become Queen, Middle-man, Arsehole 2 and Arsehole 1 respectively. In our version, Arsehole had to down a shot of Jack. when Jack ran out, we turned to pink champagne. The incident looked like this:

 

Using drunk-cam© technology to enhance the description, in reality, it actually looked more like this:

 

 

Tea at the Delmonts

The following morning, we got up to visit our good family friends the Delmonts. Unfortunately Simon, the youngest of the Delmonts was at work so we did not see him. Rob and Diana have been friends with my parents for centuries, and I grew up with Charlotte and Simon (who joined me for several years in a survival of the fittest contest which included events like slamming, punching and who can break the most fingers. Simon always got the sympathy vote, being half my size and all). Charlotte’s friend Kelly took Simon’s place at the gathering.

I also met the three newest members of the house hold, Rebecca, Rufus and a three-legged cat named removed by request of Warner Brothers inc.

 

Tea was served and we spoke of a range of wonderful things like crazy people, parents, becoming a Sangoma (Witch-Doctor) and more. An eye-witness claims that the scene looked like this:

  

 

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Family lunch

From Rob and Diana, we went off to my Aunt and Uncle in Kensington. They live in a beautiful house that my uncle designed.

 

On the menu for lunch were light starters, followed by a braai. My Uncle prepared and cooked the meat.

 

 

 

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After lunch we all sat around soaking up the sun and playing with the dogs. There are 3 dogs, Georgie and Rocko are border collies and Pepper is a pug. As Tali says, Pepper is “mooi van die leelikuid” (sp?) which means that Pepper is so bloody ugly that she is actually cute because of it.

And so that brings us to the end of a long day 3. If you enjoy reading my blog, you can click on the follow me link on the right column of the page. If you find any spelling/grammatical errors, please let me know.

Hope everyone in Israel is doing well.

Day 2 of my trippy trip

Hello friends and family. Its a sunny Saturday afternoon and I am sitting in my friend Dale’s cottage. Dale’s family is like my second family and it is always amazing to see them. Dale and Kari are my brother and sister from another… never mind the details. Anyways, they look like this:

Yesterday was a pretty cool day, I met up with another good mate, Darko and his fiancé Justine. We went off to eat pizza at a place called Mimmo’s. I ordered a chicken-tropical pizza which has chicken and pineapple on a 23cm base. Before I ate it, the pizza looked like this:

Justine and Darko look like this:

Justine did something I have never seen before, she put ice in her white wine. I found this to be extremely strange and documented it with a photo. The photo of the wine with ice in it looked like this:

 

After lunch, I went to my old shul, it was really nice to be back there, obviously since it was Shabbat I couldn’t take any photos, but if I was able to and there was a power failure at the exact moment I had taken the photo, it would have looked like this:

 

 

After shul I went back to the grandparents for Friday night dinner. Gran’s homemade food is always great, we had meat stew. After dinner Kari came to pick me up.

First we went out to a club called Manhattan. Clubs in SA are much better than clubs in Israel. The dress code at Manhattan is formal, no entry without a collared shirt. There are four bars surrounding a central dance floor.

Drinks in SA are really cheap. I bought a round of 3 drinks for a total of R56 or about 28 NIS. Here are some pictures from the bar area in the club

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After Manhattan, we went of to Fontana’s chicken. We got Prego meals and I drank Iron Brew.

Iron Brew is an interesting soft drink, originally from Scotland. I am not sure what flavor it is, but it tastes good. You should try it. No really, now, go find some.

We wrapped up the night at a bar called Billy the Bum’s. Some shmuck knocked Dale’s double Jameson out of his hand and didn’t even offer to get him a new one. The place was pretty packed and there were girls dancing on the bar. The scene can be described as such:

We headed home and I passed out for a good few hours before we went off for breakfast. I will probably go sleep a bit now and tonight I am going out with Darko and Justine.

Things I have noticed Pt. 2:

1. Drinks are cheap

2. Clubs are really high society.

3. South African houses have these interesting back doors that are split in half and I have never understood why. They look like this:

That’s it for now. Stay tuned for day 3 and more.

PS:

I almost forgot, the Amler’s have several Jack Russels. Jack Russels are the most awesome dogs ever. They look like this: