Edyn's African Adventure

A couple of weeks ago I started golf lessons. About 10 minutes drive from my house there is Vodacom World of Golf. It is billed as a golf theme park and it is essentially there to teach people to play golf in a non-threatening, non-intimidating environment. It is *not* a golf course, but rather has learning areas such as "world of putting", "world of chipping", world of driving" and "world of bunkers". There is not a regular golf course per se, but it does have a small 9 hole chip and putt course. So far I have done putting and chipping and really like it so far. I can totally see what a great help practice is. The only thing that bums me out is that I thought it was a golf course all this time so didn't go there sooner. Absolutely fantastic concept. Here I am practicing chipping. Quite an improvement since last week at the lesson I couldn't actually get the ball to lift and get onto the green. Now I have pretty good distance control and can get it reasonably close to the flag. I even sink it every now and then! Look out Annika Sorenstam!

It is coming Summer in the southern hemisphere. Unfortunately, it's been difficult to tell as the weather has been cool and pretty rainy in Johannesburg. We have started to get a few nice days though and with summer comes swimming! I live in a complex with a pool about 40 feet from my door so it's very handy for Jaclyn, my sister, to head over there with her baby, Sahara, for a little swim time. The water is warm, the yard is really nice, and the baby has a wonderful time in the pool. She has really taken to it and has a great time splashing around in the water.

Returning from Canada at the beginning of November, I changed travel plans to stay a few extra days to meet with my new boss. Instead of going through Frankfurt, the plan was to fly to New York then fly direct to Johannesburg with a fuel stop in Dakar, Senegal--you don't get off...it's 45 minutes to change crew, re-cater the flight and fuel up the plane. I have done that flight before and it generally is alright because it saves 8-10 hours layover in Europe. Well, great plan but it didn't turn out that well. We got to Dakar alright, but when we went to take off again to leave for Joburg, the pilot came on and said there was a mechanical problem and he was going to shut off the engines and all systems to try to re-boot the thing and if that didn't work we would have to deplane while it was fixed. Rebooting didn't work and we all got off. That was the start of almost 48 hours of fairly stressful time in Dakar Senegal, with no real understanding when we would be getting out. It was the second back up to a hydraulic something or other related to controlling the rudder...so while not critical, it could become so if there were a failure or two on the original system.

So around 200 people got off the plane and sat in the business lounge until almost lunch time (we landed around dawn). We finally got loaded on buses to go to a hotel for lunch thinking it might be possible that we would take off at 4pm. Turns out pilots and airline crew are also "tourists". Here is a picture of a pilot from our plane making memories of the experience.


It was difficult to know what to expect, especially since this was the view for muchn of the way to the hotel we were going to for lunch. (click to enlarge)


We got to the hotel and had a pleasant lunch. From there we hung around the hotel for several more hours. Doesn't seem that bad except we had already flown almost 10 hours, they hadn't taken our luggage off, and no one really knew what was going on. And even better, we were told there were absolutely no hotel rooms anywhere in Dakar due to several conferences so we all just hung around the hotel all day, for about 11 hours. Under different circumstances, it could have been alright. But hanging out in this environment with clothes you've worn for 2 days (keeping in mind that it's cold in Canada in November so I had long pants and sleeves on) at that point, without showers etc...not so much.


We hung around the hotel, Le Meridian, until 11pm. Oh, and by the way, South African Air decided providing water to people stranded due to their maintenance problem was not their problem, and the hotel was charging people $6 for a 500ml bottle of water. Nice. So we went back to the airport and hung out in the lounge again with the expectation that the flight would be leaving at 4am--almost 24 hours from when we landed. People were lying all over the place...there were 200 people. Well, 4am came and went and no call to board came. Some of us went down to the gate area to find out what was going on. The ground manager had no idea what the plan was or when we might be getting out of there. People started losing it and at one point, one young woman from Oakland California got belligerent and started yelling that she needed to get out of there (like no on eelse had anywhere to be). When he wouldn't listen to her, she go nutty and said, "Fine then, I'm a terrorist and I'm going to blow up the plane!" She said it four times. Nice. She was on a plane that had left New York City. Hello!?!?!? Insenstive much?? Anyway, turns out SAA had a flight gong through with 10 seats and Delta also had a flight to Joburg and we could have 20 of those. Turns out Delta actually had almost 100 seats but wouldn't let SAA have more than 20 because they didn't have catering for all of them. I personally was willing to buy a sandwich and some water before I boarded but Delta was being pissy. I will be writing them a letter as well. Anyway, the pilot finally came around 6am to explain things. unfortuately, no one told half the people some of whom were in another lounge, so they didn't hear all of the stuff. They never had the chance to get on the potential list to go on the first 30 seats. Nuts man. There were a few dozen people on the flight coming to SA for dedication of a Jehvah's Witness centre and several others were on booked safari tours etc. who were missing days of their trip. Stupid thing was, the idiot girl from Oakland who said she was a terrorist, got one of the seats out. Brutal.

Things finally started coming together as they got us breakfast in the restaurant, got us hotel rooms and got us out luggage. Midmorning we got on buses to go to the hotels. The hotel was a bit old and dodgy (think Fort Lauderdale or Daytona, circa, 1973) but it was paradise after the previous 24 hours. Amazingly, people started to calm down and just go with it. Amazing what a shower and a bed will do for your disposition. I spent the day on calls then hung out at the pool for little bit. Not bad for me since I really didn't have to be anywhere, unlike the tourists trying to get to SA. Here is the view the second day:


We had dinner that ended with the electricity at the hotel going off and finally left the hotel at 10pm to head back to the airport with the expectation that the flight would finally be leaving at 1am. That would be abut 19 hours after landing. We finally boarded and took off around 4am...about 48 hours after landing. Pretty odd experience. I didn't *have* to be anywhere so I wasn't as flipped out as many people understandably were but it was honestly, a terrible couple of days illustrating how ill prepared South African Airlines was in handling situations like that. And I know they learned little to nothing in being able to deal with it better the next time.

Back in May when I went shark cage diving with Mackenzie Horner, I didn't get into the cage because Kenz was sick and I was keeping an eye on her. I managed to go back out with the same company when I was in Cape Town a few weeks ago. It was AMAZING!!! The cage itself is attached onto the side of the boat and five people get in at a time, lined up shoulder to shoulder. They use tuna heads attached to rope lines that they continuously throw out and pull back in toward the boat as bait, and also keep "chumming" the water with fish blood and guts. Yummmm...NOT. Anyway, it does the trick and we had just gotten out to the area we were going to anchor and a shark swam by. We were on the upper deck of the boat and had a great view of the sharks. (Click to enlarge)


I also had an underwater disposible camera. The crazy thing is that there was so much going on, I forgot to put my eye to the view finder. I was busy trying to stay upright while floating, take a deep breath and dive under in time to see the sharks going by. So I didn't get *great* pictures but you get the idea. (Click to enlarge image)


The experience was absolutely the coolest ever. I went back in a second time and was in the cage a long time until it was time to go. I was on the right outside edge of the cage. The guy running the bait was just behind me and slightly to the right up on the deck of the boat. When the shark would come for the bait, he yanks on the rope to get the shark to break water and sort of jump. Being on the right, when he did that, the shark would come right at me. There was one time that the shark came straight at us and banged into the cage and swam off and another time he was right next to me, banging into the cage trying to get the bait, and that went on for quite a few seconds. Totally freaked me out while at the same time being very cool. And I guess I had my foot out of the cage a little bit too far another time because the guy next to me said "Oh my gosh, he totally almost got your foot!!!" Wow, I had no idea! Overall, extreme event, man!

At the beginning of November I went back to Canada for a week of off-site meetings for work. I managed to get home on the weekend before coming back to South Africa. I hung out with the family and spend some time with my best friend, Andrea. Here is my brother Marc checking out the kids' Hallowe'en candy haul.


And on my way to church in Point Edward, I decided to get the picture every person from Sarnia probably has, the Blue Water Bridge.

So back in May, I went to my first ever rugby match to see the national team, the Springboks, play a match against England up at Loftus Park in Pretoria. That was a warm up match prior to the Rugby World Cup. Twenty nations competed for the Webb Ellis Cup in the tournament hosted by France from September 7 - October 20th. I had no idea Canada even had a team, let alone one that was in the world cup. Just goes to show you the difference to hear...rugby is a MAJOR deal here. Anyway, this was the Springboks year, and they cruised through the competition to end up in the final against...England! The first pool match was a blow out, with England being shut out, so everyone here was pretty confident of being the first country to win the Championship twice...the first being in 1995.

Jaclyn, Sahara and I went over to Primi Piatti Loft, a local pasta restaurant for the match and we were joined my co-worker, Kath Smith and her son, Brandon. The place was packed and we had a great seat. Of course we had to get Sahara all set up in her team colours in support of the Boks.

South Africa had had a pretty easy time of it through the tournament but the final was anything but a cake walk. It was an excellent match--a real nail biter despite the match earlier in the pool play. But, South Africa won the match 15 - 6 and everyone was singing and dancing and screaming and yelling in the restaurant. overall, fantastic to be here for something so wonderful for South Africa. Very reminiscent of Canada winning the Olymoic Gold medal in hockey a few years ago,

Johannesburg is also known as Egoli or City of Gold gold was found in 1886 starting an enormous gold rush. In the south of the city is a small theme park called Gold Reef City. My sister Jaclyn and I took her baby, Sahara down there for the day in mid October. It was a great day overall. We started with Sahara's first ride on a ferris wheel and the view of Johannesburg was lovely. (click on the pictures to enlarge).


After that we walked through the Kid's Animal Farm. Here, Sahara is checking out the Macaws.



We also saw a couple of wallaby..man, are they mean looking. They look like kangaroos but much smaller and darker, and also not as friendly looking.


And while we in Canada had the painted moose a few years ago, at Gold Reef City there was a painted cow. Like probably every other tourist with kids, we couldn't resist getting a picture of Sahara with it.(click to enlarge)