Stephanie Early Green

Category: Travel (Page 6 of 6)

Drakensberg Mountains

November 12, 2012 / / 3 Comments

This weekend marked our first real weekend away from Joburg, and it was all I hoped it could be.  Al and I and three friends (Josh, Ken, and Elli) spent the weekend hiking, braai-ing, and drinking in the Drakensberg Mountains and, let me tell you, it was glorious.

The Drakensberg Mountains run along the western edge of the KwaZulu-Natal province and also border Lesotho.  There are a lot of resorts in the Drakensbergs, but we decided to stay in the Royal Natal National Park, which, according to my guidebook, “is famous for its exceptionally grand scenery.”  This turned out to be no joke.

View from our hike

However, reaching the park was no easy feat.  The drive from Joburg was a harrowing five-hour ordeal involving a two-lane highway full of slow moving trucks and fast-moving cars, long stretches of unsealed/unpaved roads littered with potholes, and, for most of the trip, pouring rain.  Oh, also, we left Johannesburg at 7 pm – probably not the wisest choice, in retrospect.   We made it, though!

We stayed right in the park in the uber-charming Thendele resort.  The five of us rented a self-catered, six-person cottage with a fireplace, TV, kitchen, and, most important, outdoor braai area.  Priorities!

This was the view from our cottage’s back patio.

Our cottage:

It was okay, I guess.

After staying up until 2 am on Friday drinking wine and eating biltong, we got up at 9 am on Saturday, ate a filling breakfast, and then set out on what ended up being a rather epic four-hour hike.  The hike took us past several waterfalls and required that we scramble up wet, moss-covered rocks and ascend a chain ladder.  For those of you who have never climbed a thin, swaying chain ladder set against slick, wet rocks, go ahead and skip it.  We all pretended we weren’t scared by it, but I’m reasonably sure we all secretly thought we were going to die on that ladder.

View from “The Crack”

On our way back down from the midway point of the hike, we were passed by a group of very tough looking Afrikaner guys wearing compression leggings and huge backpacks, who informed us, quite gravely, that “the pressure is dropping” and that we needed to get back down the slippery rocks before it started pouring rain. Then they jogged up the rocks and we lost sight of them.

When they passed us again ten minutes later, going back down, one of them – in his eagerness to outrun the dropping pressure, I imagine – slipped on the rocks and fell so hard on his back that we all gasped and cringed, sure that we had just witnessed a spinal fracture. “Are you okay?” we all asked him.  “Fine,” he said cheerily, as he popped back up, brushed himself off, determined that he had no broken bones, and continued on down the rocks at a brisk clip.  These Afrikaners don’t mess around.

After our hike, we uncorked some wine and settled in for a braai – salads, steaks, sausage, garlic bread, grilled veggies, corn on the cob, and even cookies for dessert.  Stuffing myself silly with wine and food has become my main weekend activity here, but what am I supposed to do, not partake in the local delights? That would just be culturally insensitive.

This guy, and his friend, decided to join us for our braai. He was very bold:

Guinea fowl?

After stuffing ourselves with food, we went inside and started a fire, and, of course, drank more wine. Are you seeing a pattern here?

The only thing missing? S’mores.  I’m thinking s’mores need to become a braai staple. I also realized this is the second blog post in which I’ve mentioned s’mores. I might have a problem.

Some other highlights of the trip, for me, included several baboon sightings and this sign warning us not to feed said baboons:

I also saw this in the park’s “curio shop,” and had to really make an effort not to buy it.  By the way, what do we think – is headache powder to be snorted, or applied directly to the head? I couldn’t decide.

All in all, a great weekend.  South Africa is feeling more and more live-able every day.

Weekend away

November 9, 2012 / / 0 Comments

We’re taking a weekend trip to the scenic Drakensberg mountains and will be gone until Sunday afternoon. So there will be no blog updates this weekend, but I’ll be sure to fill you all in as soon as I’m back.

In the meantime, please enjoy this ridiculous photo of some of the services offered at the beauty salon next to my gym.  I better make my appointment soon!

Enjoy your weekends!

The Wizard of Loneliness

November 6, 2012 /

The Wizard of Loneliness was the title of a book I read in middle school.  I remember literally nothing about the book other than the title.  I even looked it up on Amazon and read the description and still didn’t remember anything about it.  It obviously made a big impression on me.  Nonetheless, the title popped into my head today because I’ve been thinking a lot about loneliness.

Being lonely when you’re actually alone somewhere is a heavy burden, and I’ve experienced it several times.  I’ve brought it on myself, of course.  Over the past eight years or so, I’ve had the habit of showing up places where I know absolutely no one – or close to absolutely no one – and staying a while.  I did this in Cuba (2004), Argentina (2009), and Brazil (2005 and 2010).  The times I’ve felt most acutely lonely in my life were these times, when I found myself in a foreign country with few friends and, even worse, few distractions.

I distinctly remember dreading Sundays in Brazil, both times that I lived there, because Sundays are family days, when Brazilians get together with their loved ones to eat long lunches, drink beer, and catch up.  On Sundays, I’d take myself to the movies or go to the gym or sit in my apartment doing crossword puzzles, waiting for the day to be over.

When I went back to Brazil in 2010 for work, I wasn’t prepared for the riptide of loneliness that sucked me out to sea as soon as I got there.  It was easier the first time I had moved by myself to Brazil, in 2005, because I had been truly alone – no boyfriend back home – and I was twenty-three.  It must be said that meeting people tends to be easier when you’re single and twenty-three. But in 2010, I had left behind my then-boyfriend (now husband) and it hurt, almost physically, to know that he was still in Boston with our friends, while I was completely and utterly alone in a city of 20 million people.

It took me a long time to make good friends in Brazil, both times that I lived there.  Making friends as an expat in Sao Paulo requires a Herculean effort.  I forced myself to go to Meetups and Internations events and then forced myself to introduce myself to strangers, to walk up to clusters of people talking and ask if I could join.  I set myself up on blind friend dates.  I accepted every social invitation I received, even if it was for something I didn’t particularly want to do.  Eventually, it paid off, and I made friends, some of whom I’m still close to.  But man, it was hard.

Here in Johannesburg, things are different.  I feel a small tug of loneliness during the day, as I begin to write, take my gym break, eat a solitary lunch, and return to my writing.  Usually, by the time I wrap up my work for the day, there are several long hours before Al will return from work.  Without friends to visit or talk to, those hours can drag by.  But I’m not experiencing loneliness as a lodestone around my neck the way I have before.  I know that, no matter what, on weekends, I have my husband to cook dinner with.  I won’t ever have to go to the movies alone.

But while I relish the solitary lifestyle of the writer (I have always worked best when left alone), I also want to have the option to close my computer and go meet friends for drinks or dinner.  It’s a big burden on Al to have to be my only companion in this country.  Even though he is endlessly fascinating and wonderful and I love being with him, we both realize I’m going to be miserable if I spend the next eight months here without my own group of friends.

So, I’m starting the process again of reaching out, of joining Meetups, of contacting friends of friends.  It’s hard. And slow. And difficult without a car and GPS.  But it’ll happen.  No Wizard of Loneliness in this house.

Thirty

October 27, 2012 / / 1 Comment

I woke up today, my thirtieth birthday, with a hangover from drinking too much Pinotage at a South African country estate near Pretoria. So I guess this is my life now.

It’s been kind of a whirlwind. I left DC on Wednesday afternoon and got into Johannesburg on Thursday evening.  Al was waiting for me at the airport with a bouquet of red roses (a romantic, that one!) and we embarked on our first South African adventure together: driving back to our apartment in a rental car, with no GPS, on the left side of the road.  Nothing like a few brushes with death to really make one feel at home in a new place, eh?

Our apartment is in an area called Craighall Park, which is home to a fancy mall and a fancy grocery store (Woolworths — go figure) but is also curiously abundant with sex shops.  We live directly across the street from a charming little place called Sextopia.

Our apartment complex, however, is gated off, leafy, and quiet.  When we entered the gates, there were four little kids playing with water guns in the driveway.  They all eyed us shyly and the oldest one asked us, very properly, how we were doing.  We were fine.

That first night, we ate dinner at a restaurant in the fancy mall.  I was immediately impressed with the food and the wine here, both of which are delicious and cheap.

My second day in South Africa, Al and I ran essential errands, which included buying a hair dryer, stocking up on wine, and getting a “wireless stick” for my computer, and then we packed into our rental car again to drive north to Kievits Kroon, a country estate where Al’s company was holding a retreat.  We had cocktails on the veranda of a manor house (built in the “Cape Dutch style,” I am told) looking out over lush green lawns. A cat purred around our ankles. It was lovely.

I spent the rest of last night stuffing myself with a variety of tasty local dishes, including ostrich medallions, and a *bit* too much Pinotage, which is the signature varietal of South Africa, so how could I not, right? When in Pretoria, I say.

Anyway.  Today I woke up thirty years old and with a red wine headache.  But you know? I feel pretty good about it.  I’m in Africa on a Grand Adventure with my husband.  Bring it, old age.  I’m ready for you.

Packing

October 21, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Moving is the worst.  And the worst of the worst? Packing.  And the worst of the worst of the WORST? Packing by yourself.

These people are liars. Packing is terrible.

Packing for a move sucks because it involves taking things out of their Rightful Places and putting them into boxes, where they might be broken or bent. It involves turning a well-ordered apartment into chaos.  It involves breathing in clouds of dust and dander.  And it involves tough choices, like, do I keep this seven-year-old MAC lip gloss in an unflattering shade (frosty purple) because it cost $18 when I bought it (circa 2005)? I mean, $18! That’s nothing to sniff at.  Especially in 2005 dollars! What am I, made of money?

I’m also facing a dilemma about what to do with all of our canned goods. I don’t have a car so I can’t take them anywhere to be donated and I would feel weird just leaving a box full o’ cans in front of my apartment door, but I can’t bear to throw away perfectly good cans of diced tomatoes.  I’m part Italian, I can’t just throw away tomatoes.  That’s like spitting on my heritage.  I don’t know what my excuse is for not wanting to throw away the canned beets I have in my cupboard, but it just feels wrong.

I realize these concerns are objectively dumb and I should be throwing away as much as possible, but a not-insignificant chunk of me sympathizes with those people who can’t open their front door because there are too many cats in the way.  Not that I’m condoning animal hoarding. But I get it — it’s hard to throw away perfectly good cats.

So, to keep my mind off the misery of this process, I’ve been listening to an excellent Canadian podcast called Stop Podcasting Yourself (http://maximumfun.org/shows/stop-podcasting-yourself) and catching up on TV shows I’ve been meaning to watch for years now (“Freaks and Geeks,” for one, and “The League”).  But it’s still a slog.  Tomorrow morning the movers come and whatever I have packed will have to do.  The rest of it, they’ll have to pack. And there’s something weirdly intimate about having strangers pack your dishes for you, but what are you gonna do?

Kay, back to packing.

Stephanie’s no good very bad week

October 20, 2012 / / 2 Comments

So, uh, I’m moving to South Africa in four days.

I know.

And I’m completely unprepared.

Guys, I know.

The (abridged) backstory: my husband (Al) works for a great company that has a Global Rotation Program that allows employees to work in two of the company’s many offices for six to nine months each.  Al applied last year and was accepted (hooray!) and we decided to do nine months in Joburg and nine months in London. I’ve written about the decision process and my feelings on it here.  Suffice it to say it was sort of a fraught decision but I’m feeling good about the move and even better about my decision to quit my terrible, toxic law firm job and become a professional writer.

Anyway.  It’s really happening now.  Stuff is getting real.  But as I sit here, four days out from boarding a flight to Johannesburg, I feel woefully unprepared for this move.  I haven’t packed half of our appliances, I have a load of laundry that needs doing, I don’t have enough boxes for the rest of our stuff (and why do we have so many novelty hats?), and I ran out of bubble-wrap before I could wrap up all of our wine glasses and ceramic mugs.  Oy.

I couldn’t really pack before this because I was busy suffering through a comically terrible last two weeks of work and I had little time for anything other than crying in my office.  See, Al left for Joburg two weeks ago but I had decided to stay on a couple extra weeks at work because of a big filing deadline for one of my cases.  So there I was, in DC, working bonkers hours to try to get this brief filed, when I started feeling sick.  Really sick.  I had a terrible headache, body aches, joint pain, chills, fever, and sharp abdominal pains, and I completely lost my appetite. I went to the doctor and — long story short! — I had typhoid fever.

Yup.

I’ll spare you the gory details but my last week of work was truly hellish, and not just because I was dealing with a disease that you contract from eating or drinking something contaminated with human feces.  Oh, wait, I guess I didn’t spare you the gory details at all. Well… real talk. Deal with it.

The point is, I don’t recommend working at a law firm. It’s TERRIBLE. Worse than typhoid! And I should know!  Actually, typhoid fever is a pretty useful metric for deciding on the horribleness of any given thing. For example: Drinking a frosty eggnog with rum > watching a baseball game with beer > getting a stubbed toe > watching a baseball game with no beer > having typhoid fever > working at a law firm.

Anyway, I’m better now (thank you, Cipro) and I really do need to pack.

Newer posts »

© 2025 Stephanie Early Green

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑