Flying part two

The thrill-seeking trio trimmed the tree-tops yesterday in their quest for adrenalin rushes - although "I wasn't as frightened as I expected" reported the youngest member of the party. SA offers rather understatedly named "canopy tours" in various locations around the country - this one was again in the Magaliesberg (which I learned yesterday is pronounced with a hard H on the first G - ma-HA-leesburg). It's a brilliant idea - find a ravine filled with trees and criss-cross it with cables - hook up tourists and push them off the platforms. Great fun. It was also billed as a tour of the history and ecology of the area, but the gung-ho guides didn't bother with any of that hippy nonsense; instead they made lots of jokes about how dangerous the exercise is, ratcheting up the drama - "please write a contact name on the form so we can call someone to identify your body"; "we take your lunch order now but the cook waits to see if you come back"; "see that brown rock over there behind the platform? That's a bushman cave painting. If you don't brake on this run you're going to make it browner." Great fun. It's also a fantastic way to travel - we should rig up all the tall buildings in city centres and have more fun commuting.

We spent the evening at Moyo's, an African restaurant in a secure compound - there was music in the piazza when we arrived but this was rained off by a massive storm which started at ten and seemed to last all night - luckily there were several types of music going on inside the restaurant (including a group of waitresses who put on a well-choreographed dance routine), face-painting, transvestites on stilts, and far too much to eat - including kudu and springbok. More fun - although we had to make the usual adjustment of social conscience when walking and driving past the security staff guarding the entrances, guarding the cars, guarding my complex, protecting the lucky privileged, acting as human deterrents - they looked glum, in no mood for wishing anyone happy new year, and one can only sympathise - but then we, the lucky privileged, seem to need them there, all the time, even on new year's eve.

Flying

More photos from the balloon trip. I've always loved photos of the earth from the sky; this was the first time I had a chance to take some myself.

In the margins of tourism

Getting into full holiday mood, L, E and I spent yesterday in an elephant "sanctuary" (elephants rescued from the wild, etc.) and this morning in a hot air balloon above the Magaliesburg hills - both exciting experiences with a satisfactory level of anticipated thrills. Elephant skin is hard and tough with bristly hair all over, and their eyelashes are like wire brushes - but the backs of their ears, their tummies and the pads under their feet are soft - we know because we've felt them; these massive, powerful animals submit to these palpitations by tourists with incredible patience - or perhaps they like it in some surreal dream of interspecies sensuousness, who knows? For the tourist it certainly feels like an incredible privilege to be allowed this intimacy without being "flattened like a pancake" as the guide said would happen with a real wild elephant - which can run at 35 km per hour so "don't bother to run" if they charge you.

Ballooning is also a great experience - flying is always wonderful in whatever form, I think, but this was particularly exciting and yet relaxing at the same time - when the gas burners aren't on there's total silence, the basket slowly rotates, the land passes smoothly and dreamily underneath (today, at least - this depends on the wind, and today was calm; the "captain" refused to answer questions about emergency landings), and you finally come in to land with a gentle bump - the ground crew was waiting for us and manoeuvered the basket on to the back of the truck before we got out - this giant, fragile structure was pushed around by two men as it hovered a few feet above the ground. The scenery was very beautiful.

But in some ways the more significant thrills of being in Africa come from the unanticipated and unfamiliar - a family of meerkats begging around the restaurant tables; bromiliads (which I've only ever seen in pots) growing wild under the trees; a troupe of monkeys passing through the trees at the edge of the balloon field ("we get baboons too"), giant shiny black beetles with white legs wandering through the undergrowth; the language of the guides ("ooh, if that big elephant nudges you you'll fly like superman"; "they're on African time, man, if not today then tomorrow"; "if an elephant does chocolate mousse for poo we know she's sick"), the use of paraffin lamps instead of electricity for illumination at night (and the rather worrying fact of total darkness all around these small pools of light, darkness filled with insect noises and various rustles), the extraordinary vegetation everywhere, the red earth, the vast cloud-decorated sky, and so forth - it's the context that makes it all so special.

Animals and trees

Some random images from my excursions over the past few days... a scratching post; a giraffe licking a car roof (reason unknown); an ostrich considers eating the camera; a duck and an ibis; a cub sleeping comfortably; trees.

Sun City

I remember Sun City from ages ago, when I was a student - it was a symbol of the apartheid regime, and musicians who performed there were generally reviled: the roster of the dissed included Elton John, Tina Turner, Rod Stewart, Queen and Ray Charles. The history is that Sun City was created as a casino in the late 70s in one of the "Bantustans" which happened to allow gambling and topless "revues" - and white South Africans from nearby Johannesburg and Pretoria flooded in to ogle and lose their money. Sun City is still going strong - and now includes a golf course (designed by Gary Player, also reviled) which features real crocodiles in the water hazard at the thirteenth hole.

I felt that I had to visit Sun City, once, just to see how kitsch and absurd the place really is - and I suppose I wasn't disappointed. The faux Lost City/ H. Rider Haggard decor is totally over the top and totally tasteless, but what's even more amazing is that one of the main attractions is a fake BEACH, with real sand, around an artificial lake which produces artificial waves every few minutes (a horn blares a warning so toddlers can be quickly removed). Tourists and South Africans - nearly all white - crowd this place out, although the real sea and real beach are a mere 400 kilometres away. There's also a fake African forest all around this ersatz seaside which oddly enough is fun to explore - after thirty odd years the extraordinary (real, not plastic) vegetation has grown wild and has asserted a sort of ownership of the place, transcending its artificial origins (apparently some 80,000 plants were trucked in) - although the illusion of authenticity is punctured now and then by architectural intrusions like a giant gong and a massive torch-lit staircase to the actual Lost City (a hotel). As so often in SA, my reactions to the place were ambivalent - it was worth a visit just to see the sheer scale of the lunacy of the people who dreamed the place up; and it's a safe environment (always a factor); but on the other hand bad taste has a pretty limited appeal once you've got over the initial impact, no matter what the scale.

The sky

Some photos from my balcony - first, during an amazing electrical storm the other night - the entire sky flashes bright as day; then lighting crackles in various directions, sometimes from the earth to the sky (it seems), sometimes horizontally, sometimes in the more normal way from the sky to the earth; the sound is very loud rumbling, roaring, tearing; rain comes down in rods of water. Then, from one of the routinely spectacular sunsets. The sky here is a constant feature, full of activity.

Tame lions

Yesterday I went to Lion Park, a zoo of sorts on the edge of Johannesburg - this place is detested by genuine animal-lovers and conservationists because eighty lions are kept in captivity for no particular reason except to make money - although the staff claimed when I asked that the first lions to be kept there were saved from the wild - and their descendents can no longer be released because they wouldn't survive - they're too tame and don't know how to hunt. They also claim that a number of cubs are "rejected by their mothers" and have to be raised by hand - providing a fantastic opportunity to let visitors get up close and pet them - tame indeed.

The enclosures for the lion prides are pretty big - obviously there are fences around them, but the entrance gates are left wide open for visitors to drive in and out (there are signs up telling you to keep your windows closed, but this isn't enforced - I saw a few people hanging out of their car windows, taking photos). I wondered what was stopping the lions leaving their enclosures - the area outside is full of springbok, impala, zebras, giraffes, humans, etc - so it looked as though they could practise a bit of hunting just for the hell of it if they felt like it. Lo and behold, I saw a group of lions wandering towards an exit gate... One of the park staff - with NO PROTECTION - walked up to them and told them to go back in, patting them and tickling them under the ears to encourage them to go with him. The lions accepted this and followed him back in to the enclosure. At one point a young lion took a run and jumped up at him, nearly flattening him - the guy staggered and cuffed the lion back - all good clean fun, it seemed, but at this point I was expecting to see an unscheduled snack for this particular group of carnivores. Not quite that tame, surely?