South of the Border

Which border? Well, all the way through the flat lands of Namibia, past the Tropic of Capricorn, across the Namibian border and on into the twisty switchbacks and vineyards of the mountains of South Africa, then over a few rivers and through a few woods…we finally made it to the southern end of my African world as I know it. In short I haven’t blogged in a while because Rebecca, Jessica, and I have been in Cape Town for the past two weeks. The two main purposes were for Rebecca to have surgery and to get goats for our herd since so many of them died during the flood. There are plenty of goats here in the local area, but we use our goats mainly to produce milk for the kids and there are not very good milking goats in these parts. We were also picking up some extra goats for friends who run the Cheetah Foundation of Namibia (http://www.cheetah.org/). They have a goat farm to help train herders how goat herds and wild animals can safely interact. Jessica and I thought long and hard about the names for the four we brought all the way back to COZV. The Billy goat was the stinkiest and hairiest thing we’d ever seen so he became Stinky Pete. The 3 females were then named Curly, Solo, and Half-pint respectively for their curly horns, extremely low udder, and abnormally disproportioned udder. Because these goats were from South Africa, they looked very different from goats Namibians were used to seeing and so we got surrounded with ooo’s, ahh’s, and questions at every gas station along the way.
It was a long 6,000 km round trip journey, all with a trailor and goats. It was 3 days down and 3 days back but of course not without some perpetual car trouble, rolling into one gas station on only a liter of gas (although we shouldn’t have even made it there), and some “minor” delays in driving in which we didn’t get to our one destination until 4:30 in the morning.
Normally Cape Town is a lovely place for tourists like ourselves, but as our luck would have it, it rained most of the week, had storms with gale force winds, and even had threats of snow. I am quite disappointed that I did not actually see any snow in Africa, but could have sworn I did see some flurries one afternoon. But the weather did finally clear up for the last 2 days we were there. One day we drove down to Cape Point and stopped in Boulder along the way to see all the Penguins and the other day we went up Table Mountain.

Some things I learned on our adventures?
-African Penguins are very tiny and when they want to lay down they just kind of fall forward face first. You must also be sure to check under your car for penguins before you leave.
-New York is exactly 12, 541 km from the lighthouse at Cape Point.
-When you have a new leg and are walking long distances fast (to try and race friends on the tram car up the mountain), it has the tendency to blow up like a balloon and you are forced to take unfair stops to deflate along the way.
-When you set off hiking on the top of Table Mountain you should probably plan out which trails you are going to take. Otherwise you may end up on a 3-hour hike forging a couple new trails where the rains have flooded the old ones out.
-The statue marking Maclear’s Point, the highest point of Table Mountain, looks very much like a humongous Hershey kiss.

P.S.-Happy 4th of July! :-)