my cottage by the lake

i loved my time at reflections eco-reserve. absolutely loved it. it's a simple place: a lake, a bunch of birds, lots of fynbos bushes, and a handful of cabins. five years ago it was all a pine-tree plantation, but with the hard work and investment by the owner and our great guide to the garden route, tim carr, it's on its way to nature's balance of indigenous species. (to get a taste of the damage tree plantations cause, it won't be for another fifty years of constant work by tim that this area is back to a natural state.)



the cottage and the landscape grew onto me as we stayed there. the completely hardwood cottage with an outdoor shower, expansive deck with dinner table and lounging chairs, and the lofted bedroom with a near panoramic view of the lake. the grasses, only fun obstacles for birds as they dive through them looking for grub, the trees with nests of fish eagles, the far off dark forests, rolling hills and hazy mountains.



the best part of the cottages though has to be that they are completely off-grid and utilize a lot of energy and water saving measures. each cottage is completely powered by a small wind  turbine and a solar panel. the stove, oven and refrigerator are all gas fuel. hot water is heated by solar energy (both solar panel and the fact nearly all 'geyers' here are painted black and placed the roof). water is all filtered rainwater and borehole. all the spent water is used as gray-water, for watering nearby plants. knowing exactly where all your energy comes from (and having a clean conscience about it) and also knowing where your water comes from and goes just eases weight off your shoulders. it was the icing on the cake for me to just be able to relax and finally breathe in rural air.

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we are in the 'garden route' of the western cape of south africa, for our next great guide, tim carr. he is our guide to the area, because of his extensive knowledge of the region, and his passion for the continual conservation and restoration of it. it is called the garden route because of the great diversity of the region, illustrated by the fact it has five out of the seven biomes of the world within it. to wonder through some of it, he took rachel and i on a great hike along the cliffsides of a valley, which opened out to the rocky coast of the atlantic.




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pine tree plantations cover a lot of area in the garden route, a gift from the logging industry and good ol' american plants. it's horrible to the natural environment, because the trees create a 'green desert' or a 'monoculture' of plants in the third most bio-diverse place on earth (first being the area around cape town, the second being the amazon rainforest). the green desert refers to how all other plants die from lack of sunshine and water within the pine forests, and the monoculture signifies how these forests stop and kill off a lot of the natural biodiversity found within the fynbos. but pine trees love it here. there is constant sunshine and generally a fair amount of rain. except now we are in a severe drought, leaving many of the fynbos' drought-familiar plants withering. and yet the pine trees and gum trees, of australia, root deeper than everything else and still manage to just get by.

to further illustrate the severity of the drought, the family we stayed with after tim carr's reflections is nearly out of water, having not had substantial rains in well over a year. when we left tim's cottages, we filled up our vagabond with 500 liters of water to deliver as a gift. it was much appreciated.

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i lamented out departure from tim's 'reflections eco-reserve', but i was quickly happy at our next stop. driving along the long dirt road to their house, it reminded me of idaho. we arrived and were greeted by three eager dogs and a braai on the way. while only managing to be twenty minutes from town, our new hosts, rhi and stu, live as they were in the middle of no where. their closest neighbors are way out of sight, and they have a backyard that encompasses a huge hillside field of fynbos. i was most excited about tenting in their backyard, and overwhelmed by the good food, good company, and fantastic views. on my first morning there, masai, my favorite of the three dogs, woke me up just in time to watch the sunrise. it was perhaps the best sunrise of my life. i eventually gave up trying to limit the photos i was going to upload from it.












view panorama full-sized.

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sadly enough, i spent most of my time here at this table editing video and trying to catch-up on work. somehow, with the view from the table, the work just didn't seem all that painful though. (the smoke clouds in the next photo are in fact two fires burning through the afternoon and to the evening. the furthest one climbed the mountainside almost all night, creating a massive ring of fire visible for miles and lighting up the night clouds.)



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above is another photo of the bray family, now conquering the drift-wood playground and stealing rhi and stu's two-year-old. below is my favorite book i found in rhi and stu's bookcases. it has been a growing habit that as we visit people i browse all their books while i am there, and this one made me felt i missed out on some childhood magic. gnomes was written by rien poortuliet and wil huygen, and is basically an ethnography of gnomes. i don't know if that was their intent, but if i had read that as a kid, i would have flipped.








 
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i have really been enjoying this traveling. camping. cooking by fire. not showering (seven days so far, with next possible shower coming in two days). wildlife. people. being productive. spending time with the girls. teaching them some crafts and about the color wheel. new music. breathing fresh air.

we have since moved onto our next great guide, town, and host, but i am not at all prepared to blog about my experiences here. if i don't try to get it exactly right, you won't believe me... it's just that crazy.

cheers to anticipation, and i hope all is well.

tbk

we hit the road!

I  am really excited that we have hit the road; after being in Cape Town for two months, I felt like I was settling in too much. 2010 is to be my year on the road, traveling with Roddy, Rachel, and the girls: tagging along with their adventure.

It has almost been two years since I met Roddy and Rachel, when they first told me about this  'Great Guides' project they were thinking about. I was traveling as a student in a study abroad program, and Roddy was our guide. As he took our class around Cape Town, Durban, and Jo'burg, Roddy would tell me more and more about what he was thinking, and I would pitch him more and more of my resume. I was enthusiastic about it then, and today is no different: I see 'Great Guides' having a lot of potential and I want to do whatever I can to help spark curiosity and passion into people's lives!

Last Friday we did our last packing and sorting of things in Cape Town, turned towards the N2 to George, and floored it (maybe not floored, but we all were excited to be on our way). Traveling through the farms and grassy hills surrounded by mountains on the N2, we listened to 'Winnie the Pooh' and watched the shadow of the Fortuna get longer and longer. Looking through the side mirrors of the car, we could see the sun fade away in the clouded sky. We reached 'Reflections' after dark, absolutely exhausted but with the excitement that tomorrow we would be able to see the landscapes that were currently cloaked in darkness. It was a darkness only possible when you are far out from any city, and we could smell the freshness of the countryside in the air.

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At just half past five in the morning, I popped awake. My internal clock knew that it was the perfect time to watch the sunrise, and I just had to sit up out of my bed to see it. What was hidden from us the night before was thrown at me in all it's brilliance. A lake sits just a hundred meters from our cottage, and we are surrounded by fynbos and hills covered in stunted trees. The mist was coming off the lake, birds swooped around the grasses, looking for some early food, and cows munched on grasses just behind our cottage.  The mooing from the cows and calling from the birds took over from the constant cicada chirping, and I couldn't think of a better way to start the day.



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After working with Tim Carr to do his 'Great Guide' recordings during the day, the family and I packed up some snacks and joined Tim's family on a hike through the forests. Just at the parking lot, there was a giant OuteniquaYellowwood tree, dwarfing everything else around it. We took a pause to appreciate it, but headed deeper into the woods to explore what hid within them.



What we found inside the woods was a whole new world from the fynbos that we were used to. The forest was heavily shaded from the last hours of sun for the day, and we found millipedes crawling through the downed leaves and moss reclaiming anything that sat still for too long.

The children and adults alike enjoyed reaching out into the ferns and mosses, and just listening to the sounds of birds and life around us.

Below is an embedded audio file to listen to about a minute of sound taken from the forest. Click play to listen. Download it here.

If audio player is not visible, visit this original post to listen.



this photo is this post's wallpaper: download full-size or wide-screen.

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more about where i am and what exactly am i doing to come, but i thought it would check in. being on the road has brought a nice change of pace, some new scenery, and some time to hide away and cook on the fire.

i hope all of you are well, and cheers to barefoot forest hikes.

tbk

hitting the road

as of right now, my 'home' for the next year will be a tent, my bed a cot and sleeping bag, and my permanent address non existent. everything i have with me i can carry at once.

having so little still feels like so much. i feel it in the weight.

i might be out of contact for a while, but will post with new stories of far off places.

hope all is well, and cheers to forward momentum.

tbk

2010: year of the adventure

happy twenty-ten to everyone! i hope this holiday season has been well to you all. the past couple weeks have been pretty busy, doing work, moving again, and christmas, but i have managed to take some time off because brad visited on his way to burundi.

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a couple days before christmas, i had the joy of waking up to the smell of heavy smoke and not really know what was going on. i looked outside, and we were covered in a cloud of (probably very healthy) smoke and ash was raining down. there was a fire just outside of the neighborhood we were at in hout bay, probably started in the township and moved into the bushes on the side of the mountain. it was fun to watch for a while, but after a couple hours of constant helicopter blades beating down on you and the smoke lingering everywhere, it got pretty uninteresting and impossible to really think clearly. the fire was out by noon time though, and with the real lack of news attention, i am not worried about the damage it caused.



news in south africa is different. i am only able to get the radio news, but it is amateur enough to be like a college/high school radio station. it can be funny, confusing or just heavy-handed at the same time. callers can just call in and talk for five minutes without a point to make or having had anyone to ask them to talk anyway. during conversations, you can hear the clink of tea glasses and spoons. interviews or press conferences are almost played in their entirety, not like the chopped bits in the states or probably uk. other times, you hear things like this "there have been 619 road fatalities so far this month during our peak driving season" (on december 20th ) or "the death toll has risen to fifteen for this year's circumcision season" which stops me dead in my tracks. (these aren't babies being circumsized, but fifteen to seventeen year old boys having illegal operations to be able to 'be a man'.) i found online articles for both of these stories, here and here. it all just makes me feel like this country has a lot further to go, even if they are able to host a fifa world cup.

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on the night before christmas, instead of cookies being laid out by the chimney, we had minced pies and a carrot. while it was not up to my standards of chocolate chip cookies, they were good enough, but the secret is to have them with brandy butter. (really, you just add butter and brandy together. then use copiously.) our tree was made of a branch from a tree in our garden, and according to the girls, the presents were 'up to affinity!" i was able to get some things in the mail from the states, including some grandmother cookies (chocolate chip, of course) and a card that sang "don't make me hit you with my pocketbook" by jennifer hudson. both made me very very happy. thank you to all of you that posted me, its nice to feel connected to people other than through my keyboard.





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and then on the next day, a little odd holiday called 'boxing day' (like a christmas hang-over day), brad arrived. he was coming to visit me on his way over to burundi, where he will be volunteering for a year in a clinic in a rural area (his blog is here). it was great to see him and the greetings he brought from the states (ie. my new wallpaper). we were able to take a lot of time to take it easy, cook sushi, pizza with our own dough, pancakes, and custom teas, and explore some of the local treats around the cape peninsula. most of the following photos are from our trip up the side of table mountain, through the gardens at kirstenbosch. the trail was more like a constant staircase, with these little steps progressing endlessly up the side of the mountain. in some spots, the trail was ladders up the side of a rock scramble. in the sun it was 96 degrees, and in the shade it was 72. it was a beautiful day hiking, picnicking, and sketching.





click here to see the panorama full sized.







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once we reached the bottom of the mountain, brad and i had to wait in the gardens just outside of the restaurant that rachel, roddy and the girls were attending a wedding reception at. so we created a game to drink our wine that we brought for dinner. the wine wasn't even boxed wine, it was from a juice container. it was about R15, which is just around $2. we complemented the wine with what was left of a bottle of champagne left outside. having only a little piece of bread and hummus for our picnic supper, we waved sarita and lorien to come outside and then told them to go on a secret mission to steal us food. they took our mission very serious, and brought little pieces of bread, 'chips' and other leftovers. the first time sarita came out, she tripped and wiped out (i wish i could upload the video), just to bring us some bread and butter. i love these kids.






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brad's gone now, and it's back to work. the family and i will be leaving cape town this wednesday, finally hitting the road for real. after tuesday night, i will be sleeping in a tent for the majority of nights for the rest of this year. our first stop is somewhere on the garden route, just east along the coast from cape town. we now have a new toyota fortuna ( or 'the big tuna' as i like to call it) and our caravan (named 'vagabond sarah rosebud' by the girls) all ready to go. the girls have been in charge of making sure the caravan scares off the locals, as it name says, we are the conqueror commander! i am really excited to start traveling and really getting out to see south africa.





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i tend to take new year resolutions pretty seriously, even though i don't ever really seem to celebrate on new year's eve. in one hand the new year is a pretty pointless holiday, but in the other, they provide a great dividing line to show change and progress in your life. by making a resolution, you can take time to look at your life, find something that you have been meaning to do or change, and then just challenge yourself and do it. some of my past resolutions have been to give up drinking soda, not pay for anything from starbucks (highly recommend), and to journal.

this year has been a little harder to think of something to do, because so much is changing already and i have no idea what i will really be able to do. i am still working on them, because i like definite check marks, not loose goals, but here they are...

1. limit everything i have with me to my backpack and messenger bag (loosing my summer backpack as additional storage).
2. to do more yoga, sketch, and keep up reading. hopefully one of these every day.
3. cook and eat as 'raw' as possible.
4. write and keep in-touch with the people that matter to me.
   

these are very loose, but i'll get there. the last point about keeping in-touch brings up my internet connection, which will become more scattered and unknown as i travel. so if i disappear again, just know that i will post new blogs and reply to emails when i can.

also, i have a new link at the top of my blog, which if you click on an enter your email address, you can receive my blogs by email every time i publish one. the email/blog service is provided by 'our mother google', so you can trust her. no spam or signups.

cheers to a new year and new adventures for us all!

tbk