Welcome to South Africa: Braais, Biltong, and Boerewors

An African sunrise over  Senegal on the last stretch of my trip to Joberg.

        Getting to the Rainbow Nation, South Africa, from the US is no mean feat. I picked up a flight out of Los Angeles on Virgin, stopping in DC long enough to get myself sorted, eat and hop on a plane, before getting on South African Airways for the long haul across the Atlantic. We had a short stop in Dakar, Senegal to refuel and refit before a sunrise take off and ten more hours to Johannesburg. After about 24 hours in transit, I was relieved to see my friend Tracie waiting for me at the airport with a bag of biltong (the South African version of jerky, but wet, raw and wayyyyyy more delicious!) and a tin of zambuk (South Africa's version of Burts Bees).

      After tooling around town for a couple of days, meeting friends, munching more biltong and enjoying life, we joined a group for a weekend camping outside of the town of Cullinan. We stopped along the way to enjoy the little town, famous for its diamond mining, and to grab a cold microbrew before heading out to our camp. Tracie's friends had rented a cool little chalet, but we opted to pitch our tent a bit up the road in practice for our upcoming roadtrip. After meeting the resident zebra, Flecky, we rejoined the group in the yard of their chalet.
       The sun started to set, and a huge fire was built in order to start a true South African traditional braai. Like a barbecue but better, huge slabs of meat were lightly grilled to perfection (i.e. not much cooking) and rubbed with pepper and lemon all while a zebra wanders around in the background. The appetizer consisted of steak slices eaten with our hands before the main course of pork and lamb ribs with an assortment of fresh veggies. We eventually crashed into a cholesterol induced coma, waking with the sun for some delicious breakfast of eggs, onions, potatoes and dried sausage (boerwors) all cooked on a traditional  South African skottle.
      The weekend was a great time filled with day hikes, introductions to charming South African culture (seriously, these guys LOVE meat. Its a truly beautiful thing), and enjoying the abundant vegetation and wildlife in the area. We eventually packed up the car and waved goodbye before heading back to Joberg (as the locals call it), ready to start a new week and prepare for our roadtrip south!

First time on Virgin Airlines, going from LA to DC.

Taking off from Dakar.

The skyline of downtown Johannesburg (I think) as we drive through this lush forest of a city.

Fancy pancakes for about 3 bucks. Winning.

A cool old sign, written in both English and Afrikaans.

Beer tasting at a local micro-brewery

Cheers to new friends in new lands! (Thanks for taking the picture Tracie)

Flecky the Zebra (pronounced zeh-brah) and I getting to know each other... He nips if you dont have food for him. Cheeky lil guy.

Tracie had much better luck with Flecky.

Everything in the Rainbow Nation seems more colorful, vibrant, and likely dangerous.

A herd of impalas just kinda wandering the campground. No biggie.

Getting the fire started for a good old South African braai, like a barbecue, but more of a ritualistic worship of barely cooked meat and drinks.

A massive orb weaver, about as big as my hand, that Tracie and I almost ran into on our morning walk.

Sunrise over the the hills from our campsite (cue the music from Lion King).

Tracie supervising the skottle cooking of our breakfast. Mostly high fat meats and a few onions and potatoes with eggs

It tasted even better than it looks!

A massive hairy bug that we encountered on our walk that afternoon. Possibly a catapillar?

Flecky joined us for a snack in the garden of the chalet which our friends had rented out.

That eye tells so many stories.

Feeding Flecky whatever we could find.

The man likes his carbs, but hey, T.I.A. bru.

Flecky rewarded me for his snack by letting me kiss him on the forehead and not stomping me into the ground as apparently they are prone to doing when humans get too touchy.

Ahhhh tranquil forest.

Like the American pioneers who set out to seek their fortunes in the west, the Afrikaners (Dutch settlers in SA), used ox wagons to go further inland and establish farms.

Cooking breakfast with a zebra wandering the yard. No big deal right?

The town of Cullinan in northeastern South Africa.

Greyhound Trippin: Is This Really Real Life?!

So... let me start this by saying that this post has 0 pictures. Thats probably because its about traveling on Greyhound which is a REALLY good place to get anything of value jacked so... yeah... I will paint those grimy images on the canvas of your mind with my literary paintbrush. Hold on.

(This picture is not mine, I stole it from https://www.greyhound.com/.)

    The downtown Las Vegas Greyhound bus station is something straight out of Mad Max. Well, if you replace nuclear war with meth... pretty much the same concept though. Within 2 minutes of entering, a little panicked I was going to miss my bus leaving in 10 minutes, I had a fine gentleman try to start a fight with me. I'm a lover, not a fighter, but I'm also a fighter, so its not a good idea to get between me and a trip to Africa. However, I tried to calm down the man (honestly I was staring, the guy had dice and numbers tattooed on his neck, I was curious...) and succeeded in time to be told I was in the wrong line to get my ticket printed. Ok.
        So I get my bags tagged and I hop in line JUST in time. 12pm. Lets get the hell out of dodge for the love of everything sacred. Well, thankfully Greyhound is known for its consistency, and they didn't disappoint! For the 3rd time in a row, my bus broke down in the station and caused a delay of ohhhhhh 2.5 hours. Thats roughly half the time it actually takes to get to LA from Vegas. This gave me time to wait for the bus on a hard metal seat that smelled like someone had recently died in it, sandwiched between a couple arguing loudly over which drug they preferred most and a drunk guy who repeatedly asked to use my cell phone to call Hawaii. No. There is a payphone in the corner.
       During my sabbatical in the station, I came up with several interesting theories about why Greyhound stations seem to attract the weirdest people. One was that there were certain people who got to freshman year of highschool and were like, "yup, just about perfect. Better stay like this for the rest of my life." I mean, there was a guy wandering around in a hunting camo jumpsuit with a shirt reading "B@#$s Ain't..." peeking out, complimented with a cap tilted to accent his gentlemanly state.  Halfway through, the guy who wanted to fight me (exercise would have been nice at this point) found himself what he apparently considered an attractive, if larger, black hooker with dreads/cornrows to make out with in the corner. You may shudder, I sure did.
       Thankfully, my friends Steve, Vince, and the beautiful Maya Ram came to ease my suffering a bit. The strange part of it was, WE were the minority there. I mean, if we had smoked some crack and not showered for a week beforehand no one would have blinked twice, but everyone stared at the clean kids in the corner. They had to get back to real life eventually, so I patiently sat back down with my NEW friends, listening to philosophical musings on the best way to get out of drug charges ("tell the police to F#@$K off man, thats what I do, cause I'm smart!" was the suggestion on the guy in pajamas in the corner with gauges in his ear.)
      Soon a line formed for the door that would lead me to LA and out of this madness, so I hopped in. I was only a few people back from my new friend with the neck tattoos that wanted to fight me, who was still passionately groping his newfound l soulmate. I prayed REALLY hard (not something I normally do) that he was in the wrong line. As luck had it, he left the line and station for what was described by the lovely princess of piety in his arms as, "the best $60 special of your life." My luck was changing.
       Before you know it, I was on the bus and passed out until we parked at the LA station. Soon after that, my friend Bryan pulled up in his prius and we left as quickly as possible before getting mugged. I have a feeling that even though I'm headed to Africa, that might have been the most dangerous part of my trip.

Greyhound. Only in America folks.

A Quick Drive: Crossing The Mojave Back To Vegas

Me no speaky English, was what I planned to tell them if they got on me for blatantly ignoring this sign. Luckily everyone was too enamored with the world's most boring train ride to even notice.

         So I left California with the sun beating down on a beautiful morning to pursue another adventure. The first step was to drive back across the Mojave desert to Las Vegas to drop my truck off while I'm out of the States. This drive is normally pretty boring and straightforward, but I decided to stop halfway to stretch my legs, test my camera, and explore the Calico Ghost Town.

             This dusty little stopover in the middle of the high desert has always peaked my curiosity, but I had yet to take the time to pull off the highway and see it for myself. I pulled off and trucked 3 miles out into the hills before parking at the town itself. Now, let me just say that I've been to desert ghost towns before, and the cool thing about them is the relatively high state of preservation the buildings are in due to the climate, combined with that eerie stillness of places that should have people. This was not one of those places.

       After I forked over my entrance fee, I hopped out of my car and the first thing I noticed were the people. Lots of people. The former ghost town was flooded with boy scouts (not sure if this is a normal thing) wandering in and out of buildings that were obviously re-creations with a faux western feel that would have put Disneyland to shame. I passed an "Indian Trading Post" before winding around the "Saloon" proffering Big Gulp sized sodas to little kids (honestly, whiskey would probably be healthier for them). So, I finally came to the mining area of town, where forlorn holes still pocked the rock walls where a small replica train pitifully puttered along a pathetic track as an automated recording told the story of the town. 

                                                                       Screw that.

        I decided to go play around some of the mines (don't try this at home kids) since I figured if I was dumb enough to fall into one, then I deserved what I got. I trekked out into the desert past the warning signs and out of earshot of those shrill boyscout voices. It was far less fun than  I was expecting since they aren't exactly engineering wonders, but I did manage to get to good shots to practice with my new camera. After about an hour I trotted to my car and got back on the road, feeling a bit cheated by what I had expected from this ghost town. 

Lesson of the day? Some things are better left dead, like ghost towns.

The dusty road to the not so ghostly ghost town...

Some of the once prosperous mines.

A cactus in bloom right out of town.

This little fella decided to pose for my photoshoot...

Add caption

The entrance to a mine shaft up in the hills above town.

WOW! A REAL Indian post?! Nope, all made in China.

You know, seeing as how there is a sizable portion of the Californian population who speaks Spanish, one of these was not nearly so important...

Camera Review: Nikon Coolpix S9300

Nikon S9300 (Photo courtesy of Snapsort.com)

        When I bought this camera, it was a huge step up for me. I was just discovering that I actually really liked photography, and I figured I should replace my last camera that had died a rather tragic if epic death (Note: Cameras are not made for sandboarding, dune buggying, or anything involving sand and wind. 1 Peru, 0 Stone). So, I went with a trusted brand with a BIG zoom. The Nikon Coolpix S9300 fit those requirements with an 18x optical zoom and a shiny "nikon" badging.
       As I traveled, I got more and more into taking pictures and it became a really nice focus (pun intended) to a lot of my days. Trying to capture a very different way of life through photography to share with friends and family back home made me feel like I would be able to explain myself and my experiences better to them. So, I put a lot of thought into my camera since my pictures mean a lot to me. Overall, this camera was pretty great for travel. Starting with no camera knowledge beyond the most basic of point and shoot photography, this system was great for me. Here are some of the things I liked about it, and here are some of the drawbacks.

Pros:  

Small enough to fit in your pocket (if you're a guy). Most ladies I know can't fit their ID in their pockets so... yeah, not really the camera's fault there. But when you're taking pictures, sometimes its just not safe to be displaying more than $1000 of camera equipment boldly around your neck.

The 18x zoom. It was great for getting some of my best shots, and when traveling, its often hard to take pictures of locals in a low key fashion. Like most reasonable people, they will either ask you to stop, ask to be compensated, or pose for their photo. This can ruin a really great candid photo.

No Zoom.

At 18x Zoom

The simplicity was nice for a person just discovering a love for photography. For the vast majority of the time it was plenty for what I needed, and only after several months of making photography a priority did I feel like I was limited in some aspects.

Cheap. At about $150 it was not a huge deal if it was stolen or destroyed by angry Amazonian thunder gods.

Cons: 

 Sensor size. I didn't think twice about the sensor in this sucker till I started traveling with a friend who had a new iPad. That iPad took better photos in some respects because it had a backlit sensor that was engineered better. So... theres that.

 Manufacturing flaw. There was a fairly fatal flaw in the camera itself, where the automatic lens cover that closed over the lens to protect it, actually was slowly scratching it. By the end of my time if I didn't very carefully catch the light, then I would have a white blob hovering in the middle of an otherwise fantastic shot.

Look at the ghostly apparition in the center! Oh, wait, thats just poor manufacturing.

 Poor lowlight shots. This ties back to the sensor comment. The camera just did not have a good sensor for anything after sunset. After a while I learned to manipulate it to the point where I wrested a few good shots out of it, but most were garbage.

Very blurry, not well lit lowlight photos.

   

         I did upgrade my camera, mainly because of the large abrasion in the lens that ruined a lot of good shots. It was however, very hard to decide which camera system to upgrade to. I really wanted to get a more advanced system that would allow me to grow in my skills and be taken more seriously, but I didn't want to sacrifice my really handy superzoom/supercompact duo of awesomeness.

Sony DSC-hx50v  (Photo courtesy of Snapsort.com)

The Results of All This:

       I eventually decided against a DSLR system at the moment, since I wouldn't have the time to sit down and learn how to use it before my next trip, and instead went with a Sony compact superzoom. The Sony DSC-hx50v sports a 30x optical zoom, a backlit sensor, and 20mp (which is actually kind of a drawback). My line of reasoning followed that eventually I would need to upgrade to a DSLR if I continue to travel and grow more serious about photography. When that time comes, this camera is one that would still fill a useful niche even with a DSLR at hand. The best camera is the one you have on you, and some of my favorite shots came at times when I never would have dreamed that I would need my camera. Since I could slip in in my pocket, it just happened to be there when I needed it. Plus, a 30x zoom is something that would require lots of hefty lenses with a DSLR system. So, when I eventually do upgrade, I will still have a great day to day pocket camera to fill the gaps!

Here is a very good, professional comparison of my old and new cameras:
http://snapsort.com/compare/Nikon-S9300-vs-Sony-Cyber-shot-DSC-HX50V

     If you are traveling anywhere, I highly recommend bringing a good camera with you to capture everything that means something to you. For me, a pocket sized camera with a big zoom and room to crop were, and still are, big selling points. That might not necessarily right for you.

Check out your possible cameras with these nifty sites I used to do my research:

http://snapsort.com/compare

http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-cameras/

http://www.photographyblog.com/

The Comeback Kid: A Roadtrip Though SoCal

Clouds hover on the edges of the Sierra Nevadas on the way to the El Cajon pass down to the lush coastal plains of Southern California.

          The overly broad windswept streets were empty. Large houses stood unguarded day and night. I constantly and unconsciously brushed my hand against my wallet to assure myself that it hadn't been lifted by a skilled artist I may have bumped into. It seemed too quiet, yet I was catching snippets of conversations as I browsed large, sterile, fluorescent lit grocery stores. It was simply... strange.
        After nearly 8 months abroad, much of that time spent in South America, I was finally back in the suburban sprawl of Las Vegas. I wasted no time (except for brief moments to wonder at the strangeness of it all) to catch up on the day to day admin of a life I had let pass me by. Car registration, oil change, bank visits, unpacking, job hunting. All these things pressed with a fierce urgency, leaving me no time for a soft landing and a gentle transition. But hey, thats no fun anyways right?
       I had a plan, which as my friends abroad would likely tell you, was a rare oddity in my life. I had 5 days to settle my affairs in Las Vegas, then I headed out to see my family on the west coast in Santa Barbara for the weekend. It was nice to be welcomed back to the calm and tranquility that I find at my Aunt Trish and Uncle Michael's house. It is a magical place filled with art, music, and the best food you have ever had touch your unworthy tongue. My aunt and uncle graciously put up with my slightly dazed demeanor and constant blabbering about my travels as they proceeded to do their absolute best to restore the weight I had lost traveling through a full rotation of Santa Barbara's best restaurants and my their delicious home cooking.
      I reluctantly left with a sad heart and a full stomach, heading down to Los Angeles where I was hosted for a night by my wonderful Aunt Martha Ellen. She is a very talented painter and businesswoman who is in the process of carving out a nice section of the LA art scene, and it was wonderful to get a chance to exchange stories about Paris and Colombia for my far too brief stay. Unfortunately I had to leave the next day and head to San Diego to scope out a prospective job.
       I got to San Diego late that night, woke up early, and started my new job. Over the next few days I caught up with old friends, most of whom seemed fairly happy to see me again, some of whom not so much... Like the end to a bad novel, I even got to meet up, again, with Eduardo. We went surfing to close the circle of events (for good measure and good fun) before heading over to see the seal pups that had just been born in La Jolla. My first week back was completely mentally exhausting, and quite a whirlwind. I was finally back in San Diego, ready to make a little money, and with my eye already on my next adventure... You just wait to see where I end up next!
   

Lonely joshua trees in the harsh Mojave desert along the Pear Blossom HWY to Santa Barbara.

Ohhh I missed these great Cali sunsets!

Santa Barbara, a town where if it tastes good, you can get it... like fresh European cheese!

Seals lounge on rocks in a cloudy morning, two oil rigs anchored on the horizon.

Pelicans bob in the surf between the coast and the Catalina Islands.

A fountain in a secluded part of my uncle's garden.

My uncle tending his massive pizza oven, a rare treat that I'm always excited to help with!

San Diego... The jewel of California.

The last ferry back to the city from Coronado.

The industrial strength of America's naval shipyards is something to behold.

An amphibious assault ship hulks in San Diego harbor, framed by the Coranado bridge.

Pelicans in formation

Baby seals frolicking near mama.

Seals and Seafoam... not a bad day for early February when the rest of the states is mid-freeze!

Because who doesn't love baby seal?