In Transit

Alright, I am inside the O R Tambo airport in Jo'burg. I have passes security and passport control. So so far so good. However I did not get my boarding pass for my second flight, the one to Canada. I gave myself time, enough time I think, but......

Sunny warm day here, th cold front is over. It is nice to leave Jo'burg on a nice day.

Reservation for Kruger National Park

Hurray! I did manage to get a reservation for Kruger National Park.

I didn't get exactly what I wanted but still pretty good: 13 nights in 6 camps. I'm leaving in a couple of days (I couldn't get the exact starting date either and I had to delay by 1 day not a big deal).

As I was saying I don't like planning, but in this case I think it is worth it.
In this case, instead of stressing me out because I have to reach a destination on a given day, it will be less stressful to know that I do have a place to stay for each day. In Kruger distances are quite large and driving is obviously very very slow, so you cannot always hope to have time to drive to a camp and drive back out if it is full.

Always Last Minute

I hate planning, especially for something far ahead. So in my typical fashion, but also because I just found out that I do have free time in South Africa after all, I am now trying to see if I can book myself for a few days in Kruger National Park.

"Trying" is the key word in that sentence. I went to their website and under booking found out that the second notice (right under "please read our conditions to ensure that you are familiar with the system") was:
"The June and July 2016 bookings will open on 22 July 2015 at 07:30. Online bookings for the same period will open on 23 July 2015."....Yep! booking for June 2016 opening soon!!!

Still I am crossing my fingers since I am now trying to book for this May (I mean May 2015) and not June.

Just a brief update and travel plans

In early April I am supposed to go to South Africa.
Between now and then I am planning a small road trip in the States but right now I am in Calgary looking at the weather map, and the jet-stream in particular and it does not look good.

Still I will hit the road soon.

Plan for This Winter

Ok, so this winter I am planning to spend a few months here in Fort Smith and then once I have had enough of the very short days and the cold of winter and roughing it in a cabin I will jump in the truck with the camper and go south to ????

Anyway, here are the photos of the cabin I am going to rent for the winter months I will spend around Fort Smith:
It is not far from a road which is maintained even in winter, but even tough you can see an electric line there is no electricity. And yes in white is the outhouse.

this is the view this time of year from the front door.

You can see that it is not far from the road, a VERY quiet dirt road which as I was saying earlier is maintained in winter and this is key because it means that the snow will be plowed regularly.

The inside is obviously a complete mess right now just like any empty house but I think it has potential.

It is 5km (3 miles) from cell phone reception, 11 km (7 miles) to the main paved road, and 30km (17 miles) to the grocery store, swimming pool and town in general.

It has no running water, which for me means that when I want to go I can just lock it and go without worrying about pipe freezing and bursting. I really was set on only renting a cabin with NO running water. and no electricity, so I will get a generator for light on the short days of winter and mostly to run the block heater on the truck so I can start it at -40C (also -40 in Fahrenheit) which is the kind of temperatures to expect.

From Google Maps here is the location of Fort Smith.

Major Plan Change, Off to Malaysia

I woke up in Cortez Colorado this morning ready to make my way to Monument Valley but decided to check my email one more time before leaving the campsite. This is when I found out that really I needed to go to Malaysia where an extra pair of hand is needed. I am not going to explain but an extra pair of hand IS needed.
And thanks to the wonder of technology, I bought a plane ticket, found storage for the camper while I am gone etc etc, drove the 400+kilometers to the nearest town with an airport etc. Busy day.

So tomorrow morning I am flying to Kuala Lumpur.
Now the only problem is getting to the airport because I am in a campground out of town (where the camper will be stored) and my cell phone stopped working so calling a cab is now gone to the world of "difficult". Funny isn't it. There are no more pay phones to be had so having sorted out everything else I am stuck at finding a way to make a call tomorrow morning early....too early to have the office of the campground open and too early to ask another camper. Well, by tomorrow morning my cell may work again.

Also I have to pack, but that's not major.

Leaving Tomorrow

Unless something really unexpected happens I am leaving Calgary tomorrow morning, late morning most likely. So you can expect blog silence for a while.

Getting Ready to Hit the Road with My New Green Tea Grinder

I am getting ready to hit the road.
On Tuesday late evening C, where I am house-sitting /dog-sitting, will be back.
The winter storm warning for Calgary should be over the next day since Tuesday is also the last day in the forecast with winter storm conditions.
This is the map from Environment Canada showing in red the blizzard, winter storm and snow fall warnings, and in yellow what they call winter storm watch. In Calgary we have a blizzard warning starting this afternoon.

But all this should be over by Wednesday morning. Of course afterwards you are left with the snow and the cold, and if it is windy blowing snow but otherwise conditions are supposed to improve to a high of -10C (14F) by Saturday. So I should be hitting the road sometime around Thursday, I hope.

Anyway, this means that I have to get ready and get everything I need. Mostly I need to get the food, meds and stuff like this. I do know the the States are not a third world country and will have everything I need but since I do not intend to hit any large towns I have to plan pretty much the same way than when I was heading into northern Canada.
Luxury and unusual items need to be packed or I have to do without.

I am a coffee person but it is something I need to change. Coffee is on the list of things I should absolutely not have, whereas tea, especially green tea, is on the list of things I should absolutely have.So green tea is on my list of luxury item to pack and yesterday I hit the tea stores.
In the spirit of trying to talk myself into letting go of coffee I bought myself a Japanese tea grinder. Definitely a luxury item! So now I can myself very nice cups of tea very easily. And this way you ingest the tea which is very good for me as long as I use green teas.

Here is the expensive new toy:

and here is the result:

It does make a nice cup of tea. And you just need to put hot water in the cup, throw the tea and stir and it is done. Apparently you can make ice tea the same way because the tea does not need to steep when it is this fine. I am hoping this will work and I will switch to green tea, or at least switch to mostly green tea.

In Calgary doing tasks and having some quiet fun

I am in Calgary for a few days (house sitting and dog sitting) and I am trying to do as many tasks as I can while I am here. I am doing pretty good.
I had the truck fixed, nothing major bust still 2 days without mean of transport.
I moved the trailer in what should be permanent storage space with the help of CW.
I reorganized the trailer ...though this is not finished.
I emptied the truck practicallt entirely ... and that was not a job I was looking forward to. In the process I found my camera which had slipped between the seats. I thought that maybe it was lost or had been stolen out of the truck when I was in Medecine Hat (for the none Canadian this is the name of a town... pretty cool name I think)
I started clearing books and clothes not needed anymore from the camper.
I had the replacement jacks put on the camper.
I lifted the camper (finally possible with the new jacks) and moved the platform underneath it which had shifted forward too far.

All this has to be timed around snow. Last week end it snowed. Tonight (Friday night)  and tomorrow it is supposed to snow again.

But through all this I also managed to do some fun stuff.
A lot of going to the library and borrowing all kind of books.
I have been doing a lot of my Chinese language lessons (and I am quite happy with the way it is going).
I've eaten very good Vietnamese food.
And in the realm of entirely useless I bought myself a Christmas tree ornament. My favourite part of Christmas is the tree. I LOVE Christmas tree decorations and I found one really cute one. (for a dollar)... just made of plastic...
I looks like soon after December 4th (I will be house sitting again in a couple of weeks until December 4th) I will be heading south to the States. So Christmas in my tiny camper means no Christmas tree. Just the same I thought it would be nice to have this one ornament. See it for yourself::

Isn't it great...and SO Canadian in a none red-and-white way.
Maybe I'll use it as a rear view mirror ornament in the truck...right now I have a tiny stuffed buffalo.

Winter is around the corner

This is it winter is around the corner. Nights are cool and days are ok as long as they are sunny but this is Canada and Canadian winters are long and cold.
Right now I am in Grande Prairie for resupplies and general "maintenance" and taking off this morning. I haven't had internet in quite a while and I probably will not have internet for a while again.

I haven't decided yet what I will do for the winter. I cannot stay in the camper in Canada over winter so I have to make a plan. I somehow cannot decide but I am pretty sure that the weather will "help" me decide really soon!

I have to say: it has been a fantastic summer!

I think I will go to Inuvik

So I just left Writing-on-Stone right by the US border and now I am thinking of going to Inuvik which means going up the Dempster Highway.

On this picture from Mapquest Inuvik is the red star at the top, so well above the Arctic Circle.

I would like to get there for June 21st, the longest day of the year even though this is not hte only day of the midnight sun. Right at the Arctic Circle you only get one day with the midnight sun, but higher north you get more...obviously!

To get there I need to first go to Dawson Creek and start the Alaska Highway. I need to drive the Alaska Highway up to Whitehorse and just a few kilometres past Whitehorse I need to go on the Klondike Highway  to Dawson City. A bit before Dawson City I need to turn north on the Dempster and then 734 kilometres I am in Inuvik. All together (from Dawson Creek) it is just under 3000 kilometres.
Just the names make me want to go.
Maybe I won't get there. Maybe I'll change my mind and turn off beforehand. But right now this is where I am heading....until further notice.

Another look at the Camper

This post is for K who asked several times what the camper looked like (P. can you show K the photos.... you know who you are... I mean Parkview P. and K.).
I've posted the first two photos before but it was a long time ago, so here they are again.
This is the camper:
The outside: The window at the front is at my feet when I am in bed. it would be at my head if we were looking at the other side of the truck. The window at the back is in my "kitchen" above the sink, and on the other side it would be behind the seat at the table. The two "tubes" you see, one on the side and one at the back are the jacks so I can put the camper on its "feet", lift it and drive from underneath it if I want to take it off. But I seldom take it off. What you cannot see is that it is tightly chained to the frame of the truck, inside the box.

 
And the inside with the bed not even made. You can see the 3-burner stove and the sink on the left and the fridge on the right with the back of the L-shaped seat in bluein front and below it.
I am not crazy about the "decor" and I would love to redo it in serious more funky look but it was in great condition when I bought it and I am not sure that I even want to get into "renovations".

 It is quite small but Ok for one person, especially since all I really do in there is sleep and sometimes make a cup of coffee. I do most of my cooking on my Coleman stove outside.

The Coleman stove is the thing sitting on the table on the left of the picture.
This is super civilized camping in a proper campground. I am pretty sure that this picture was taken at was Dry Gulch Provincial Park just south of  Radium, sometime in the fall of 2011.

The Top 5 Regrets

First I want to say that I am OK.
For what ever reason (I think because this afternoon volunteering at the charity store sorting out the books I came across "the Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch) I was thinking about "The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying".
Also I am about to pack everything and leave South Africa. I have no obligations or even places where I have to be once I leave so I can go anywhere and do anything I want, so the "no regret" thing is very big on my mind right now. I want to make sure that I use my time well. There are so many things I would like to do but amazingly few I feel I cannot go without doing. Most of all I want to go slow. I don't want to rush through and miss everything, I want to go slow and enjoy everything instead. For me "slow" and "simple" are key...(remember I said I was OK... I am Ok!)

But this is not what this post is about. I am sure you all know the list but somehow I think it might be worth writing it again.

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.


You all know the story: Bronnie Ware, an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives recorded their dying epiphanies. This is how she came up with this list and wrote a book.

P. Rich's recommendation for India

P. is just back from India and came back absolutely thrilled and enthusiastic about Ahmedabad, Gujarat. He says that it is the best place in the world. P. travels a lot and is a very knowledgeable person so I am taking his recommendation very seriously.
He also strongly recommends the Kutch District (or Kachchh)north west of Ahmedabad, a desert area.
And in a totally different area he recommends Kochin (or Cochin) an old Dutch area of India.

This post is obviously just so I remember since I am about to leave South Africa and be a nomad for a while, though the original plan is to be a nomad within North America (from Alaska, Canadian Arctic to Texas, California and Newfoundland). Though I may not be able to afford life in North America in which case Asia is the next possible destination.

I am in Malaysia right now at B's place and departing for southern China in 2 days.
KL is a big city, very Asian and nice and warm. Today we had a high of 33C with high humidity. As long as you do not have to work outside it is quite nice.

As I was wondering what was going on in Africa so I went to my usual BBC world news and had a look at this. Why do they (the mysterious "they") always represent Africa as a place of sadness and chaos?

Brief stop at Changi, Singapore airport

I always blog when I go through Changi. first because there is easy access to free internet all over the airport. Second, I think, is because this is usually my first stop leaving South Africa and I am usually on my way somewhere nice. third, after Changi access to the internet usually gets more difficult, so it is sort a last chace for a while.
This time I am on my way to Malaysia, where I have never been before to visit B, S and the Cs.
Soon I will then fly to southern China, train northern China (if Chengdu can be considered northern) and fly back to Malaysia. I will take 3 weeks to do it just so I do it slowly.

Travel news

I admit I am feeling under-motivated to blog the photos I took in Swaziland because crossing back into South Africa I was given a one moth visa with no possibility of renewal so I am packing madly, running around to meetings etc and generally getting ready to go to Malaysia, Australia and then Canada.

I am looking forward to visiting friends but honestly totally not into the spirit of packing and getting going again.
I am still recuperating from something and I am quite tired.

I know my last visit to Swaziland was a few months back but I am thinking about it because I am planning another trip to Swazi.

So here are a few photos, a summary of a sort of why I want to go back.

At night there is a spot where you can get really close to the hippos in the evening. This is what it looks like with a small, old digital camera. but when you are there and can hear them breath etc it is pretty cool. A lot cooler than it looks in these photos. They really are about 5 metres away from where you can stand and there is just a little stone wall between you and then. However they cannot climb walls so you are safe.

Sunsets! And now it is thunder-storm time of the year so there should be some spectacular clouds.

The next trip ...small but still a trip

Tomorrow morning I am taking off for Victoria Falls, on the Zimbabwe side since Canadians visiting Zambia require a visa before showing at the border and typically enough I decided today to go tomorrow.
I am looking forward to it.

With a little luck I should be posting some photos soon.... I am only going for a long week end. However I cannot promise anything since it is the rainy season and the flood season and the mist around the falls may be too much to take pictures.
I always said I wanted to see Vic Falls both during the rainy season and the dry season but somehow Vic Falls are so close to Jo'burg that it always felt like it was a place where I could go some other time.

The New Camper

Last year my friend A gave me an old camper mostly to try it out and see if I liked it. It was a great big old camper and I loved it. A and I did a lot of work inside and at the end it was a great thing to have. This is what I used last year when I drove to northern Canada and went to Liard Hot Springs. I camped in it down to -10C which would be a bit of a nightmare in a tent.

 You can see it is big and old.

 and quite spacious!

BUT it was just too heavy for my truck and my fuel consumption was through the roof. But by then I was in love with the camper and I didn't want to let it go even though I knew I should. After a long time looking for a new lighter camper I finally found one.


So here is the new (to me) camper:

 It is much smaller, but mostly it is made of fiberglass and much much lighter.

Just right for one person. It does have a stove, a furnace, a small frige and a small sink (with cold water only but this is all I need).
 
Anyway tomorrow morning, after too many self-imposed delays I am leaving and going on a month long road trip. I don'ty know yet where I will go. The weather is quite cool now in Canada and even though I feel like going north I know I probably shouldn't. I think I will start by going to some hot springs (either Miette or Golden and maybe on to Nakusp) and decide once I am relaxed and feeling like I am on a road trip. It feels very different very quickly and soon I get into the spirit of the road trip and the slow relaxing feeling I love.