South Africa

Cape Town to Plettenberg Bay

After my last trip to South Africa, I said that I would one day return and continue along the coast and the famous Garden Route. Seeing as I had to fly back to Perth from Johannesburg anyway I decided to extend my trip (after a surprise 2 weeks in the UK) and booked a Nomad Africa adventure tour travelling from Cape Town to Johannesburg over 20 days.

Table Mountain, Cape Town

I flew from London to Cape Town arriving on Thursday 19^th May, ready to start the tour the next day. Unfortunately I didn't have much time in Cape Town, which is a shame because I had forgotten what a fantastic city it is. I find everyone to be very friendly there and it has a great atmosphere, and my Air BnB host for the night, Johann, was very welcoming.

Bo Kaap, Cape Town

Day 1 of the tour started with a township tour to the District 6 museum and out to the township of Langa. It's something I chose not to do last time as I felt uncomfortable taking a tour to see what life was like in an impoverished township, however I'm very glad I did it- it was incredibly eye-opening and emotional at times. The apartheid in South Africa is something I was always aware of but knew few details of, and to see it described and displayed in the District 6 museum was very difficult. There were pictures of the towns and communities around Cape Town- not slums as I had imagined but normal, working class families and homes- which were destroyed as part of the apartheid. Huge numbers of people were displaced into these townships to live in appalling conditions, most of the time being evicted with less than 24 hours' notice and leaving with very few personal belongings, all so that these could be made into whites only areas. District 6 itself was not even put to a useful purpose, the buildings were almost all torn down and to this day the area remains open and unused.

A typical family home in
Langa township

From the museum we were taken to the township of Langa and were shown around and into the homes of some of the residents living there. There were a variety of types of housing, the oldest being a hostel with several bedrooms leading off from one communal kitchen and living area. In each bedroom, barely big enough to fit three single beds, would live up to three families and as many as 15 people. Work is underway to improve this, and new housing is being built where one family lives in one home, but these are still very small and rudimentary. The townships are constantly growing, with people coming to Cape Town from neighbouring countries in the hopes of finding work. The growing areas are no more than shacks built from wood and corrugated metal, with dangerous makeshift electrics and high levels of disease and flooding from the local waterway.

The amount of rent that one family has to pay per year in one of the newer homes would have paid for two nights of my accommodation the previous night, which really puts things into perspective. However the township tours and the tourists do bring a valuable source of income to the residents, as the tour guides are from the townships and the locals are able to make and sell souvenirs.

The view from the winery

Beautiful scenery en route to Oudtshoorn

Following the rather sobering morning in Cape Town we headed out to the beautiful university town and wine growing region of Stellenbosch where we had wine and cheese tasting (as it turned out at a winery I visited last time I was here!). That evening we stayed in Somerset West and had our first meal as a tour group. There were 10 of us in total from all over- Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.

Day two of the tour and we were driven through some spectacular scenery as we drove along Route 62 and through some beautiful mountain passes. We stopped in at Ronnie's Sex Shop, so named because one of Ronnie's friend's vandalised his newly painted shop sign and the name stuck. It's little more than a pretty odd country pub in the middle of nowhere, but they do alcoholic milkshakes and I can recommend the rum and banana!

The unique Ronnie's Sex Shop

In the afternoon on our way to Oudtshoorn we stopped in at an ostrich farm and were given a tour of how they breed and rear ostriches and the types of feather they harvest and sell. Painted and carved ostrich eggs are very popular souvenirs and the egg itself is the equivalent of 24 normal hens' eggs- it's very rich as we had some for breakfast the next morning. That night was the first night camping for the four of us who had chosen the camping option- everyone else had paid to stay in accommodation for the tour. The tents are very easy to put up, and quite comfortable when you have a couple of mattresses to yourself!

Ostrich at Oudtshoorn

Ostrich racing

Day three and we visited the 'famous' limestone Cango Caves in the morning (which were pretty much the same as any other caves I've ever been in). In a change to the planned schedule the group voted that in the afternoon we would drive to the Bloukrans Bridge bungee jump... where I would be doing a bungee jump! The bridge is the highest commercial bridge bungee jump in the world, and is 216m high. I have bungee jumped before but that was a mere 30m in New Zealand. I had several hours to mentally prepare myself, however as we drove over the bridge itself, nothing could prepare me for just how high 216m actually is when you're jumping off it!

Only myself and two of the others in the group were to do the bungee jump, and after being unceremoniously weighed and categorised (clearly I've been snacking a bit too much...) we were rigged up with harnesses and made the long journey out to the jump site. This involved walking along a cage-like walkway suspended beneath the bridge over the valley, so we could see all the way down to the valley floor as we walked out. I actually think this was far more terrifying than the jump itself! There was a pretty large collection of people jumping, and they alternate jumpers between lightest and heaviest and they accurately record the total weight of people jumping so that the bungee cords can be changed regularly for safety purposes.

I was supposed to fit somewhere in the middle of the group of people jumping, however I got bumped up as I was part of the tour group. What I didn't know at the time was that they were waiting to change the rope so I would be the first person to jump on the new rope. I think I would have been much more nervous if I'd known that before I jumped! I saw the other two members of my tour group do the jump, as well as a fair few other people and all the while I'm dancing around to the music and chatting to people, trying to distract myself from the inevitable doom awaiting me.

Cango caves world heritage site

Finally it was my turn, so I sit down and one guy is attaching a safety cord to my harness (so that if for any reason the cord around my feet fails or my feet slip out- it never has happened here before) then the harness will catch me. Then another guy comes along and attaches the bungee cord to my feet. And then they shuffle-hop me out to the platform which I'll be jumping from, and I'm still laughing and joking and psyching myself up to jump off this bridge. 

And 3... 2... 1... bungeeaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

is a fairly good approximation of what came out of my mouth (perhaps accompanied by a choice swear word or two). Increase that by several decibels and extend for as long as you can scream until you run out of air and you have Sarah bungee jumping. I think I was aiming for an excited 'wahoo' but it came out more as a blood curdling scream. Apparently I was the loudest screamer of the afternoon!

Preparing to bjump

The last time I bungee jumped I don't remember what happened immediately after I jumped. I now realise that was my brain's way of preserving itself from re-living the sheer terror you go through as you jump and expect to be landing on solid ground any second, only to find that you won't be landing on solid ground at all and that you are in fact in freefall, hurtling towards the bottom of a valley several hundred meters below you. 

And then you're at the bottom of the cord and it feels as though your feet are slipping, even though they're not, so you force out your feet as far as possible and you tense your thighs (as if that is going to help anything). But then it feels like everything is OK again, only it's not because next thing you know you're being pinged straight back up into the air again and although this part isn't too unpleasant, all you can think is 'the higher I go up, the longer I have to fall back down again.... please stop please stop please stop' and then you're free-falling back down again and you go through this several times. Apparently the first time you rebound you then fall as far again as the bungee jump over the Zambezi river, so you've basically done two bungee jumps in one.

The look of pure terror

Being hoisted back to solid earth

And EVENTUALLY you stop free-falling and you're bobbing upside-down at the bottom of the cord, looking down at the valley bottom and you start having a conversation with the ground about how you're thankful it's down there and you're up here (and you're still tensing those thighs and penguin-footing your feet just in case). And this little guy abseils down and hooks your harness to his seat and swings you back upright and starts to hoist you back up to the bridge. He asks me how I am and I start speaking French (clearly a bit discombobulated by the entire experience) so he starts speaking French back. So now I have to admit to him that I've pretty much expended all the useful French I know, only now my English isn't working too well either so the entire journey back up to the bridge he's trying to understand what on earth I'm saying (and I'm not too sure what I'm trying to say myself). 

Then I'm being hauled over and back onto the bridge like an over-sized fish (the video is not pretty), and I grab onto that bridge for dear life as they untie my feet and release me to my fellow survivors. They bring me in for a massive group hug and we're all grinning like madpeople, and all swearing that we will never do that again (although if another higher one happens to crop up on my travels then I might think about it...).

After the terrifying hanging-cage walk to get back off the bridge, we met the rest of the tour group who all congratulate us and tell us we're crazy and that they were watching the entire thing on a live video feed. They thought my dancing around on the bridge was me chickening out of doing the jump (as if!). Our accommodation for the night was the incredibly fancy Dunes beachside resort in Plettenberg Bay- no camping for us tonight!

Journey from Cape Town to Bloukrans Bridge

Detailed  map of the trip so far

Zambia

My trip to Zambia was my first overseas business trip, and after a shaky start with my flight booked under the wrong name I landed in Johannesburg early on Sunday 17^th April. Sue- the senior geologist and my host for a few days- picked me up from the airport and took me back to her house where I met her two beautiful ridgeback dogs Heidi and Terra.

Johannesburg wasn't at all what I was expecting- it was much more pleasant. Granted I was staying in a more affluent part of town and wasn't going anywhere near the dodgy parts, but the city is incredibly green- it apparently has more biota than any other city in the world- and although there is a heavy security presence and plenty of barbed wire protecting properties it is all blended in quite well with the neighbourhood. The weather was wonderful and we were able to go for some great dog walks and run some errands.

Sue, Riccardo and Brian assessing the pit

Harry, T-Bar and Joe ready for work

On Tuesday 19^th April I caught the train to the airport for my flight to Ndola in Zambia which is where the company I was consulting for, Mukango Resources, is based. Ndola international airport was a fairly relaxed affair, and it took a while to get my visa sorted. We were met at the airport by Luca and Riccardo who head the project, two very charismatic Italian-Zambians.

The first few days were spent as a team doing a run-down on the project, making a plan of action and getting equipment ready for the field. Ndola is the third largest city in Zambia, but is still fairly small compared to Australian or English cities with less than half a million people living there. It's close to the copperbelt, Zambia's copper mining region and also close to the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.

We set out for our first stint in the field via Kitwe to the west, Zambia's second largest city, to stock up on supplies. Kitwe has quite a different feel to Ndola and is much more lively and commercial, although also much more run down. The mine site wasn't too far from Kitwe distance-wise but took us 2 hours to get there as the access road was a poor quality dirt track. On our way we passed lots of little rural communities and homesteads, which were not much more than a collection of simple mud brick houses with grass roofs and a central grass roofed communal area.

Mapping the pit

Zambia's Kafubu mining area where the project is located is actually patrolled by the military due to the it's value. Once we were through the checkpoint it was only a short drive to get to the Mukango mine, passing by some of the bigger emerald mining operations in the area- Kagem and Grizzly. The mine camp was a hive of activity as we arrived, with 20 or so guys all busily unpacking our vehicles and getting to work setting up new tents for us. In Australia we would probably only have one or to people on the site to do this, but here they employ many staff so that several people might earn a small wage as opposed to a couple of people being paid a bit more.

Mukango mine camp

The camp was well set up considering its remote location, with a few basic toilet blocks with showers, a rustic outdoor camp kitchen and a communal area for us to eat and work in. There were power points and lighting wired in, with a generator and solar panels powering the batteries to supply the electricity. We slept in large canvas tents on stretcher beds- probably more comfortable than I will be on my trip around Australia!

Traipsing through the undergrowth to survey the mining lease

The area was incredibly lush and green as Zambia has several months of rain during their summer rainy season. This means that all mining work needs to be done during the drier winter months giving a limited window of opportunity. The grass and plants were taller than I am in places making navigation and field work quite tricky, and there are several old workings and abandoned pits to be cautious of. The Mukango pit itself is quite large, and about 19m deep, however work on excavating the pit has stopped while we do a scientific review of the project in order to better target further drilling and excavation work. The company also has access to several other areas in the Kafubu mining district, so another element of the work to be done is to evaluate the potential of these areas.

After a couple of days walking around the lease a plan was made for the geological and geochemical work that needed doing, although at a much slower pace than I'm used to! I had planned a program of geophysics whilst in Ndola and had acquired quotations, and so my job was to help with the field and pit mapping.

Washing mined material to find the eneralds

For those who are interested in the geology of emeralds, and put very simply, the emeralds are hosted in metamorphosed ultramafic units, which provide the chromium content required to give emeralds their rich green colour. Where these have been deformed and faulted, hydrothermal fluids have penetrated the rocks and where these fluids have contained sufficient beryllium, they have produced hydrothermal veins containing beryl, which combined with chromium in the right quantities and the right conditions gives you emeralds.

And not only are we looking for the right spot in the right host rock which has seen the right conditions for emerald formation, we are then also trying to piece the puzzle back together as more deformation of the rocks has occurred since the emeralds were formed and has moved the deposit around. This is why the geophysical work will be so critical to understanding where better to target future exploration and mining, as the program I have developed will help with mapping the host unit and potentially also identifying where in the host unit there might be the emerald-bearing hydrothermal veins.

Driving to Lusaka past the fruit and veg stands

We spent a few days on site and then drove to Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. The drive was about 5 hours, and it was interesting to pass through a few other smaller towns where there would just be a few buildings and lots of stalls selling locally grown fruits and vegetables- piles of watermelons, butternut squash and tomatoes grown by the local people. There were huge areas for cattle grazing too, with Zambeef being the major farming company in Zambia.

A hive of activity in the pit

The aim of our trip to Lusaka was to introduce ourselves to the various government departments we would be working with and reporting to, and also to see what publicly available information we could acquire. The Geological Survey Department is setup (as with most things in Zambia) based on the English system, which in theory should mean that companies submit reports on their activities, and that certain amounts of information, data and reports should be available to members of the public. The reality is quite different, which made it very difficult to get any further information from the system (unless you have an insider helping you... but I won't go into that on a public forum!). I did manage to acquire the department's most up to date airborne geophysical survey, which was flown in the early 1970's and was all but useless in that many of the critical data needed to process it was missing- deliberately by omission or because it was genuinely lost I couldn't tell.

Lusaka was a big, bustling, hectic city as you would expect from the capital of an African nation, and had plenty of upmarket buildings, malls and skyscrapers and a university. It was fairly chaotic, and I was constantly amazed at the level of skill of our driver and how he avoided hitting any other vehicle. If you hit rush hour traffic (we did) it could take you an hour to go 100m (it did), and there are plenty of innovative people selling various items in the traffic- apparently if you drive for long enough you can do all your shopping and get a pressure washer to boot all from the driver's seat of the car.

The final week of the trip was spent back on site trying to get on with pit mapping. We pumped the water out of the pit and dug a few trenches to help look at a cross section of the geology across the pit. I did struggle a little with the slow pace of the work and some of the methods used I thought could be improved upon. It was also difficult to get a commitment from the senior geologist on which geophysical options she wanted to pursue, and so I handed over a recommended program of work and quotations. I very much hope to see that some of the work will be done in the future! It certainly appears that the area the company is in is very prospective, and I think it will only be a matter of time before they are pulling out gem quality emeralds from their pit.

Some of the field crew on the last day in camp