My Journey: 2007

Saturday, 29 December 2007

Monday, 24 December 2007

Christmas dinner

On the menu today - Gammon, Chicken, Pasta salad, Swedish meat balls, Potato, Sausage...

Årets julklappar

although sun was hiding behind the clouds water equipment had to be tested immediately so Jonas and I went for a swim in the Indian Ocean. Majority of evening was spent on playing RISK.

Gold Reef City

Some cool roller coasters at this amusement park. But water rides was a wet experience and had to walk around all day in wet pants.

Saturday, 15 December 2007

Sun City - Valley of Waves

No real beaches close to Pretoria but this is a decent substitute only 100 km away.

I have long had a dream of going to Victoria Falls but somehow I had not got the opportunity until now. I had a very vague idea of what Vic Falls looked like but knew that the site really astonished Livingstone when he once arrived. No pictures in the world can ever give this natural wonder of the world justice, it just has to be experienced with own eyes!

Victoria Falls is a part of Zambezi River and so much more than just some water dropping 108m. Above the falls is a wide river delta with Zimbabwe on one side and Zambia on the other. The river delta is filled of crocodiles and hippos and surrounded with all of the wildlife the savanna has to offer. Once this 1,7 km wide river delta reaches the edge of the cliff it throws itself down the deep rock gorge in a constant massive lunatic suicidal act. Once in the gorge it changes shape into a rapid running white river snake making its way true the hardest of rocks.

I had some ethical concerns of traveling to Zimbabwe as there is a lot to question with the current leadership of the country. However I decided that I could live with that with the motivation that I would be able to get some more insights in the situation plus that the people of Zimbabwe need all the help they can get at the moment and without the support of the tourism industry many more people would suffer. Had not expected to find world class hotels, so much professionalism and good service and the Zimbabweans are just so friendly and nice. In Vic Falls they know how to treat tourists, how to make us feel welcome and how to make us want to come back. I stayed at Victoria Falls Hotel which is an old hotel from 1904 and reading the newspapers handled out together with morning coffee from 1910 and 1920 gives an idea that in many aspects not much has changed since. Discussed politics with a number of people and realized some were a bit reserved in expressing their opinions but got an idea of how people on the ground view the situation they are in at the moment.

There is a lot of exciting activities to do in Vic falls and was a bit skeptical about the idea to get onto the back of an African Elephant but got convinced by a friend who had been in Vic Falls who said it is a must-do. And for those of you who have been taught that you can’t tame an African elephant I can tell you that it is wrong. However after the ride we got some of the stories of how moody they can be and how hard work it is to train them.

But being on the back of the elephant was great and the guides had a lot of knowledge in the behavior of these gigantic creatures. We had some hope of doing some game viewing from the back of the elephant but other wild animals stayed out of our way this day. All in all it was a great experience and I learned a lot about the elephants.

Starting just after the falls Zambezi River offers one of the best and most challenging white river rafting in the world. After making the payment we were shown a video of what to expect and must say I was wondering if I was going crazy doing this. Our challenge for the day was to get through 10 serious rapids alive.

We took of together with two other boats and already after first rapid one person in next boat was bleeding from his mouth and showed a “smile” short of couple of tooth. First few rapids went well for our boat and I was placed in front. Just before getting down the first rapid we were also told about the crocodiles in the river referred to as vegetarians and not to be feared… At one of the smaller rapids guide told us to jump in and get the experience of swimming the rapid which was very refreshing and fun. The two other boats experienced getting flipped over but we managed to defeat all the rapids. Only at one occasion we lost one team member, my travel companion Heidi who got thrown out of the raft and experienced a tumbling ride through the rapid. The crocodiles did not bother us as promised but we saw a couple of small ones which felt a bit uncomfortable. The rafting was awesome and I survived without even a scratch and the only times I left the boat was when I jumped in for a swim :-)

Last night I went on a sundowner cruise on the Zambezi River delta above the fall. It was a nice peaceful cruise amongst hippos and crocodiles. I have seen and experienced quite a number of places on this continent by now but must admit that nothing can be compared with Vic Falls and I hope all of my few readers will get to experience it as well!

Sunday, 21 October 2007

Grahamstown

Grahamstown is a beautiful relatively small university town. Every year they have a big Science Festival attracting 40000 kids. Went there to discuss the twinning of SciFest in Joensuu with the SciFest in Grahamstown. Amongst other ideas we will have a tug-of-war between Finland and South Africa during the festival. Also went to Rhodes University and the Computer Science Department and discussed some collaboration. On Saturday morning I also visited a Science Club for kids that is quite similar to the Technology Club I am involved in. It was nice to see their arrangements and learn from their experiences. During the visit the kids made HIV tests of 9 imaginary patients where there was a story around each patient giving kids an idea also of the risk factors.