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  Saldanha, South Africa
Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Right away we were glad to have been advised to take the bus from Windhoek to Springbok.  The hills and big scrub are much more interesting to watch go by then the desert and small scrub of Southern Namibia.  Southern Namibia is interesting, but after 30min you get the idea.
Along with the landscape change, we also noticed a society change.  Soweto's are now quite visible, even in the small towns.  A Soweto, (South-western Township, refers to the largest and most recognized outside of Johannesburg, now used as a general term) is where the black people were forced to relocate in the 1940's.  In 1994 Apartheid came apart, Nelson Mandela was elected President of the new government and segregation officially came to an end.  However, that sort of change is slow in coming and the result is you've still got the blacks living in very poor conditions.  At least that's what we can see biking by, the whites live in the city (normal house), and the blacks live in the Soweto's (concrete bunkers).  We have had some interesting conversations with local white people, who have lived here for generations.  They say that in effort to balance out the past segregation there are many cases of blacks being given preferential treatment to move into management jobs.  But, they also say that it's common for those people to not have the right training for their new job which results in difficulties.  Despite the bumps in the road, for a country that is 13 years old, I think that everyone seems to be doing a fine job and most importantly keeping patient and diligent, for overcoming the mess Apartheid made.
Since I'm rambling about society changing as we bike south in Africa, I'd like to back up a month to when we took a local bus from Divundu to Grootfontein.  (Random- we were having a snack at a gas station a few days ago and the women who runs the great Bed and Breakfast we stayed at a month ago in Grootfontein, about 1400km north of us, jumps out of her car all excited to see us!  She was driving to Cape Town for a vacation.  Small world.)  we crossed "The Red Line" which is an animal disease control checkpoint baring north - south movement of cattle in effort to control foot and mouth disease.  The side effect is that it also makes a boundary between first and third world.  First being the commercial cattle ranchers of the south and third being the communal substances land of the north.  In Namibia it wasn't so clear that we crossed a society line because the whole country is so sparse in population.  But here in more farming land of Namaqualand it's clear.  We now have big farms with many people working on them.  Gone are the little villages about 10km apart where people farming their tiny plot.  Sort of sad to see that go.  As hard as it was to have an audience while eating lunch, it did feel more like we were seeing a culture.  Now we just have cows watching us bike by.
With some advice from our friends in Windhoek we found a gravel road route off the main highway and have worked ourselves to the Atlantic Ocean then down to Saldanha.  The same friends also gave us a phone number to one of their mates who lives in Saldanha with instructions to call him when we got down here.  Thean and Erna were extremely generous to host us for two nights, despite the fact that we gave them a two hour notice and were complete strangers.  We enjoyed our break on the sea and now look forward to enjoying the wine country along route 62 into the Little Karoo.

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03-Matt with bikes!

04-Sunset on the Atlantic

05-Lighthouse

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