Climbing the mountain (cont'd.)

If you are following the site, you might remember that we went to Tablemountain to climb it. I am posting some of the pictures from that day now, since I haven't gotten around to it yet.
Hope you like ;)

Fire in the sky over Cape Town (Part 1)

After returning from Johannesburg last night, we prepared to go to Blouberg beach to enjoy the fireworks show at the Cape Town Waterfront. I setup my camera and prepared to take some long exposed pictures. I am posting 2 of the better ones. I found that we were just to far away to make it worth it. The next time the show is on we are planning to go to Cape Town it self and take some pictures there. I see that the gallery on their website has much better pictures then mine. I guess I have a lot of work to do next time. Since I will be missing this Saturday's show I will go next Wednesday.


There was a very nice sun set again last night and I took this picture...

Metallica Rocked Cape Town Last Night

Last night we went to the Coke-Cola Colab concert. This was possibly the best concert ever hosted in Cape Town. We left home at 10:00 in the morning. It was an absolutely perfect day. Not a cloud in the sky, not much wind and a Metallica concert to go to. We spent the morning sitting on the grass in the stadium, listening to some of the South African bands that played. It was a great start to the day. By late afternoon, the heavier bands started to play. The big surprise for me was Seether ( previously known as Saron Gas). They are heavy, but they got the crowd jumping and singing along. They are also previously from Cape Town. So it was a great homecoming for them and us.

When the Metallica actually started later that evening (just after 21:00) the crowd was already in a frenzy. We had been waiting for years for them to come to our country and our city. Their set was supposed to last 2 hours, but after 2 and a half hours of mind-blowing masterpieces, they were called out to do another encore. They came out and did a couple of songs more to make a total of 3 hours that they had spent on the stage for us. My voice was practically gone, my back was killing me and my knees were basically useless, but I felt GREAT. The adrenaline was still pumping when I got to bed at 3 this morning. I got one really bad picture with my cell, but I hope that they will post more on the Metallica site. I will link to it if I find any.

After they finished their show they made a promise that got the crowd to roar. “Johannesburg, Durban...Looks like we saved the best for last” and then ”...we love and and we will see you again very, very soon”. I thought that my lungs were going to jump out of my throat we were screaming so loud. If they made this an annual event and they get big bands like this to come every time, this will be a total success every time.

We were lucky here in Cape Town, that the beer didn't run out. Apparently the event in Johannesburg ran out of beer very early and there was huge problems around this. We didn't have any of this. Just one great day that I will not forget soon.

I will post the Table mountain pictures soon.

Going to take on the mountain.

Tomorrow we are going to climb this mountain. We are going through Kirstenbosch early in the morning. We are taking the Skeleton Gorge and Nursery Ravine path. We will try and take as many nice pictures and post some of them here.

Tomorrow is Human Rights Day here in South Africa. It is a public holiday that is celebrated in remembrance of Human Rights.

I hope to have more to write about tomorrow.

Pic that I could not upload through firefox.

I hope that this comes through now... ;) 

No moon.

Ok, so I didn't stay up all the time to get the pictures of the moon. Kinda fell asleep and my alarm didn't wake me. So I searched google for some images to add to the site here. In my search I found a nice schedule of all the eclipses this year in South Africa. They explain in this page that it was a penumbral lunar eclipse, which doesn't actually change the "shape" of the moon.
So no pics to add.

This is the second day that I have Internet back, so far so good. I also heard that there might be a reduction in the cost of ADSL soon. I just hope that this materializes.

I took a pic over the weekend as a cold front moved in over Cape Town. I hope you like. :)

MMM, there seems to be a problem uploading pictures ... :(

The moon eclipse

Well after a week of struggling to get my Internet Up and running again, Telkom has finally sorted my Line. I can now connect and the noise is gone.
A friend informed me this weekend that there is a Lunar eclipse tonight. I will try and add some pictures of the event, if I can get up ;)
I took one picture so far.

The state of the Internet in South Africa

In South Africa Internet is a privilege, not a right. Here you pay lots of money for a telephone call or ADSL line and then you are still not guaranteed a decent connection. After the power failures got a bit better, the Internet got worse. I still use a normal dialup to get access to the Internet and have been unable to get access the net for the last 4 days, since I got disconnected. Since we still have to pay for EVERY call we make, I can't afford retrying to connect all night. Then we still have to pay for the Internet Account as well.

Then there is the ADSL limits that has been imposed by Telkom ( currently the only telecommunications provider in the country). They limit the speed at which you can download, the total amount that you can download and you don't have a static IP address. They limit you to a total of 3 gig PER MONTH. If you want to download more, you have to buy another account or get a larger one. I hope that the second National Provider ( the official competition for Telkom, that we have been waiting for about 5 years) will do something about decent prices and Internet access.

On a different note, there is a "Fly-in" in Carnavon in the Northern Cape every year. Light aircraft, Microlights and Gyro-copters get together for the weekend. There is some showing-off of skills and aircraft. Lots of partying, braaing and of course drinks. We are going through again this year and I will be posting some pics when we get back.

This weekend we took a breathtaking trip around Chapmans Peak. I have added some pictures that I took there. Over the last couple of years the road was closed because of all the rock falls. Special metal nets were installed to catch the rocks. Now it has been made a toll road and reopened.

Got the car...

We drove out to Stellenbosch early this morning to go pick up the new wheels (VW polo Classic 1.6 Comfortline). With all the power failures the whole week, it was almost impossible to organize insurance, finance and delivery, but finally everything came together this morning.

While driving home today I realized again that there are really BAD drivers here in Cape Town. I know that I have said this before, but hell you should just not be weaving through traffic chasing after someone. This one BMW almost drove into me while racing with another car.
I coincidently got a comment from someone of the K53 Blog today. There blog's title is: Help with obtaining and passing your K53 learner's license test, driver'’s license & becoming a driving school instructor. I think that I should maybe stop some of these people and give them the K53 blog URL :)

I took a nice picture from a friends house of the sunset today.

So much for Nuclear power...

Another day at work without power. We sat for 5 hours without power today. That is another whole working day gone. The government yesterday throwing accusations of sabotage around, but Koeberg Nuclear Power station and the power company Eskom says they don't know anything about this. Today the government says that they said nothing about sabotage. There has been rumors about Muslim fundamentalist groups that took responsibility for the sabotage.
There are rumors that we will still have these power problems between 6 weeks and 9 months. This is totally unacceptable. What can a person or a company do for alternative power sources?
Here are some links regarding the powerfailures:
IAfrica
Koeberg sabotage claim queried
Daily power cut shock for EC
Eskom plans to return Koeberg to full power
or you can just
Search Google News

I have added a picture from 2 days ago, we had some rain and after it cleared and just before the sun set...

Cape Town Drivers...

I have finally got a chance to say something about the way that the people drive here in Cape Town. Awful, without any skill, irritating, etc. Every time you get on a highway, you have to be on your guard, because someone that is not really supposed to possess a drivers license, tries to get to their destination in the slowest way possible. They have to drive slow in the fast lane and fast in the slow lane. Even after flashing your lights at the person driving in front of you, they seem to ignore you. Recently I read in the K53 Road Rules of South Africa, that you are allowed to flash your lights to the person driving in front of you to warn them that you are trying to over take them.
The most irritating thing that people on the Cape Town roads do, is known as drifting. They slowly drift from one lane to the next without indicating that they are changing lanes. They assume that if they do it slowly enough the person closing in from behind will see them and slowdown.
A nice saying that we use is that they drive like "old men with hats...". It is surprising how many times you pass the car and there is an old man with a HAT...

Last night i got another pic to add here :)

Today was also voting day here in South Africa. We had local elections. Hope you voted if you are South Africa ;)


I have been listening to 2 podcasts here from South Africa and thought to list them here . I will add them as perminant links on the right here. Sound republic has some nice tunes from Derek the Bandit. The ZA Show is from Glen and Bridgitte here in Cape Town.