Johannesburg: Climbing and Driving Adventures

I flew into Joberg and was met at the Airport by Bertrand, a friend I met in Waterval Boven. I stayed at Bertrand's flat for my four day stay in Joberg.

Saturday, July 5th we went climbing with Michelle and I coached them a little. I didn't do anything really hard to give me ankle some more time to heal. That night we went to Michelle's Uncle and Aunt's place for dinner. We ate some "Fat Cakes" which were like pan cakes that you stuff with cheese and syrup or veggies stuff or minced meat (which I didn't have). Their family
was wonderful and we were all laughing and trading stories.

Picture: Bertrand leading.

Picture: Michelle leading the same route.

Sunday Michelle had to work; however, Tara was there and we went climbing at the Choss Pile a local Joberg crag just outside the city. We had TONS of FUN and Bertrand pushed himself a bit and learned a few new tricks to help his climbing. I was so happy for him because I can see how fast he's getting better. Tara pulled down a few 5.9 and 5.10a's to make a day of it.

That night we went out to dinner with Tara's family who are so wonderful and well travelled. They are all so warm, have the best stories, and are just super fun to be with.

The following day was Monday and Bertrand was super generous to lend me is Buckie (Truck) to drive to the Apartheid Museum. Frightening as this is I drove it downtown since that is where the museum is.

Unfortunately, the museum wasn't open on Monday so instead I went to Gold Reaf City where you can get a tour of a real gold mine. We descended 226m underground into the mine where they showed us how the storied the explosives, how they cart out the ore and how they keep the electricity going and the air breathable (now dust). Bertrand is a mechanical engineer and works on products for the mines and he said they haven't changed the mining technology too much since then. They look and feel pretty much the same today with the exception of the roof being a little higher.

Picture: Me next to the explosives lockout in the mine at Gold Reef City.

It was funny because before I took the tour I met up with this woman name Laurie from Seattle. She was very friendly and had been intending on going to the Apartheid Museum as well but found it closed. She had also joined our tour of the mine. We chatted a lot and she told me of her daughters who where my age and just a little younger.

Once the mine tour was done we headed off to the amusement park to enjoy the rides. For our first ride I picked the biggest roller coasters. It was hilarious, she held my hand as we went through the first few loops. Once we were done we took a picture of the coaster then headed onto something a little smaller as we both were a little dizzy from the last one. We did the bumper boat and the log ride before we both called it a day because her ride was there to take her back to the hotel and the sun was starting to get low.

Picture: Laurie from Seattle on the Log ride.

That night Michelle cooked a wonderful fish burger dinner and Bertrand and I watched King Lines on his laptop.

Tuesday was my flight date so I woke up and packed my bags. I headed to the Apartheid Museum and arrived in the early afternoon and spent the whole day there till 5 PM. That place is very moving, the courage that many had to resist oppression. So many lives lost and how ruthless it was living under that regime. I felt humbled. I really enjoyed the exhibite on Steven Biko which detailed his life and his moment for Black Consciousness and non-violence. This was a story I had long wanted to hear and see since hearing the Peter Gabriel song about him in my youth.

Picture: Apartheid Museum, "To Be Free is not merely to caste off ones chains, but to live in such a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others." Nelson Mandela.

That night Bertrand and Michelle drove me to the airport we where we had one last dinner together and I jumped on my plane to London. I've now been here the past few days staying at Audrey's house with Adrian.

We got out for a day of bouldering on Thursday night and I'm still sore two days later. My ankle seem to be looking much better now that the swelling from the plane has gone down. Tonight the three of us are driving up to Sheffield for a climbing competition that Adrian and Audrey are competing in.

Now only a week away to the Vispassina in Hereford. I'm starting to get excited.

I hope you are all well at home and the sun is shining.

A week to heal and hang with D

My last post I had just dropped Karina of at the Capetown Airport and was no on my own so it was time for another adventure. Once of the things I hadn't yet seen and always wanted to was Penguins. I had my chance in Australia but never made the effort.

So off I went in search of penguins, which I could find at Boulder's Beach in Simon's Town. I had a brochure that showed some of the roads of Capetown and the surrounds. Having a slightly shoddy memory for the name of the town and figuring since this was a tourist destination that there would be a name on the map "Boulders Beach" and that perhaps it was just off the map since most people said it was 30 minute drive.

I started off by heading in the completely wrong direction up the coast and ended up at driving to table view beach where I took a picture. Eventually, I asked a man at a beach pullout how much farther it was and he set me straight. In total I spent 2.5 hours driving in the wrong direction and back.

Picture: Devil's Peak (left side), Table Mountain (center), Lion's Head (right side)

I finally arrived in Simon's Town at 3.5 hours later and made my way down to the beach. Penguins everywhere! Those guys are hilarious. I love how they walk! One trundled right past me on the beach, only 3 feet away. I soaked my ankle in the Ocean to help with the swelling then rested it up on a rock meditated for about an hour.

Picture: Penguin on Boulder Beach, Simon's Town.

I grabbed lunch, phoned Dion (friend from Wilderness), and started making my way to the highway. It was around 2:45 PM when I set out. After a series of bad calls on which route to take to get to the N2 I really started my journey at around 4:00 PM.

I picked up a hitch hiker on the way through Somerset West. The guy it turns out live about 1 km from Dion and was turning his life around. He had just resolved a dope possession case after 2 years and had broken his Meth addiction which is why he had moved away from Capetown. Really encouraging story and I was glad to give him a ride.

I made it to D's at 8:30 PM in time to have dinner and watch the Euro cup soccer match with him. My ankle was not happy with all the driving but we got the tensor off and it raised nice and high. I was totally exhausted so we both went to bed early.

The next few days was relatively uneventful since I was incapacitated with the ankle so I spent most of it focusing on writing update in the blog. Yes, it does take a fair amount of time to write down the experience of the trip. The entries from Boven to this point took a few days of solid writing to cover so that game my ankle time to heal.

That weekend was Dion's Birthday so we set about celebrating. Saturday, June 28th was the date so we got up and went to see Kung Fu Panda with his friends who had children. The movie was hilarious, it was both beautiful and irreverent, it pointed out how some people mistaken Zen for being seriousness and self discipline. Quite funny and a wonderful message.

That night there was a gathering where a potluck ensued with dancing and talking till just after midnight.

My ankle had been improving and after a week I was walking on it with only a minor limp and no tensor. Much of the swelling had gone out of it.

So on Wednesday July 2nd I went out to do some very easy climbing with a friend of Dion's named Brad. We went to the Tauw river to a park and climbing location called Ebb and Flow. Since this was my first time back after a little over 9 days since I injured it I was definitely going to be cautious as a fall on it at this point could put me out for quite a while.

Neither of us had any topos for the area so I stuck to some easy 5.7ish climb on trad then did a second one that was maybe 5.8. Both climbs were lots of fun and it

Picture: Brad at the top of the 5.7ish climb at Ebb and Flow.

We only did these few climb then retired to Brad's house to spend some time relaxing and catching up with him and his beautiful wife Elaine. Brad is an artist and I also got to see a lot of his work. I was amazing, if I wasn't on this trip and had the ability to carry it with my I would have looked at getting one.

Since my ankle was doing better I decided to do a hike on the beach and take a picture of myself there to send to Karina since she was home and I know misses this place dearly. After breakfast I headed down there to find that there were a pair of Humpback whales just off shore. They were swimming in circles and I could see their tails fins sticking up and there heads. I watch and photographed them and then went down to test the waters to see if I could swim out to them. They were really close to shore.

Picture: Humpback whales slightly left of center at the beach 100 meters from where I was staying.

By the time I had reach the water they had decided it was more fun to move on and had started swimming down the beach. I followed along the shore with my ankle in the water hoping the cold would help it. It didn't take long to lose the whales as they were finish their business and I just enjoyed walking down the beach in the cool water for several hours. In the afternoon I went up to see a 800 year hold Yellow Wood tree and do a hike in the forest that surrounded it.

That night I went out with Dion and friends for a goodbye dinner at Knysa Heads. We all enjoyed some very tasty pizza's and then had a few beer at the local pub before calling it a night.

The next day I took my time packing up and took one last walk on the beach before heading up to George. On the way I stopped to take one last picture of Wilderness to say goodbye.

Picture: Wilderness, on the road from George. Saying goodbye to this beautiful place.

In now time I was on the play flying out of George on my way to Johannesburg to meet up with Bertrand and Michelle friends I had made in Waterval Boven. To see the related photo album for this segment click any of the pictures or here.

From Boven to Capetown.

I'm making a quick version of this entry and will post it but will likely make and update shortly to include pictures and more detail like the climbs I did on the ascent of Table Mountain. This will do for the quick update for now.

Karina joined me in Waterval Boven, it was good to finally see her in person instead of chatting on the internet all the time. Climbed a day, hiked the next. During our hike we found someone's stolen climbing equipement and thankfully though the Roc n' Rope lodge was able to return it to its owners.

Trip from Waterval Boven to Capetown was a little strenuous since we stayed up all night in the Joberg airport waiting for a our flight in the morning.

First day in Capetown was organizing our rides out to the garden route and Wilderness which is supposed to be amazing (on the Garden Route). I also tracked down a climbing partner and yesterday climb table mountain. Did the whole day from 8:30 AM to 6:30 PM. You have to hike about 75% of the height of the mountain to get to the start of the climbs. Needless to say I'm a touch tired today. I also was leading trad which means I was placing my own protected gear which is WAY more scary especially since I haven't done that type of climbing in 9 months. (Paul C will be so proud). ;) I did three routes that day. Two of which were 20-21, 19 but I don't know the names of them. The third one was the ultra classic "Jacobs Ladder" which got us to the top of the mountain just in the knick of time as the sun set and the last cable car was leaving.

Today we are going to Cape point and chilling on the beach before heading off down the garden route and doing some wine tours.

Welcome to Waterval Boven

Picture: Elands Falls and the township of Waterval Boven

This is my fourth day in Waterval Boven and am finally taking a rest. I arrived here four days ago with no partner and a lot of energy for climbing. Its been 20 days since I last touch the rock so I was eager to get there.





The lodge where I'm staying is a climbing lodge and I had hoped to meet some people to climb with there. After arriving it would seem my like would hold as there was only a climbing couple from Austria stay at the lodge and they were more than happy to have one more climber with them. Their names are Klaus and Annalise.





The first day we headed up to one of the crags near the water fall called "The Last Crag of the Century". Gustov the owner of our lodge gave us a ride down to the crag so we wouldn't get lost and the road is rather rough and would be hard on the car not to mention the security concerns.





We abseiled (rapped) into the climbing area and got cracking. Me being the eager beaver, warmed up on "Who's your daddy" a nice austrialian 19 (5.10b) for an easy warm up. Anna toproped it as there were a couple run outs and Klaus cleaned the route.





Next Klaus put the draws in a climb call "Good Times" 23 (5.11c). I followed it and pulled through the crux but got a flash pump and came off about 3 meters from the top. Guess I should have warmed up more.





I moved on to do "Endless Summer" 22 (5.11b). The climb was really nice, with big holds and long moves. A pronounced crux at mid height where you have to step left on small crimps and make a reachy up and left. Then its sustained jugs on veritical wall to the top.





To finish the day and exit from the location I decided to finish on a climb call "Three Mosquitos" 21 (5.11a), since we were leaving the area and this climb topped out allowing us to leave without hiking through the train tunnel.





Since we were leaving I was climbing with my pack on. I headed up and then started traversing diagonally up and left under a crack system when I took my first fall. I was a little off balance from the extra weight in my back. I was clearly tired but continued up feeling I could rest above.





I moved up several more bolts and reach as series of roofs. By this time I was terrible tired but not pumped out (my forearms could still grip). I clipped the bolt below the roof and moved up and left a few moves to a small ledge that I hoped I could rest on. As I was pulling onto the ledge my right foot blew (slipped) and I went for a huge 30ft wiper in which I had to kick off the 2ft ledge that was 25ft below.





Scared but determined I climbed the rope back to my high draw and clipped my pack to the bolt. After some rest and two more big falls I conceded that I was to tired to complete the route. Since I had spent so much time on the route we now had to hike out through the train tunnel.



That evening over dinner we were joined by two native South African climbers from Johannesburg: Paul and Doug. Paul was a retired stats professor and Doug was a software developer residing in Sydney Australia now. Both were friendly and interesting. It would turn out that Klaus and another climbing friend Kyle (AKA Canadian Kyle) had climbed the Nose on El Capitain in Yosemite last summer. After climbing there Kyle had cycled up to Vancouver and we climbed a few days together in Squamish. Welcome to the small world of climbing.



The next day I was so I decided to take it easy and climbs. Since we had left my draw on "Three Mosquitos" we returned to "The Last Crag of the Century". Paul and Doug also wanted to climb here so we all piled into Gustov's car and got a ride down to the crags.



Trying to stay gentle I warmed up on a climb called "Caffiene Jitters" 15 (5.7) then on to do the first pitch of "Electric Avenue" 17 (5.9). I finished warming up by putting the draws into "Who's your Daddy?" 19 (5.10a/b) for Anna to red point (which she did).

Now warm I jumped back on "Three Mosquitos" 21 (5.11a) but armed with some cams to protect the right travers at the roof. I quickly climbed to my hight point only to find that all the cams were too big for the placement midway through the right traverse in a horizontal crack. Instead I climbed above to place at the back of a roof above the traverse, this placement would prove to be my undoing as I didn't have any runners to extend the placement out from the back of the roof. The lack of extension would prove to be the critical mistake that would cost me the climb.

I completed the right traverse by commiting my weight to my right hand moving my left hand into an adjacent crimp next to my left hand. Then making another move far left to a ledge which was just incut enough to move left on then moving up to a good hold next to the third last bolt and standing up.

Clipping this bolt would prove to be a nightmare as the rope had tracked around a corner doing a near 90 degree turn at the TCU I had placed and out of the roof. To make matters worse the rope going from the last bolt to the TCP had sloted behind a flake to add to the drag. Pulling in the rope must have weighed 30lbs to get it clipped.

I struggled up gaining a few feet with my legs to reach the next bolt. The weight of the rope made it nearly impossible to clip but I managed to do it and fighting the pump in my arms. Once clipped I down climbed to the previous clip which I removed to reduce the 90 degree angle to a mere 60 degree with a roof edge and the rope still slotted behind the flake.

With 10ft of climbing and one bolt left I pressed on. I manage to drag myself up to face level with the final bolt, only 5ft below the anchor. I manage to get the clip into the bolt but the rope drag was too much to pull up and clip. I surrendered my red point attempt and sat on the rope to recover my forearms.

We rounded out the day by climbing out of the valley via the warm up climb "Caffiene Jitters" which tops out. We then walked about the hill that the rail tunnel passes through. See picture below.

Picture: Me hiking out from "The Last Crag of the Century" near the Elands Falls, Waterval Boven.

The next day Klaus, Anna and I were to have a rest day. Well, that was what I thought atleast. We decided to go check out the boulder fields at Kaapsehoop, a small town about one hour drive from Waterval Boven.

We drove out of town fairly early after having a light breakfast and arrived at Kaapsehoop after a little over an hour. The owner of our lodge recommended the pancake lodge there so we had only eaten a light breakfast so that we could enjoy the treat at this sleepy town. The mushoom and garlic pancakes were a delight and filled us up before heading out into the boulder fields.

Picture: Annalise and Klaus hiking into the boulder fields at Kaapsehoop.

We managed to find more than enough boulders to keep us happy and entertained for the day. There were boulders as far as the eye cold see, the sandstone was very features as you can see from the pictures. After a short hike in we settled on some promissing looking boulders that offered some overhanging crimpy fun. After a bit of skin punishment we threw in the towel on our "rest day".

Picture: My fingers after the bouldering session on our "rest day" at Kaapsehoop boulders.

Picture: Klaus hiking out from the Kaapsehoop boulders.

I didn't manage to get this posted before my internet ran out on the rest day that followed but here it is now. I now have to catch up on the weekends climbing which was amazing.

Pilanesberg Game Reserve

We were staying in Kwa Maritane, a four star time share and resort. We pulled in here at 9:45AM for a coffee and to find out what time we could check in. I was impressed by how nice the resort was. The complex was actually inside the games reserved and there was a "hide" right next to a watering hole as part of the resort. The was quite interesting since you had to walk down a 200m tunnel to get to it and it was sunk into the ground so you would look at the animals eye to eye while they were drinking. Unforetunately, there we didn't see any animals there but there was an elephant that arrived while we were out driving around looking for game in the afternoon.

The weekend of the 18th, Les and Ros took me to Pilanesberg game reserve for the weekend of driving through the games reserve. We woke up at 7:00 AM Saturday morning so we could get out of the house by 7:30AM. The drive North East to Pilanesberg took around 2 hours and we arrived before the heat of the day started to be felt.

After finding out that our room probably wouldn't be ready for a few hours we decided to head out into the games reserve. Once inside, we only needed to drive for 200m before we came face to face with a several Zebra munching away right next to the road. The details of each and every game siting doesn't make for good reading here online so I won't go into the details.



After a few hours and lots of game later we stopped into the Pilanesberg Centre where you can get out of your car and have lunch and a cold beer. The centre looks out onto a open grass land and I was able to see two female lioness' lazing about in the shade of a tree about 1 km into the open grass plain.

After a nice lunch we returned to Kwa Maritane to check in and for Les and I to head out on a nature safari that Ros had kindly organized for us.

The tour went long and I got a much more upclose view of several animals that I hadn't seen in the drive earlier in the day, the most notable of which were the Giraffe, Rhino, and Alligators. The tour when to the early evening past sun down and we did manage to see the eyes and hear a pair of mating Lions before returing to Kwa Maritane in time to catch the Sharks vs Lions rugby match.

Les had gotten so nice pork chops and some boerewors (farmers sausage) which he cooked up on the BBQ which in RSA is known as a Braai. The food was delicious and Les' team, the Sharks, won their match insuring that they made it into the super 14 semi-finals.

The next day we relaxed in the morning after checking out of Kwa Maritane and then drove back into the games park. This time not 2km into the park we ran into a traffic jam as there was a herd of Elephants blocking the road next to the Lengau dam.

Les and Ros have had experience with the elephants in the past and elected to turn around and drive around them rather than wait till they elephants moved on. This turned out to be a good idea since we managed to drive around for an hour to our picnic destination, eat a late lunch and then driving back we encountered the herd on the road again. Thankfully this time they had moved off the road but were still skulking about on either side.

We return to Johannesburg that night to have dinner with Matthew, Les and Ros' son, and his girlfriend. I set up skype so that we could have a chat with Les Senior, Mom (Margaret), Dad, and Holly that night. It was nice to have a good chat with the family at home and for the RSA relatives to connect with the BC clan.

The next morning I packed up and caught the bus to Waterval Boven.

Welcome to Africa, a few days in Johannesburg.

I have been in Joburg since Tuesday. So far this place has been rather eventful. Within 10 minutes of clearing customs I stumbled around half awake waiting for my luggage to appear and managed to loss my passport. I couldn't find it and nobody had turned it into the lost and found. I didn't want to but had to assume the worst and filed a police report on the missing passport. After wandering the airport for a hour and a half filing reports and checking the lost property, Ros, the wife of my second cousin, and I finally made our way back to their place in Randburg. I checked my email to find that my passport had been turned into the BA desk and being held there for safe keeping. So after lunch we drove back to the airport to retrieve my passport. Les Woops.

Since my cousins' computer was working really slow I decided to help them upgrade the RAM as it was woefully inadiquate. We went out the next day and got some RAM for 1/4 the price that their computer guy had quoted and I installed it. However, it didn't work quite right, the 1024 MB stick was only showing up at 512 MB. I found this strange and check into the current revision of the BIOS (this is the Basic Input Output System; the lowest level of a computer which controls everything). I have upgrade many of these in the past and found that there was an online upgrade program. As per the normal procedure (since this is one thing that can physically break you computer) I made a rescue disk. In the 20 or so BIOS upgrades I have done over the years I have never had to use one of these. So off I went with the MSI (Microstar) Live Update and sure enough, the firmware upgrade finished completely and then failed after 2% of the verification process. No matter what I did, I could not get it to reprogram properly. So I rebooted in hopes of using the recovery disk to reflash the BIOS. Lets just say that it didn't work and the screen wasn't even online all I got was several beeps indicated a video output failured. A touch of panic set in as I had just destroyed my cousin's work computer and it was old enough to be unable to replace the motherboard with a new one.

With the laptop that was still functional I did some research into it. Apprently I was only one of many who had destroyed their BIOS for their MSI MS-7222 mother boards and the forums showed discussion on recovery methods from Feb 2007. You think MSI would have atleast gone to the trouble of preventing more people from doing this but apparently that falls outside their realm of concern for their customers. The forum suggested a few idea on how to repair it using a boot floppy (who has these anymore) and also contacting MSI in the Neatherlands where they might ship a new BIOS flash part which could be place on the board. I decided to follow both avenues for repair. I sent an email to MSI field application engineers requesting assistance (to which I still haven't gotten a reply) and create a boot disk. To do this I would go to the computer store where we bought the RAM.
This morning Ros dropped me at the computer store to attempt the recovery process. I had to remove the floppy disk drive from the dead computer because the shop didn't have any functionat 3.5" floppy drive that worked and when through the process of trying to create the boot disk to reflash the BIOS. After 4 hours of struggling I gave up and called Ros to be picked up.

My next avenue for success would be to track down a replacement mainboard and possibly call MSI for assistance. By this time Ros was starting to get a bit stressed over the status of her computer and with reason. Restoring a BIOS is no trivial task and the prospects were looking increasingly bleak. I didn't think there was a location in the area which would have a programmer and without home ice advantage I didn't even know the names of potential place that might even have programmers.

I decide to use what I had learn of distribution and support from my time at Xantrex and look into who the distributor of MSI was for South Africa. Thankfully there was only one and they were located in Midrand which I had never heard of. I called them and they pass me through to technical support who assured me they had a programmer and could program it but without any guarantee that it would work. All I had to do was bring down the chip and/or PC to be programmed with an image of the BIOS that I wanted put on it. As it would turn out, Midrand was between Johannesburg and Pretoria only about a 30 minute drive.

Ok, so now the situation was under control, we had a solution that could work. The only problem was that the alarm company was outfitting Les and Ros' house with additional security since there had been a crime wave in their neighbourhood so she could go. Les had appointments and was unable to drive me. So they had their Afrikaans employee drive me over there. I got quite the treat spending time with him. He knew quite a lot of history of the area and had mentioned that Ghandi had in fact lived in South Africa and was hiding in some caves near Johannesburg before he went back to India because they believe he was an illegal alien. This is in part where Mandela learn his peaceful approach to change.

Finally, I arrived at the MSI distributor's office and had the BIOS flashed and a sticked of 1GB RAM that worked for the mainboard. The computer all repaired I breathed a sigh of relief an returned to Les and Ros' triumphant.

So far, I have met a few South African and they have been a pleasure to work with. Tomorrow should be interesting and I know that my time in Waterval will be fun. Tomorrow night I go to Matthew, Les and Ros' son's restaurant for dinner. Ironically he is a the owner and chief of a french restaurant. So while I didn't eat much french cuisine in France I will get my chance in South Africa.