Frontier Weekend

Farm hands houses

Sheering merino wool by hand

The incredible view from the top of the mountain

This past weekend we took our first full group excursion since our safari at Addo National Park a month ago. Turns out traveling with adults and guides makes vacation much less stressful. All thirty of us packed our bags and drove three and a half hours inland, to the highlands outside of Grahamstown. We were hosted by two extremely well off Afrikaaner farmers, known commonly as Boers (more a derogative term for farmers by non-whites). Manus and Winnie hosted our first evening at their lovely farm home, offering us each a few beers, a pleasant social environment, and an excellent late dinner, with traditional Boer food. We took a late night drive about 15 minutes to the Francois farm, and crashed for the evening. We wok ein the morning to coffee and tea, and an african version of the egg mcmuffin (The best things seem to cross cultures). We spent the day swimming in an epic FRESHWATER (I miss this even though the ocean is wonderful) waterfall, and driving to / climbing up the third highest peak in South Africa. The view was spectacular, and getting into a natural setting like the mountains helped quench my craving for the outdoors. This was definitely one of my favorite things we have done in Africa. We came down the mountain and spent some time learning about the actual workings of the farm (not terribly different from Minnesotan farms if you ask me) and eventually had some free time. We swam in their pool, played tennis on their court, got a tour of Francois' game trophy room (He has a mounted giraffe among 25 other species of big game) and again spent the evening socializing while waiting for the braai. Dinner was excellent and most of us passed out early after the long day. Sunday we packed up, and headed down to Manus' second farm, where we got to enjoy the coolest waterfall swimming hole I have ever been to. We had to swim inbetween cliffs just to get to the waterfall, and when we got there we were pleasantly surprised to find a deep and warm swimming hole. No pictures of the waterfall because of the whole swimming to get there thing, but trust me it was beautiful. We had a quick lunch and headed home after the waterfall. The weekend was incredibly fun and relaxing, I wish I could have shared it with so many people back home! The only challenge of the trip was trying to grasp the farmer, farm worker relationship. With the farmers so well off it was rather frustrating to see the poverty the farm hands suffer through. Many of the black farm hands live on the farm, and live in the same kind of informal housing as people in the townships of PE. Manus told me he has had the same farm hands for 25 years and has a very good working relationship with them, but almost no personal relationship with them. He even claims to pay them well compared to all of his neighbors. I don't understand how you can have the same workers for 25 years and have no personal relationship develop. This is another example of white South African's dehumanizing black South Africans, whether they do it consciously or not. The paradigm is frustrating, with no simple solution. It's just another challenge facing South Africa, and good food for thought. We leave for Cape Town and most likely the most epic spring break of all time. We have plans for seeing one of my favorite bands at the international jazz festival, shark cage diving, bungee jumping, wine touring, visiting Robben island, climbing table mountain, and so much more! Wish me luck.

Andrew