Hike up the Tugela

Yesterday, I decided that my Drakensberg stay wouldn't be complete without, you know, a little bit of old-fashioned legwork around the mountain ranges, so I signed up for a shuttle to take me to the Royal Natal National Park.

That's not to say that I put my chips in for a guided tour along the mountains. Oh ho, no. See, I'm a bit of a cheapskate. I sleep in tents and eat noodles. And while something like R400 is considered acceptable for a guided day-long hike amongst some of South Africa's most glorious peaks, I can't say that my wallet is entirely thrilled at the prospect of parting with that money for a walk. Unlike 99% of the people who pass through most backpackers, I'm not a foreigner: I earn in rands, I travel in rands, I suffer in rands.

So anyway, summary of the whole thing: guided hike costs 400 bucks and takes people along the mountain range to the top of the Tugela Falls (basically one of the highest waterfalls around). Shuttle to Royal Natal and entrance fee came to R60 and afforded me a gorge hike that took me to the base of the waterfall. Bonus points because the gorge hike was both warmer and easier.

While I enjoyed my stroll, mountaineers were freezing their arses off on this escarpment.

The Drakensberg is awfully scenic, and has a lot of winding trails that take you to all sorts of nice places. I personally went along a trail that closely followed the Tugela river. Being winter, the river was mostly dried up, but it still offered an interesting scene or two for my camera to snap up.

Of course, my pics suck anyway, so it doesn't make a difference.

There was also a bit of wildlife hanging around the path: namely, a bunch of baboons that dotted the trail here and there. Admittedly, they made me a little nervous at times: I hear that they sometimes kidnap and eat human infants, and due to my rather spry frame, I was worried that they'd mistake me for an infant. And I absolutely hate being carried off and eaten.

But seriously? They belt out some of the most frightening sounds at an unbelievable volume – at one point, I nearly fell over when I heard what I thought was an angry simian creature standing right behind me – it turned out that it was a noisy little bugger practically standing on the opposite end of the gorge who was the source of the crazy racket.

If I recall correctly, this was the culprit. He was barely visible.

About two-thirds of the way through the hike, I met up with a group of students from Holland. They were a notable bunch because one of them was called Zoltan, which is possibly the most awesome name in existence. We went along the rest of the trail together, exchanging smalltalk and trying to figure out just how badly lost we were. We even decided to take a brief stroll along the dried-up riverbed after the trail came to an unceremonious halt just short of the falls.

Dried-up waterfall in the background, random Hollandaisy dudes in the front.

Lovely day walk, though I'm glad it finished up before evening struck: I swear, the moment that the sun disappears over the mountains, it's as if somebody flips a switch from “sweltering heat” to “bloody chill”. When you're in the berg, DON'T get caught in the shadows. Pitch Black style, yo.

Lodged in the berg

It's Drakensberg, baby! Gee whiz, it's been a long time since I've come up here. I mean it's probably been, what, a good ten years? Altogether way too long, considering that this place is tucked away right inside my home province. Yeah, sure, KZN has beaches and Zululand and stuff, but I think that its most distinctive feature is having the best gosh-darn set of mountains in the country. Not that I don't appreciate and respect Table Mountain, but man, “the berg” really puts stuff into perspective.

I'm currently holed up in a backpacking establishment known as Amphitheatre Backpackers, named after the area of the Drakensberg where it's based. Not a bad place: prices are reasonable, cool features abound and I'm able to hide in a corner whenever I want in order to do geeky, computer-related stuff. The jocky vibe of the place makes me a little ill at ease, I will admit, but I'm putting this down to being out of practice when it comes to backpacking.

The main bar, where people drink beer and watch rugby. It's true.

In some ways, this place is a rather mixed bag: some of the facilities are amazing, while others (such as the kitchen and water) are a little on the iffy side. Which is okay, I guess: it's just that alongside the super-duper awesome indoor jacuzzi (which I'm still too shy to clamber into: my pseudo-tan has thus far refused to return and, as I've said, the vibe is a bit too jock-ish for me) I have to deal with stuff like shower doors which don't entirely closed over, leaving me in perpetual fear that the Dutch girls I was staying with were going to see my willy.

Not much room for modesty. And that shower door crack feels pretty big when you're on the inside.

At least I have a comfortable place for the night:

My bed ...

... NOT.

Yeah, so, I almost decided to lie down in the dorms. Then I remembered that I had some freakin' expensive camping equipment that needed to pay itself off with use, so at about 5pm on the day of my arrival I told the backpacking crew that I'd changed my mind and decided to set up a tent instead. Camping is usually a lot cheaper – in my five-day sojourn here, I'll be saving nearly R200 just for sleeping in a tent instead of a bed every night, and the figure would have been a lot higher if dorms were more expensive or campsites were cheaper (this is often the case).

“BUT NANDREW, AREN'T YOU GOING TO FREEZE YOUR ARSE OFF?”

The answer is no. It's not quite dead-winter yet, and the weather here has been jolly nice so far. I can now state proudly that my cousin was wrong: she hit a 7 on the Mother Scale before I left due to all the fuss she made about how cold (and dead) I would be with my current equipment in the Drakensberg. But, as always, I'm a survivor and stuff. Life's pretty good right now.

Ciao again, Pretoria

Between the Bat Cave and my family's hideout, I think that Pretoria has been my longest stay in one location this entire year. Although I tend to dwell in favourite spots for at least a week or two at a time (read: Cape Town and Grahamstown), it seems that I've inadvertently nearly clocked the full month of May in Gauteng. Blast it all!

The past two weeks have seen me entertained by several clutches of the greater Joubert clan: many thanks to the family, and it was good to see y'all again. I look back fondly on all the great memories I've formed with this particular visit.

Wimpy lunch with the cousins.

Mimmo's dinner – ahhh, the atmosphere!

Sunday lunch at my aunt's place.

I love food.

But now I'm just allowing my mind to wander too far into the realm of nostalgia and self-indulgence. Instead, here's a picture of my aunt's dog.

My aunt's dog hates me.

Hatred. Seriously.

I've not been this creeped out by an animal since seeing that super-creepy dog in Plet. Canine eyes have a way of burrowing into your soul, seriously. And when a dog has it in for you (not the world, not people in general, not even anybody else in the room. Just you), there's little you can do about it.

My aunt's dog hates me, won't go near me and won't let me touch it. It growls at me on a near-constant basis -- kinda like a revving Lancer. If that fateful Sunday gathering was in a movie, the audience would immediately be able to identify me as "the bad guy" cos the animals hate me. Gee whiz.

And, yeah, that's it for now. Just a quickie: I've been procrastinating a whole bunch this week and now need to get myself sorted for a Baz Bus shuttle tomorrow (didn't think I'd use these guys again, but go figure: turns out that they really are cheaper on multi-stops than a public bus would be, and they go door to door anyway).

Depending on how things turn out, I'll either be in the Drakensberg or Joburg tomorrow night. It's all very complicated and last-minute, so don't ask.

Catch y'all in 24 hours.


A LONG-WINDED POSTSCRIPT FOR BONUS READING:

This blog post was supposed to go up yesterday. I swear it. But then, halfway through my evening, my Internet died and refused to start up again. I thought that this was typical cellphone failure until I got an SMS five minutes afterwards that cheerfully told me I was screwed for net cap. But that's just the beginning of this grand tale of woe and deceit.

Let me give you a quick run-down of cellphone pre-paid Internet. When you get a non-contract phone with, say, Vodacom, you usually have the opportunity to use it as a make-do modem to access the Internet on your computer. The typical pre-paid tariff is about R2 a megabyte. This is effing steep, and is not to be used unless, say, there's a crazy guy with an axe behind you demanding that you log onto the Internet by any means necessary (in which case you open up your closest instant messenger app and give your online buddies a “help me please” code signal).

Fortunately, one has the opportunity to purchase Internet data bundles, and the more data you purchase at once, the cheaper it is per megabyte. I typically pay about 30c per meg, which still isn't great compared to a regular land line, but suits me well enough as long as I exercise some restraint. When you run out of data on your bundle, you go back to R2 per meg and that eats into your regular cellphone airtime.

Right, so, with that explanation down: I top up my cellphone airtime using Internet banking. I top up my Internet bundles using spare airtime. This is a very elegant solution which can sometimes go horribly, horribly wrong. When I'm surfing the net with my cellphone, SMS messages often don't come through until I log off. This is dangerous when, say, your “low bandwidth” warnings for Internet data bundles are sent – lo and behold – via SMS. When my Internet cut out at about 11pm last night, I immediately received four SMS messages from Vodacom.

The first one registered as being sent at about 7pm, warning me that I had less than 4 megabytes left on my bundle. The second one was sent half an hour later, telling me that my data bundle had been exhausted, and that I WAS NOW BEING CHARGED R2 PER MEGABYTE. The third was sent later, warning me that I was using up all of my cellphone's airtime on the Internet. The fourth and final message: “YOU F**KING IDIOT! YOUR MONEY IS ALL GONE!” Not in those words exactly, but that's kinda how I felt at the time.

So in summary, I simultaneously lost all Internet and cellphone access at a really inconvenient time last night because the only system of warning that I could receive was, ironically enough, disabled by the very use of the device which warranted the warning in the first place. To top it off, I recharged my cell's airtime with about R70 yesterday afternoon, and it all got chowed by the Internet in one evening. Suffice it to say, Vodacom and I are no longer on speaking terms.

End rant.

Hatfield: day and night

So, I finally decided to get off my ass and do some walking around for a change. Footlike movement comes rather naturally to me (spend a few years in Grahamstown while lugging your laptop everywhere, and you'll see what I mean) but in Gauteng, that habit all but dries up in favour of getting to far-off locations with a private vehicle of some kind.

Deciding that my personal improvement and whatnot relies exclusively on my ability to wander around aimlessly for at least an hour every day, I've recently been slipping into my anti-mugger kit (also known as “dressing up like a freakin' hobo”) and took to the streets in search of adventure and geographical enlightenment.

My grandparents stay rather close to a lot of important places in Pretoria. After a few trips around the local neighbourhood, I've realised that I'm within perfectly acceptable walking distance of the University of Pretoria, the Loftus Versfeld stadium, a local KFC and Hatfield Square.

Hatfield is possibly THE hangout for Pretoria's student population (aside from the University itself, that is) and is, in general, a place for a great day (or night) out.

Hatfield in the sun: nice restaurants, open plazas and interesting walks.

Hatfield in the dark: jostling jocks, sticky floors and blurry pictures.

Although most of my recent expeditions to Hatfield have been during the sunlit hours, I also went there for a post-rugby party on Saturday night against my own better judgement. Not that I have an undying hatred of the jock crowd or anything (hey, they're people too. Sometimes), but they tend to get on my nerves when I'm surrounded by too many of them at once. And there's just way too many people in this world who enjoy getting drunk because it's an excuse to act like an ass.

Hatfield is nicely cosmopolitan though, which I quite like in a student hangout. There's stuff like dance clubs, Irish pubs, sports bars and all that other mainstream tomfoolery, but there's also a few slightly more alternative spots like Tings an' Times, Cool Runnings and a nice, down-to-earth bar called Aandklas where I received no less than three separate compliments for my glorious fedora hat.

And then there's stuff like this:

Not a student club.

Hatfield is bursting at the seams with fancy stuff like embassies and diplomatic establishments hailing from all sorts of countries. It seems rather strange that they'd throw in such official buildings amongst the student / backpacker riot that makes up the Hatfield area, but there you go. I've literally got Iran setting up camp just a little down the street from where I'm staying, so I guess it's kinda normal around here.

The embassies themselves are also quite unexpectedly plain-looking: you'd think that stuff from Thailand, UAE and Singapore would at least have some pretty cultural architecture, but no ... most of them just look like big houses. Or flats, even.

Canada totally has the best crib. Other countries are totally jealous about it.

Quite a few people ask me why I insist on walking about everywhere even when I have access to transport, but the fact is that I'm somewhat “car-blind”: since I'm not a driver, I get absolutely no sense of direction or geography when I'm using motorised transport.

Humble use of my feet generally gives me a much more solid sense of a location than vehicles ever could – often bringing about rather critical revelations such as the fact that Hatfield has always been just a little north of my grandfolk's place instead of some indeterminate location “somewhere in Pretoria”.

A funny habit, you say? Well, screw you.

Variance prototype is out!

Right, so: long story short, I don't write about enough geeky stuff on this blog. So it's time to jack that up a little and post some regular updates on my game development efforts.

As I mentioned earlier, a recent mini-death in my blog updates was attributed to two weeks of caffeine and heavy game development. That game is currently called Variance. And it currently has a prototype version available for download.

Bright colours. Very bright colours.

Variance is a puzzle-platformer ... WITH A TWIST (a tip for marketers out there: never ever ever use the phrase “with a twist” when promoting your stuff. Clichés are a pet hate of mine). If you've ever played the likes of Shift and Sokoban, then you can imagine what it would be like if they ever got together and had horrible mutant offspring. Localised gravity fields have your avatar moving up, down, left, right and wonkways in an effort to navigate obstacles, solve grid-based puzzles, dodge enemies and get to each level's exit for glory and presumably some sort of reward.

Huuurgh, more colour. And puzzles.

As mentioned already, the game is in the prototype phase. What I'd like to call the “last” prototype, yes, but still a proto. This means two things: firstly, I've been focusing on getting gameplay down to pat, but acknowledge the need for better graphics. They're like doggy doo, I know – get over it. Secondly: there currently exists a bigger, better game behind closed doors in a whole different engine and stuff (I'll be keeping my lips sealed on the details, at least for now), and this particular bugger is just a version that I hacked out for public consumption to get important stuff from people ... like FEEDBACK.

That means that I'd like everyone to pick up a copy, dust it off, play a little and give me some useful advice about making it better. There's some handy feedback guidelines over here if you choose to accept this quest, o reader.

But yeah. Have fun. More blog updates soon, I've got a bunch of photos in my camera which need to hit this page before they explode.