The Big 5

Doing some exploring now. For the big 5. Lions and tigers and.... oh who cares? I just wanna see a giraffe and a hippo and maybe a gazelle. Anyway, going to live in the bush for a bit. Back later...

And just as a sidenote... the xenophobic violence taking place in Johannesburg does not affect American tourists. It is a situation involving 'foreigners' of neighboring countries who are entering South Africa with the intention of seeking work. Not kids who just wanna beach it... So I'm A.O.K. [mom and dad!]

Back later, cheers n adios!

Namibia = Goat Crossing

That pretty much sums up Namibia. One big goat crossing...

After our rafting trip had ended, we decided we might as well go explore up in Namibia for a bit. Really, I think we all just wanted the extra stamp in our passports. Ha. Anyway, we drove for a couple hours and you know what we found? Nothing. A whole lot of nothing. But dirt. And some fancy rocks. Nice rocks. And a whole lot of em. We actually had this place in mind that we thought we'd check out, and so we went there, and you know what? It was closed. Of course it was closed. It had to be! So we decided to drive back that night...

At least I got to learn how to drive manual on this trip. Oh, and that means on the left side of the car and rode. Should come in pretty handy when I'm driving through Botswana and Zimbabwe!

Guys Weekend (part 2)

So Corey, Eric and I went off to explore our little paradise for the evening and found that the whole place was built upon these really impressive, large rocks that seemed to have fallen from the mountains and down into the river below. So of course we got sticks and tried to climb the whole thing. At one point Corey jumped across this huge gap between the rocks that seemed quite impossible... and made it. So I thought I'd give it a go as well... and I think in the back of my head I knew I wouldn't make it... but it was worth trying. It wasn't just this huge gap... it was scaled upwards, so you sorta had to not only jump outwards, but up as well! Anyway it didn't go so well...

Basically, that's me jumping, hitting the dirt just below and now falling backwards. Yeah, I ate it pretty hard...

And now sitting there trying to swallow my pride hahahah. Scraped up my arm and back. ooops. (Oh, but I made it on the way back!) But the most amazing thing happened later that night...

This picture doesn't give justice to the beauty of what we saw later that evening. The rains had brought out the deep reds and oranges of the dirt and all the rocks seemed to be illuminated against the river with the rain still coming down upon us. But later that night when the sun had descended, and all we were left with was the light of the moon, the clouds had come in and blocked out any chance of seeing the view of the stars. But I didn't mind so much, because the lightning storms that followed would beam little spurts of light throughout the distance, bouncing like pinballs from cloud to cloud. And it was a silent lightning storm with the little rods of light sporadically giving view to the Namibian skyline just beyond. And then you know, the clouds went away, and it was if we were getting a double feature. Because the stars appeared and it was if a blanket of lights was smothering us there, showing us everything, everyone, just as we lit our fire and enjoyed the light rain that continued to fall upon us.

I hope to god I get to experience that just once more in my lifetime...

Guys Weekend

The five of us rented a nice little car and went all the way up north to the border of South Africa and Namibia to the Orange River for a guys weekend of... rafting. Yeahhh! It was pretty cool. So we made the long eight hour drive pretty easily, only stopping a few times to gas up and fill up on chips, glass bottles of coke, and sandwiches. Once we got to the border, we were able to find our campsite which wasn't too far off. We pitched a tent and spent the first night prepping for the next day which would be all rafting along the river...

We went with a tour group with this guide who didn't have much to say about the history of the river and the surrounding areas. Basically, as he put it, the river is called the 'orange' river for one of three reasons. Either it's because once upon a time, people came along and found oranges floating in it... or some guy who owned the surrounding land had the last name Orange and so they named it after him... or it was because sediments fall into the river during the rainy season making the water look a tinged, orange colour. Blech. Boring.

Anyway, something interesting happened. So we rafted down the river and... it started to rain. Or more precisely, it started to pour. POUR. So we rafted along and were nowhere near our campsite yet, and our guide picked out this random place to stay (which happened to be on the Namibian side of the bank!). So we stopped at this place, hauled our boats up this steep, muddy hill, and made a campsite for the evening. While the guide and some other people decided to make a fire and setup dinner, the guys and I decided to explore our little piece of land for the evening...

Climbing the Cederberg Mountains

We recently went hiking up in the Cederberg Mountains. It's about a four hour drive from Stellenbosch or so. The days were beautiful, and the hiking was impressive. Six or seven hours in total. Up to the top with the magnificent view.

Even made our way through these tiny cracks in the rocks. Made our way back to the campsite for a nice South African braii and fun with friends. A good weekend.

No Pressure...

Haven't been around for a while... been busy... living. There has been so much to see and do while here in South Africa. I've been traveling a lot. Even been outside this country. Went up to Namibia for a rafting trip with the guys as well as a hiking trip to the Cederberg Mountains. Some pics to follow.

A lot has been going on recently. Here as well as at home. Just recently in the news the California Supreme Court essentially overturned Proposition 22 that defined marriage as an act between a man and a woman-- and basically legalized gay marriage. Bout time. It was just back in October when Governor Schwarzeneggar vetoed the marriage bill, and I had a few things to say... And my sentiment hasn't changed much. If, god forbid, I should ever get married, I would never get a civil union and I certainly would never get a domestic partnership. How cheap. Marriage is marriage. But what do I know? I don't wanna think about this stuff. I'm too young. Or am I?? [Thanks NYT, cuz I really needed the extra pressure to prove a political point by getting married at 20!]

There is a downside to all of this you know... Now my mom -- a Jewish one at that -- is going to feel further inclined to set me up with nice Jewish boys from Temple. Great. She wants beautiful grandbabies and knows the process just takes a bit longer. In other news...


The end is near.


Of my trip that is. It's been a year. An entire year and soon I am going home. I was thinking back to my time in Washington DC, and then London, and now here in South Africa, and it's just... I don't know. Things change from place to place. The scenery. The people. And always the ideas. But the end isn't today. So I think I'll go on one last trip. A few new places. Like Johannesburg, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique...

To find this feeling, and here it is.

So here it is. The moment of truth. And I look over the side and all I want to do is hurl my guts out to the world. You can see it on my face. And I'm disappointed in myself because I really wanted to be so contained, so centered, so there in the moment that nothing in the world could distract me from this thing I was about to do. Jump off a bridge and fall to the Earth. 216 meters. Crazy shit, man.

And if you could only look at my face in the moments before I jumped, all I could think about was that one word -- that one indellible word that has seared my mind so vividly and pushed me to see things so differently. It's that word that is a reflection of the landscape that I see here. Damn-- I should've taken that picture. Of the divide between the mountains just opposite the bridge. With the blue ocean beating hard against the brown sandy beaches with the green hills just above. Right there. Right in front of us. And I was looking at it from this bridge that I was about to jump off.

It's that one word that beats with my head and pulses through my heart. The same word that pumped through me as my friends screamed beside me like the mofos they are and nearly knocked me over the edge.

Love, baby.

It's all about love.

Love. Love. Love.

It's all love.

This. Everything. Me. You.

So jump, baby, jump. It's all about love.

And so I jumped...

And I flew. And I descended with the air rushing through me. So good, this feeling. And when I finally stopped flying, I just hung there with my arms reaching out to God and the river below and it just felt so good. Love, baby, love.

And so this is it. What I came here for. To Africa. To find this feeling, and here it is.

There is so much work to be done. So many problems I see in the world. That we all see. And we know this, and it is so exciting because we are so capable of righting these wrongs. But it's frustrating. So very frustrating because the people who have been here longer, the people with the very means to make great things happen, though they have so much more experience in so many ways, they just can't grasp what we see, and so they do not help us.

But I'm not worried anymore. I don't see it like that any longer. Love, baby, love. It's all about love.

Love, Love, Love.

I think I'll jump off a bridge today...

Welcome to Bloukrans Bridge, the highest bungy jump... in the world.

216 meters. That's 709 feet. A 70 story building. Yeah... it's pretty damn high up!

Here's a closer look at the center of the bridge where I'll soon be throwing my life to the whims of gravity and depending on those itty bitty strands of elastic that will hopefully keep me alive a bit longer...

Let's do this shizzzzz....

Okay, I'm dancin, my friends are dancin behind me... let's roll...

Oh shit... I actually have to jump this thing!!??

The Long Road Home...

It's now time to make our way back and we have at least fifteen hours of road in front of us. We'll split it in half and have decided to head to Jeffrey's Bay for some surfing the next day, but for now, we're spending our time with our heads peering out the windows, looking at all we have to leave behind. The Transkei of South Africa is a really different place. It's funny how you can find yourself so connected when the place around you is so disconnected.

There was something strange as we headed out of Coffee Bay. Children would run up to the cars and yell, "Sweets! Give me sweets!" We didn't have any sweets to give. But they'd run up to us in hoards and stick out their hands and yell, "Sweets!"

It's a weird thing, actually. This place, where children will run up to you and ask for money because that's what they seem to have been taught to do. And you think, fuck man, I don't have any money. And you do. But I mean, what're you going to do? Give a sweet to this kid? And how about the next? What do you do?

It just really occurs to you that you are in a much different place when you see these small children working while you're driving your ass home on a road trip...


We saw a pineapple stand on the side of the road. They looked good so we stopped. They were delicious.
Need another quick fix...