Youth Day, Monkeys, Caves, and the Drakensberg Mountains

Sorry again to get so behind on blogging, but I'll try to run through everything major that has happened since the last blog!  Work has picked up a bit, so we are going into the clinic regularly or working from home during the week.  We have also made several friends in the city, so we have had a chance to explore Joburg much more.  Two weekends ago, we went to something called Arts on Main, which is a cool district in downtown Joburg that is being built up right now.  In an old warehouse, there were tons of food stalls with deserts, drinks, and food from all over the world.  They also had a rooftop bar next to the warehouse that had salsa dancing all afternoon - it was so much fun!  We also experienced the first big rain we have seen in Joburg since we got here, but we just kept salsa dancing in the rain.

On June 16th, we decided to visit the monkey sanctuary with a fellow Tar Heel we found here, Paul, who was studying abroad at Wits University in Joburg.  The sanctuary focuses on saving monkeys that are adopted by humans and abandoned when humans can't cope with taking care of a full grown monkey.  Usually, when monkeys are babies, they are cute and cuddly, but as they reach sexual maturity, they become more and more aggressive and are prone to biting.  The sanctuary is a place these monkeys can go as they are grown, and it's many acres spreading through a forest and up into the mountains. Even the walkway through the sanctuary was made of wood and rocks so that it blended in with the natural surroundings.  Monkeys also walked all around us through our tour - it was fun!

Pensive monkey man

We climbed a swinging bridge

Some monkeys in the sanctuary are used to warmer and wetter climates, so they lose their fur from the dry African sun. But they usually have no safe, open place to roam without the sanctuary. 

After the monkey sanctuary, we met our friends from Emory who are living in Joburg in Soweto for Youth Day celebrations.  In 1976, students held a peaceful protest against the apartheid government because the government had just mandated that all students must learn Afrikaans in schools.  Students saw this as getting rid of their own unique African cultures, so they held a peaceful protest in Soweto.  The government violently tried to stop the protest, and ended up killing many young students.  One of the youngest was Hector Peterson, who was just 12 years old.  There is a famous picture from June 16, 1976 of a young man carrying Hector Peterson's body through Soweto while Hector's sister trails behind, devastated.  We went to Hector Peterson square first, and saw the Hector Peterson Museum, which had free admission on Youth Day.  The square and museum were packed with everyone trying to learn about the history of the Apartheid and Youth Day.  It was incredible to be at that historic site during Youth Day, and to learn more about how much power and strength young men and women have in standing up for what's right.  At the end of the museum, they had bricks for many known youth that resisted the government and passed away during this time, it was eerie and sad to walk through those bricks and see so many incredible lives taken early because of racism and hatred.  We then went to a concert in Soweto called the Young n' Free concert to celebrate Youth Day.  They had DJs from around South Africa so everyone was just dancing and enjoying the music.  We also someone got into the VIP MTN (a cell phone company) tent and were treated to hand massages, free temporary tattoos, and swag.  It was a really good time!

Hector Peterson memorial

The only type of weapon the students had on June 16th was rocks to throw at their oppressors, while the government had guns.

A mixture of our fun times at the concert

We decided to pretend to be the Big Five (well... Six) African Animals.  I'm a buffalo, that's obviously a buffalo face.

The next weekend (literally I haven't blogged in forever), we went through Sterkfontein Caves in the Cradle of Humankind.  The area is called the Cradle of Humankind because it's where they have found some of the first Hominid fossils, which are believed to be the species that Homo Sapiens originated from.  In the Sterkfontein Caves, scientists found one of the oldest known, most complete, Hominids, 'little foot', which is 3.3 million years old.  Isn't that incredible?  They named the fossil 'little foot' because the foot is much smaller than our feet today, even though little foot was an adult, and before they found the rest of the foot and ankle, it appeared abnormally small.  They found it at the bottom of one of the natural openings of the cave, so scientists believe that the Hominid fell into the cave and likely broke major bones so was unable to move and died there.  We had the chance to walk through the cave, which is 20 million years old, and see just one of the 20 lakes that exist in the cave.  They actually don't know how deep the lake is or how long it goes into the cave.  A group of scientists went into the lake in the 1980s to try to see how long it went.  Once they realized they had gotten to far to safely return, two scientists decided to turn back, but one wanted to keep going.  They found his body a few weeks later with messages to his family and wife carved into the cave.  Since then, they have forbidden anyone from going into the lake because it is too dangerous.  It is so incredible and awe-inspiring to see what nature can create.  They also had a museum that we were able to go through at the end that showed the origins of humankind.  

The area where they found 'Little Foot'

One of the 20 natural lakes inside the cave.

This past weekend, I went on two of the hardest, most incredible hikes of my life in the Northern Drakensberg Mountains.  We drove around 4 hours to the Northern Drakensberg and stayed in a local hostel, the Amphitheatre Backpacker's Lodge that had the best view of the Amphitheatre (which is just a large amphitheatre shaped section of the Drakensberg Montains).  I had never stayed in a hostel before, but we met the most incredible, adventurous people.  In a hostel, you explore by day, and socialize and hang out by night.  The backpacker's lodge hosted several more advanced hiking trips that would be difficult to do on your own, and after doing a lot of reading of reviews of the lodge on google, we decided to join them on the hike up the Amphitheatre.  Honestly, this was one of the most incredible things I have ever done in my life.  We rode with a group of about 9 people from the lodge in a bus about 2 hours up the mountain.  And let me tell you, these roads are far from paved or even well structured.  Driving into the lodge, we went down this terrible road for about 8 miles that was half paved half dirt that had potholes galore, you could barely go 20 mph without worrying if you were going to tear up your tires and car.  The roads up the mountain were far worse, and for far longer.  I doubt our tiny rented Hyundai would have made it.  Usually, it takes around 3 days to hike up the Amphitheatre from the bottom, but they have a point you can hike up after driving up the mountain around 2,500 meters.  

We hiked up the Northern Buttress of the Amphitheatre and would be 

looking out at the Eastern Buttress and what they call the "Devil's Tooth" when we got to the top.  All in all, it was a 12 km hike that went 600 meters up in elevation.  When you started the hike, you zigzagged up the mountain until you got to the point where you scaled rocks for 45 minutes and about 250 meters straight up.  I'm telling you guys, from both the elevation and the climbing, I was incredibly out of breath.  But once you got to the top, it was so, so worth it.    

Climbing up the 250m incline

Zig-zagging up the moutain

We got the best seat in the house

After we got to the top of the Northern Buttress, we went around the Amphitheatre to Tugela Falls, which is the second largest water fall in the world.  The only source of water for the falls is rain water, and during winter, South Africa is pretty dry and cold.  So unfortunately the falls weren't running when we visited.  We did find some ice pockets on the falls though!  

Walking to the falls 

Ice skating on a waterfall

Tugela Falls

 After we went to Tugela Falls, we began our descent down the mountain.  To get down, you have to go down two ladders that scale the mountain.  The first one is 8m down and the second is around 25m.  The first ladder was far more terrifying, probably just because it was the first time I have ever done something like that.  The ladders had rings around them that hugged the mountain face, so it actually wasn't that shaky at all.  The hike all in all took around 5 hours and we were exhausted after.  We went back and took a nap then hung out with everyone staying at the hostel.

Climbing down the 25m ladder

The second night in the hostel, we met two really cool dutch guys who were traveling around South Africa for a month and we ended up going on a hike with them the next day at Royal Natal National Park.  We drove ourselves to the park, which was only about 20 minutes away, and went on two hikes, one was a short hike to the bushman rock art, which is 800 years old, and the other was a much longer hike (the longest/hardest day hike in Royal Natal National Park) to the Gorge.  We did the bushman hike first and had the most knowledgeable guide, Elijah, who lived in the village right beside the park.  He told us about a program he had where he trained people from his village and taught them about the park and the art so that they could also give tours and contribute to the tourist economy.  He also told us the origins of Kwazulu-Natal Province, where the park was located.  We live in Johannesburg, which is in Guateng Province.  Kwazulu literally means "land of the Zulu" and the province is where the Zulu kingdom reigned many years ago.  The Zulu are famous for being the only African tribe to defeat the British army and their guns with just spears and shields.  They had a unique fighting strategy where they would run up to their opponent with their shields and when they got close enough, they would spear them right under the shield.  Elijah was Zulu.  He also told us the history of the rock art.  The bushman got their name from people settling Africa, but they really preferred to be called the sand men.  The only rock paintings you will ever see today are on sandstone, because it preserves the paintings the best of any other rock source because the sand absorbs the water pigment well. Bushmen would use half of an ostrich egg to mix other types of broken down stone and clay with water to make white, red, and grey pigment for their paintings.  

The paintings are to the right of Michelle's shoulder and above that

800 year old paintings

After we saw the bushman paintings, we started on the Gorge hike, which was supposed to take around 5 and half hours, but we stopped and enjoyed the sights a lot and climbed many boulders throughout the hike so it took closer to 7 or so.  The hike overall was around 15 km.  The guys we were with kept challenging each other (and us) to scale large rocks along the hike.  One of them that Michelle and I also eventually got up on was really high and steep (it's in the picture below).  I was incredibly terrified about getting down, because you had to basically slide down the rock until you could jump off.  I eventually survived though - it was a lot of fun!  The field is charred in the picture because they regularly burn parts of the park to encourage new growth.  As I said, you see fires regularly along the highway in South Africa.  At one point, we thought that the hike ended, but we noticed a trail hiding among the dried up river bed of the Tugela River.  We followed the trail and man am I glad we did, the hike continued for about another hour and a half and we ended at one of the peaks of the Gorge.  You could barely hang over the rock face enough to see the bottom of it, it was very deep.  We couldn't even take a proper picture of it because we were too worried about hanging our cameras down.  It was beautiful!

This is the rock that Stefan convinced us all to climb up and I was terrified to climb down from

Standing in a very dried up Tugula River

A beautiful view near the top

Climbing up to the Gorge

How dirty our feet were after trailing through charred fields and scaling rocks

That's all folks!  If you actually made it to the end of this ridiculously long blog, high five!  If you just perused through and looked at the pictures, I don't blame you - they're beautiful (although they truly don't even begin to do the real scenery justice).