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What funny/interesting thing happened in your life today?


Ultimate Steve

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We drove from our home city all the way to Graaff-Reinet, or as I call it, Graaff-Ry-net-weg. (Direct translation: Graaff-drive-just-away, grammatically correct translation: Graaff-just-drive-away) here are some pictures I took:

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We visited my grandparents in Bethulie.

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That's what roads look like outside the city, and probably how the cities will look in a few years too.

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My grandpa's super old (and therefore calm, and thus, not part of my fear of dogs chasing me down) doggo!

We also met with my cousin Hano, who is as young a teenager as I am, and collects knives. He is currently at 108 knives, ranging in size from a small pen knife to a half meter long “knife.” I maintain my position that that is a sword, not a knife.

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The gariep dam, completely full this time.

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Boy! We're getting a load of rain this year! Just look at that river!

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Town.

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Pitstop, to swap drivers, and stretch our legs. Also, that dirt road has a 80 km/h (50 m/h) speed limit. 

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Monkey!

Edited by Hyperspace Industries
Added a bit about my cousin’s knife collection.
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Today we ended our 800 kilometer journey to the sea, this is what I photographed.

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The place we stayed in Graaff-Reinet had some rather scary Koedoe skulls in our bedroom.

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Lion for scale. ;)

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The great annual taxi migration! (Activate David Attenborough voice) Here, you see a squadron of South African taxis, in their natural habitat, migrating from Cape Town inland, for the Christmas holidays.

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These creatures are known for their dangerous driving, as seen here, from the back seat. (Disable David Attenborough voice.)

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A big bit of that mountain has detached lately, I'd hate to be in that rock's way.

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Cruising along the N9, since the N1 is packed, goes to the wrong place, and is prone to exploding (or is that just the rocket). On reflection, I should have watched a bit of For All Kerbalkind.

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Pitstop.

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There is a reason we call the rural farm areas of the country the platteland (literal translation: "Flatland"). (The sign saying that number is completely accidental.)

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Stopped for breakfast at a padstal, essentially, a shop next to a road/highway which sells food, but not petrol/diesel.

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Breakfast. (at 11:00)

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Sea detected!!! Sea detected!!! Initiate sea seeing protocol!!!

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Oil rigs are pretty!

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We have arrived at our destination! And, when we go back, we'll have to drive all the way back in one day! It's usually not as rainy here in Dana bay (Dana baai in Afrikaans).

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Monkeeeeey!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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1 hour ago, Vanamonde said:

I am puzzled by the one warning that trees buzz the road. 

:joy: I'm pretty sure that that is to indicate that there are many sight seeing opportunities in there (that place is gorgeous) and that the mountain pass lasts 1 km. Why exactly they made the sign look like that, I have no idea, though "sightseeing opportunities ahead" is not the easiest message to send through the visual medium. :D

 

I've never seen a tree buzzing a road, okay, I've seen some growing next to a road, but that's a little too slow.

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39 minutes ago, tater said:

Nice. I have a cousin who lives in SA, actually. Had lived in Joburg, think he's moving to Cape Town (he's engaged, and I think she's from down there). Gonna have to visit at some point, looks pretty.

I definitely recommend coming in the summer, the winter is stupid cold but not cold enough for snow. Summer is a lot more fun.

@TheSaint Cool!

(The living in SA part not the Knysna part.)

Edited by Hyperspace Industries
Knysna quite famously was once burnt to a crisp by wildfires.
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4 minutes ago, Hyperspace Industries said:

I definitely recommend coming in the summer, the winter is stupid cold but not cold enough for snow. Summer is a lot more fun.

When my South African friends came to visit me in California, they wanted to see two things:

1. Snow. One of them grown up in Barcelona and had seen snow a couple of times when she was a kid, but the other had never seen snow in his entire life.

2. A bear. Neither of them had ever seen any kind of bear outside of a zoo.

So we took a road trip up the Sierra Nevada. Stayed in Sequoia, saw the trees, stayed at Curry Camp in Yosemite. It was October, so there wasn't a ton of snow, but there was enough sticking around in the north-facing areas to have a couple of snowball fights. But no bears.

So we're driving out of Yosemite on 140 heading west, we're going to spend a day in San Francisco and then camp in Big Sur. We come up on road construction, they've got the road down to one lane and they're running the traffic through behind a pilot truck. So it comes our turn to go, we're in this big line behind the pilot truck, big signs everywhere, No Stopping. And it's your typical mountain road, cliff on your left going up, cliff on your right going down, giant pine trees all around. So as we're going through, we look out to the right, and sitting there in one of the pine trees is a black bear. He's just level with the road, but it's a steep drop off right there, he was probably thirty or forty feet off the ground in this tree, just sitting there without a care in the world. And my friends are all, "Oh! Oh! Stop! Stop! Stop! We have to get a picture!" I CAN'T! We're still in the line with the stupid pilot truck! So they're freaking out trying to dig their cameras out of their bags. I'm trying to do the lame duck slow down without actually stopping. They're leaning out the windows trying to get pictures. It was complete pandemonium. The bear must have thought the circus was in town.

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11 hours ago, tater said:

Nice. I have a cousin who lives in SA, actually. Had lived in Joburg, think he's moving to Cape Town (he's engaged, and I think she's from down there). Gonna have to visit at some point, looks pretty.

If I can make a recommendation, if you have a load of time to stay in SA, Clarens, a small free state town just outside Bethlehem, is really pretty. The sunsets are awesome, it is surrounded by mountains with nice hiking trails, Horep mountain is quite pretty, and it's just outside the Drakensberge (translation: Dragons-mountains), which, if you found my pictures pretty, you'll find gorgeous.

Also, my dad designed the road there, and it is the place I, for the first and so far only time, saw snow, when I was 4, so I may be a little biased. :D

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On 12/19/2021 at 1:18 PM, Hyperspace Industries said:

I woke up late, and boy, do I mean late! I woke up around 09:45, and I only got out of my pajamas and into normal clothes around 12:05, I'm about to go eat lunch, even though I refused to get out of bed for breakfast.

Me who got up at 13:30 as usual on a Sunday: :blush:

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