I go Bali.

Time for a vacation! Katie and I are going to Bali! Yay!

So fun Bali.

I will put pictures of Bali up here. Soon. After I finish South Africa.

Oh, and OMGOMG I saw Superman Returns.

OMG. XD

I loved it.

I LOVED IT.

LOVED. IT. BEST. SUPERMAN. MOVIE.

EVER. Go see Superman Returns. I loved it. Poor Cyclops never had a chance...

[EDIT] And I totally forgot for ages to tell everyone to go over and look at Melissa's new baby!

Holy CRAP OH GOD YES PLEASE YES!

I like Spider-Man. I like it. I like. Yeses.

South Africa 30: Ronnies. Sex. Shop.

There is a legend.

Out in the desert, there is a place.
The place is called Ronnies Sex Shop. [sic]
You can stop there and look at it. It is the only thing for miles and miles and miles.
The walls are covered in words, and there are lots of people there.
Ronnies Sex Shop is cool.

You see.

We love Ronnies Sex Shop. Lisa loved the cacti. I just loved.

So we sat down an had a drink and carried on like idiots.


Collect 5 black ringpulls, send them in and stand a chance to be on the "Shaya for Ikhaya" game show.
OMGOMGOMG. I wanted to go on Shaya for Ikhaya, but I didn't have enough ringpulls.
I love Shaya for Ikhaya. 

South Africa 29: So Fun Oudtshoorn.

Wow, I didn't even have to check how to spell Oudtshoorn that time. I am teh r0xx0r.

We camped. We were in Oudtshoorn (oh, pronounce it "oats-horn") for this big drama festival, I think it was called the KKNK, which stood for Klein Karoo something something (it was Afrikaans). It was a big arts festival. It was wicked. I saw an Afrikaans play about a South African writer named Ingrid Jonker. It was 95% Afrikaans, but the plot was fairly easy to follow, and the stagework and lighting were quite good.

Oh, camping, yes. It hurt. Lisa and I shared the back of Michael's bakkie (see it? Michael just told me a couple of days ago that it ended up getting stolen. Poop.), thinking it would be warm. It was uncomfortable and cold. Oh well. At least we didn't blow over, like that poor sod in the background.

Lisa tried to get money out of this mobile bank machine. That went as well as you might expect.

Oh, then we went to the jazz club. It was great. As evidenced by how happy we are. So happy. So beer. I liked Black Label. It reminded me of O'Keefe's Extra Old Stock. Mmmmm.

Michael spent a lot of time fucking around with my camera to get weird effects, like this shot of Lisa talking to one of her old schoolmates. Michael showed me how to do all this stuff with my camera, but I forgot it all. Heheh. A-hem. 

South Africa 28: A Very Long Drive in Four Pictures

I know nobody really cares, but I was really busy because all the new teachers just arrived for this year. I'll put up pictures of them as soon as I'm done with all the South Africa stuff.

Tree and pump. They call these windmills pumps. Or pumpes. Or pompes. I forget how to spell it right.

Wow. Look at how cool this is. I love South Africa. We stopped and took this picture when we were almost all the way to.....

Oudtshoorn! Yay! There were trapeze artists! Flippy flippy!

I almost cried laughing. Parkering. I understand parking in Afrikaans is parkering, but damn. Just saying that word makes me laugh. I think it could be a euphemism for sex. Like: "Hey, did you hook up with that girl at the bar last night?" "Yeah." "Did you parker her?" "Yeah."

I love parkering.

This was the place where I was going to go chocobo riding. I mean ostrich riding. But I didn't ride the chocob...ostrich. We went swimming in their weird pool instead. That was fun. 

South Africa 27: MIRTH!

Yes! Laugh, you wretches! Laugh the laughter of the damned! We stopped to take some pretty pictures of the pretty mountains. Which Lisa and I apparently also found HILARIOUS.

AHAHA! The glee continues! Michael is powerless! And I almost fell off the mountain.
Or Michael is shooting me with some kind of invisible laughing ray. Anyway.
I forget what there mountains are called. Michael or Lisa can tell you. Michael! Lisa! Put a thing in the comments thing and tell us what these bleeding mountains are called.

Then we settled down a bit.

Then Michael got all artsy on us and said, "Ooh, let's take pictures of ourselves reflected in your sunglasses." Voila. Art.

South Africa 26: Wilderness

We went to play pool in the little town of George near Wilderness. I screamed laughing at the "pool balls." They were tiny. Little itty-bitty pool balls. Lisa and Michael both thought I was nuts, but I swear they were like friggin' My First Pool Balls. So I had Lisa hold one to show you. SO small balls. Really.

This is the view off the balcony of the backpackers' we were staying at in Wilderness. That white trucky thing is Michael's bakkie ("bucky"). If you can zoom in (I don't know if you can, you can actually see Michael and Lisa on the beach (in that little triangle of sand you can see right above the bakkie).

This is the backpackers' that I was just talking about. So nice place to stay.

Then we went and had breakfast at this idyllic little breakfast place. They had cute animals running around, and the food was divine. (??? Who said that? Was that me?) 

I am easily distracted by science.

Wowsers.
Bill sent me this.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71087-0.html

South Africa 25: Blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind...

Do this, don't do that, can't you read the siiiiihiiiiigns....
Right.

KER-BOOMS RIVER! AHAHAHAHA! I love it!

"No lines." But, pray, good sir. There seems to be a line right there on the side! Stupid sign doesn't even know. Lisa started to get pissy because of all the signs I was taking pictures of. I think she was just jealous because I wasn't taking pictures of her.

This is probably my favorite one. Ever. "End-Thank You." It's a great all-purpose phrase. Try using it on someone, like, the next time you want someone to shut up. "End-Thank You."

I just liked this one because it looks like a face.
So, this is in Wilderness. I thought Michael was driving us into the wilderness, but it's actually a town called Wilderness. It was pretty sweet. Here, this map goes next to the last one I showed you of the Eastern Cape.

We came in on the bottom left, from Port Elizabeth on the Eastern Cape, and went to Wilderness. (The little blue line that says "Wilderness National Park" points right at the town.) It was a really long drive. Next, we went to George, then Oudtshoorn to the north for a drama festival. Then Cape Town! Yaya! 

South Africa 24: The Road to Wilderness

SO THEN I started taking pictures of signs, because signs in South Africa are very funny.
Take this one, for instance. "No Fences." And a big "!". Sweet. Thanks for the heads-up, b'ys.

The best is when the signs are directly contradicted by reality. We saw a "No Fences" sign later, but there were fences all over the show.

We went into the woods for a nice lovely picnic. Michael sawm in the water. The water was the exact same color as Coca Cola. The exact same. Michael said it was something to do with, I dunno, silt or some bullshit. I didn't buy it. Not for a second. We had icecube races in the water. Meaning we threw icecubes in the water and cheered them on to see whose would go over the little waterfall first.
Shut up, I make my own fun.

If you turn around form the last picture, this is what you see. South Africa? Looks like Newfoundland to me.

Yay, signs! (Lisa was starting to go, "Stop taking pictures of signs.") This is where the police stopped us for animal diease control. 

South Africa 23: Partners

Lisa was my partner who helped me hold Partners.
"What's Partners?" you ask. "Is it cooking oil? Because that's what it looks like."
You'd think that. But no, children, that is a big-ass bottle of wine. 11.5% wine. Called Partners. That costs 44 rand ($7 Canadian, NT$200). I love South Africa.

The man. The myth. The Michael. He drives his bakkie on the highway. ("Bucky.")

"COME ALONG, KINDER, GET ON ZE SKOOLBUS!!!!"
I died laughing before I realized that they spell school that way in Afrikaans. (Afrikaans is a language kind of like Dutch, only just in South Africa.) Then I died laughing anyway.

And Lisa peed on her shoe! Fantastic! 

South Africa 22: Albums of MADNESS.

The Soft Shoes. IT'S SO GROSS! Look at them!

Sparky's Magic Piano. Awesome. The B-side (if you look closely) is "Sparky and the Talking Train." Oh, that Sparky. When will he learn that kids shouldn't take acid?

The title of this record is "More Music for Relaxation" by the Melachrino Strings and Orchestra. She looks relaxed, hey? Bent backwards like that? Wow, the last time I was that comfortable was when I got in my scooter accident.


Sing and Dance with Duffy. This is not a choice. You will sing, and you will dance, or you will face the wrath of Duffy.

South Africa 21: Off To See The Wizard

Well, okay, sorry about that. Katie and Faye went to Vietnam for a week, and there was nobody around to tell me not to take pictures of/compose a huge narrative experiment around my malfunctioning PS2. So sue me.

In brighter news, I've got a new slimline PS2. She's small and sexy.

I think I'll hold a wedding between her and Twoey.

Ahem.

ANYway, back to South Africa.
We left East London (myself, Michael and Lisa) to go to Cape Town. It would take a long time. I pretty much spent the whole time killing myself laughing. Lisa and Michael are two of the most entertaining people you could ever want to travel with.
And they put up with my constant fooishness pretty well.
Piccywicks!

We went to a restaurant, but I forget wheat it was called. The food was quite good. We were a little zonked. We went from East London to Grahamstown (where Lisa went to University), then through Bathurst for a beer and a nice long argument about how to properly play rummy, before ending up in Port Alfred for the night. We got lost trying to find the backpackers' place that were we going to stay in, but the guy at the video store helped us.
After we went to the backpackers' to drop off our stuff, we ended up here for dinner.

Oh! Here's a map of the Eastern Cape of South Africa, so you can trace my progress with your finger!
http://www.places.co.za/maps/eastern_cape_map.html

This is the Snorting Grunter. Classy place. We had a drink and decided that we were all too crappy to not go to sleep.

Here is the wall of our little dorm room. (We had it all to ourselves, thank god.) They decorated the walls with mad album covers. I couldn't resist.

Tee-hee. Look at Julio Iglesias. Peek-a-boo, yo. THIS WAS THE COVER OF A RECORD! BAAHAHAAHAAAHAHAHA!