solvent abuse

our humble rehabilitation department was recently visited by the highly talented and long limbed Emma Gray. thanks to her the department is looking quite spiffing after a lick of paint and a dash of creativity. who knew first year OTs were actually useful?

never a dull moment

its been a wet couple of weeks out here and it can be said without fear of contradiction that the roads have seen better days. rob and i arrived at a slick and muddy section of road to find that Dr Caroline had gotten stuck in a ditch. she tried to avoid the photos but i was merciless. after a quick tug out she had a second try and with a bit of power sliding she was away.

best viewed with dolby surround...

makambati

^ insert surfer here ^

makambati is stunning. if you go one place in the transkei go here....

makambati is a nature reserve in the northern transkei. it a bit of a drive to get there, two hours off the main road (shot robby boy!) and requires a high ground clearance vehicle to get to there. for this extra effort you get perfection. i jest you not. it is without a doubt the best place i have been on the wildcoast... and i've gone to a few places this year. the makambati river stumbles down three waterfalls into the sea and you can be the only one there to see it... awesome. the park can only accommodate a maximum of thirty people so it doesn't get crowded and most of the other people who were there did nothing but fish leaving the beach free for frisbee and various pools open for skinny dipping. word of warning: don't jump from the waterfall you see in the picture. the pool is actually very shallow. this didn't stop me though. fortunately my fall was broken by the rock at the bottom. thank god. as you limp home and spend the rest of day in bed you can console yourself with the fact that you got injured in one of the most beautiful places in the world.

does some one have some ice?

bulungula in racing green

in the transkei when it's summer it's wet and when it's wet it's green. really really green! i love it.

after having nothing against and many things to like about bulungula the canzibe crew paid it a summertime visit. we were joined in our endeavour by jenny gow, the whitest white girl in lusikisiki, who spent the weekend getting less white via various shades of red and brown. the first night there i indulged in my new found love of tanqueray gin. unfortunately my bottle seemed to develop a leak... it was almost finished the next morning....

if you are willing to go for a short trek through forests and hills you will find yourself at a local pancake establishment. find some shade, sit down, make yourself comfortable and order a three nut pancake. this glorious savoury pancake is stuffed with a butternut, cashew nut and coconut curry filling. it is quite simply divine. after this you can have a dessert pancake if you wish, its not really necessary but if you sensitive about your calorie intake you can tell yourself that you will burn it off when you walk back to the backpackers. i dont worry about that. i always have dessert. learn to live with it

morgan's bay & kei mouth

the last journey of what you could consider "the originals", the canzibe comm serves 2009, was to the small seaside resort of morgans bay. situated just below the kei river it is outside the borders of the transkei and has none of the usual mud huts or psychotic sheep which add so much character to my current place of residence. none the less morgans bay was very enjoyable. we stayed at mitford lodge having booked dorm rooms. we were pleasantly surprised on arrival to find that, due to construction, our dorm was unavailable and we had been upgraded to a suite. after some minor bickering over who would get the double bed we dined at the lodge restaurant in the evening and though i found the main course to be only passable the chocolate brownies we had for dessert were simply scrumptious (i was going to write orgasmic there but i believe we all managed to keep ourselves under control) but ja... get the brownies.

in the morning i arose early (this always takes everyone by surprise. keep them guessing i say) and went for a walk to the lagoon. i met a wagtail along the way who was feeling very photogenic. after dropping my camera off at the house rob and i returned for a swim

a short drive north and you arrive at kei river mouth. rob and i left the girls tanning (some would say burning) and walked to the river. you really get a sense that you are standing at a great divide. on our side of the river were expensive holiday homes while on the opposite shore mud huts dotted the hillsides. a ferry is available for the border crossing. the river flows out to sea surrounded by large, flat sand banks; perfect for frisbee once the wildlife has scattered. back in the town i spotted the tree full of weavers i have mentioned in a previous post. the weaver in the picture is the one i spoke to... poor bastard, his wife looked like she would rip his nest up at any second.

weekends always end far too soon. before you know it you're in the car, heading back to the sticks. be sure to buy some pineapples on the way and enjoy the view

the holly and the ivy

in other news: jesus has set up diplomatic offices in Mthatha. and it seems he is getting into the yuletide spirit by having a holly ghost hour. isnt that fantastic?

windows 7: extended beta testing

it annoys me that microsoft consistently manages to release a product which doesn't work until six months later...

my new laptop has arrived and it is pretty cool spec wise. in an attempt to avoid that OS from the abyss, windows vista, i jumped on the windows 7 train and have to admit I'm pretty disappointed. this is the first time i have upgraded almost immediately after the release. and you can tell. gone are the days of 98 and XP when all the glitches had been figured out by the masses, serviced packed, and installed without any problems. welcome to compatibility issues, random freezes and blue screens of death. oh well. put those upgrades on hold for a few months guys coz its microsoft extended beta testing time.

for those of you still mildly interested in my laptop check it out here: http://www.asus.com/Search.aspx?SearchKey=g71gx

location location location

its been a while since i have updated this veritable tome of information on living in the transkei. the main reason for this is the death of my much loved computer due to total motherboard failure. the mourning period was short since in the world of technology, as in the world of relationships, one is often on the look out for the next best thing. my new laptop is on its way to me now and wields more power than most european principalities.

until then i present to you the above photo. if you decide to click on it you will find that it is not my usual low quality, easy upload photo but a full sized jpeg begging you to zoom in and have a closer look. taken in the town of Kei river mouth it shows high density suburban weaver housing. i think it is very impressive. the fronds of the palm tree have been stripped fibre by fibre and turned into very fashionable nests. almost every single frond is occupied except those at the very top which appear to be too vertical to build on. why this tree and not another? who knows? i asked the one weaver and he told me i should ask his wife. his wife told me that she had once lived on the other side of the river but there were soooo many darkies and she just cant stand darkies. the mind boggles.

tallyho!

nostalgia

http://www.lukechueh.com/paintings/nostalgia.html

awesome painting. feeling just like that right now... only 7 weeks to go...

its dry, but you can needle it

dry needling of insertion of rhomboids and subscapularis. 75mm needle into subscap elicits the pain the patient experiences while writing. twitchy twitch! sweet :)

hogsback

hogsback is a small wooded town in the central eastern cape. it has some fame as apparently being the inspiration for the forests of The Lord of the Rings. plunging into the forests below Away with the Faeries backpackers you really start to believe this. enormous yellow wood trees reach skywards 800 years since they first germinated. you cant help imagining Tolkien in this place, seeing the placid giants of the forest, seeing the forestry works destroying the natural forests. if only the giants would wake up and defend themselves...

lord of the rings aside, hogsback was very enjoyable. the forests reminded me of home, hiking through the forests of table mountain on yet another table mountain sortie. the dank smell of vegetation, the humidity under the canopy, i almost expected to step out into kirstenbosch at any moment. i completed the 5 waterfall hike with my transkei hiking buddies elin and rob. ok, we didnt actually go to one of the waterfalls... so sue me.

the town of hogsback is named for three mountain peaks above it, which appeared to those people who did exploring and the such to look like the backs of hogs. although it has been a popular tourist destination for quite some time it remains charming and not over done. all the shops and restaurants are run by cheerful locals and there is no pressure from proprietors of Away with the faeries to join in on paid hikes or similar excursions which are hoisted upon you at most backpackers along the coast. i had started to mention the restaurants back there, they were brilliant. reasonably priced, large portions and just the right atmosphere. our group dined at the Enchanted treehouse and Nina's pizzeria on friday and saturday night respectively. Nina's was especially nice. i recommend the moroccan chicken pizza, tasty!

from the physio side of things i would say if you are placed anywhere in the eastern cape for community service give hogsback a visit. its well worth it.

even more on the phsyio side of things, i have managed to develop an achilles tendonopathy. i had the great fortune of noticing it on ascents of the waterfall hike... maybe fortune is the wrong word. anywho, it seems that six months of relative inactivity combined with the liberal use of slip slops, old shoes and a sudden return to sporting activity has decided to bugger up my tendon. fortunately eccentric exercises will damn this nuisance to heck! mother says heck isnt a nice place to be. you have been warned tendon.

now, feast on some pictures

fish river marathon

working as a rural physiotherapist presents few opportunities for some good old sports injury treatment and so when i was invited to join my friend sam at the fish river marathon there were no objections from me. the fish river marathon takes place in craddock, a small town some 4 hours from mthatha. it is well attended. in the western cape the berg river canoe marathon is attended by around about 140 paddlers. the fish often attracts over 2000. after a scenic trip through maclear and elliot we arrived at craddock and went straight to work. it is always slightly daunting when you have to switch to a sports mindset after working in a general hospital for 9 months so i spent the evening feeling a bit inept. after a while i did manage to get my confidence a bit higher, just in time for the start.

don't get up at 5 am. its cold. the race started at 7 am for the top 50 seeded paddlers. the mist didn't clear until an hour or so later. i managed to strap my first tennis elbow before going to see the mad rush

it turned out to be awesome weather for the rest of the weekend. pictured below is one of the later batches starting off on the dam. one of the draw cards of the fish is that it is a controlled race. water is released from the dam allowing for perfect racing conditions.

it never ceases to amaze me how some people expect physiotherapy to be free. fortunately the strapping for the race was donated by leuko and so we only charged R40 for a strapping. having a sponsor did of course mean that a few photos had to be taken with lots of leuko stuff in it. so smile, say leuko and nail that piriformis sam!

due to work requirements i was only able to watch one rapid being shot. this was called "soutpans" and i only saw it because the road we had to take crossed the river there. the paddlers go over a small weir and under a bridge before a long section of rapids. watching for 10 minutes was enough to get me hooked.

massaging is harder than you think, an afternoon of massage leaves your arms and fingers in a fair amount of pain. at least business was brisk which always means payday will be better... at least in the private sector. the second day was even brisker. tired paddlers came flooding in. one guy had three sessions, one each day. he dislocated his shoulder and had a bristow repair exactly 6 months before the race. 6 months is the recommended time for return to contact sport. he was cutting it fine. gave me a chance to practice my shoulder strapping which is all i ask.

len jenkins, professional paddler and lusty pursuer of a colleague of mine, won the marathon in record time. its his fifth in a row i believe. when he won half of the field was still waiting to start the second day. some people just take the fun out of everything. most likely in an attempt to balance things out, at the end of the race everyone has a big piss up. the varsity students dont mess around. you have not seen drunk until you have gone to fish. since i planned to drive the next day i had an early night. the ladies i traveled with had a wild night. being medical professionals has its benefits though. Dr kelly set up some drips, works wonders I'm told

now some of you out there may think it pretty lame that i didn't get tipsy at the biggest party in the great karoo. this may well be true, however, the next day i got to drive sam's audi A4. yeah. well worth being sober for that.

now where do i buy a kayak?

i luff it when you talk foreign!

god as my witness i hated afrikaans when i was young. like no other subject at school i dreaded its arrival. it mystified me. i trembled the entire lesson when we were doing mondeling (spoken afrikaans) fearing that suddenly the teacher would choose me to speak and my ignorance would be exposed. throughout my school career it was consistently my lowest mark. my mother took drastic measures. she made me read afrikaans with her in the evening, reading had always been fun before, now the evenings held a dark promise. the list of words i had to memorize grew and grew. fortunately, it seemed to work. my marks stabilised in the mid 60% and the reading lessons stopped. as a further incentive my mother tied my pocket money value to my afrikaans mark. this is why i was constantly poor in high school. then with a final 60% in my final year of school i was free and able to find alternative sources of income.

after some reckless months of laziness with nic and dave and pizza delivery; i settled on physiotherapy as a possible career and was accepted. in second year there was an afrikaans course and i surprised everyone by not fouling it up. my tutor was mildly startled when i even managed to come top of our group for an oral exam (it only happened once) i didnt hate afrikaans any more, in fact it was now a useful tool, most of my patients were afrikaans. i didnt get fluent but i did get passable.

now, i know lots of foreign people. my mother hosted many students learning english in south africa and you cant be friends with nic and not meet foreign people. that guy has his PhD in foreign... girls... knowing them... yes.

as you may notice, foreign people have this annoying habit of looking at you, turning to their friend(s) and jabbering away in some incomprehensible lingo. they then look back at you and laugh. fuckers.

get your own back! speak afrikaans! lekker

mdumbi to the haven: the hike

for the recent long weekend rob and i planned to go for a three day hike along the wild coast starting at the haven and finishing at the home away from home, mdumbi. nothing in the transkei comes without some organisational nightmare. our first major problem was the lack of anyone to drop us off at the haven and so it looked as if the hike would get cancelled. fortunately it was suggested to us that if we started at mdumbi and walked to the haven, then we could pay one of the mdumbi drivers to navigate rob's bakkie down to the haven and pick us up. however, this was suggested to us on the tuesday before the long weekend, it was unlikely that there would still be accommodation available at the various sleepover points along the hike. mdumbi, hole in the wall and bulungula were all fully booked, but we decided to go anyway. the main draw card of this particular hike is the backpackers along the way who provide a bed and bedding and food, thus decreasing the load you carry in your pack. indeed it can be done with only a daypack ideally. such was not our lot. full sized packs were found and dusted off and sleeping bags and a tent were acquired. we were also joined by a new arrival to hospital, one elin hem stenersen, a volunteer physiotherapist from norway. we arrived at mdumbi on the thursday and, despite being fully booked, there were three beds available in the dorms. sweet.

here we are at the beginning with rob upping the ante for the "best looking" prize on the hike. the walk on the first day is punctuated by a trip on a small ferry over the mthatha river

and later on, lunch at coffee bay. you dont need to carry any food for the first day unless you want to cut costs. elin had a chicken salad at coffee shack while rob and i contemplated the hardships in our lives... so many hardships

the highlight of the first day is a reef between coffee bay and hole in the wall which looks like it would hold some awesome south west swell. if you have spent the day hiking and have seen hole in the wall before then hole in the wall can wait for the next morning. once again there was accommodation available at the backpackers. this time, to our misfortune, we had a roommate. he snored. bastard.

the next morning we set off with the wind at our backs and bumped into our roommate at the hole. he was passed out by his lonesome on the beach across the river. aren't motorbiking holidays great? the second day consisted of some rather steep climbs and descents. the views were spectacular and the beaches were beautiful.

the agony in my lower limbs while making repeated ascents was soothed by the beauty around me and the assurance that with every step bulungula was getting closer. i have never been so happy to see a backpackers. the food that evening was babootie and yellow rice followed by malva pudding. the main course was so brilliant and smothered with bananas and chutney that it almost made up for the puny size of the desert. attempts on my part to steal more were non-existent. i was too tired to move. bulungula was the only place not to have official room in the inn for us, but we all know what happens in inns with no room (well, everyone who went to sunday school should know). we bumped into fellow health professionals from zitulele and madawaleni and a great time was had. elin and i pitched a tent under the the stars while rob strung out his hammock in the forest on the dunes. satisfaction guaranteed.

a brisk walk from bulungula will take you to the xhora river. since we hiked at the end of winter most of the rivers were easy to cross. the xhora presented the only deep crossing to be made. i came prepared of course and my bag remained dry during the short swim required. rob managed to find a wading route with no swim needed... it looked far away... besides, i was prepared... so i'm damn well going to swim.

the wind had changed overnight and now was forcing us back with every step we took. combine this with soft sandy beaches and you get some hard graft. fortunately there were no more hills just flat walks along the beach. we stopped for lunch at breezy point, a five star wave and one which doesnt rely on sand like mdumbi, even without good conditions we saw one awesome wave crash to shore as we began the final stretch of the hike. the wind was increasing in velocity as a cold front approached us; rain started to spit out of the clouds; and then we spotted our driver on the beach. it was good to be done. the blister on my small toe was beginning to challenge the toe in girth. we drove back to mdumbi, the rain following close behind us, some birds sat on the fence and complained about the weather, and i appreciated life a little bit more.

thanks for an awesome hike guys. drakensberg is next on the list