An account of my (Adam Cutts') endless summer.

I’m home.

Adam — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:16:54 +0000

72 hours later I’m home!
The flights from both Johannesburg to Qatar, and Qatar to New York were both actually pretty painless. Decent food, and an awesome selection of movies and music. I saw fantastic mr. Fox which was really good. I also executed my ” operation 13 hour layover in Qatar” plan perfectly.
Phase 1: Saturday night, Steph and I went out with some friends in Jo’burg leading to a slight lack of sleep. Just slight enough to eventually make me tired, but not too much lacking, which would have made me not functional at 100% to execute the rest of the plan.
Phase 2: watch alot of movies, and refrain from sleeping. This of course meant I had to avoid the gigantic selection of Sandra Bullock movies Qatar airways boasts.
Phase 3: allow myself only to indulge in Qatar Airways wine selection after half of the flight had been completed, causing drowsiness to set in, of course, at a later time.
Phase 4: after arriving in Qatar, I kept myself as occupied as I could, combing through duty free, brushing my teeth, small talk, etc, until the drowsiness had accumulated into a blur of debilitation.
Phase 5: This phase took some training over the previous 5 months. The training included practicing sleeping on hard surfaces, and in front of many strangers. It also required a sleeping bag, which I had strategically purchased back in December.
Phase 6 was simple. I had pocketed the complementary sleep mask from the reception desk to the executive lounge (which denied my entrance, but were none the wiser of my crafty thievery). The second half of phase 6 was to inflate the inflatable pillow I purchased a month back in Namibia.
Phase 7: with shoes off, I got into my sleeping back, applied sleep mask, and Ipod headphones with nice music ideal for sleep.
Phase 8: this phase was not executed, because I had already fallen asleep.

I managed an impressive 7 hours of sleep, waking up with just enough time to brush my teeth, and board the aircraft.
This next flight was much longer, but followed roughly the same game plan.

I arrived in New york with 3 or 4 hours until i could check in for my next flight to montreal. It’s important that I mention the state of chaos that was JFK airport on monday night. The JFK airport was in a state of chaos on monday night. there was something like 6 airplanes waiting to be boarded at the same gate as mine. when I go to the gate to board, they tell me there is a problem with my ticket, and that I had to go to the desk over accross the terminal to fix it ( same problem arose in Johannesburg, so i was not worried) The desk which fixed my ticket problem has one of those screens to tell you about which flight are boarding, and it said Montreal Trudeau – boarding. Even after i fixed the ticket issue, it still read boarding, so i walked back to the gate. When I got there, it still said boarding, but the man told me it was locked up and that I had missed the flight. This sucked.
Long story short, I was put on for a flight to Detroit connecting to Ottawa. I remembered that there was an Ottawa in kansas, and made sure I wasn’t on that flight. i was on that flight. Second long story short, I was put through to Canada, but my flight to detroit didn’t leave until the next morning, at 8:30.
This meant that I had to repeat Phases 4 through 8 once more. Anyways, I’m getting tired of writing about this experience. I made it home yesterday around 4:30. It’s nice to be home. Very strange waking up in my own bed today.

some more

Adam — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 17:39:19 +0000

I’m staying now at my friend, Banele’s place in Kilane, a very cool neighborhood here in Johannesburg. To me Jo’burg is really one of those intimidating cities, that is very chaotic, and has quite a bad reputation. Now that I’ve had an insider view on the city, I see it in a completely new light. I seriously have loved the last couple days spent here, there’s alot more to it than I had thought coming through the last time. Anyways, I can see my rambling is going nowhere, all I can say is that I’ve made many new friends, and that I wish I had another couple days in Jozi before flying home.

Johannesburg has also figured out the whole internet thing, so here’s some more photos.
See you soon Canada!

much love,
Adam

Adam — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 12:01:23 +0000

photos.

Adam — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:42:18 +0000

i lied about the phtos, I’ll try again in a minute

Back in S.A.

Adam — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:36:12 +0000

It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a computer, so here goes an update. Oh yea! and I fly home in two days! it kind of snuck up on me.

Since doing my tour of the South, I headed north along through the caprivi strip, along the Angolan border, and into Botswana! The last country of the trip. I spend bout 7 days through Botswana, mostly in the north, around the Okavango delta, which was spectacular. It’s the largest inland delta in the world. Pretty much a gigantic swamp at the end of the Kavango river in the middle of the Kalahari desert. A friend and I hired a local in Seronga to take us out on what is called a mokoro, a hollowed out tree trunk. We went all around the panhandle of the delta, and spent the night camping on one of the hundreds of islands. It was amazing being on foot in the middle of so much wildlife. It was also amazing how much wildlife swims out to these islands! We saw herds of wildebeast, zebra, antelope, even elephants. And the local told us that lions are also known to swim out to the islands!
After a great couple of days by the delta, with our trusty dusty rental car we headed south, and conveniently ran out of gas at a gas station. Unfortunately the gas station had also ran out of gas. As luck would have it though, a couple hours later we met a young guy who happened to have some extra gas, and also happened to be a manager at a 4 star game reserve in the area, that at the moment was under renovation, and had no visitors! He generously put us up in luxury safari tents, and in the end we spend 2 days around the camp on this huge 15 000 hectare property!
After grudgingly leaving the camp, and heading to Maun, I caught a bus which brought me through Gabarone, and about 20 hours later into the heart of Johannesburg. A friend, originally from Swaziland, living here has also generously put me up for the night, and has a younger brother, who is apparently an awesome jazz guitarist playing at a club in town tonight, who we’ll go see. I’ll be sure to put up a link to his music as it sounds super interesting.

Anyways, I know I am coming home soon, but here is one last photo dump!
When I’m back i’d be happy to go through more of my photos with anyone who calls.
my oh so simple 7 digit canadian number is 222 3594 for anyone who doesnt have it!

lots of love,
Adam

The best things in life aren’t things.

Adam — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:39:03 +0000

Hey everyone,
I’m back in Windhoek after an unbelievable trip through the south of Namibia. I rented a car with some friends, and we stocked up for a five day camping trip. We first stopped in the Namib desert, the oldest desert in the world! We arrived just in time to climb a dune for sunset. It was a very surreal landscape, one of the most beautiful places i’ve ever seen. We spend the next day in the national park, that includes this huge salt pans that lie surrounded by giant red sand dunes. I must have taken 500 pictures, and sweat 10 litres. We climbed the highest sand dune in the world, called big daddy, which had an unbelievable view of the sea of red dunes from the top.
From the Namib, we made our way south. One of the best things about namibia is the open space. At night we would just pull off the road, cook over a fire, and camp out in the middle of nowhere. Each night, i didn’t see a single car pass from when we had set up, to when we left again in the morning!
I got to drive through the wickedest winding dirt road through the hilly area around the fish river. We had an exciting desert experience, when our car got stuck in the sand of a dried up river bed. It took us about an hour, with some expert engineering to jack up the car a couple times, using rocks to level out the car in the deep sand. Digging and pushing the car in the desert sun thankfully only lasted an hour and a half, or we might have ended up as human jerky. We spent the last couple nights around the spectacular fish river canyon, the second biggest in the world, and brought our gas cooker out at about 6am., and sat on the edge of the canyon with a cup of coffee watching the sunrise. Overall a pretty amazing time.
I’ve got a couple days of downtime here in Windhoek, while I plan my trip up north, near the Caprivi strip along the Angolan border, then accross to the Okavango Delta in Botswana. Today I finally delt with my visa problem getting back into South Africa, so I’m set to fly home in 2 weeks. I can hardly believe the trips almost up.

Pictures later this afternoon when I can figure out this slime sucking scumbag computer

Adam — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 19:19:16 +0000

I’m back in Windhoek now, after spending the last couple days in Swakopmund / Walvis Bay.
There was a bizzarre icey breeze coming off the ocean, which was awesome in the 35 degree sun! Swakopmund and Walvis bay are some mediocre (in my professional one day opinion) separated by about 40 km. of a big yellow sea of sand dunes, which is very cool. I was hopeing to meet someone in Swakopmund that could take me south to the Sossusvlei, but had no luck! On the bright side, i got a call from some people back in Windhoek that they had space in their car to take me down on monday.

I grabbed a mini bus in town back to Windhoek, about 400 km. through more dessert from Swakopmund. It’s a really cool drive for someone who’s never seen a desert before! Closer to the greener area near Windhoek there was a herd of oryx by the road aswell! About halfway into the drive, it got a little scary when the mini bus started making very weird noises and kind of vibrated like a cell phone gone mad. It ended up breaking down, litterally in the middle of the dessert, but we were assured that if we hung out (not that we had much option) it would be up and running in no time! I had picked up a book at the last hostel i was at in Capetown, and decided I’d hang outside and read while we waited. What happened from here should have been filmed for some cutesy television program. Everyone started to get very jealous that I had something to do while we waited in the middle of nowhere, and before i even realised what happened three of them somehow convinced me to read the story outloud for everyone!
The book I had with me was a short book called Jonathan Livingston Seagull. I ended up reading the book cover to cover (it’s not too long) to 14 Namibians in the middle of the desert, while the driver fixed the van in a way I can’t even begin to describe.

If you ever get the chance to read Jonathan Livingston Seagull, 14 Namibians, and I recommend it! Anyways, about 8 hours after leaving Swakopmund, here i am, alive, and skin a couple shades darker, in Windhoek again!

good night

Adam

A bunch of pictures coming soon!

Arrived!

Adam — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 19:17:33 +0000

Hello from Windhoek!
After a nightmare of a trip i’ve made it to the capital of Namibia, and will be off soon to the sea side town Swakopmund, to get ready to head to the Namib desert!
The trip: I left Capetown on tuesday morning, knowing that my bank card wasn’t going to work in Namibia, so, as much as i didnt want to, took a butt load of cash with me to last me till i get to Botswana. About 12 hours later through the most barren and peculiar landscape I think I’ve ever seen, We all had to skulk off of the bus and get our South African exit stamps in our passports. When i crawl up to the desk after some strange mix of Afrikaans and Xhosa is yabbled about, I’m given a big white piece of paper with a big fine on it for overstaying my South African visa. They also decided it was a good idea to rip apart my bags and search them in the weirdest most unorganised manor, on the cement floor of a small room. At this point they had decided that the bus could go on without me. Another one was coming in a couple hours, and I was still trying to figure out why I hadn’t been given a three month visa back in december.
Anyways, long, boring story short, and 26 hours since i left Cape Town, I’ve got to pay for this fine before being let back into S.A. for my flight home. I can appeal the fine, and for them having issued me the wrong visa (which apparently happens often) but the appeal taked 3-6 months to go through!

much love.
Adam

Namibia bound.

Adam — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:24:57 +0000

The three blind mice, or musketeers, or whatever it was we were, are no longer! Saturday was our last night together here in Cape Town. Dan caught his shuttle to the airport at some frightening hour. 5 am or something, which began his long long journey home. To be honest he might still be en route as a write this.
Tonight is my last night in the country. I’m trying to enjoy my last bit of city life for a quite a while before i head to Namibia in the morning. With a population of only 1.2 million, in quite a big country, it’s the 2nd least densely populated country in the world, after Outer Mongolia! The last couple of days have been great. We stayed at a friends beautiful house in the city centre, Steph and I visited an awesome kind of farmers market deal, with all these fancy local cheeses, ciders, breads, shmancy sauces and meats, aswell as some swanky local clothing and jewlery designers and whatnot. It was an awesome day, and made for quite a budget meal comprised of bite sized free samples.
Today we’re off to the beach down the chilly atlantic side of the peninsula before we say goodbye. Steph’s decided to stay in Cape Town a while until meeting her parents in Ethiopa, which sounds absolutely unreal. In the morning this pup stallion

Will be my home for the 21 hour ride from here to Windhoek, Capital of Namibia.

I’ve got to go, either by some awesome bus snack food, or some extra strength tranquilizers.

next update from the Namib desert!
Adam

Adam — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:06:56 +0000

view of the cape peninsula

Cape Town from above! with the new green point stadium on the left side of the photo, for World cup 2010

ATHULE!

Timone and Pumba

sharing is caring

This is Bruce. everyone calls him Bruce Lee. He is trouble.

Been some busy weeks, but winding down with our last week of teaching. Today we went up Table Mountain in Cape Town. It was very spectacular. It’s a very steep mountain, almost vertical on the front side, and then it just flattens out completely to a big open space on top.

I put up some pictures of the awesome kids at the pre-school. Also some of the amazing views from on top of Table Mountain!

John, here’s our flight details to Doha:
Flight 2: Sunday, March 14, 2010
Qatar Airways 585 Economy | Airbus Industrie A330-200 (332) | 8hr 20min | 3878 miles
Depart: 10:35am Johannesburg, South Africa Johannesburg O.R. Tambo International Airport (JNB)
Arrive: 7:55pm Doha, Qatar Doha (DOH)
Seat: 11B | Seat is confirmed
Change planes. Time between flights: 12hr 15min

Steph told me you were looking for them, to connect her flight to Ethiopia.

Ciao Ciao

Adam