St Lucia and Kruger

Posted on September 9, 2016 by Gareth

Photos are a combination of mine and my wife’s.

When you’re leaving South Africa for a couple years, what is the last thing one should do? That’s right, undertake a two week safari. So that’s what my new wife and I did. We flew up to Durban and kicked off our trip with a week in St Lucia.

We started off with a 3 night package from Heritage Safaris. This included a cruise on the St Lucia Estuary, a day trip to through the Isimangaliso Wetlands to Cape Vidal, a night drive through the wetland park and a day trip to Hluhluwe Umfolozi. Accommodation and meals are included, so it was a nice relaxing start to our trip.

Hippos in St Lucia

Although the area is in the middle of a massive drought, the wetland still has a decent amount of water in it. Enough to support the hippopotami (my spellcheck accepts it as well as hippopotamuses) and other wildlife. The boat cruise is a great way to get up close to the hippos which carry on as if you weren’t. A few birds, some antelope and the opportunity to see a croc or two is also possible.

White rhino, samango monkey and giraffe in Isimangaliso

The wetland park had a lot more to give than what we had expected. On driving in we immediately came across a number of wildebeest and zebra. A bit further on we were spoilt by several white rhino. We continued to see a number of birds and various antelope. Apparently leopards can be relatively common, although we didn’t see any. During season, whales can often be seen from the coastal regions. Cape Vidal was also a bit of a surprise. A lovely beach in the park allowing one to swim, fish or snorkel the nearby reef if the tides are right.

Warning sign and crocodiles on beach in St Lucia. Hippos on walk in Kruger

Warning sign and crocodiles on beach in St Lucia. Hippo on walk in Kruger

As with any kind of safari, they can be hit or miss. You can go 10 times and not see anything, then get an amazing sighting on your last day, or you can pitch up and get something new every day. It’s luck of the draw. Our night drive was a little bland, although we still saw several antelope, zebra and giraffe.

Our trip to Hluhluwe was a great trip though. It starts with a 5AM pickup and a freezing trip in the back of a land cruiser to the park. We spent the day in the Umfolozi section of the park. We saw almost everything we could have wanted, elephants by the tens, several white rhino, a cheetah sighting followed by a wild dog. Antelope of all sizes and kinds. The only surprise for us was the lack of birdlife. This is apparently not abnormal though.

Our beat up rental, getting close to zebra in St Lucia, petting cheetah cubs at Emdoneni

We spent a further two nights self-catering in St Lucia (at the Safari Lodge). We spent a day exploring the town, and did a return visit to Hluhluwe. The town itself has its own beaches and several paths one can wander and still manage to encounter some wildlife, sometimes more than one would want. On our way out of St Lucia we also stopped at the Emdoneni Cheetah Project where you are taken on a tour of the project. You get shown serval, wild-cat, karakal and cheetah. You are taken into the cages of each, and may be able to approach the cheetah and serval.

Hornbill, giraffe and zebra, all in Kruger

St Lucia is a lovely little tourist town, well worth a visit. They have a fuel station, grocery shop, plenty of accommodation and ample restaurants. After a week there, we took a meandering drive up to Kruger National Park. While in St Lucia, it was suggested that instead of skirting the Swazi border the whole way up, that we actually cut through Swaziland to get to Kruger. For a number of reasons we couldn’t do this, but it is a highly recommended route.

Baby hyena are surprisingly adorable

We spent the night just outside Nelspruit at the recommended Bee-Eaters Farm. Although we mainly saw kingfisher, we did spot a bee-eater as we were leaving, just managing to live up to its name.

We had two nights booked at the Sabie-River Bush Lodge, just outside the Kruger Gate, and then three nights within the park at the Olifants rest camp. We drove up on the first day from Nelspruit through the Malelani Gate, taking some back roads through the park, past Skukuza and out Kruger Gate. It is was towards the end of the school holidays and we had been warned to pre-book a day pass which we had, but found it wasn’t necessary on arrival.

A nice bee-eater sighting, complemented by lilac-breasted rollers

We did fairly long drives each day, weaving up and down through all the roads. We twice went to Lake Panic, a hide just outside Skukuza. We got there an hour before gate closing each day, and had some amazing bird sightings. We had a number of other great sightings including a pair of hyena cubs right next to the car, a civet on a night drive and a honey badger on our last day. Although we lacked for cheetah and leopard, we had a distant lion sighting. This was all complemented by numerous birds of prey, sightings of rhino, giraffe, elephant and various antelope.

Two giant kingfisher sightings, and a fish eagle

It’s amazing how big Kruger really is, and we were constantly impressed by the running of the park, and the amazing placement of restaurants (specifically the ones we visited at Olifants and Lower Sabie). We additionally did a morning walk. You get taken out into the bush by two rangers. Although you may not see much, it’s a really cool experience to be out in the wild, and a nice escape from the daily confines of your car.

Civet we saw on night drive and a honey badger

We had a great trip. Going to the two parks were completely different experiences. Kruger obviously caters for the masses and has many comforts to support that. Hluhluwe was amazingly quiet, and apparently never gets too busy. It’s perhaps a bit more out of the way, but definitely worth the visit.

Watch your step…

Posted on September 6, 2016 by Gareth

“For your safety; Watch yer step, when exiting the bus”

These are the automated words that anyone who has made use of the LA metro buses will have heard countless times. And it cracks me up every time. Just the way the guy says “Watch your step”. It sounds like a threat, “Watch your step, or else”. Anyway.

I both love and hate the LA Metro. As much as people say the LA Metro “isn’t that great”, it has been a lifesaver for my wife and I. As new arrivals in the city, without a car, the metro can get you within a mile of almost anywhere you want to go. If you have time. ie. If you really need to get there.

It has saved us a lot of walking to the university and back. It has allowed us to go to the beach, visit friends and family, do our shopping and go out in the evenings. Taxi services and Uber/Lyft are very prominent here, but you can’t beat $3.50 for a return ticket anywhere in LA, and there are major discounts available for students.

Metro signs shows 2 buses stopping, but no indication as to when or where they go

But it takes a long time. Most places we want to go are within an hour (by metro) of where we’re staying, this would be a 20-30min bus trip. We looked at going to the LA Country Fair, but this would take over 2 hours by metro, as opposed to 40min by car. One of the places I’m applying to work is a 1hr30 bus trip, or a half hour drive. Again, if you need to get there you can. You just need time.

Another thing is the reliability of the buses. Unlike European equivalent systems, where at each bus stop there is a full schedule of the bus, what times it will arrive and where it’s going, the bus stops here are merely a sign saying the 37 bus stops here. It doesn’t tell you when, or where the bus goes. Just that if a 37 bus drives past, it will pick you up here. Part of it is understandable, as with LA traffic, it is anyone’s guess when the next bus will arrive. Making use of Google Maps, or other services, you can view an estimated time, but if the bus is running ahead of schedule it won’t necessarily stop and you can get to the stop on time and have to wait for the next bus. There are set stop points along the way.

German bus timetable displayed at bus stop – Marielle Segarra, WHYY

Buses are scheduled every certain amount of minutes. For peak times, this may be every 6min. So you know you shouldn’t have to wait too long, however we have experienced times when waiting over 10min for a bus, and for whatever reason the bus was delayed, resulting in 3 of the same bus arriving at a stop at the same time. Once on a bus it is usually possible to get a paper copy of the ‘timetable’.

Also, if you’ve ever looked at an LA street map, you’ll see that the roads are pretty much set up in a massive grid, and buses tend to travel straight, very rarely turning off the main road they are on. So if you know where to go, you can just take a series of buses going in the direction you want.

They have an App, and with their website most of the information you require is available. It also seems to be fairly well synced with Google Maps, which we rely on more than anything else really.

So while we will continue to use the metro, a car is definitely on the purchase list for the next few months.

Also I like their campaign artwork.

Metro artwork – from Metro Projects

And this is just something else: Click it and Go

I don’t like Verizon

Posted on September 2, 2016 by Gareth

Goodness, I’m not sure exactly where to start. My cellphone screen on my Galaxy S4 got damaged in July to an extent that it was unusable. For the last month or so I’ve been using an old Galaxy Trend which while doing the job, does it in a manner that frustrates me, slow, laggy, crashes etc.

Now in the US I figured I’d be able to pick up a cheapish 2nd hand S4 and perform a motherboard transplant. Looking around Ebay, I found quite a few phones. Almost all of them were 16GB versions (as opposed to my 32GB) and many were CDMA (although including GSM). From this I thought there might be some problems with a direct motherboard switch, but if it looked like it wouldn’t work, I could just use the phone as it came and not do the transplant.

Additionally to this, most of the phones seemed to be carrier locked. A google search showed that this is relatively easy to disable however, so I thought nothing more of it. Cue me buying a Verizon Galaxy S4.

It arrived, I put my T-Mobile SIM card in and booted up. The phone notified me that an invalid SIM card had been put in, but still allowed me to make phone calls. Time for the heart transplant.

The phone opens up easily enough, at first glance the boards look like direct replacement, but I noted several small differences. As such I decided to rather try get the Verizon phone to work with my T-Mobile SIM.

It should be as simple as going into a ‘secret‘ menu and changing a setting. Problem one, none of the ‘secret’ codes did anything. Even typing *#06# (which should bring up the phone’s IMEI number) did nothing. Verizon had the secret menu blocked.

Then I tried a bunch of other things, firstly trying to create a shortcut to trigger the secret menu. Which failed. Then trying to send commands to the phone via USB debugging and the Android Development Kit. Eventually resigning myself to rooting my phone. Kingo works like a bomb by the way. This allows you to edit a file in the system to make hidden menus visible.

Great. All done, but not actually. So I can bring up the hidden menu, but when I navigate to the correct place, the option I need to turn the SIM Lock off isn’t there. There should be 3 options: info, on and off. I have only info. Now I don’t know what to do. There are lots of people with lots of ideas. They mention installing other APKs, I install CWM recovery to support this, but whenever I try boot in to the CWM recovery, the phone decides halfway it doesn’t like CWM and loads the standard Android recovery menu (I assume this is also Verizon’s doing).

Image modified from Wonderhowto

I remember now that, although the phone tells me it has an invalid SIM card, I could still make a phone call. My data doesn’t work, but looking around, I was able to create my own APN which then got my data working. SMS however wasn’t working, and the usual menu item to change the SMS Service centre wasn’t there. There is apparently another code you can enter to bring up a hidden menu. But for whatever reason this did not work. Googling I see that others have a similar issue.

Unfortunately not everyone in the US uses Whatsapp or equivalent, and I still rely on being able to send SMSs. So I decide to cut my losses(?) and go for the heart transplant.

It went OK. Not as well as I’d hoped but OK. Took Verizon motherboard out, and put my 32GB motherboard in. So there are a set of cables down the LHS which plug into the motherboard. The cables are fairly rigid and the plug location slightly different on the two boards. There’s an additional brown wire that was not in my 32GB phone.

Circled plug in different place results in bulge in cables

I removed this additional wire (as no where to plug it in) and went about removing some plastic structure of the phone to get the cabling to still fit in its new position.

Clips that I shaved off to make cables fit.

Put everything back together and it works. However the bottom ‘back’ and ‘menu’ buttons don’t function. They light up occasionally but don’t do anything. At the moment I’m just living with it to see how annoying it is. I did find a workaround. Also the phone thinks its charging even though it isn’t :/

Coming from South Africa, where phones haven’t really been carrier locked since the late 90s, the amount of effort that has gone into locking the phones in the States is incredible. I’m truly impressed (albeit extremely frustrated) at the lengths I’ve tried to go through to unlock this phone. Verizon will apparently do it for a fee, ~$100. More than what I paid for the phone in the first place.

But I have a mostly working phone. And it’s fast and I’m happy enough for now :)

Also I realise Verizon didn’t do all this work themselves, and that Samsung developed the phone in this manner. But it was done because of companies like Verizon who believe that the phone should for some reason belong to them. And that is why I don’t like Verizon.

Kings Canyon & Sequoia National Parks

Posted on September 1, 2016 by Gareth

It was only our first week in the US, but we already had an opportunity to travel. A field trip to Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks was to be our first adventure in our new home. Located about 350km (or 5 hours drive including traffic) North of LA, and about 100km inland, these two national parks are just some of the many national parks/forests/conservancies that litter the US and that we are keen to explore.

It was a great opportunity for us to get out and meet new people. We camped the Friday and Saturday night at Crystal Springs campsite. This included the new experience of bear protection. Back home we’re generally fenced in from the lions and leopards, but a low enough risk means bears are free to roam through campsites in the States, smelling out food, toothpaste or other items of interest. We were fortunate (so I’m told) enough to not be bothered by the wildlife. None the less we did our part and made use of on site steel anti-bear cupboards to store our fragrant belongings.

Saturday, after a leisurely wakeup, we went to the end of the Kings Canyon road and hiked the 4 miles up to Mist Falls. It’s a fairly non-strenuous hike through the forests and along the river. Several opportunities to swim were not ignored, and the fresh water was a welcome relief to the fairly warm Californian weather.

Mist Falls

The scenery is picturesque; ambling through the trees, wedged between towering mountains, one is never short of a stunning view or photo opportunity.

General Grant (81m tall; its namesake a measly 1.73m tall)

We returned back to camp for the night, and on Sunday we drove out through the Sequoia National Park, stopping off at General Grant (pictured above and below) for a few pictures with the enormous trees. Apparently the park is quite popular on weekends, as the General Grant section was packed, requiring us to take a shuttle from a nearby parking area. Also the trees there are huge!

The two types of ‘big trees’ are the Sequoias (tall and really wide) and the Redwoods (Even taller, slightly thinner). They’re both part of the same family, but the Redwoods are found closer to San Francisco. See useful insert from the NPS map:

A long drive back to LA got us home before dark.

Fiddlings

Gareth's Random Blog of Fiddlings

St Lucia and Kruger

Watch your step…

I don’t like Verizon

Kings Canyon & Sequoia National Parks