Traveling Geeks

3.8Km underground – My experience in the deepest mine in the world

3.8km is a long way whether you look at it vertically, horizontally or any other way you can think of. Now think of going down. Deep down in the pit of the Earth.
TauTona is AngloGold Ashanti’s Mine near Carletonville in Johannesburg. Let me be straight with you here, it’s deep and you don’t really […]

America Gives South Africa Tourism Love

The United States has overtaken Germany as the second-biggest market for South African tourism, according to Wendy Tiou, Global Manager of Communications for South Africa Tourism.  (The U.K. is number one, of course).

We spoke over lunch at Moyo, an open-air Johannesburg restaurant set in a park near the zoo.  Moyo serves dishes from all parts of the country, including delicious curries, wild game and desserts that I’d never seen before and wish to meet again.

Even more interesting than the food is the setting, with singers and dancers and drummers, and lamps that look like happy white jellyfish.

During the middle of the interview I had my face painted in a kind of sunshine warrior design.  How often does that happen to you during lunch?

South Africa is hosting the next World Cup, in 2010.  The World Cup, as most Americans don’t know, is the world’s biggest sporting event.  We hosted in 1994. Brazil won, remember?  Perhaps we can build on Obama’s victory and cement our improved relations with the rest of the world by finally appreciating “soccer.”

There are already signs counting down the days, even the seconds, until the first match.  As every host country has learned, preparations are overwhelming, but Ms. Tiou sounded confident that stadiums will be ready and there will be plenty of beds for the 450,000 visitors that are expected.  The country is eager to play host.

Tourism has grown substantially overall, not just from America.  And why not?  It’s a gorgeous country, the weather is great, the people are interesting, it has a fascinating human narrative, dynamic, cross-cultural, full of challenges and opportunities, and is defining itself anew.

If you want adventure travel, vineyard outings, ancient human history, city culture – it’s all here, and with the infrastructure, exchange rate and English language to make the journey an easy one for Americans and other first-world dwellers.  It’s a long haul, but if you have a couple of weeks it’s well worth the jet lag.

Finding Diamonds in the Rough Seas

For the 60 men and three women aboard the Peace of Africa, diamonds aren’t a luxury, they’re a career choice. Finding the gems requires  the latest technology and creates a Jacques Cousteau-like adventure.

The Peace of Africa is a $1 billion South African rand ($110 million U.S.) piece of high-tech engineering designed to maximize the yield of precious gems from the ocean floor at a minimal cost and impact. The process may seem simplistic — find diamond “hot spots,” scrape along the floor to loosen the gravel and minerals, vacuum up the mess, and sort through what you got. The mining operation has been fully automated so that no human hands touch or even see the diamonds until they reach a secure facility on shore.

The system processes about 10,000 cubic meters of water and minerals per day. First the minerals are washed and then dried, and sorted to identify the materials most likely to be diamonds. The pieces are then x-rayed to illuminate the diamonds so that they can be identified, and then immediately spit out of the system and canned and sealed without a finger being laid on them.

One of the biggest challenges is figuring out what to keep and what to throw away, according to Elizly Steyn, the ship’s metallurgist. Steyn works for the De Beers Group, the diamond business that own and operates the ship. She’s part of a team that monitors a steady stream of data to optimize the diamond yields. The company’s target is 1000 carats of diamonds per day, or 200,000 carats per year, which includes down time for maintenance, technical glitches, and bad weather. Based on the information collected from the sonar scanning, automated underwater vessels, and real-time analysis, the filtering system is set up to only extract pieces between 2 and 19 millimeters in size, Steyn says. This results in the largest diamonds automatically being tossed overboard — not what you would expect. “It would cost more to process the additional material than you’d get back from the one large diamond you might find every six months,” says Steyn.

The diamonds were formed about 2.2 million years ago, and then thrust to the surface by volcanoes around 700 million years later, according to Tom Tweedy of De Beers. He says that while diamond mining started in South Africa about 100 years ago, no one bothered to look under the ocean until a Texas oil man suggested doing so in the 1960s after diamonds were found on the shore. The diamonds are harvested by “the crawler,” a remote controlled bulldozer-like vehicle that rests on the ocean floor and scrapes the bottom until the clay is reached. Steyn says only the occasional fish gets caught up in the vacuum. Most of the sea floor at around 125 meters is barren of vegetation. The crawler costs about $1 million U.S., so it is too expensive to keep a spare on board. When it stops working, as happened during our visit, so does the mining operation.

The crawler takes about 1 1/2 hours to retrieve and return atop the Peace of Africa, which is anchored about 10 miles off the coast. The waste water and minerals are automatically pumped to the side of the ship and eventually resettles on the bottom. The dolphins don’t seem to mind the brown cloud this creates, as a group of about half a dozen was hanging out by the side of the vessel during this reporter’s visit.

Another impediment to mining is the stormy weather off the coast near the South Africa-Zimbabwe border. Swells sometimes reach 27 meters in height, which shuts down operations as it is too strong for the flexible hoses that connect with the crawler below. Only when waves surpass 14 meters does the mining operation shut down. All of the equipment — the engines, the winches that maneuver the crawler and position the ship over the crawling area, and the machines that pump and sort the materials — run on electricity. The engines run on a fuel oil that is slightly thicker than diesel, and burn through between 18 and 30 tons of fuel each day. That’s the equivalent of filling up the gas tanks of about 600 cars per day. De Beers has an environmental officer dedicated to studying the ship’s impact on the ocean and air. The engines were tested to meet the government’s requirements for NOx and SOx emissions. While the air quality within the working areas of the ship is not monitored for emissions, an air filtration system cleans the air in the living quarters, according to Steyn. The ship’s crew stays on board the ship for 28 days and then gets 28 days off.

That schedule is just fine with Steyn, who plans to stay on for another two years. She grew up with three older brothers and is used to hanging out with the guys.

WindFarming energy…unbelievable? Believe it

Two days ago we traveled to the Darling Windfarm. Sounds nice and quaint I suppose. It is magnificent. It’s astounding and huge for four fans spinning at a rate of knots to create energy.
Another highlight (yes there were many) of yesterdays Cape Town trip was this Windfarm. It’s called a wind farm I can […]

Zoopy: YouTube meets Flickr meets Blogging, South African Style

[South Africa Blogging Tour 08] Nic Haralambous is part of the Blogging Tour and the General Manager of Zoopy. Founded in 2006 by Pat Elk, Jason Elk and Gerry da Silva, Zoopy is the South African Youtube and a new version was just launched on Monday. I took the opportunity to talk with Nic about the new website during the bus trip to !Kwa ttu, the cultural center of the San people.

In South Africa, the bandwidth is expensive and Yoututbe does not have a server there, so it takes forever to upload movies. There was a real need for a local video sharing site and Vodacom, one of the three mobile carriers in South Africa, is an investor in the company since early 2008. The new features include the launch of Zoopy TV, 3 channels where journalists with “extreme blogging training” (Nic), post breakings news nation wide, the multiple uploads capability (up to 20 files simultaneously), and the mobile version, available at m.zoopy.com.

Read more after the jump

Project Runway

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There’s nothing as adrenaline-inducing as a plane landing in less than optimal conditions. Today our team of bloggers got to enjoy(?) a dicey descent after a thunderstorm caused us to change airports on the fly.

We were headed for Lanseria airport, but the massive black clouds forced a 45 minute game of storm chasers before the pilot diverted to nearby Oliver Tambor airport. The charter plane is open to the front, so we could see the pilots manning the controls while clearly struggling with the elements.

As we approached the lighted runway, our aircraft was continually being pushed about 10 degrees to the right, and the pilot grappled with the wheel, turning left, left, and left again. It reminded me of my meager attempts at Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Every correction was met with an equal force of wind, and my heart started pumping as we got close enough to see the narrow white lines of the runway. Even after the wheels seemed ready to scrape the ground we were still a few degrees off course, but our adept pilot readjusted and got us squared up on the runway only seconds before touchdown.

I couldn’t wait to speak with the captain when deplaning. When asked if this were one of his trickier landings, he said “Most definitely,” with an exasperated sigh. “It was a struggle all the way down.”

Meet the San People of Southern Africa

A mere seventy kilometers outside of Cape Town sits the San Culture & Education Center, a center dedicated to culture and training for Southern Africa’s First People, the Bushmen, now called the San.

The center, otherwise known as !Khwa ttu is designed to be a living celebration of past and present San culture.

Their 850ha nature reserve is surrounded by rolling bushlands, birdlife, game, West Coast farm buildings and fynbos. Formed as an NGO, the center is a joint venture by the San people and a Swiss philanthropic foundation (UBUNTU). !Khwa ttu’s CEO is sexy Michael Daiber, a blonde South African crocodile Dundee with perfectly weathered skin and khaki cotton clothing head to toe.

For the first time in 10,000 years, there’s a central place for all the San people wherever they may be living in southern Africa to go for education, inspiration and growth. When they first thought about where to hold the center, Botswana and Namibia were considered but ultimately southern South Africa was chosen despite the fact that it houses fewer San people than the three considered.

This is their ancestral land so it is here they should be able to speak in their original language and learn how to pass it on to the next generation. The San language has numerous dialects (!Khwa ttu employees Andre Vaalbooi and Kerson Jackson – both of them San people, go into detail about the language, giving examples of various dialects in a movie we shot below).

Only four elderly San still speak older generation dialects because it simply wasn’t passed on to the next generation over the years. Why? Apartheid had a lot to do with it. Afrikaans farmers wouldn’t allow their San workers to speak their own language.

Knowing that their children might be punished by their Afrikaans boss (baas-man they would have called them), it was safer not to teach their children their native tongue. The result is near distinction of certain dialects as the last few generations learned Afrikaans instead and passed on “it” as the mother tongue.

How unnatural Afrikaans must have felt to a people whose language sang rather than spoke. As I listened to them speak one dialect after another, the sounds came out as clicks, clacks, oings and mooias with lingering aaang delays that were hypnotic at times.

Frustrated by the inaccurate image people had of Bushmen around the world, one goal of the Center is to educate others about who the modern Bushmen (the San) are today. They also wanted to reintroduce certain vegetation and restore the land.

Says a very passionate Daiber, “A lot of the San people who work here have developed a sense of ownership. They hold workshops that range from arts & crafts to zoology. People come together to learn about their own identity and heritage as well as develop skills they can use elsewhere, such as the tourism industry or in a game reserve. We create an environment where they can learn and interact while maintaining self respect and dignity.”

The big challenge, Daiber maintains, is to find a foothold in the tourism industry. “We have to sell the place in a unique way so the rest of the world can see that the San people are so much more than a visual they might have in their minds of loin clothes and bows & arrows from centuries ago.”

The center appears to be succeeding from what I could tell by talking to Andre, oddly an Afrikaans name. Andre’s facial features as you can see below couldn’t be more different from an Afrikaaner, yet the strong verbal and cultural connection to their world doesn’t seem to bother him.

When asked how they felt about losing their language over the years because of an Apartheid way of life, he merely said “what has passed has passed.” In other words, what can we do by spending time in the past? Here, they are focused on the now and the future, which is maintaining their language and the numerous dialects as well as educating others about their culture and history.

The pictoral museum itself also shed history of the Bushmen from the beginning of time.

The below map shows the regions where they spread.

Below is footage we shot of Andre and Kerson giving us lessons on the why, how and pronunciation of the various dialects of the San language. It’s a fascinating watch whether or not you have some familiarity with their culture and history.

Before we explored what was past and what is now, we were served Springbok tartare with melon. It was prepared and presented in a way that might lead you to think you were in a top-end Parisian restaurant rather than a rural center in the middle of the South African bush with nothing on either side but rolling bushland, hay, trees and four lonely wind mills less than 60 kilometers away.

The main course was equally exciting and tasty as hell. Springbok curry served with rice, chutney and egg brought out some of the best flavors I’ve tasted in awhile. Southern African curry is unlike the curries from northern India and the states and share more in common with the Indian curries you can find today in the southwest of India, some of which made its way to England and Scotland.

As it was time to leave, a playful Daiber followed us to the dusty parking lot outside of their locked gate that was opened today just for our visit since they’re normally closed on Mondays……an amazing treat since it meant that we had the place to ourselves.

Here, natural beauty is in raw form. You can actually hear the silence in a way I’ve only found possible on the African continent. I had forgotten how different the air is in southern Africa and how the place gives a new meaning and definition to the “sounds of silence.”

These sounds of silence weave its way into your memory accompanied by a late afternoon sky – diffused oranges and yellows, more yellow today, yes, more yellow.

The day after a windstorm and the afternoon after a helicopter ride around Table Mountain, the sky was calm with blue sky, a smattering of white clouds that had managed to form an impressionist-like mass by 5:30 in the afternoon as we made our way out of the dusty road and onto Stellenbosch. As I looked out the window to our rear, I could see Daiber’s Jack Russell terrior Bullet wagging his tail and watching us drive out of sight.

South Africa: Darling Windfarm.

[South Africa Blogging Tour 08] This is not a new technology but alternative energy sources are becoming more popular these days, so it is worth a little post. We went to visit the Darling Windfarm, the first large wind turbine facility in sub-Saharan Africa. The 4 turbines producing 5 MW can provide 70 % of the electricity to the 6000 people living in the area. Herman Oelsner, president of the African Wind Energy Association, told us that the Cape Town Municipality is willing to pay an extra to get a cleaner electricity (85c instead of 45c for “coal”electricity), The deal is not closed yet and up to 16 turbines may be build

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In the picture: Graeme Addison

Lanzerac Hotel is a hidden gem

Keeping with the blogging of the world posts for the next week I sincerely believe that Lanzerac Hotel needed it’s very own blog post.
Situated in the heart of the Cape Winelands this hotel boasts a five star rating and with very good reason. The service staff is always smiling, seem to really love their […]

Rosebank Hotel refurbished and rocking

This post is a few days late but nonetheless deserves to be written as the Rosebank Hotel really is worth visiting if you get the chance.
Working in Rosebank I have, over the past months, driven past men and woman working at a steady rate at rebuilding and developing the renowned Rosebank Hotel. I was […]