Things I Love About South Africa (Part 1 of Many)

All right, South Africa. I’ve ripped on you pretty heavily in a few previous posts. But I mean, come on- you can’t possibly expect to wear tight short shorts as a guy and NOT have people make fun of you.

Anyway, I didn’t move here because South Africa sucks. It doesn’t. This country is one of the most amazing places on earth, and I fell in love with it when I visited years and years ago. I was going to write down all the reasons I dig this place, then realized the post would get obnoxiously big. So it’s going to be an ongoing, multi-post list, starting with this:

1) The Weather

Up until very recently, I lived in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. People are quick to recognize Vancouver for its natural beauty.

I mean, it’s OK I guess.

But the problem is you get to appreciate that beauty for exactly 2 hours each year. The rest of the time it’s raining. And not even cool rain like we have in South Africa where the heavens unleash fury for an hour or so, and then calm the balls back down. No, the rain we have in Vancouver is a constant drizzle that reminds you of all the poor life decisions you made that led up to you living in a rainforest without the trees.

In the 9 months I’ve been here, I’m pretty positive I’ve seen more sunshine than I have in my entire life. It’s coming into winter now, and I found myself noticing that it was a little bit cold outside. So cold, in fact, that I had to wear a long-sleeved shirt and jeans as we sat outside at a restaurant to eat our dinner. Brutal.

2) The Wildlife

I post about the wildlife in South Africa all the time. No need to say more.

OK, I couldn’t resist posting another picture to rub in how spectacular the wildlife is here.

OK, I couldn’t resist posting another TWO pictures to rub in how spectacular the wildlife is here.

3) The Activities

Sooooo many activities. I’ve shot my son down a zipline over a pile of angry crocodiles at Croc City, amusement parked my behind off at Gold Reef City, bartered with the locals at Chameleon Village, touched an Elephant’s tip (the trunk tip, you weirdo) at an Elephant Sanctuary, and a billion other things. All within a one-hour drive of my place. And we haven’t even BEGUN to explore yet. Go ahead and leave some of YOUR favourites in the comment section below.

If you thought I was the type of parent who loves my son more than I love a good photo op, you thought wrong.

4) The People

There are 2 types of people in South Africa. Those who want to do you harm, and your best friends (who VASTLY outnumber the “bad guys”). There’s no middle. Don’t ever say “Hello, how are you?” to a stranger here unless you want to engage in a 30-minute conversation, followed by an exchange of phone numbers and an invite to a braai. In Vancouver, we’re very good at being cool. Too cool to make eye contact. Too cool to start up a conversation. Too cool to expand our tight network of friends. In South Africa, your new friends’ friends become your friends, who introduce you to their friends, and on and on it goes. The biggest problem is making time to attend/host so many braais. Speaking of which…

5) The Almighty Braai

In North America, we BBQ, and we’re fine with it. However, that’s only because we don’t know any better. It’s very similar to a guy who has, for all his life, shared a locker room with mice. He feels very confident in his manhood. And then he suddenly joins a new gym with new guys in the shower and discovers what he thought was this:

It’s even more impressive with aggressive eye contact

Is actually this:

I TOLD my wife all these animal wiener pictures would come in handy some day. Boy do I bet she feels dumb now.

What I’m saying here is that I’m embarrassed of our silly little propane BBQs back home. In South Africa, we braai. You don’t just cook up a steak and call it day. You cook steak, boerewors, lamb chops, and anything else that had the misfortune of walking in front of the butcher that day. It’s all done over wood coals too- if you use gas you’re pretty much telling everyone you don’t deserve to be holding the braai tongs, which is probably the highest form of disgrace in South Africa.

That’s it for now. I’ll be adding to this list often. Tell me what YOU love about South Africa in the comments!

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