Introduction
It is now two months since we aborted our mini tour in the heat and wind of the Karoo in mid summer and it is time to hit the road again. The broad plan for the year was to spend three months in Spain in the austral autumn and then head back to South America for six months in late August.
Our time back in South Africa since returning from Mexico in December has allowed us to take in two big events.
The first was an epic birding trip to the sub-antarctic islands of Marion and Prince Edwards aboard the MSC Orchestra in the company of one and a half thousand other birders including most of the world's top pelagic ornithologists. Birdlife South Africa organizes these pelagic cruises in conjunction with MSC every few years and is fortunate that Peter Harrison, the acknowledged expert on oceanic bids, has been the senior guide on all of them. The islands are home to more than two million birds covering twenty eight species and are critical to their survival because pelagic birds only breed on specific islands. One of the aims of the cruise was to raise money for ridding Marion Island of mice which were inadvertently introduced to Marion Island by sealers in the early 19th century (see https://mousefreemarion.org/) and have been causing havoc since the cats that were introduced to rid the island of mice have been eradicated (the cats were causing more damage than the mice currently are). Prince Edward Island has mercifully been spared the mouse and cat invasion. This video of a presentation by Professor Peter Ryan of the University of Cape Town taken during the early stages of the MfM project is worth watching.
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The second was the celebration of my mother's ninetieth birthday. She managed to summons all her children and grandchildren as well as half her great-grandchildren (my four grand kids) from across the country for a great weekend in the Eastern Cape.
Spain is of course part of the Schengen Area so we needed visas for this trip. About eighteen years ago I swore that I would never apply for a Schengen visa again because the process for Africans is so difficult and expensive. Visas applications cost about $150 each (non-refundable) and requires an interview and a collection of bio-metric data in Cape Town, a round trip of almost two thousand kilometers. Apart from needing to have all our accommodation and travel booked we also needed to show that both of us earned the equivalent of thirty five thousand Euros per annum (nearly three times the average income per capita in Spain!). Clearly they are intent on keeping indigent Africans out.
Since part of the plan was to cycle to Santiago de Compostela, we joined the Society of St James in South Africa which provided us with certification that we intend to do the pilgrimage to that city and issued us with Pilgrims Passports. This (miraculously ?) removed the need to book all our accommodation and on Friday, with a sense of relief, we received out passports back giving us ninety days in the Schengen Area.
A friend of mine who applied at around the same time was less fortunate. He planned to visit his daughter in Scotland after visiting Europe and his Schengen visa application was rejected because he hadn't yet applied for and obtained a visa to visit the UK. Such are the challenges to traveling internationally now that my beloved country is a democracy. Why is it so much more difficult now than it was when we were under the boot of a racist regime ? The answer to that question potentially lies in the response we once got when explaining the difficulties to a couple from one of the Schengen Area countries : "Surely they can see from your passport photos that you are white ?".
We fly into Malaga in Andalucia and fly out from Barcelona in Catalonia. The broad plan is to loop through Granada and Cordoba to Seville where we will start the Ruta de la Plata de Santiago de Compostela. Then on to Finnisterra on the Atlantic coast before heading eastwards to Barcelona.
Despite being triple vaccinated and Spain not requiring us to present a negative COVID test for entry, South African authorities won't allow us to fly out without a negative test. So the only possible pandemic related obstacle lying in our way at the moment is the threat of COVID infection. For the next two weeks we will need to be diligent about mask wearing and praying that a new variant doesn't break out resulting in borders being closed again
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2 years ago
2 years ago
And you’re probably already aware of it, but you might include Monfrague National Park in your itinerary. A great birding site, and not far off of the Ruta de La Plata.
2 years ago
2 years ago
In 1999 Leigh and I walked across the bridge over the Zambezi River from Zimbabwe into Zambia. We got chatting to an ancient looking man on the Zambian side and he was complaining about the use of passports! He said that when he was younger, if he wanted to go to Cape Town all he had to do was to jump on the train. Now it would involve three border crossings.
2 years ago