Rocklands South Africa

Back at it in Rocklands South Africa

We arrived in Capetown South Africa after three flights from Bangkok Thailand. It was a fairly brutal 14 hours of flying but when we were descending into Cape Town we were just in time to watch the sun set over Table Mountain and see the clouds of the South Atlantic swirling in the valleys below the coastal peaks. It was one of the most beautiful vistas we have seen flying into anywhere and it really got us excited for South Africa.

the flight into Capetown

After clearing immigration and customs without issue we picked up our rental car and I got my first experience of driving on the right side of the car, with a manual transmission. That by itself was exciting enough, but then to add driving on the left side of the road was a little bit nerve wracking. For our first night in Africa we decided to splurge a little bit and stay at a cozy little bed and breakfast. It was built in the early 1900s and was absolutely perfect. We slept like rocks and woke up to an excellent breakfast. After that it was off to the climbing shop to pick up our bouldering crash pads and then north on the N7 for a three hour drive to Clanwilliam for groceries, and finally due east for about 30 minutes of Pakhuys pass to our campground at De Pakhuys. The campground had about 15 climbers there when we arrived and everyone was super nice. The scenery from camp made our mouths water for bouldering and it was pretty hard to wait until the next morning to do our first day of climbing. We checked out the Plateau area for our first day since it was just a short walk from camp. The weather was quite warm (around 70F) and we were sweating on the hike in. Our first taste of Rocklands helped us understand the description of the rock as "sandstone with quartzite". The rock was very very much like a cross between Ibex and Joes with lots of quartzite holds intermixed with sandstone holds. This makes for some very interesting climbing as both of these holds require slightly different types of power to hold onto. Quartzite has more flat crimps and the sandstone has more slopey crimps. One thing is for sure though, this place is crimpy.

consequence boulder 5c/v0

plateau stem v0

The rock has horizontal breaks every 2-3 feet or so with either crimpers or sloper rails, then a big move to the next horizontal rail. Our crimp strength will certainly have to get much better to make progress here.
Given that we hadn't really bouldered in over two months our lack of strength was not suprising and we spent the day doing mostly easy climbs that still felt quite hard. All in all we had a great day and were convinced we made a good decision to spend two months here.

That night we met a bunch of climbers at the cool little bar in the campground. One of the climbers was named Florian (Flo) and was from Germany, he had been to Rocklands the previous year and after talking with him we realized he had met a climber we knew from Austria named George whom we had met 2 years ago in Joe's Valley Utah! He then proceeded to tell us that George was arriving the next night!!! We were very excited to see our old friend again. The coincidences keep growing though, just yesterday we met some climbers from the Gunks (new york) who know our friends Ian and Nikki, who we met in Utah and Tennessee. To top it off we talked to a french climber named Tristen who we had met in Albarracin Spain. Small small climbing world indeed.

Flo invited us to go over to a nearby farm to pick olives the following day and get a home cooked meal. We were exhausted from our first day out so a rest day sounded excellent and a free meal sounded even better. We picked olives the whole next day, met some local workers, and a few donkeys. The dinner was outstanding and we made a bunch of friends quickly after picking olives all day with them. Plans were made for climbing the next day and we went back to the Plateau area with a local climber from Capetown named Clara.

picking olives

dinner at Alpha Excelsior

Donkeys

Climbing the second day went better than the first and we sent a few things that we really enjoyed such as "Girl on our Mind" 6b/v3 and a few other v3 ranged problems. We weren't totally suprised to find our strength left us quite quickly and we got trashed trying to climb many problems. The holds here tend to be very sharp and since we lost our callouses in asia we are finding our fingers quite sore. The weather forecast predicted two days of rain so we climbed as hard as we could until we couldn't hold on any more.

girl on my mind 6b v3

The following day the rain arrived as predicted so we decided to go with a small group to a nearby hotsprings. It poured the whole time we were in the springs but the water relaxed and soothed our tired bodies. We will certainly be going there again. The next day it continued to pour on us, resulting in the bridge to the campground flooding and waterfalls appearing throughout the mountains. While a second rest day was probably what we needed we started going a bit stir crazy by the end of theday. for our third day of climbing we went to one of the bigger areas called "8 day rain" and tried a bunch of problems though we sent very little. Our strength is still just not quite cutting it, but it's okay since all of the climbs we tried were outstanding and well worth coming back to.

playing chess (george and flo) with cassie reading in the background

For our fourth day we headed to higher elevations in the pakhuis pass to an area called Road Crew, though it was anything but right off the road. It was a good half hour hike, but again we were rewarded with excellent climbing. Still very much struggling on 6b-6c (v4-v5) we are working hard to get strong again. We didn't send anything super notable but had a great dayon quality rock. We walked right past Amandla 8b+ which works out to something like v14-v15. It is truly a staggering line.

sunset on the pass

We took a rest the following day and headed out to the coast which is only about 30 miles away from Clanwilliam. We explored tidepools an saw dolphins. The sun felt good on our faces and we ended the day with fish and chips for dinner before heading back to camp.

dolplins

Cassie is nursing a strange finger injury that we are hoping will go away quickly so she wont be climbing for at least another day (after 4 days off) which she is understandably bummed about. Hopefully her finger will feel better soon so she can start climbing again. I'm continuing to climb and am starting to feel stronger again
so I'm trying some harder problems and making some progress though no sends to report yet.

Hopefully we'll have more sends to report in the next post as we continue to get strong and hopefully as injuries heal quickly.

Click here to see more photos from rocklands

Ayutthya: our final Thailand post

famous Buddha head 

fallen Buddha statue

We arrived in Bangkok's train station feeling quite familiar with the place since it was our 3rd visit there. We knew our favorite pad thai vendor and felt like we knew how the system worked. We had 4 days before leaving for South Africa which was a little long for us to enjoy spending in Bangkok. Christian had mentioned Ayutthya and after doing a little research we decided to check it out.

tree temple

Ayutthya is the site of many temples. It was mostly destroyed in a Burmese invasion, but there are still some interesting relics and temples. It was only a 50 cent train ride for the 70 km trip to get there, so it wasn't a difficult decision to go. We rented bicycles from the guest house and toured around the ruins. Some cost a bit to go in, while others were free to wander though and were in a very nice park like setting. We learned from the owners of the guest house we stayed at that the town was still recovering from a huge flood last October. There had been so much rain that the reservoirs were too full and the government decided to flood the town so the dams wouldn't burst. They were quite surprised since they didn't expect the historic area to be flooded. He showed us pictures of the water being up to the second floor of their place and that it took two months to reopen. The seem to be getting plenty of tourists again now and from what we could tell, the temples weren't damaged extensively, but there was a lot of clean up still going on. The ruins were not as spectacular as Angkor Wat, but there were still some impressive buildings and statues. Our favorites were probably the Buddha head which has become overgrown in tree roots, the chedi with a tree growing out the top, and the giant reclining Buddha.

temple spires

After our day on bicycles, we did our new favorite evening activity of checking out the night market. Again we weren't disappointed. We had already eaten dinner, so were just on a dessert mission this time. We found mini waffles filled with cream and strawberries which Matt went back for seconds of and bought the vendor out of. I found strawberry and pomegranate ice cream which was amazing. This should have been plenty to eat, but we thought we needed to try something new. We'd heard of and seen the large spiky fruit called jackfruit or durian, but hadn't tried it yet, since it's a little intimidating to purchase a giant fruit with no idea how to eat it. We saw a vendor cutting one up and some people eating it, so thought we could try some as well. If you haven't heard of durian, it's the fruit that is said to smell like sweaty socks and it's not allowed on air conditioned trains or in other enclosed places due to its smell. But if you can get over that smell, it's supposed to be delicious. I could not. If you held your breath while eating and didn't think about it, I could almost not gag. It bordered between tasting good and making me gag. Matt was able to get over the gag reflex after the first few bites and enjoyed it after that. It was good to try, but not something I'm going to go out of my way to eat again.

reclining Buddha

This picture is from Tonsai, but it is such a good shot of Cassie's it would be a shame not to have it somewhere in a post.

Back in Bangkok again, we are happy to see that the stuff we left in the guesthouse here 6 weeks ago is still here and unharmed. We were happy to see our laptop again and wondered why we decided to bring some of the things we did and why we didn't bring others. Our time in southeast Asia has been great, but we are quite excited to get to South Africa and do some climbing again! We leave in only 2 days! So, our next post should be from Rocklands!!!!!

FYI: almost all the pictures above are Cassie's. She's getting to be quite a good photographer!

Tonsai and the Andaman coast

We left our island paradise of ko pha gnan for ton sai on the west coast of Thailand. Even though they are not far apart, the monsoon hits at completely different times and the west coast was forecasted to be very rainy. We decided to risk it since we'd heard great things about the limestone climbing and were planning on meeting up with our friends Christian and Julie there.

Krabi weekend market

Octopus on a stick -- we ate the squid on a stick, not the octopus

On our way to Tonsai, we stayed 1 night in Krabi, where we explored the night market. Krabi's night market was really interesting to us since the southern areas of Thailand are more Muslim than the rest and the resulting food is different from what you can get in other areas. We ate a terrific (though almost nuclearly hot) dinner at a muslim food stand in the market. We enjoyed wandering around and buying cheap (25-50 cent) desserts or, or at least, what we thought were desserts. They were mostly excellent.

Cassie on the beach

Christian, Julie, and Cassie

Although it's part of the mainland, Tonsai is only accessible by boat because of dense jungle and mountainous terrain. We left Ao Nang on a longtail boat: which is basically a 15 foot long boat with a car engine strapped on back running a long drive shaft at the end of which is a propeller. it's a very cheap boat and excels in shallow water as the engine is mounted on a swivel which allows the operator to easily adjust the depth of the propeller. you might expect that a car motor running a few feet away from your head without a muffler to be loud. it is. As the monsoon approaches the seas tend to get quite rough and the waves were quite large as we left the port. we were drenched within minutes and one of the other passengers decided to put on a life vest. we were both a little nervous. We found a place to stay and spent the first couple days doing short explorations in between drenching rainstorms. Luckily the weather outlook improved when Christian and Julie arrived. We went deep water soloing which is where you go out on a boat, swim to a cliff, climb up a ladder to the rock, then climb as high as you want before jumping or falling into the water. The height is up to you. I was good jumping from a couple meters, while others were much braver, jumping from 10 to 15 meters (about 30-45 feet). Jumping into the ocean was made even more exciting by the large jellyfish which drifted by. The next day we kayaked around the peninsula checking out some of the rock formations off the coast. As we'd been exploring tonsai and railay beaches, we had seen a sign for a viewpoint and lagoon that we saw everyone coming down from covered in mud, so we decided to check that out the following day. It was amazing! The hike was very steep and muddy with dirty ropes to get down short cliffs, but was worth it when we arrived at the beautiful lagoon surrounded by cliffs and the biggest palm leaves we've ever seen. The lagoon had a connection to the ocean, but it wasn't visible. It was quite a beautiful place to swim and explore for the day.

Matt dws

The next day we wanted to climb and were quite disappointed when it started out raining. We decided to give it a try and hoped we could find some places that stayed dry enough. It ended up being a great day. Very fun climbing! Steep limestone with big holds and fun features.

Our time on tonsai was great. A small laid back place, good cheap food (mama's chicken was where everyone ate every night. You can't beat bbq chicken, fresh fruit shakes, good curries, and friendly people. We don't know how any other restaraunts stayed in business.) It was also great for us to meet up with friends.

Christian swimming in the lagoon

a huge centipede

What happens when you get to the top? You jump, or if you're a snowboard aerialist then you do a backflip from about 40 feet up. Not us, we jumped from much lower as we are chicken.

We left Tonsai for Krabi the day after Christian and Julie did. We waited out a few more rainstorms and power outtages and did the night weekend market which was Amazing! Then we made our way back to Bangkok on another sleeper train (which was 3 hours late so instead of leaving at 11:30pm we left at 2:00am). while waiting for the train we got to watch rats running around on the other train platform. very exciting.