The overdue travel post

 Oh hey it's me.

It's been a while, partly because I've been traveling and partly because settling into Gqeberha has been a bit more of a process than other places.  There are a few possible reasons for this, but they all pretty much boil down to me not wanting to make two or three shopping trips in a single day, and how inadequate one trip is for actually setting up a new home space.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

As with some other trips, I took a handful of pictures that have no specific context, so I'm going to link the whole album.  The pictures with some commentary will have it through this post, and the rest will just be free to leaf through or not, as you will.

On Wednesday, 20 August, I boarded a bus out of Batumi heading for Tbilisi.  Near the bus station in Batumi, they were building some new land in the Black Sea for a big luxury hotel.  I'm not sure what part of the process this is, but it amused me.
The cost of a flight from Batumi to Tbilisi was low, but the cost of a bus and hotel was lower.  So that made the decision pretty easy.  I'm glad I did, too - the scenery was pretty gorgeous.  I didn't realize how mountainous Georgia really is, nor did I expect to be going through as many tunnels as there were on the highway between the two cities.  I also didn't expect cows on the highway to be a regular thing.  I took relatively few pictures on the bus, because as you can see, the windows were pretty bad.

The hotel where I stayed had some pretty stunning views on the rooftop terrace where the included breakfast was served.  Speaks more to just how mountainous the region is.

The next morning, after seeing in the Tbilisi airport one of my top three favorite Barry's (alongside Bonds and Manilow), I boarded a plane to Hoda Airport in Qatar.  Qatar Airways, like many airlines outside the US, sort of puts our airlines to shame with the service.  This was a standard flight, 3-4 hours, but it was still a full meal service.  I also didn't expect it to be foggy in Qatar.

I assume that Qatar is much like a lot of the Middle East, especially the Arabian Peninsula, in that it sort of has more money than it knows what to do with so it approves rather large, overdesigned projects intended to flaunt that wealth and draw in more tourism and such.  The airport certainly fits that description with this large central faux forest area.  Beautiful and pleasant to walk through as a change from the standard sterile airports you see everywhere else, but feels out of place somehow. 
The airport also has these self-promo videos playing throughout the terminal, celebrating, I think, the 20th or 25th anniversary of the airport, or maybe celebrating making "Best Airport 2025" or something.  I wasn't entirely clear on it.  But when I say "throughout the terminal," I mean everywhere.  The red circles indicate three screens playing these videos that could be seen from one place. 

I spent about 6 hours in this airport before my flight to Cape Town, which was nearly 10 hours.  I spent another 4-6 hours laid over in Cape Town, which was also more mountainous than I expected, before my little flight to Gqeberha.  The airport had a display case of animal products that were confiscated, which I found interesting...and hard to take pictures of due to the glare.  Wasn't just me, either; as I was standing nearby, I watched four or five more people come up and struggle with it.
I got in to Gqeberha fairly late evening, maybe 7pm, but being that it's coming out of winter down here, it was getting dark already.
A note about Gqeberha: the name is actually from Xhosa, which is one of the 'click languages' of Africa.  Which means that the pronunciation is actually impossible to write out in a way that is clear to readers unfamiliar with the language and how it's written.  So just be aware that whenever you see it here, it probably doesn't sound like you think it does.  You can look up pronunciation videos if you're curious. 

 My stay here is an adorable little tiny home-esque place, what I believe is often called a "mother-in-law suite" because it's a fully contained, separate home on the property of another house.  I later learned this is one of two stays on the same property, along with the home itself.  This is the first time in my nomad travels that I've stayed in an AirBnB where the host lives on the same property.  I imagine it's pretty rare, of course, since most places I look for are fully-contained apartments so I'm not sharing a kitchen or bathroom with anyone.  These hosts also set themselves apart immediately by being the most welcoming, personable, and supportive people I think I've met.  I've known hotel staff to make less effort than these lovely folks.  They helped me get my luggage in, asked if I needed anything, took me around to multiple stores to find a new chair, and more that I can't think of right now.  Spoiling me rotten, quite frankly.

My explorations of Gqeberha have been minimal so far, mostly limited to shopping trips and very very nearby things.  But the little things still intrigue me, like how some familiar companies make different products here, or how some products exist here that I've never seen.

Finally being in an English-dominated area, though, has also lead me to seek out D&D again, and I've found a few people with whom I can play.  It'll be interesting to see if there are any cultural differences in how people perceive the game, how they run it, and so on.  Either way, I'm looking forward to it as one of the things I miss most from the US. 

 South Africa does, however, have these bastards.  These are the Hadada Ibis, and they're really annoying.  They have a tendency to fly over the house at 6am making their ridiculous, ear-splitting scream.  It's not just 6am, of course - they can be heard throughout the day, alongside some very persistent doves.  I think I heard an owl late last night as well.  One of my friends once commented that for those who have an ear to it, one of the culture shock elements of traveling can be how the birdcalls just...don't sound quite right from one place to another due to different species and such.  This is the first time I've noticed it, and it's mostly because these ibises are so obnoxious.

In closing for this post: an amusing sign inside an eatery.