African Adventure - Chobe, Botswana

Tuesday, April 24th, 2012

            Today we boarded the bus at 7:00 on a day trip to travel across the border to Chobe National Park in Botswana. It was an hour's drive to the border between Zimbabwe and Botswana. At the border everyone got off the bus, stood in line to get exit stamps from Zimbabwe. There were three of the modified pickup trucks waiting for us. As on other game drives, the truck beds had three tiers of three seats, each higher than the one in front of it to provide good all around viewing wherever you were sitting. 

     Our driver Mobuta took us about two miles to the next gate, where we climbed down and stood in line again to get visa stamped and passing through yet another gate into Botswana. In between, each vehicle had to drive through a trough of disinfectant as a precaution against the transportation of hoof and mouth disease into Botswana.

           A short drive took us to a hotel and marina on the Chobe River, where we boarded the open double-decked river cruise boat "Mmadikwena" (the mother of crocodiles!). The Chobe River, one of the upper tributaries of the Zambesi River, forms the border between Botswana and Namibia. I had heard of and read about the great Namibian desert, but across the river from us was an expanse of tall flooded grassy green marsh that stretched to the western horizon. Our boat pulled out from the  eastern bank and headed up the broad river at a leisurely pace.

  Almost immediately a medium sized crocodile rand down the low river bank into the water, surfacing a moment later, revealing only its eyes and nose as it kept watch on us while we slid past. 

  As we moved slowly upstream we saw lots of small holes in the ground a few feet above the water where small birds had excavated underground nests in the bank. As we watched, a two foot long river monitor lizard wobble-walked its way along the sandy slope, poking its head into each accessible hole, checking to see if there were any eggs available for breakfast.

            We slowed to a stop close to the riverbank to watch a large group of impala, and then again to watch a group of about ten elephants that had come down to the river to drink. 

Heading out into the river toward the Namibia side, we found a lone elephant eating a breakfast of tasty march grass, and just beyond, a tangle of hippos, clustered so closely that it was difficult to differentiate between the various noses, sets of eyes, heads resting on backs, and impossible to count individuals. I estimated that there were at least fifteen, lazing and snoozing away the morning.

            There were large areas of shallow water where vast fields of pink lotus blossoms covered the water, and other expanses of lily pads where small long-legged birds with oversized feet to spread their weight strode across the floating leaves as if they were on solid ground.  More groups of impala, more groups of elephants, more hippos, both individually and in groups, and eventually we turned back to the Chobe Marina Lodge for an elegant lunch that included such exotic choices as kudu, impala, and crododile as well as more traditional fare.

            After lunch we scrambled aboard the safari trucks again, and headed onto the deeply rutted soft, sandy, dusty roads of the Chobe National Park. Consisting of more than 11,700 square kilometers of wild bush country and river marshes, it is unique in that it is unfenced. Animals roam at will, often swimming across the river to Namibia for awhile before coming back to the eastern side.

                                ELEPHANTS!!!! EVERYWHERE!!!

The park elephant population is estimated at somewhere between sixty-thousand to eighty-thousand, and during the entire three hour drive we never drove more than a very short distance seeing elephants, singly, in pairs, by tens, by the twenties, or even more! As the road paralleled the river for awhile, looking along the sandy river bank elephants were scattered in clusters so numerous that it was the pachyderm equivalent of Coney Island Beach on a hot summer day. 

      Elephants in the open, elephants in watering holes, elephants in the trees, elephants in the road, so close that they could have reached a trunk into the trunk and plucked one of us out if they had wished. Big bulls, facing the road, spreading their ears wide and shaking their heads to tell us that this ground was already taken, pairs of cows, gently flanking and nudging baby elephants away from the intrusive humans, or standing in protective phalanxes between several babies and the road. I've never seen so many elephants, nor do I expect to again in a lifetime!

     We also saw lots of giraffes. Though not nearly as numerous as the elephants, they gathered in loose groups in several places, standing still to watch us pass, or ambling with ungainly grace beside the road, or standing splay-legged to sip water or lick the salty soil.

            In the late afternoon we immigrated in reverse, doing the border-crossing shuffle to get back to the Safari Lodge in Zimbabwe just at sunset. We ate dinner on the open deck where a beautiful crescent moon paired with bright Venus, decorating the deep red western sky as it faded to black.

African Adventures - The Smoke That Thunders

Monday, April 23rd, 2012

            Victoria Falls is one of those places that simply cannot be captured, in words, on film, by video, nor even with poetry. You can only be there with all senses close to overload with the spectacle. The Zambesi River, surging toward a three hundred foot deep chasm, races over the cliff edges with such incredible violence and power that you can hear its roar some distance away. The original name for the  falls, " Mosi-oa-Tunya" translates as "The Smoke That Thunders" because there is so much spray generated that the cloud of mist ascends several hundred meters into the air above the canyon.
            A paved path winds along the opposite side of the chasm, with many viewpoints along the mile wide extent of the falling water. The cascading torrent pulls air along with it as it falls, generating a powerful wind that carries drops of water across the gorge and straight up the other side, flinging them high into the air above the opposite bank. The large drops fall as torrential rain, and the raincoats we were provided gave little protection. We had been warned, "You WILL get wet", and the promise was fulfilled!

         We traveled from the falls to a craft fair area a couple of miles away, and were met by a van that took us to a heliport where we had only a short wait to climb into a helicopter for an amazing fifteen minute ride that circled several times over the chasm and falls, the deep downstream gorge, and the wide Zambesi River that separates the countries of Zimbabwe and Zambia.

            After our aerial explorations we wandered through the craft fair, constantly bombarded with exhortations to look, to buy, to bargain. We did buy several small items to put in our suitcases, and then stopped at a courtyard cafe for some bottled lemonade and a delicious vegetable quiche.

We stopped again near the market to listen for awhile to a group that was joyfully banging away on big marimbas with varying lengths of bamboo and different sizes of hollow gourds tied underneath to resonate with the notes. We bought one of the CDs that they had on sale.

           Later we walked to the very British colonial Victoria Falls Hotel and had another lemonade overlooking the falls before catching a shuttle bus back to the Safari Lodge.

           In the late afternoon as the sun drifted toward the western horizon we sat on the deck for a long time at the lodge, looking out at the watering hole, fascinated by the variety of animals that appeared, approached cautiously, drank, and then ambled back into invisibility in the bush while others appeared to take their places.

African Adventure - the Watering Hole

Sunday, April 22nd, 2012

    This morning we flew on South African Airways and hour and a half from Johannesburg to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. The entire planeload of passengers lined up at the immigration/customs desk. A tired looking official collected forty-five dollars visa fee from each person, and wrote out a receipt by hand for each and stamped the receipt and five copies individually, before passing the entry documents and passport to a second official who carefully peeled a page-size visa and pasted in each passport and stamped that before handing it before handing it back to the owner.

     A bus took us to the Victoria Falls Safari Lodge, a thatch roofed multi-level building perched on a hill overlooking a game preserve waterhole. We had a short time to rest before boarding the bus again for a twenty minute ride to the wide Zambizi River for a sunset cruise.

            We ate a light dinner at the lodge in the open air dining room, and then climbed up three more levels to sit and watch the water hole. 

     It was dark by now, with Venus hanging low over the western horizon. Floodlights mounted near ground level at the lodge were on and pointed down the hill, their light barely illuminating the water hole two hundred yards away. In the dim light it was difficult to be certain if we were looking at vegetation or animals. Looking out, we had with some certainty identified several large rocks near the far side of the water....that is until some of them moved, and we realized only then that they were elephants! As we watched entranced, more and more elephants of all sizes materialized out of the bush until there were more than than twenty. 

           A big bull was first to wade into the water until he was half submerged. A younger male not much more than half his size walked slowly toward the same spot until the big elephant turned, and showed his annoyance with a trumpeting bellow. The young one immediately backed up, turned around and walked some distance before stopping to wait his turn. In ones and twos and threes, the others eventually came to drink, and then slowly and silently vanished back into the bush.

African Adventure - Johannesburg Dystopia

Saturday, April 21, 2012
    We rode by bus this morning from Sandton through the center of Johannesburg's downtown on the way to the Soweto Township. Johannesburg is thought of as the hub of commerce and government for South Africa, and it was at one time. Driving through the city center today is akin to touring a populated movie set of some Distopian city of the future where entropy has set in and everything is just short of anarchy. 

    Although there are busy streets and lots of people everywhere, the major corporations, the thriving businesses, the government and office workers one would expect to see in a major financial center and seat of government are missing. The streets are dirty, with paper and plastic littered everywhere. Tall office buildings and large hotels stand abandoned, the doors and windows of the first two floors filled in with carelessly laid cinder blocks or bricks. The upscale highrise apartment buildings have roll down gates, and the first floors are strung with razor wire or electric fencing. Most of the buildings have lots of broken windows at the lower levels, some with dirty shredded curtains hanging from the openings, blowing in the wind. What businesses there are consist of small shops selling electronics, overstuffed furniture, gaudy clothing, tobacco, etc.
    It looks like many downtown city centers in the United States, but several orders of magnitude worse. The banks, the corporate headquarters, the lawyers, the government offices have all moved to beautiful new facilities on the outskirts in the suburbs, leaving the old to continue its downward spiral toward decay.

     Under apartheid rule, anyone not white was uprooted and forcibly moved to the "townships", which were really a part of the city, but away from or adjacent to the areas set aside for all-white sections. The government threw up thousands of little three-room houses that had a very small central room that included a place to cook, and an even smaller bedroom on each side. No running water, no toilet facilities, no electricity. There was a single community water tap every couple of blocks, and several outhouses every few blocks to serve all the nearby houses.
    Johannesburg was the business capital of the country, and there were some jobs at all levels. People continued to migrate to the city, not only from the outlying rural areas but from surrounding countries as well, in the hope of finding work. In some places there are barracks built for guest workers from within South Africa or from nearby countries, men only, the women and children left behind.
        For many new arrivals there were no jobs, and newcomers threw up shacks of discarded packing crates, scrap wood, and sheet metal, all unbelievably crowded together. Counting the better built houses as well as the extensive shack-slums, there are almost two million people living in the townships near, but not in the city center of Johannesburg. 

    We next drove into the heart of the township of Soweto, one of the neater townships, where we visited the home of Nelson Mandela. He lived here in a typical three room township house for thirteen years before his political activities got him arrested.

    We took an afternoon tour that stopped at the Voortrekker Monument to the South African pioneers who traveled in covered wagons inland to escape the hated English. 

    We had a tour of the city of Pretoria, just a half hour drive from Johannesburg, and stopped in front of the Palace of Justice on Church Square. The tour guide hopped off the bus, asking us to wait a few moments. He was soon back, saying that he had paid a small bribe to the security guards, and that it was now OK to follow him into the building. 

      Looking straight ahead, we walked past the guards, down a short hall, and had just a moment or two to look at the court room where Nelson Mandela was convicted of sabotage and treason, and sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island, five miles off the coast of Cape Town.
    This was the last evening together for the whole group, and everyone got together for a farewell dinner at the Balalaika Hotel. the main course on the menu included kudu, which was delicious!

African Adventure - Conquering the Dragon

Friday, April 20th, 2012

          Today was another travel day. Leaving the Kruger lodge early, we drove all morning through Mpumalanga, formerly called Eastern Transvaal. We slowly gained altitude as we climbed the eastern slopes of the Drakensburg Mountains, passing through more extensive groves of eucalyptus and pine. The jagged peaks inspired the Zulu people to call then "uKhahlamba", the barrier of spears. The Afrikaans Voortrekkers called them "Drakensberge", the dragon mountains.

       Where theBlyde and Treur rivers join in a narrow canyon Blyde River has cut deeply and dramatically down through layers of different kinds of rock to form a narrow, deep canyon with colorful cliffs. We took a break to hike down to Bourke’s Luck Pot Holes, a place of African legend containing bizarre holes cut into rock by powerful river erosion. 

            God’s Window is a place farther on where the plateau ends in dramatic cliffs where the lower land is often covered with dense clouds  that make it appear that you have reached the end of the world. That spot was used to portray just such an edge of the world in the movie "The Gods Must Be Crazy".
           For our group however, the clouds were higher, and we were enveloped in thick, thick fog that limited visibility to about a hundred feet! 

          We gave up on that view and continuing west and down off the plateau we next made a stop in Pilgrim’s Rest, an old gold mining town  with many old corrugated iron houses. It was evocative of the small towns of the Mother Lode Country in California.

            We continued on through the afternoon to Sandton, a thriving, traffic-crowded city at the edge of Johannesburg, arriving after dark at the Balalaika Sandton Hotel.

African Adventure - chasing lions

Thursday, April 19th, 2012

            Our safari today included a morning game drive in Kruger National Park, riding in the same open vehicle as yesterday.  John, or guide, was determined to find all of the park's “Big Five”, including lion, elephant, buffalo and rhino. We followed the road along the river, and quickly came upon a herd of at least twenty elephants spread out along the opposite river bank. I could have sat there and watched them for an hour, but within  minutes John had heard on his walkie-talkie that a lion had been spotted a few miles away, and we were off with a spray of gravel and a cloud of dust. 

     It took no more than a few minutes to reach the spot where the lion had been spotted, and no more than a few more before there were at least ten other vehicles converging on the spot, all alerted by the radio transmissions back and forth between guides. The lioness had stopped halfway between the paved road and the dirt road we were on, a hundred yards closer to the river. She was unperturbed by the commotion, and was lying on her side in the grass, barely visible, probably taking a nap until the noisy creatures in those strange machines would get bored and move away. Which we did.

            Another meandering road brought us up through scattered brush and trees. John put on the brakes suddenly, and pointed to a tree about two hundred yards away. "Leopard!", he said. We all craned our necks, strained our eyes, focused binoculars, and eventually saw the dark irregular bulge near the trunk on a low branch might indeed be a leopard stretched out for a nap. 

            I remained only partially convinced until the leopard rose, stretched, and lazily moved a few feet to another branch. I was impressed as much by John's ability to spot such a subtle outline as I was with the leopard itself.

            We returned to the lodge for lunch, and later in the afternoon went out with John again. We saw more elephants, giraffes, a group of storks perched in some tall trees, vervet monkeys, another hippo, lots more impala, several other kinds of antelope, some cape buffalo, and after an hour of urgent walkie-talkie chatter and racing back and forth on dirt roads at high speeds managed to see for a few seconds a lioness padding along a brushy path that paralleled the road.

African Adventures - Kruger National Park

Wednesday, April 18th, 2012
    We got an early start on the bus this morning, leaving the valley where Mbabane nestles, and climbing a steep rocky range of mountains where large rounded outcroppings make it look as if they had been carried from somewhere else and accidentally dropped on the slopes. With the change of elevation came changes in the vegetation, from low scrub brush to huge cultivated groves of eucalyptus trees, to large stands of pine trees, planted in neat rows at the higher elevations. 

    The sequence of vegetation was repeated as we descended the other side, down to the Matsamo border crossing back into South Africa, and we repeated the border-crossing drill in reverse, getting our passports stamped as we exited Swaziland, taking a short walk to the South African border crossing gates, and getting stamped back into the country.

    We arrived at the Kruger National Park mid-morning, and left the bus to climb into Jeep-like safari vehicles that had three tiers of seats, each higher than the one in front of it to provide excellent all-around viewing from all vantage points.
    The entrance to the game reserve is only a short distance from the Protea Kruger Gate Lodge, and once past the gate, we traveled some distance on a paved road through rolling bush country before turning onto an unpaved, well graded road that meandered along, more or less following the path of the  Sabie River. Being a dry climate the river appears dry in many places, although there is water flowing just a few inches under the surface of the sand and gravel. In other places the water is many feet deep. Crossing a bridge, we could look down and see the nostrils, eyes, and ears of a hippopotamus. 

     We rattled along back roads for several hours, sometime smooth, sometimes washboard, and every few minutes spotted one or two or twenty impala, beautiful predominantly tan antelope 36-40 inches tall. the males had formidable spiral dark horns.

    We came upon a small herd of elephants, and paused to let them cross the road and move into some brush. One young elephant attempted to push through a dense wall of bushes, and got frightened when it was unsuccessful, letting out a startling trumpet. Momma was there quickly, and they moved out of sight together.  We saw kudu and springbok, singly and in groups. We saw impala so often and in such numbers that they almost became unnoticeable background. 

    We stopped for lunch at a place somewhere in the middle of the park, and drove many more miles on the back roads. Before returning to the lodge for dinner we had seen giraffes, elephants, zebras, rhinos, cape buffalo, wildebeast, springbok, hippo, monkeys, ostriches, baboons, a leopard, lions, and a variety of birds.

African Adventures -Swaziland

Tuesday, April 17th, 2012
    Today was a travel day. We drove north, crossing the border into the far south east corner of Swaziland at Lavumisa. A casual glance and a stamp on the passport by the South African officials, a short walk uphill to the Swazi border, another stamp on the passport, and entry was accomplished. While the necessary paperwork was completed for the bus to cross, we passed a sign saying "Siyakwemukela" Welcome to Swaziland in Swati. We had a little time to look at local crafts at a dusty roadside stand in the shade of a big acacia tree. I found a wonderfully colorful loose cotton shirt to buy.

    The Kingdom of Swaziland is the only country on the African continent that still has a king, Mswati III, who is supreme ruler. Although there is a congress, and a council of elders who listen to the advice of everyone in each village, they meet to discuss and make recommendations to the King. Having listened to all the advice he is given, the King then makes the final irrevocable decisions about what course of action to take.

    We stopped for a leisurely lunch in an open air restaurant at the Sambane Crafts Center, in the town of Malkerns, and enjoyed seeing fine examples of wood and soapstone carving, batik, weaving, an jewelry as well as the usual souvenir trinkets, and bought a few, using the Swazi currency of "Emalangeni", the value of which is fixed, by law, to the value of the South African Rand.

    From there it was a short drive to Mbabane, the capital of Swaziland, where we stayed at the Lugogo Sun Hotel. For dinner we took a short shuttle bus ride a half mile to a high-end hotel/golf-course/spa, where we ate on the terrace overlooking a large free-form swimming pool and manicured lawns.

African Adventures - Big Game & Zulu

Monday, April 16th, 2012
     The phone rang at 4:45 a.m., waking me out of a sound sleep. Yebo! (I hear you!) Thank you. the extra-early wake-up call was so that everyone would be up and ready to get on the bus by a quarter to six, and rolling toward the Hluhluwe Game Reserve, about twenty minutes drive from the hotel. The earliest morning light is the best time to see the animals as they begin their day. A family of baboons ambled along the side of the road as we approached the park.
     Just inside the gate of the reserve we boarded open Jeeps, six or seven to each vehicle, and headed out into the hilly savanna is different directions. Each guide was equipped with a walkie-talkie that they used to let each other know where they were when they spotted wild animals. In just a few minutes we came upon a group of four beautiful giraffes nibbling breakfast from the tops of acacia trees. We saw a family of wart hogs, and they reminded me so much of the character in the movie "Lion King" that it made me chuckle.
     Our driver/guide Meghan had only been employed at the reserve for about three months, so when we topped a rise and she spotted a black rhinoceros on the slope across from our hill, she was so pleased at her first black rhino spotting that she was wiggled like a happy puppy!
 
 Two Nyala bulls with long straight horns popped out of the bushes just a few yards ahead of the Jeep, walked unhurriedly across the dirt road, and disappeared again just as quickly.  

     Rounding another curve we found a group of Cape Buffalo grazing on the hillside in front of us. Their massive horns grow out from the center of their foreheads, ending on either side with sharp ends. Where the horns meet in the center, it looks like a part in thick hair, hence the name CAPE buffalo, which comes from the word root in Afrikans that means "wig". We stopped to look at them, and they stopped to look at us, and after awhile we all moved on.
     We watched several vultures surfing the breeze blowing gently up the slopes, and stopped again to watch the smooth, long-legged gait of a lone giraffe that was successfully giving the impression of moving in slow motion while actually covering a lot of ground quite quickly.
     The riders in one of the other Jeeps also saw hippos and elephants at a distance, and had to stop and wait for quite awhile until a large group of cape buffalo finally decided to move off the road that they were blocking.     Leaving the game reserve, we drove to the Damazulu Village. Built as an authentic reproduction of an old style Zulu village for a movie, today it is a Zulu analog of Colonial Williamsburg, with enactors re-creating the traditional clothing, traditions, and dancing of a hundred years ago. 

 
One knows it is not real, but interesting, nevertheless. Inside the dome shaped large thatch-roofed community house they sang and danced, and passed around a round ceramic pot of Zulu beer, made primarily from fermented corn and grain. Many of the group simply passed the vessel, but they missed a good experience; it was delicious, slightly sweet, somewhat similar to the seasonal wheat beer found at home. Following the performance we had a delicious lunch at the village before heading back to the hotel.

On to ShluSHLOOay!

Saturday, April 14th, 2012
...was not overflowing with adventure. Jane and I walked from the President Hotel about a mile to the angular intersection of Regency Street and Kloof Road to the Sea Point Medical Center for a followup visit to Doctor Sacks. He noted that I was breathing much more easily, and instructed me to use the nebulizer this evening and again on Sunday morning before dropping it off at the hotel desk where he could pick it up.
     We took a taxi back to the hotel, and left again soon for a walk along the shoreline. We had planned to take a taxi to the base of Table Mountain, since we had already paid for tickets to ride the cable car to the top on the Friday excursion we had missed. This morning when we got up there was a low hanging layer of thick gray clouds hiding the Lion's Head and Table Mountain, so there really would not have been much satisfaction on riding a cable car into the clouds.
     We walked for awhile along the waterfront, watching the waves roll in, lifting and moving the beds of kelp near the shoreline. At times the bulbous kelp floats lifting and surging under the swells looked like seal heads riding the surf.
     We turned back after a short while. This time it was Jane who was not feeling well. The dizziness and nausea were not terribly alarming, but we decided to spend the afternoon resting. We both felt well enough by 5:30 to join Linda and Ruth. The four of us examined our South African coins to count out the 8 Rand shuttle bus fare several miles to the downtown waterfront where we found a huge shopping mall. We ate dinner at the seafood restaurant that had been recommended to us, and boarding the shuttle bus again rode back to the hotel.
     It was early to bed for an early wake-up call at 5:15

Sunday, April 15th, 2012
     Our bags were loaded and everyone was aboard the bus by 6:30, and off we went to the airport. The flight from Capetown to Durban was just a little under two hours, and from the window of the plane you could see the sharp-edged ridges and mountains that characterize this part of the country. The King Shaka International Airport is located just outside the port city of Durban on the Kwazulu Natal North Coast, and as soon as we had collected the checked bags we boarded another bus and headed north east.
     We all piled out of the bus at the shore of the Indian Ocean to enjoy a brief half hour on the gold colored sand where big breakers crashed and slid up the steeply sloping beach.
     During the long bus ride to Zululand we passed through enormous fields of sugar cane and pineapple, but the most interesting sight was the agricultural cultivation of eucalyptus trees in vast tracts. Planted deliberately close to each other in precise rows, and growing as much as forty feet tall, each tree trunk appeared to be not more than four or five inches in diameter as the crown stretched up, competing with its neighbors for light. Our guide told us that when ready, they would be clear-cut, and the wood used primarily for wood-pulp products. The long, thin pieces could also be made into strong, handsome, construction beams if they were laminated to overcome the non-laminated tendency to warp.
     In the later afternoon we arrived at a hotel just outside the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Reserve. (the HL combination of letters in Zulu is pronounced like SH which makes the first part of that name pronounced shloo-SHLOO-way) The game preserve incorporates the traditional Zulu royal hunting grounds. The combination of setting this land aside from human habitation and providing security to reduce the incidence of poaching enabled the white rhinoceros to retreat from the edge of extinction. Even with security patrols, however, poaching is still a major problem. We were told that the preserve had lost 117 rhinos to poachers over a recent three month period!

African Adventures Friday the 13th

     Although not gone completely, the bronchitis was so much improved that I got a pretty sound night's sleep last night, really the first one in a whole week, and woke up feeling refreshed.
     It has been a busy day! Leaving the hotel by bus, we got an early start, driving along the coastline. In places the narrow road wound along the excavated shelf of a cliff, rock overhead, and an 18 inch stone wall separating the edge of the road from drops of several hundred feet. As we entered the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve we saw a troop of baboons meandering along the side of the road. We stopped at the Cape of Good Hope, and I climbed partway up the promontory to get a good view. If there had been a longer stop I would have taken the time to climb all the way up. Many people think of Cape of Good Hope as the tip of the African continent. Actually there is another small peninsula not too far east that holds that distinction.
     At another stop on the peninsula, there was time for many of the people in the tour group to hike up to the lighthouse that overlooks False Bay. During much of the year the wind blows over the mountain ridge here, flowing down the other side and across the Capetown Bay. Sailing ships could anchor in the bay safely. Even if there were strong storm winds from this direction that made the ships drag anchor, they would be blown toward deeper water.  During the rest of the year however, the wind shifts 180 degrees, and ships that dragged anchor during these conditions would have been in grave danger of being smashed on the rocky shoreline. False Bay on the opposite side of the peninsula became the preferred anchorage at those times.
     We ate lunch at a famous seafood restaurant, and afterward followed the rugged coastline along False Bay to stop at Simon's Town, where we took a short walk to view the Penguin colony. The South African penguins stand about eighteen to twenty inches tall, and scratch out nests in the sand in the open of under bushes. There were quite a few penguins tending nests, sitting on eggs or on newly hatched babies. This penguin colony was started years ago with only two couples; today the community is thriving, and its population has grown to over two thousand.
     Our final stop of the day was at the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, where our knowledgeable guide told us about the plant adaptations to this very dry ecosystem behind Table Mountain.

  






   About 6:15 p.m. I jogged down to the shoreline from the hotel to watch the sunset in the ocean. Instead of sinking below the ocean horizon though, it disappeared behind the decks of a departing cruise ship, while I lingered to take some pictures of the brilliantly lit orange clouds and the glowing pink waves rolling in to the shore.
     A bit later four of us walked from the hotel for just a few blocks down Regency Street to eat dinner outside at the "Casa Nostra" restaurant.

African Adventures - Doctors still make house calls!

     At least in South Africa they do. We had gotten a recommendation from our local tour director that there was a Doctor Sacks who often did consultations for tour group members who needed medical attention, so I gave him a call right after breakfast. His answering service indicated that he was in a meeting, but that he would call our room within a half hour. In his answering call he indicated that rather than having us come to his office, he would come to our room at 10:00.
     There was a knock on our door right on time, and there was Doctor Sacks in dark suit, coat and tie, carrying a doctor's little black bag. After taking note of my current medications, listening to my account of the progress of my distress, and the usual temperature, blood pressure, and pulse-rate readings and various thumpings, the doctor diagnosed a strong case of bronchitis. He gave me a shot of Prednisone to reduce inflammation, a box of Moxifloacin broad spectrum antibiotic pills, a nasal spray bottle of oxymetazoline, a tube filled with effervescing tablets containing N-acetylcystein, an expectorant to break up the thick lung congestion.    To top it off, he noticed while taking my pulse the presence of an irregular heartbeat, just a very short few-beat-long runs of atrial tachycardia. That concerned him, and he asked me to come to his office that afternoon at 12:30 so that he could do an electrocardiogram.
     The result of that test showed no abnormalities in my heart beat, but he suggested that after I get back to Virginia that I should ask my doctor for an EKG monitoring halter to provide a continuous record of heart rate for a 24 hour period, making it possible to pick up any very brief transient tachycardia runs. I assured him that I would, although it is my personal opinion that the violent bouts of extreme coughing may have been the cause of the AT.
     Before leaving his office he gave me a box containing a small electric compressor and the tubes and mask necessary for operating this nebulizer, as well as a liquid prescription containing bromhexine hydro chloride and a broad spectrum antibiotic, telling me that I should use the nebulizer three times a day. I was to leave it at the front desk of the hotel on checking out on Sunday morning, and he would pick it up from there himself!
     An afternoon cultural tour took us to the townships where more than 1.7 million people are living in shacks built of scraps of lumber and corrugated tin, with no running water or toilet facilities. The government has provided rows of public toilets scattered along narrow unpaved lanes, as well as public water taps every so often, where residents of these shanty towns must bring their own containers to fill with water to take back to their homes. At the Kayalitsha Township we stopped at the Philani Employment Project, which started out as a means of providing hand work employment in a township where the unemployment rate is at least 50%. It has evolved over the years into a wide variety of social services that include a school, health services, and counseling.
     All over the country since the end of apartheid there are small houses being built with government subsidy, with the ultimate goal of replacing all of the shanty towns with substantial, livable small houses that have running water, toilet facilities, and electricity.
     Our welcoming dinner to South Africa that evening was a smorgasbord with a delightful variety of dishes that included some delectable smoked springbok!

Adventures in Africa - NYC to Capetown

Tuesday, April 10th, 2012: Our Trip to Capetown begins today.

There's not much to write that hasn't been said about an airline trip that hasn't been told before. Up early to eat breakfast, bags loaded on the shuttle, arriving at the airport three hours before departure, long lines at check in and going through security, shoehorning yourself into seats that you wish were just a little roomier. The flight time between JFK and touching down wheels on the ground in Johannesburg was almost 15 hours.

Our flight took us southeast, hurtling through the dark sky feet first, five and a half miles above the vast invisible black waters of the Atlantic Ocean at 540 miles per hour. The temperature just a few inches away on the other side of that thin aluminum skin and frangible layers of plastic hovers somewhere around 80 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

One could focus on the amazing qualities of that piece of technology, but instead we take it for granted, concentrating instead on the amazing technology that places a 6" X 7" video screen on the back of each seat, and an armrest pop-out controller that may be used to select from at least 20 movies, six or seven video games, 8 channels of music, a GPS map showing distance traveled, airspeed, temperatures, distance and time to destination, and includes a video link to a camera mounted facing forward at the top of the aircraft tail.

Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

There is really no way to achieve a good night's sleep while seated in a plane; sporadic dozing is the best I could hope for. Eventually all the cabin lights came on in time for flight attendants to serve the plastic breakfast trays, and we began our descent to the African Continent.

Reclaim your bags, wait patiently through the long lines at immigration and customs, find the new departure gate, go through security again, and then after a wait of another hour, board the second plane for the two hour flight to Cape Town.

One more bag reclamation and a half hour bus ride later we finally checked in at the President Hotel in the Sea Point neighborhood, around on the west side of Signal Hill from the main part of town.  

Our room on the sixth floor faces away from the Atlantic Ocean offering a magnificent view of upscale houses stacked and crowded in tiers rising partway up the steep slopes of "The Lion's Head", a rocky promontory that was evidently the plug sealing the throat of some ancient volcano.

After a two hour crash-nap, we were joined in the late afternoon by Linda and Ruth, and we walked the few blocks to the main business street, stopping at an ATM to change U.S dollars to South African Rands.

We found a nice little restaurant where we could sit on the second story balcony and enjoy a Greek dinner and drinks as the Sun disappeared behind waterside highrise buildings.

AMTRAK to New York City

Riding the AMTRAK between Richmond and New York City, is pleasant. Although not as fast as the high-speed trains of Europe, between cities there is a significant sense of speed as trees blur past the windows. The scrolling view out the window evolves. The discarded plastic bottles and bags, broken bits of glass, the remains of rusty chain link fences and dusty windows overlooking stunted trees and patches of weeds gradually give way to low rolling hills of open forest, ponds, lakes, and swampland predominate, punctuated with occasional farm fields.

We stopped in Fredericksburg long enough to let a few people off and on. Another intermediate stop, and then on to Washington, D.C. where there was a half hour pause, perhaps for the people who are used to things taking longer! I took a short nap.

As we approached Newark, NJ we noticed hundreds of solar electric panels attached singly to every utility pole for several miles. They also appeared in twos and threes, and in large clusters on the roofs of residences, even on individually built platforms. There are so many that I think that maybe individual owners as well as the municipal government has made arrangements to funnel their excess energy back into the power grid for profit.

Permanently back in urban surroundings, the train plunged into darkness as it sped beneath the river, occasionally resurfacing for light and air as it dodged between long blocks of brick tenements and diving a final time underground, slowing to ease past thick black support beams and glowing blue signal lights, stopping with a gentle lurch and a sigh in the depths of Penn Station.

Retrieving our bags from the racks over the seats, and stepping down onto the crowded platform felt like being transported in an instant to the tunnels of some just-stirred ant hill. People, wall-to-wall people, scurried ant-like toward unknown destinations with unidentified luggage, the primary difference being that their jaws were not as large and the packages clicked along obediently behind them instead of being carried in their teeth.

There are soldier-ant analogs too. Figures in camouflage uniforms, M16 automatic rifles held, butt-high at the ready, stood rooted at passage intersections, eyes sliding back and forth across the ranks of the workers flowing past, and other security guards in dark uniforms patrolled in pairs. The surveillance was welcome; after all, it's not as if New York had never been in danger from terrorists!

Climbing up a level and negotiating another crowded passage, we found a connecting tunnel to the Long Island Railroad, and boarded the commuter train that would bring us the Jamaica Station. That's still New York, folks; they have not yet connected to the Caribbean island. Buying yet another set of tickets, we hopped on the AirTrain that brought us at last to JFK Airport. The final leg was from the airport via Shuttle Bus to our motel for the evening, arriving at about 2:30.

Jane, Linda, and I squeezed into a tiny room that seemed more congruent with ocean-liner cabins than other motel accommodations I've encountered. We only stayed long enough to freshen up, and then it was back toward Manhattan. This time it was the AirTrain to Howard Beach and a ride on the subway to a different underground station in the East Village. It was with a feeling of some relief that we climbed the crowded stairs to the street at the corner of 14 Street East and Avenue A.

It was 4:30 by now, and we still hadn't found time for lunch, so we stopped at a corner delicatessen that is open 24 hours a day all year and sampled some of that famous New York good sidewalk food.

After eating, a leisurely six block stroll brought us to the corner of 11th Street East and Avenue C, where we found Christoper serving table to the only other people in the Matilda Restaurant. He found himself with enough time between duties to greet us, and we chatted for a few minutes before he had to get back to work. We continued east on 11th for several blocks, crossed a pedestrian bridge over busy six lane Franklin D. Roosevelt highway, and entered an open park along the side of the East River. 

It was a good spot to sit on a bench and enjoy watching the many high speed ferry boats zipping along and around each other before heading back to Matilda for a glass of wine before dinner.

Rachael soon breezed in to join us, and we chatted through a delicious dinner that was dubbed "a fusion between Tuscan and Mexican" by its owners, one of whom is from Mexico and the other from Tuscany. The restaurant is named for their daughter Matilda.

After dinner and good-byes we still had almost two hours of travel on a combination of subway, surface, and elevated trains, plus two different buses to get back to the motel, where we were soon sound asleep after a very long day.