Travels in Africa #1 - South Africa

Dear All -

As many of you know, my friend Robert and I are on a
trip in Africa. In the past half decade I've been
fortunate enough to take month-long trips to Guatemala
and Egypt. On each of those journeys I sent
journal-style emails to my friends and family. Though
many people chided me about their length, I received
many positive comments about the trips. I've always
enjoyed reading others' accounts of travels and take
pleasure in conveying the experiences I'm having. So,
bear in mind that you may receive a number of emails
from me over the next month. These promise to be
lengthy, detailed accounts of everything from the
exciting to the mundane. Store them in your inbox and
enjoy at your leisure. Thanks for reading.

This first account was typed on my blackberry after
we'd left South Africa en route to Rwanda:

"Here we are in a MacDonald Douglas 82 jet flying high
above the African continent. This is one of two
weekly South African Airlines flights between
Johannesburg, South Africa, and Kigali Riwanda (with a
stop in the capital of Burndi).

It's Friday, December 15th, and it's been really easy
to forget how close we are to the holidays. The past
weeks (months, hell, this year) have been packed full
of things that I hardly even noticed that they were
approaching, stateside. However, to be thrown across
the equator into the thick of summer is surely
justifiable means for not thinking that Christmas and
New Years are just weeks away.

We left DC on Monday, December 11th. Just leaving
became somewhat of an ordeal in and of itself.
Unbeknownst until my travel companion, Robert, logged
on to check our itneraries on Saturday, what was once
a morning flight had been rescheduled for an evening
departure from Dulles. This actually turned into a
benefit for me. I spent Friday through Sunday in
Birningham, Alabama, at my younger brother's wedding.
I wasn't particularly looking forward to returning
home Sunday night, packing and getting up 3 or 4 hours
later.

What was a bit disappointing was that this twice
weekly flight to Rwanda had changed days of operation.
When I initially looked into booking award travel
(frequent flier miles) for last year's holiday season
I quickly found out that seats were rarely available
further than six months out from the intended date of
departure. Therfore in April of '06 I painfully
committed to an itinerary. At the time, South African
Airways was a partner with Delta airlines. Delta
operated a flight between Dulles and Johannesburg that
landed at 9am. Unfortunately, the South African air
flight to Kigali departed at 8am. There was no way to
fly from DC to South Africa and then on to Rwanda
without overnighting in Johannesburg. The same was
true for the reverse trip. Though the extra day on
each end was not ideal, we'd figured a night at a
youth hostel in Johannesburg might turn out to be
interesting. Hell, if we had to fly through there
anyways, why not add it to the unofficially tallied
checklist of places I've been.

Now, though, we had already set our minds to leaving
DC on Monday and arriving in Jburg on Tuesday. Our
flight to Rwanda on Friday granted us 3 days to stay
and explore Jburg.

Too busy to actually plan anything in advance other
than our trip to see the mountain gorillas in Rwanda
or our post new year's ascent of Tanzania's Mount
Kilimanjaro, neither Rober nor I did any advance
planning for Johannesburg. We both figured that we
would head into town and see what happens. In fact,
three days would sufficiently allow us to recover from
jet lag and coherently see this major city.

The 17 hour flight itself was rather uneventful other
than the fact that prior to taking off in DC the
stewardess made an announcement about "spraying"
within the plane (presumably for some health related
aspect). Imagining an invisible stream emitting from
the air vents overhead , Robert and I quizically eyed
one another as a steward quickly walked through the
aisles of the plane with an aerosol cannister in each
hand as if he were leading a parade. The smell was
intense and similar to axe "men's spray" or a thick
dose of fabreeze. After that we settled in for our 17
hour flight, possibly the longest of my life.

Upon arrival we easily cleared imigration and customs.
The johannesburg airport was smaller than I'd
anticipated. When we'd only had one night scheduled
our plan had been to be picked up from the airport by
a youth hostel close to the airport. Now, with three
days at our disposal we decided we would head to a
hotel in the center of town and figure out our plan
from there. Knowing nothing about Johannesburg we
went to the information desk and inquired there.
Robert had purchased travel insurance (and in turn
convinced me to as well) which is supposed to cover up
to $1000 in travel costs due to schedule changes.
He'd had an easy settlement with some goods stolen
from him while in Belize, so we presume that we will
be reimbursed for our activities (hotel,
transportation, food, etc) during these three days.

The attendant at the counter recommend a part of town
called Sandton for us. We were told there shops,
restaurants and pubs within an area called Mandela
Square. Sandton was north of town, but we were told
that the city's downtown had been abandoned over the
past 10 years and there wasn't much to do or see
there.

Conveniently there was a cab driver waiting at the
information booth. This trip to Eastern Africa is
going to require a heightened sense of both awareness
and attentiveness to scams. Red flags always arise
when a cab driver happens to be waiting next to a
hotel booker - that's 3rd world travel 101. As we
exited the airport and entered a brand new Toyota
passenger van I eased into the role of passenger and
took in the sights of South Africa's largest city.

Our well dressed driver played tour guide as we
maneuvered the highways en route to our hotel. The
afternoon sky was sun filled and hazy. The landscape
was relatively flat and the housing clusters were
common of those in warmer climates of southern europe
and the Meditteranean. There were alcohol ads (Jack
Daniels, Chivas, J&B, and many others) plastering the
majority of the billboards and all of the street signs
bore Afrikaans (almost identical to Dutch to my
uneducated eye). Our driver talked a bit about the 13
native tribes to the country. We asked him about
Sandton and he explained how it was the financial
center if jburg now that most businesses had fled the
downtown area. He also told us of Soweto where Nelson
Mandela was from (as well as the Bishop Desmond Tutu -
making their small city the only place in the workd to
bear two Nobel Peace Prize winners) and Pretoria, the
government capital. He also threw in that
Johannesburg was in Guateng Province noted by GP on
the license plates of cars from here and was also
known as "Gangsta's Paradise" or "Good People."

The entryway to the Pembroke Plaza hotel was under
construction, which was an indicator of what to expect
out of the $80/night spot. It was within walking
distance of Nelson Mandela square, which we intended
to explore shortly after settling in. By this time it
was past 4pm and we joined a number of people walking
along the side of the road in the late afternoon sun.
Our tired bodies and minds walked in the direction of
two mid sized buildings looking for a shopping center.
There were no white people walking along the roads of
this high end area of town. In fact, there weren't
even really sidewalks, just the shoulder of the road.
We passed one mini-bus depot which was sheltered by
walls on three sides, almost to keep the chaotic
center of activity for the underpriviledged out of
site. It was really tough to tell what we were
looking for, so we eventually asked where the shopping
center was. Following our instructions, we entered
the lobby of a high end hotel ascended two escalators
and found ourselves smack in the middle of an upper
class shopping mall. We were a tad confused and
slightly disappointed at our prospects of spending the
next three days here. Should we have gone to the
youth hostel instead of using or expected travel
insurance to cover a hotel that was expensive because
it was within proximity to a place we had no desire to
be? Better yet, should we have acted on an suggestion
by Robert to crash at the airport hotel and figure out
what we wanted to do from there.

After great roasted vegetable sandwiches and good
coffee we found a grocery store and concocted a new
plan - we would rent a car and head to Marakele
National Park, about 250km from Johannesburg.

We attempted to get a car that evening, but after
flagging a ride from a mall security guard to Avis
only to find it closed we wallked back to our hotel to
retrieve our laptops and walked the 5 blocks back to
the mall for wireless internet research and a couple
of beers.

After changing rooms to one with a working lamp and a
power outlet for a power adaptor, we were in bed by
10pm. Though it was only 3pm back home and the daily
barrage of emails was still pouring into my
blackberry, my exhausted body fell asleep quite
easily.

Light peered past the curtain and into the room around
5am. Confused and disoriented I managed to catch
another hour of shut eye before we started our day.
Avis opened at 7am and though our destination was only
a few hours away, we wanted to make the most of our
time.

We returned to mall to eat, stock up on groceries for
our trip and to pose with the statue of Nelson Mandela
- smack dab in the center of the plaza of the shopping
center which surrounds the plaza. I have trouble
believing that the freedom he fought for in ending
apartheid was so blacks Africans would be able to
purchase the same high end items available to whites
at this mall.

Armed with written directions to the park and a couple
of less than desirable Avis rental car maps I
maneuvered the "right-side-drive" 1.6 liter,
4-cylinder, air conditioned 5 speed VW "Polo" onto the
N1 freeway towards Pretoria. The 45 minute drive
north led us to the national parks headquarters where
we were able to make reservations at the Tlopi tent
site at Marakele Park. Pretoria left no true
impressions on us other than it felt a tad more "real"
than Sandton had. Many of the buildings had barbed
wire surrounding them and mini-buses crowded the
downtown streets. The only recognizable US franchise
appeared to be KFC, but the we could easily tell that
many chain stores from South Africa were amidst
locally owned businesses. Having already loaded up on
supplies in jburg, we found our highway and headed
west towards our park.

Marakele National Park was just outside the small town
of Thabazimbi. Typical of my cognitive processes, I
tried to compare the landscape to a familiar spot
within the US. Both Robert and I have been fortunate
enough to see a fair share of the country that bears
our nationality within our passports. I have
personally been luckily to set food in all 50 states,
and would place a safe bet that I have covered 75% of
the nation's interstates at least once - many of them
on more than one occasion (I counted going north or
south on I-5 between SF and Seattle 6 times in 2002).
The approach to Thabazimbi partially reminded me of
the 5 in the cental valley of California and at other
times a greener version of New Mexico or Arizona.

At the Marakele National Park reception office we
learned that the park was actually divided into two
portions (the national park headquarters wasn't even
armed with a park map). The smaller side just past
the reception gates was said to contain antelope as
well as white rhino. The other part of the park was
said to contain a ton of other wildlife. It also
housed the camping area as well as a 19km paved ("tar
road") to the top of a mountain ("massif"). There
were a number of other roads within the park, though
about 70% had been deemed 4x4 only roads. Even with
our small sedan Robert pushed the park reception
attendant to deem just how 4x4 these roads were.

We entered the side just beyond the reception gate and
within 5 minutes saw a group of 5 antelope. We
immediately liked our prospects, and had high hopes of
seeing a white rhino before we reached the picnic
area. We trolled slowly along the one lane dirt road
scanning our perspective sides for any sign of
movement amidst the bush.

We quickly ate and made way for the other part of the
park. Without a 4x4 vehicle we wouldn't be able to
take advantage of a shortcut between the road up the
massif and our campsite; we'd have to traverse the tar
road up and back and then make our way to a separate
entrance to the road that led to the tented area. We
began our drive up the massif around 330pm, and knew
we had to be back through the guarded gate by 6pm. We
cruised along the road, scanning for acticity. Nearly
5kms in we spotted something ahead - a Zebra stood in
the middle of the road. Robert and I both got excited
and scrambled for our cameras. Soon enough a few
other Zebra emerged from one side of the road en route
to the bush on the other side. Amazing.

The scenery here was gorgeous. As we ascended the
road a magnificently lush, short grass valley lay
below us to one side. A rounded out cripping of rock
sinilar to the massif we were climbing lay on the
other side of the valley. The road turned and the
view reminded me of parts of Glacier National Park in
the US, except that lush grass and short trees took
the place of snow and pines in the US. Though no
animals were visible it was easy to imagine a scene of
elephants, lions, zebras, giraffes and countless
smaller African animal species. We continued to the
top where a couple of transmission towers stood. We
were able to park the car and go for a short walk to
the ridge. Unfortunately, hiking was prohibited in
the park. The urge to walk around, potentially
crossing from one outcropped peak to the next, was
hard to overcome. Both Robert and I have hiked in
bear country in the US. There is risk there, but we
quickly reminded one another that the risk was much
greater here. Therefore, we hopped back in the VW
Polo and headed towards the campgrounds.

We drove quickly down the red, dusty, gravel road that
splits the two portions of the park. I napped shortly
as Robert eagerly made our way towards camp. The set
of keys we'd been given at the recpeption allowed us
to unlock the sliding gate to the electric fence.
From the gate to the campsite was a short, 4km road
lined with various animal scat (poop). Our luxury
tent was one of 10 raised sites above a small lake.
The woman at the reception indicated that it was
common for animals to frequent the lake side opposite
the tents, and it was tough for us to drive slowly as
we hoped to make camp by dusk and have a chance to see
some larger animals. Halfway down the road a giraffe
appeared before our eyes! It stood in the middle of
the road about 40 feet away. Again we fumbled through
the bag scattered back seat to retrieve our cameras.
As we proceeded forward the giraffe skirted off the
side of the road and stood there watching us. First a
zebra and now a giraffe. We were on our own
self-guided African safari. There was an air of
uncertainty about the entire thing. It was tough to
know how real of an environment we were in. There was
a slight sense of a wildlife park to it all. However,
we quickly reminded each other that this was
different: we were in Africa and these animals thrived
in this environment. The only fake thing here was our
own ingrained thoughts that animals like this can only
exist in constructed habitats.

The tents themselves were much nicee than the hotel
room we stayed in Sandton. The price was similar, but
the environment was more conducive to our desires.
There was electricity, running water, a full
functioning toilet and shower and a kitchen (with a
refrigerator and freezer). The only tent-like part of
the entire place was the fact that it was madde of
canvas and has screen windows. There was even a
locking door at the front.

After a dinner of cous-cous and pre-packaged indian
food we decided to take a night-time drive. We
retraced the road back towards the entrance, but
turned down a smaller road towards an old bush camp
within the park. It was pitch black and the soft
headlights of the car hardly shone strong enough to
guide our way. Suddenly, a very large creature and
her cub darted in front of our vehicle and stopped
just across the road. Both Robert and I were confused
at what we were seeing. The creatures were large and
grey and simultaneously we recognized that it was a
black rhino and her cub. It was fascinating! There
they stood, 15 feet from the car. I was eager to take
a picture, but my amateur photography skills were
quite apparent. I couldn't get the flash to operate
and it very well may have been for the better. Robert
had read that Rhinos have been known to charge
vehicles, using their size and strength to overturn
them. That wasn't anything either of us was
interested in having occur. It's the experience
itself that is exhilarating and the capturing of it in
photo is only an added bonus for remembering it later
and sharing it with friends and family.

We returned to camp and spent a bit staring up at the
millions of stars that spotted the sky. Neither of us
know the least bit about astronomy. I was still able
to point out Orion's belt, but wished that I could
identify the southern cross, something I'd seen in
both Australia and South America. Though we were
fortunate enough to adjust to the time change pretty
well, we were still exhausted from jet-lag, the travel
and the heat. We each fell asleep quite quickly.

The following morning was nice and relaxing. The
early sun rise fit our schedule well and we drank
coffee and ate cereal while viewing the various
animals across the small lake from our deck. Check
out at the camp was 9am and we decided that though we
wouldn't be able to hike, we'd rather stay there
another night than trek into Johannesburg. We had to
return to the reception for the park to pay for
another night and combined that with a trip into town.
Thabazimbi was an interesting place. Not unlike a
small desert town in the US it felt as if it lagged
behind the major cities by a few years. The strangest
thing to me was how much all of the white people
resembled their Dutch ancestors.

The rest of our day we spent relaxing and exploring
the roads that our car was able to travel within the
park. We dubbed the stretch we turned on last night
as "Rhino Road" and frequented that as often as
possible. It never let us down and each time we went
for a ride we saw animals. By the end of the trip
we'd seen Zebras, Giraffes, Rhinos, Wildebeasts,
Warthog/Boar, Antelope/Impala, Baboons and Vervet
monkeys. Our impromptu trip to Marakele had opened up
a door we didn't expect to see until much later into
the trip, if at all."