Africa

Travel Quiz

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Friday, December 31, 2010

One of the marks of travel competence, in my opinion, is being able to figure out how to have fun, even when circumstances change and the setting is unlikely.  We had a small test of that ability yesterday, and we passed.

To simplify our journey into the Saloum Delta, we had decided to leave Popenguine Wednesday morning, travel to Kaolack, and spend the night there. We knew Laura and Albie expected to pass through Kaolack around 3 p.m. Thursday, and arriving the night before would relieve us of any stress about missing that connection. 

The only problem was this meant we would have to spend most of the day in Kaolack, a great crossroads of Senegal but by all accounts a singularly lackluster town. (The French proprietress of the Balafon, our hotel in Popenguine, had wrinkled her nose when asked how long it would take to travel there. She never went, she said, because why would anyone want to?)

You might not travel to Kaolack to stay at Le Relais.  But apart from the unpleasant smell that permeated the town upon our arrival, the hotel seemed to us an excellent way station.  Well-tended gardens filled much of the grounds, and the pool was large and welcoming, if a bit murky. Our room, which cost about $65 a night boasted air conditioning, a TV, and hot water, and a shower that worked well.  Although the power went out almost immediately after our arrival, the sound of a generator kicked in around dusk, and we ate excellent fish and surfed the internet on our laptops in the huge, well-lighted dining room. 

We’d read in the Rough Guide that Kaolack’s two principal “sights” were its covered central market (“one of the largest in all of West Africa,”) and its mosque.  So the next morning we asked the friendly receptionist if he could help us secure a taxi to drive us to them and wait while we visited both.  He called a young man named Moussa who arrived in a clean, well-maintained Toyota Echo and said he’d serve as our chauffeur for 10,000 CFA (roughly $21). We bargained this price down to half, then set off. 

Although we’d told Moussa he didn’t have to act as a guide, when we arrived at the central market, he seemed eager to accompany us, and as it turned out, we were happy to let him lead us the dark, crowded, fetid labyrinth. On Moussa’s heels, we both felt relaxed scanning the tiny stalls filled with fabulous fabrics, flip-flips, recycled glass bottles, live poultry, spices, grains, fruit, jewelry, and a thousand other goods. Some of the vendors assailed us, but far less aggressively than the touts in Egypt.

We did make two purchases — several oranges, tangerines, and bananas (for just under $3), and 3 small but charming necklaces.  Asked a ridiculous 10,000 for the latter we refused, but when I got the price down to 3500, I accepted. High drama erupted, however, when I started to pay: violent shouting between Moussa and the seller, culminating in Moussa snatching the money and signaling us to stomp off behind him. A bit further on, he found identical necklaces being sold by some ladies — for which I paid 1500. (Apparently the injustice of the first price was too intolerable for him to bear.) 

Our visit to the mosque played out differently. Moussa quickly found two guides to lead us through it — one tall and haughty and French-speaking and the other with an ebullient command of English. I was stunned by the beauty of the interior — as vast, I think, as the great mosques in central Cairo, and ornamented with glowing stained glass, huge ornate chandeliers, intricate Moroccan woodwork, and acres of pristine Persian-style carpeting. We left our shoes at the door and I wore Steve’s safari hat, but that’s where the formality ended. They seemed proud to be showing off the place, and they insisted we photograph one detail after another. Here are two:

African public transportation

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Wednesday, December 29

According to my nose, the smell surrounding the Relais de Kaolack  (where we’re staying tonight) is the first unpleasant one of this trip.  Mostly, I detect l’air de burning garbage (a smell I know well from Latin America), but there’s a putrid subnote mixed in with it. That may come from the giant marsh that surrounds this area.  It’s not that bad; doesn’t bother me that much. Rather, it surprises me that we didn’t encounter any other revolting smells on our trip from Popenguine to here.

On that trip, we traveled for the first time like ordinary Africans. (In South Africa it was all white-guy transport: planes, rental cars, backpacker buses, the Bulungula shuttle.) Today was one of the only times on this trip when, despite having planned most details pretty extensively, I had no clear idea how we’d get from Point A (Popenguine) to Point B (Kaolack).

We started asking around the day before yesterday about the best way to do that. Got some conflicting advice but finally concluded we had to call a taxi to get out of Popenguine (which, though a tourist magnet, is quite small). Sineta, the B&B operator in Dakar, had given me the number for a good driver in Popenguine, and when I called it this morning, he said he could pick us up in 15 minutes.  

My rusty French has proven more serviceable than I expected; we agreed to pay about $15 for the 45-minute ride to the gare routiere in Mbour, where we would be able to catch a bush taxi. The driver, Elhadji, was a friendly fellow who pointed out sights (in French) all the way and promised to help us find a good “sept-place” to Kaolack.

We appreciated that, as the Mbour gare routiere was the first of its type we’d experienced in West Africa. Some people call these places “taxi parks” but that name might give you the wrong idea: a mental image of something orderly. Mbour isn’t a large town, but its gare routiere felt enormous to me: a sort of outdoor grand central station of chaos. Dozens upon dozens of taxis, station wagons, huge vans — each more crazily decrepit than the next — filled the concourse, and teaming streams of people flowed among them. Most cheerful and eye-catching were the women, dressed in their gorgeous Senegalese dresses and head-gear and bearing (in many cases) baskets or trays filled with oranges, eggs, candies, French rolls, and other wares on their heads. But there was a head-spinning assortment of other sights: touts beseeching us to ride in their vehicles, boys bearing frosty quart bottles of Kirene-brand water, a pack of very young kids who surrounded us, called us toubabs (a somewhat pejorative term for white folks), and asked us to give them money. When we ignored them, they disappeared, and Elhadji had returned with advice.

He pointed to a cluster of station wagons and said the two-hour ride to Kaolack in one of them would cost us and our bags 4500 CFA (roughly $9.75).  Another cheaper ($4.30) option seemed to be in a larger vehicle, but Elhadji looked nervous even mentioning this, so we chose the “sept-place” (seven-place, in French). 

The one we wound up riding in probably wasn’t any filthier or more macerated than its peers, but the sensory overload prevented us from doing much comparing. An old Peugeot station wagon, it was in the worst shape of any vehicle in Steve’s experience (which is vaster than mine when it comes to beaters.) Neither the speedometer, nor the tachometer, nor the starter worked, so when we finally started moving, it was a human touch (or rather, push) that got us going.  The front window was spiderwebbed with cracks (though intact.) From the time we threw our bags into the back to the time we started, 30 minutes passed. During that time, as the driver scouted five other passengers (to utilize every cubic centimeter of flesh-hauling capacity), a steady parade of vendors came by, thrusting into the windows rings, oranges, candy bars, cell phone cards, little plastic bags of allegedly sterilized water, and other offerings. “You know,” I whispered to Steve, “This is the sort of place which if it doesn’t scare the shit out of you is really quite fascinating.” He agreed.

View from the 3rd row

Certainly we would have found it too daunting even a few years ago, but for whatever reason, we both felt at ease and consequently hugely enjoyed most of the ride — even though we had chosen to sit in the rear-most seat. This we shared with a silent young man so tall he could only accommodate his knees by opening them at a 45-degree angle. This meant his right thigh, side, and arm were fused to mine in the manner of a Siamese twin. The row in front of us held a middle-aged guy who incredibly was wearing a leather jacket, a somnolent younger man whose lolling head kept falling back over the seat top onto my knees, and a broad-shouldered man holding the best-behaved 18-month-old (a tiny girl, dressed with care and attention) I’ve ever observed.  Another lucky passenger got the shotgun seat. 

Despite the dry heat and close quarters, the only thing I smelled was the diesel fumes. The road was excellent for the first hour, and we made good time. Our driver passed larger vehicles with care and good judgment. 

But after the town of Fatick, as we entered a lowland area that frequently floods, all the drivers on the road began zooming from side to side like slalom skiers to avoid the enormous potholes. Since this requires using every part of the roadway, the ride at that point began to feel like a huge, high-speed chicken game. Although we only saw mechanical breakdowns and flat tires, I’m sure worse things happen.

Passenger holding his well-behaved and fashionably dressed daughter.

For that reason,  and because future rides mostly will be longer than 2 hours, and because the novelty is gone, our future rides will probably be more expensive.  And the one tomorrow is certain to be more sociable. After Albie and Laura arrive from Kolda, the four of us will share a taxi to Toubacouta, where a boat will take us to an island in the delta. From there a horse-drawn cart will take us to the place on the delta (Keur Bamboung) that will be our lodging for the next three nights. I think it’s probable we won’t have an Internet connection there, so there may be a communication blackout during that period.

A warning about the Senegalese safari experience…

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If you’re thinking of trying it, keep your expectations modest! Steve and I paid $178 for a “package” organized by our B&B that included sharing the 70-minute taxi ride to Bandia National Park, the park entrance fee, rental of the safari truck (which we shared with the above-mentioned Ardyce and her mom, an Italian guy, three African-American ladies who’d come to Dakar for the black African arts festival, the B&B owner’s 16-year-old son, and a guide), plus the guide’s services.

A converted pickup hauls tourists around Bandia National Park.

In French, the guide dutifully recited the gestational period and age of every species we saw — but not much more.  The experience reminded me a lot of going to Orange County’s Lion Country Safari, back in the days when it was operating.  Only briefer and more expensive. 

Who doesn't like giraffes?

On the other hand, it’s churlish to complain about a two-hour outing with the breeze blowing through the safari truck and sightings of impala and sable antelope, savannah buffalo, eland, zebra, ostrich, giraffe, monkeys. (No predators; they’re long gone.) The animals posed and munched among dense acacia and thorn trees, and — thrilling to me — forests of baobabs.  The best thing our guide did was to spot a fallen baobab fruit (not so easy to find!  Monkeys love them so much that the Senegalese call them the “monkey’s bread.”  He let us photograph the long oblong fruit, then smashed it against the side of the truck to reveal a fractured white interior. He passed it around to let us extract fragments, which looked like pieces of white packing material. Inside each piece was a huge seed (the malevolent invaders that Le Petit Prince had to ceaselessly prevent rooting in his beloved planet!)  The big surprise was the taste of the white stuff around the seed — refreshingly citrusy.

Now we’re happily settled into the Relais in Kaolack — by all reports a dreary town despite being the crossroads of Senegal. But our trip here was a personal triumph, and Laura and Alberto will meet us here tomorrow afternoon so we can continue on into the delta paradise where we’ll ring in the New Year.

Moving to Senegal

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Tuesday, December 28
One of the first characters we met here yesterday morning was a young woman named Ardyce (I may be misspelling her name). She was a member of the group of 8 who made the trip yesterday morning from Dakar to Bandia National Park (a 70-minute ride from the capital, and billed as a cheap and easy way to sample an African safari in Senegal.) Steve and I sat with her in the back of our taxi: Ardyce’s mom, visiting from Florida, got the front seat. I think Ardyce was about 24, graduated with a masters in journalism last summer and now on a Rotary scholarship to work and study in Senegal. She wants to be a foreign correspondent and told me Dakar wasn’t a bad place to try to launch such a career. She acknowledged that the city had many awful, trying aspects; in her first weeks, she had called home every day weeping and ready to return to the US.  But now, after just 4 months of living in it, she had grown so attached to the place that it was painful to think of leaving.  The only complication was that she had a boyfriend back in the US, and she wasn’t sure how he’d feel about settling down in Africa. 

Horse cart on the beach at Popenguine, Senegal

Ironically, Steve got into a conversation today with a young African that touched upon the same theme.  After visiting the park yesterday, we moved on to Popenguine, the nearby beach town on Senegal’s “Little Coast.” We’re happily installed at the Balafon lodge ($32 a night), and after a long breakfast this morning at the wifi cafe on the beach below our hotel, Steve took off alone to stroll around the tiny village.  His young conversational partner (who spoke French and bits of English) asked Steve why he didn’t move here. Steve later recounted that he had answered that Popenguine was just like his home back in the US.  I snorted that that was ludicrous.  I knew Steve was thinking that this place is hot and sunny and lush with many of the same plants that have been transplanted to San Diego (rampant bougainvillea!).  But the streets are also dirt, and boys deliver bottles of water driving horse drawn carts, and the girls and women walk around with baskets on their heads. The power went out about 9 last night, so when we got back to our room after dinner (fish caught with nets from the beach, earlier that afternoon), we had to shower by kerosene lantern.  The water was unheated.

It struck me that just those sorts of differences, added together, constitute culture shock. On your first trip to Paris, the fact that everyone speaks French and the elevators are tiny might make you experience it. But the more you travel and the greater the part of the world you see, the areas of culture shock shrink. I’ve spent so much time in Europe over the years, I imagine I’d feel only a shadow of it were I to visit Hungary (even though I’ve never been there.)

Still, even though Steve and I were hiking on the Wild Coast of South Africa only 10 months ago, I’m once again experiencing the shock of being in Africa. It’s not unpleasant. On the contrary, for me, one of the greatest pleasures of travel is being jolted by sights and sounds and smells that are shockingly new to me — they sharpen my senses and bring me most fully into the present moment.

They burn experiences into my memory such as our arrival at Dakar Airport. After touching down about 9:30, we moved hassle-free through customs and immediately found our luggage wheeling around on the carousel.  Then we had to go through a bizarre drill of hoisting it onto a conveyor belt. Our suitcases traveled through a large black box and emerged past a fat guy in a security uniform who was paying no attention at all to any of it or us.  But apparently someone in Senegal felt this charade was necessary before tourist could be allowed into the arrivals hall. 

I couldn’t figure out how to get my I-phone to either text OR phone our B&B, so I finally mustered the courage to approach an enormous policeman who looked like he could have been Idi Amin’s bodyguard and ask if I could borrow his cell phone. Looking disgusted, he dialed for me but at almost the same moment, our pre-arranged driver materialized.  

Bada turned out to be warm, welcoming fellow, and after helping us change money and buy a SIM card, he led us to a scarily dark and run-down parking lot and ushered us into a cab.  Then he climbed on his motorscooter and drove off. Our taxi driver followed his single taillight through the crumbling streets of major thoroughfares, then turned into narrower creepier streets. It was pitch-black when we arrived at the B&B, unloaded our suitcases from the trunk, and hefted them through the fine dust of the street and into the pitch-black building. 

It turned out that Dakar was also experiencing yet another power outage. In the morning the world was sunny and warm and everything looked much more welcoming. Now, sitting in the cool breeze of Popenguine and typing these words to the sound of the surf below, I’m already so comfortable I’ve started to take for granted things like the adjoining unfinished rooftop, bristling with rebar and unconnected power lines. That’s a bit of a shame, but I think we’ll get to experience more novelties in the coming days. Enough, I trust, to keep us awake.Popenguine work in progress

In the War Against Bugs

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Steve's still wearing at least one of his bandaids. Our arms ached, but that was our only reaction.

We got our immunizations yesterday — typhoid, flu, meningococcus, tdap(typhoid/diphtheria/pertussis), along with the pills we will take to protect us against malaria during our upcoming trip to West Africa. For previous trips in recent years, we’ve gotten shots for yellow fever, hepatitis A and B, and polio.  Surely we’re ready to go anywhere on earth now…

Safety

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Thursday afternoon, March 18, 2010
The single biggest question I had before we left for South Africa had to do with safety. Would concerns about crime limit our ability to move around freely; to enjoy beng here? Now that we’re about to leave I can answer: that hasn’t been a problem.

I know the least about Johannesburg, as we had so little time there, and all of it came right after our arrival. The stories about crime are worst there (and indeed the morning we left, one of the employees at our B&B didn’t show up for work because a close friend of hers had been robbed and stabbed (not fatally)). Likewise, we had so little time in Durban, I can’t really judge it.

But from that point on, it’s been fine. Out on the Wild Coast and on the Dolphin Trail, I felt safer than I do at home (where I wouldn’t think of leaving my doors unlocked at night). And when we arrived in Cape Town last Saturday, we asked Hannes (the co-owner of our B&B) where we could safely walk in Cape Town. Anywhere in Green Point (their neighborhood) at any hour day or night, was his answer. Anywhere in the rest of central Cape Town during the day, he continued, though we might want to be a bit more cautious after dark.

Hannes, a collector of fine china and antique silver who looked to be in his late 50s, seemed a prudent fellow. His romantic partner, David, once worked in the perfume industry. The rooms of the B&B are all named after famous perfumes. It seemed unlikely he would steer his guests into the jaws of death. So for two nights in a row, we dined at the Waterfront, and on the 25-minute walk home we shared the dark streets with so many other pedestrians, I felt very comfortable.
Yesterday we got even more ambitious on foot. We’d moved out to the suburbs by then (staying in the home of a very generous house-trading contact), so we drove our car to the Bo-Kaap district in the center of town, parked it, and set out on what turned out to an almost-6-hour-long meander. The Bo-Kaap is the very old Muslim quarter, now in the grip of gentrification, but still distinguished by its colorful and distinctive architectural signature. While it was interesting to explore, I enjoyed even more walking the length of Long Street, an amazing medley of restaurants, boutiques, bookstores, record stores, porn shops, bars, backpacker hotels, surf shops, locksmiths. Many buildings have balconies, and that, along with wrought-iron work, made it feel a bit like New Orleans.

We also visited two museums, both excellent. One focused on the gold treasures of West Africa and the other presented the infamous history of Cape Town’s District 6 (whose name probably inspired the title of the recent sci-fi movie). This was once a seedy but vibrant enclave near the heart of the old city filled with immigrants. Unusually multiracial, it must have been a lot like New York’s Lower East Side early in the 20th Century: grubby and raucous and zesty. But in the early 60s, the South African government re-classified it as a White district and began ordering the vast majority of the residents to move out. Hundreds of thousands of people had their property confiscated; their homes bulldozed. Most were relocated to a grim, sand-blasted and barren plain a half-hour from their former homes. The museum beautifully captures how traumatic this was for most of those affected.

We also strolled through the beautiful Company Gardens park, and we picked our way through a couple of open-air craft markets (where I was intrigued to note that almost none of the vendors harangued us to patronize them — de riguer for Egyptian street hawkers — nor did anyone seem inclined to bargain.) When we paused once to study our map, a passerby asked if we needed help. At another point, when we really were disoriented and asked a security guard for directions, he led us for several blocks to get us pointed toward where we needed to go.

These were clean, busy streets, filled with commerce. The vast majority of the people moving through them (90%? 95%?) were black. It was a pleasure to share the cityscape with them, at ease.

This morning we throttled back even further. Anticipating the grueling flight to come (at 9 p.m. tonight we start what will amount to almost 24 hours of straight air travel), we’d saved a visit to the Kirstenbosch Gardens for last. This is a World Heritage Site, and deservedly so. Located on an enormous spread of land not far from where we’re staying, it’s one of the great gardens of the world, celebrating the incredibly diverse plant life of this region. I learned that that diversity puts San Diego’s to shame (with something like 94 species per 1000 square kilometers here, versus 14 in Australia, and a puny 12 in California!) We walked through arboreal tunnels formed by gigantic trees: camphors, yellowwood, podocarpus, emerging onto huge lawns edged by African heathers and protea and grasses. At least, the weather was perfect: mid-70s, no trace of the demonic wind that’s tormented us every other day. I lay down on the grass at one point, listening to the birdsong, thinking about how much more pleasurable it was than sitting in a coach seat on an airplane, savoring one of those moments when it really WAS about the destination, rather than the journey.

But now it’s time to head for the airport, to journey again.

Good hope

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Tuesday night, March 16 2010
As we anticipated this trip, Steve several times commented that he expected we would be seeing some of the most beautiful landscapes on earth. And we have, but I have to say our encounters with the inhabitants of those landscapes — human and animal — have been at the forefront of our attention. Today was different. Our interactions with other humans was limited to jockeying for photo-op positions with the Chinese, British, Dutch, English, French and other tourists we encountered throughout the day. As we drove from our hotel to the Cape of Good Hope, the physical world took center stage.
Actually, we did have two memorable animal encounters. One came after we had entered Table Mountain National Park, toward the bottom of the long cape that Cape Town sits astride. We passed sign after sign warning of the highly endangered baboons who inhabit the area. They bite. They are wild animals who must not be approached or fed! If you feed them, you will be fined!! We didn’t need the warning, as we’d already heard stories about these creatures, as clever and menacing as the bears of Yosemites. So we neither fed nor approached the troop of about 20 animals — little babies, juveniles, adults — who stopped traffic on one section of the road. One of the biggest baboons clutched what looked like a woman’s duffel bag. Pilfered? We couldn’t tell, but two rangers grimly followed the troop on foot, one with a mean-looking leather whip in his hand. I think he cracked it, sending the baboons off the road and away from additional human contact.
The other animal interaction came on our return drive back to town. In the little town of Boulder Beach, we detoured to see the resident colony of African penguins there. We’d already been introduced to these birds yesterday, during our brief visit to the excellent aquarium at the Waterfront. The African penguins (once known as jackass penguins because they supposedly make a braying noise) are only about a foot tall, and their black and white plumage is set off with a band of pink eye shadow. They were very cute as the marine biologist parceled out fish, which they swallowed whole.
But it was wonderful to see them in the wild this afternoon — hundreds of them lining the beaches and grooming each other and waddling around and sitting on eggs. If Boulder Beach is a tame suburban setting, the wind today made it a savage place. It whipped the water into a mass of white caps. Some of the gusts shoved and jostled us, like bullies, and after we’d climbed back into the car, our skin and scalps felt like sandpaper.
Despite the wind, the sun shone brightly all day long, and the drive to the tip of the cape was splendid. Just outside Cape Town, we wound along roads that hugged the steep cliffs, overlooking huge white beaches encrusted with picturesque towns. By turns, the water looked cobalt blue, then clear turquoise, then emerald green. It made me think of a combination of the most beautiful coastline in both Hawaii and California. Later, approaching the tip of the cape, the land grew starker, stonier, and clad in fynbos, the South African version of coastal chaparral, but lusher and more beautifully colored than any chaparral I’ve seen.
Our primary goal for this outing was the Cape of Good Hope, often thought of as the tip of Africa, the southernmost point, the place where the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet. It’s none of those — those honors go to Cape Argulhas, several hundred kilometers further south. Still it felt a little like an omen to me to be standing with Steve on this wild and beautiful spot, on our 36th wedding anniversary, rounding another important landmark on this fantastic journey, with good hope for what we’ll find further down the road.

The brightest and least corrupt city

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Tuesday morning, March 16, 2010
I woke up Sunday morning feeling like a Biblical plague victim. In addition to the shingles (fading but still annoying), sore throat, sore knee, and wracking insomnogenic cough I’ve been dealing with for days, my eyes were glued shut with the unmistakable evidence of conjunctivitis — pink eye! But after two aspirin and two good cups of coffee (one of the many virtues of the inestimable B&B where we’re staying), we took to the streets of Cape Town. An instant tonic!

We dropped off a bag of reeking clothes at the 24-hour laundry on the high street (just a few blocks away) and learned that we could pick up our washed and folded clothes in a few hours. We visited the nearby 24-hour pharmacy and bought more of the cough medicine that seemed to help Steve last week. We’d learned that a world-famous cycling race would be taking place in the city — the Cape Argos, I think it’s called, with something like 35,000 riders from all over the world competing over a grueling 66-mile course –and the start and finish were located just blocks from our hotel. It was a rousing scene: flags flying, peppy pop music playing over the loudspeakers, supporters cheering, the excited voice of an announcer. Again the crowd was predominantly white, and I noted with amusement the OSHA-like tone of the sign affixed to a rope barrier surrounding one sandy area. “Potential tripping hazard.” This American-style safety consciousness struck me as quaint, considering that this is a country where young girls routinely get raped by HIV-infected men who believe sex with a virgin will cure their ailment. (That ailment afflicts some 10% of South Africans, btw — the highest AIDS infection rate in the world.)

Paul Theroux in Dark Star Safari records that when he arrived in Cape Town, it struck him as being “the brightest and least corrupt” city he’d ever seen. I could understand what he meant. The wind was blowing hard, scrubbing the sunny skies of any evidence of pollution. The Waterfront shopping center, redeveloped in the 90s, reminded me of Fisherman’s Wharf. It’s wildly touristy, jammed with several malls and dozens upon dozens of restaurants, but maybe because it adjoins the section of the waterfront that’s still an working port, I liked it more than I do the San Francisco institution or the Disneyesque Seaport Village in San Diego. I would have enjoyed spending several more hours poking around.

But we had other touristic missions to attend to. After lunch, we drove to the Table Mountain Cable Car station. Hiking to the top of the iconic massif had been near the top of my Cape Town To Do list. But given my cough and still-recovering knee, we’d decided it might be more prudent to simply take the cable car. Alas the strong winds had forced its closing for the afternoon. The few vendors clustered next to the cable car entrance looked bored. A white guy at a t-shirt stall was tossing raisons to a big black bird with dramatic red epaulets on its wings. “Red-wing starling,” he informed us. “Member of the raven family.” He enthused about how intelligent the birds were; claimed they could identify individual human faces and come when called. They were serially monogamous and fiercely territorial. “If another male came along when the male was here, it would be terrible.” He shuddered. Did they peck at each other with their beaks, I asked. He grimaced, like a man recalling a ritual disemboweling. He said the male redwings stabbed at each other, savage. He tried to entice the female closer with additional raisons, but she wouldn’t comply. “Must have already had her fill.”

In the late afternoon, we spent 45 minutes at the South African Museum, a disappointing hodge-podge. But an excellent Indian dinner at the Waterfront lifted our spirits, and everything about our trip to Robben Island yesterday morning went well. Steve commented afterward that the notorious holding ground for South Africa’s black male political prisoners didn’t hold any surprises for him, being featured as it was, in the recent movie Invictus. For me, though, there were a few, One of our guides was a fellow who served time on the island between 1984 and 1991 for a terrorist conviction. He old us his “terrorism” had been ignited by his outrage over the disparities between black and white educational standards in the 1970s, when the government was spending about 47 rands per year, on average, for every black child, and 2,000 for every white one. Another surprise was learning that 9 former prison guards are included among the 150 hardy individuals who live on the island full-time. Why haven’t they been attacked and driven away, long ago? But Mandela’s most searing message was the need for reconciliation, and we’ve heard it repeated over and over in our travels here.

After recording his initial good first impression, Theroux added that he soon learned about Cape Town’s frightening crime statistics. He also visited a township here, like the ones we saw Saturday as we drove in from the wine country: squalid, unspeakably crowded, an implosion of impoverished humanity that makes Tijuana’s shanties look buccolic in comparison. With only two and a half days left until we head for the airport, I doubt we’ll see much of such misery. We’ll depart with a woefully meager view of what’s here. But I’ve become resigned to that here, in one of the most complicated places I’ve ever visited.

White Folks Fun

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Sunday evening, March 14
On our first day in South Africa, when we drove around Johannesburg with our guide, Danie, Steve and I were both struck by how much the center city reminded us of an aging city in the US heartland, Detroit, say, or Cleveland. But Friday when we left the famous “Garden Route” (between Port Elizabeth and Mossel Bay) behind us and a few hours later entered the South African “Winelands” region, we felt transported instead to the European Alps. Our destination for the night was Franschhoek, once a French Huguenot settlement and now one of the most important centers in the world’s 9th largest wine-making country. Surrounded by tall and rugged mountains, the town occupies a huge green valley. Vineyards have been staked out on the valley floor, and they also climb up the foot of the slopes. It reminded me of Switzerland… or Galt’s Gulch… or some combination of the two.

In Franschhoek we were staying in the “guest room” of a couple named Marilyn and Charles Chance, and we arrived too late in the afternoon to visit any wineries. The Chance’s room for rent was large, pretty, and outfitted with a king-sized bed and excellent linens, with its own entrance from a beautiful garden located within a gated housing development designed to look like a vineyard. We didn’t enjoy it as much as it deserved, as we were harried from the long day of driving 75 mph on narrow 2-lane roads with lots of passing. Instead we walked around the town for a bit, then headed for Le Bon Vivant, recommended by our guidebook.

The guidebooks say that Franschhoek is where you find the finest cooking in South Africa, and this restaurant was cited for being one of the best. So we threw caution to the winds and ordered the five-course tasting menu (actually six, including the little seafood-mouse-topped-with-cucumber salad amuse-bouche), accompanied by five different wines. Considering that we’d enjoyed a five-course feast at the Phantom Forest in Knysna, as well as a complicated and superbly executed meal at The Fernery (our last stop on the Dolphin Trail adventure), we probably should have shown more restraint. But would a pilgrim to mecca not visit a mosque? How could we dine in the gastronomic capital of South Africa without seeing what one of their best chefs could do? (Such was our reasoning).

It was all extremely impressive: other mousses (tomato, raspberry), intriguing meat combinations (medallions of grilled eland atop roasted pork, things I’d never tasted ever (cold smoked eel soup!). I’m not enough of a foodie to declare how this part of the world compares to other haut cuisines in other regions, but it certainly was a respectable competitor, and the skill and thoughtfulness was evident not just in the fine restaurants. Yesterday we ate lunch at one of the wineries, and (still feeling overindulgent about the previous night’s repast), we only ordered starters. Mine turned out to be a healthy pile of smoked salmon on blue-cheese-flavored shortbread, served along with a mushroom mousse, baby salad greens and an asparagus coulis. (Steve’s “beef baguette” starter was so huge, he could hardly work up any appetite for the rest of the day.) The lunch offerings, plus a bottle of water, cost $18 (including the tip).

More than just the food Impressed us. The last Dolphin Trail hotel and the place we stayed the next night, in Knysna, both ranked among the best commercial lodgings I’ve ever experienced anywhere. In both, we occupied wooden chalets, superbly equipped with amenities I’ve never seen before (insect repellant! flip-flops! raincoats!) along with the more standard teas and coffee and biscotti and creams and lotions. The king-sized beds in both were clad in zillion-thread satiny cottons. Both commanded unique views. Our chalet at The Fernery (which, btw, is also a working commercial fern farm) overlooked a deep, wild gorge leading to the ocean, and you could slide and fold up an entire wall in the bathroom, climb into the oversized tub, light the candles and gaze upon the wilderness without any barrier between you and it. You couldn’t open up the bathroom walls at the Phantom Forest, but they incorporated so much spotless glass it felt as if they were open. And they provided protection from the vervet monkeys who thrive in this forest (and at one point came to check out our patio — and us.)

These hotels were our big splurge of the trip, and they carried a cost beyond dollars. Unlike everywhere else we’d stayed up to then, it wasn’t possible to easily engage with other guests (overwhelmingly white, as were the other diners at the Bon Vivant). Indeed they were designed to insulate each couple or small group within little bubbles of luxury. While this is a marvelous thing if you want to bathe outdoors, other travelers often can be entertaining (at least to us).

Similarly, the pleasures of our wine-tasting outing yesterday sprang principally from the excellence of the wine and the extreme beauty of a couple of the wineries. The weather was sublime, we motored over gently rolling hills, vines pressing in close on each side, and found ourselves in elegant, opulent tasting rooms with heart-stopping views of the Stellenbosch valley; they were at least the equal of anything I’ve seen in the Napa Valley. At the Engelbrecht Els winery, we sat out on a stone terrace to taste the four bold reds. Nearby a guitarist played softly and sang American ballads. Other murmuring white people sat at other tables.

It was easy to imagine we were in a glossy, prosperous country, filled with mostly white-skinned inhabitants, and protected from any hint of strife. We were glad to experience it, and we could understand why other travelers with a greater passion for wine or more miserable home climates might want to come here and hunker down. But more than one night would not have interested us. We were happy to press on to Cape Town, our current and final site for South African explorations.

Goodbye to the Dolphin Trail

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Wednesday evening, March 10
Sadly, we saw no dolphins today. (We hear January is the best time for that.) We saw no otters, either, though there was plenty of otter dung. Apparently their practice is to rise early from their dens among the rocks along the ocean, then creep up the streams that trickle down from the bluffs, snacking on fish and crustaceans and whatever else they can find. They ascend for about 1000 feet, chill out up at the top, then make their way back at the end of the day.

Stan also pointed out where porcupines had dug under bushes, seeking tasty roots and ants. Polecats do something similar, and we saw those scratchings too. We failed to spot any bush pigs or snakes, and the closest we came to baboons today was a couple of deposits of their excrement, “You can recognize it because it looks a lot like human’s, ” Stan told us. Still, for all that we failed to see, for as much as much as my (bad) left knee aches at the moment, this two-day hike has to rank among the most memorable of my life.

For one thing, our weather luck was wonderful. It was so hot when we drove from Pt. Elizabeth to the park Monday morning that the air flowing through the vents into our (un-air-conditioned) car felt like it was coming from the heater. An hour after we checked into the park cabin, the moisturizer in the tube in my suitcase was still hot to the touch. But Tuesday (the first day of our hike) dawned much cooler and a mix of clouds and sun made the trekking ideal. Today was even mistier, even foggy at times, but that too felt refreshing. By the time we stopped for our final picnic lunch, distant thunder was rumbling, and we expected we might get soaked in the final stretch before we reached the Fernery lodge. The rain held off, however, until just a few minutes ago. Now it’s pouring amidst thunder and lightning, a goodsend in this parched region.

At the picnic in the woods, where another Fernery employee named Marius had arrived to set up a table filled with homemade bread, gourmet cheeses, cold cuts, salad, and a pudding pie, Marius asked if we usually hike when we travel. Although there’ve been a few memorable exceptions (e.g. the Inca Trail), we had to say no. And the question made me wonder why we’d chosen to do so here. Why escape into nature for two days, when our goal has been to gain better understanding of the people and cultures within South Africa?

Getting to know Stan actually did wind up advancing that goal nicely. Our leave-taking yesterday was emotional; it amazes me what a relationship one can form in just two days. Beyond that, however, I’d have to say I’d suspected the physical beauty of this trail would justify hiking it. And it did. The plant life alone was enchanting — so many plants that are fixtures of life in San Diego — agapanthus, calla lilies, ice plant, society garlic — growing wild here, and so much many more wonderful things I’d never seen.

We climbed up the sides of cliffs so steep I was gasping at the top, followed trails frighteningly close to murderous abysses, penetrated dark, green leafy sanctuaries that Stan called “the jungle,” but then amended, when pressed. True jungles are actually a bit wetter than these “Afro-montane forests,” he said. But they felt jungly, filled as they were with hidden vervet monkeys and baboons, exotic snakes, huge insects.

Best of all, I think, was the second day, when we descended from the Misty Mountain Reserve to the shoreline, which we followed for several hours. Here the sea meets the land not on sandy beaches but at huge black Table Mountain sandstone formations thickly veined with quartz. The layers have been tilted over the eons by almost 70 or 80 degrees, and the edges worn away so that they look not like delicate lines in a block of solid rock, but rather enormous pancake stacks, with jagged, frayed edges. It almost made me dizzy to look at them — as of the world had turned sideways and I had somehow remained off-kilter. The first time we reached a shore like this, Steve and I both quailed. How could we traverse the daunting jumble of rock? We learned the answer as we followed steady, sure-footed Stan: the formations actually provided dozens of footholds at every turn. You just had to take your time and find them.

Stan was off work today, so Marius drove us in a Land Rover back to the park, along a dirt road that 50 years ago was the only way route for vehicles to get from Cape Town to Pt. Elizabeth. It was an interesting drive, through pine plantations and dairy farms, and when we arrived back at the park, we took an even more amazing trip, on a boat up the narrow gorge through which the Storms River flows to the sea.

Now we’ve into the Phantom Forest Eco-Reserve, recommended by our friends the Zatkins. Tomorrow we’ll set off on the Road More Traveled by tourists — along the so-called Garden Route, to the cape wine country for a day, then finally to explore Cape Town until next Thursday next, when we fly home. It will probably be less adventurous than what we have been experiencing. But I’m guessing it still won’t feel like we’re back in Kansas yet.