The first few days...

Disclaimer: the first few days were written off-line on my laptop, so I had time to give more detail than I otherwise might have, and at the advice of Ted, I included a lot of specifics; I hope it’s not too boring for you, but at least I think I’ll be glad I did it later. Besides, I’m to some extent alone with my thoughts on this part of the trip; I’ve never kept a diary, but maybe that’s because I usually talk a lot. It helps to feel like I’m writing for people back home (even if I’m really just boring you all to tears). Whatever, if it’s too much for you, stop reading.

Also, by way of warning, there’s some political sentiment early on, for obvious reasons. Anyway, here goes – my first few entries from South Africa.


11/4: Election Day

I awoke early despite having been up very late the night before finalizing my plans for the first week and packing. Still, it was not early enough, as by the time we got to the polls (20 minutes after they opened), the line was already stretched down the block and around the corner from the library that served as our polling place. As JJ put it, “I’ve never seen so many of our neighbors!” The excitement was stronger than I remember experiencing on a voting day; I don’t think this is only because I voted absentee the last few times. Everyone felt the history of the day.

Unfortunately, this delay (nearly an hour) kept me from finishing some busy-work that was required for my fellowship applications (that a better person would have finished long ago). So, I had no choice but to scut some of this out to JJ, the second time I’ve dumped on her due to a combination of poor planning and impending travel. She was good enough to step up; I now owe her two. So, though I cut it closer than I wanted, I headed off for the train to the airport that would begin my long journey to South Africa. I made it to the airport in time to fire off some emails on my phone (more fellowship stuff; this time finalizing plans with my letter-writers) before taking off for Washington DC on this historic day. I don’t know what I expected, but the DC airport was pretty dead despite Election Day. I had a few hours’ down time and used it to eat, send a few more emails, and walk around in anticipation of the 15 hours of sitting to come.

I then hopped on a full flight to Jo’burg and plopped down into my aisle seat where I would be confined for the better part of a day. After a forgettable dinner to the tune of a Simpsons episode (the new-ish one where Marge is a carpenter but Homer steals the credit… we got to choose our own TV programming) followed by the Prison Break pilot (this was bad… and still it was the next best thing offered; getting to choose your own shows only went so far), I slept.


11/5: Lightning show

I slept surprisingly well, in fact. Those neck pillows are saviors on a flight like this. I probably managed to be out for 10 of the 15 hours all told – not bad! Hopefully I don’t get a DVT to show for it. They turned the cabin lights on for breakfast and I groggily awoke (at what was well past noon SA time… they kinda screwed with us that way, but I wasn’t complaining about the extra sleep). Not long after a bland breakfast (“waffles”, which is apparently South African for pancakes), the pilot announced what I had been waiting for, what you all had known for hours by then… that Barack Obama was the US President-Elect. Applause, shouts, even tears of joy poured forth. This is an ENORMOUS deal in Africa… more on this later.

The flight went smoothly and really painlessly, and before I knew it (but after a truly awful documentary on KwaZulu-Natal, the province I’ll be living in… the choose-your-own-TV options left a lot to be desired), we were on the ground in Johannesburg. No customs forms to fill out anymore unless you’re declaring anything, so I breezed through, breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of my checked bag on the conveyor belt, exchanged a bit of money, and called my hotel to request the shuttle they offer. A 10 minute ride turned into more than an hour because of traffic and a detour requested by another passenger, but I had nowhere to be; this is all I saw of Jo’burg, so the more the merrier. The driver was a friendly, quiet kid who asked if I had voted and was glad to hear I was happy with the outcome of the election. He told me a bit about his impressions of recent South African political events (to summarize: chaos).

Soon enough (for me, but not for his boss, who was pissed that he had been talked into the detour), we arrived at the Airport Game Lodge. I had picked this chiefly because it was the cheapest place near the airport I could find on the internet, but I must say I was somewhat intrigued by the name (the website did not elaborate). I was considerably less intrigued when I arrived and saw their slogan (“where wild is mild and the game is tame”). The game did, however, include two ostriches, one of which was quite curious and would hang out close to people, and a bok of some type (maybe an impala?) that was too skittish to come anywhere close to us (though she didn’t seem to mind the ostriches). All in all, the place was very pleasant and quite dull.

The highlight of the night by far, though, came just after dusk. Chased by some light rain from a hammock set up in front of the “game range”, I was soon treated to a majestic light show. Sheet lightning punctuated by occasional vivid bolts illuminated the entire sky for at least an hour as I sat on a lawn chair under an awning, out of the downpour. I couldn’t help but think of Toto (“I blessed the rains down in Aaaa-fricaaa”); mercifully, I don’t know much more of that song than I just wrote, and it didn’t stick in my head for long, cuz that would have kinda ruined the experience. Eventually, the show ended (no grand finale) and I retired to my ascetic but comfortable and quite spacious room.

I ate some food I had brought on the plane (spurning “Mr Delivery”, the only alternative) and turned on the TV, which had four channels, two in English. One had news including fairly detailed coverage of the US election, which made me happy; they even had reporters on the scene in DC and in Grant Park. Many parallels were drawn (both by the SA reporters and by Jesse Jackson and a Georgetown professor they found) between this election and that of Mandela in 1994 in SA. After the news was over, another Simpsons episode (“B-O-R-R-I-N-G!”), and then I finished a book I had started on the plane (“Everyman”, by Philip Roth… good, quick read about aging and the psychological impact of illness) and turned in early.


11/6: “USA! USA!”

Woke up early feeling mostly rested. Breakfast at the hotel (ahem… “game lodge”) was great – boiled eggs, omelet, various meats, toast, jam, cereal, fruit, yogurt, juice, tea… and I had most of the above. The backdrop for breakfast was a non-English newscast where the name “Obama” was spoken with joy and big smiles. The shuttle back to the airport took only the promised 5-10 minutes. Clearing security and checking my bag didn’t take much more than this, leaving me with plenty of time to chill at the airport. Flying is in some ways a lot easier abroad; you even get to leave your shoes on! (I swear, Richard Reid’s lasting impact on American culture is to make all US airports smell like feet.)

I was taken aback by the afterglow of the US elections. The results came back too late for yesterday’s papers here, so today was the day: I grabbed a Soweto Times and South African Citizen, each of which had full-cover photo spreads of Barack and Michelle Obama and many pages within devoted to our Election Day. One paper had a transcript of his acceptance speech; all had editorials with varying perspectives on the importance, both historical and immediate, of this result. Many authors shared joy at the implications of this result for people of African descent. Some pointed out that the US lagged behind South Africa in taking this historical step (one editor, having said earlier that America would never elect a black president, even literally ate his words). Others marveled at the promise of a peaceful transition of power and wondered why South Africa couldn’t behave as civilly after an election (see, America, our political system does some things well). And some challenged Obama to hold himself to the impossibly high expectations the world now has of him: to be the savior of a struggling worldwide economy while sowing racial harmony in Africa and ending two wars in the Middle East. Without a doubt, “the continent” eagerly awaits Obama’s term in office. Kenya even declared a national holiday to give everyone two days to party. (Apparently I missed the parties in Cape Town by one day...)

Reading reactions from many world leaders really drove home how uniformly detested Bush was abroad; America truly has a chance to adopt a completely different place on the world stage with this change in leadership. People in Kenya were wrapping themselves in the US flag and dancing – a far cry from what’s been done with the US flag abroad over the past 7 years. I’m sure there are differing opinions of this back home (the Bushes, Cheneys, and Rumsfelds of the world will surely miss our role as bully – “shock and awe, losers, shock and awe!” – and see this as a step back to the pack), but most reasonable people must see the shortsightedness of the “we are the champions” approach to diplomacy, no? Especially as a foreign traveler in Africa, I hear Michelle Obama exactly when she said that she was finally starting to feel truly proud to be American.

(Then I read – in one of the South African papers – that California passed Prop 8. Seriously, Cali? That’s horrendous. In 30 years, that proposition is going to look so bigoted through the lens of history – as if it doesn’t already – an indelible pockmark on the records of every state that passed something like it. One likes to think of our society marching forward through time, taking steps towards civil liberty and equality for all, but there is no way for me to view this as anything but a giant step back for individual freedom. For cripes’s sake, South African papers are mocking us for our intolerance. How different is it from laws passed not long ago prohibiting interracial marriages? Civil unions my ass; haven’t we been down the “separate but equal institutions” road before? Don’t we know where that ends? And if that didn’t make my pride ebb, I started seeing headlines that there are serious concerns for Obama’s well-being back home. I sincerely hope these are just headlines to sell papers in Cape Town.)

Anyhoo, the flight from Jo’burg to Cape Town was short and sweet; I used the time to work out my plans for the next couple days. Upon landing, I picked up a map and trekked over to Dollar Rent-A-Car, where my chariot (a silver-blue Toyota Yaris) awaited. Manual transmission is great, but shifting with my left hand is taking some getting used to (luckily the pedals are in the same orientation). I think that’s a bigger adjustment than driving on the left side of the road, though that’s quirky too. I was able to find my hostel (a kinda lame Cape Town Deco Hotel in the Woodstock neighborhood) easily.

It was early enough by the time I got in (about 3:15 pm) that I drove into downtown Cape Town, parked near a castle (yes, a castle… with Table Mtn in the background and modern Cape Town in between), and started my loose interpretation of Lonely Planet’s Cape Town walking tour. Unfortunately, the District 6 Museum (a tribute to a vibrant mixed-race Cape Town neighborhood uprooted by apartheid) was closed, but the rest of the tour was interesting. The highlight was probably a view of the site at Old Town Hall from which Nelson Mandela gave his first public address after being freed from prison in Feb 1990. I just had time to grab a late lunch/early dinner at Café Eco, a blandly hip joint that served chicken curry with roti and a lassi (!). I gotta say, I see what people mean when they compare Cape Town to San Francisco (even down to the weather, which is inoffensively mild all year from what I read, and changes several times a day). I picked up a memento just as a street market was shutting down and hustled back to my car in a bit of a drizzle.

Back at the hostel, I explored the neighborhood, bought some fruit and ginger beer, then ventured out to the common area for some company. It’s a long-time guest’s last night, so there was some to-do. When conversation dried up a bit, I headed back to my room, listened to music on iTunes, and wrote the above entries. If weather permits, I hope to hit Table Mtn tomorrow morning, then Cape Point the following day on my way out of town. Not quite sure what I’ll do if it’s overcast tomorrow… I’ll turn in to the sound of light rain on the roof, hoping for clear skies when I awake!


11/7: Table Mountain

Well, they weren’t perfectly clear, but partly cloudy with no rain would have to do; at least I could see all the way up the “Lion’s Rump” part of the nearby mountains that extend near my part of Cape Town, so things looked promising. I tried to wake up early this morning, but I can’t say I was too successful; after two snoozes and the semi-conscious decision to sleep through morning rush hour traffic, I walked over to Observatory (the next neighborhood over from Woodstock) for some breakfast at a café before heading out to Kirstenbosch Gardens to start my hike. I didn’t have a detailed map of the area, but signage was excellent and I was able to find the trailhead without much trouble. I took a quick look around the Gardens before getting started (loved the bird-of-paradise flower), but since it was already 11am and I was looking at a 5 hr solo hike, I kinda pressed ahead.

The route I chose up Table Mtn, “Skeleton Gorge”, sets out from the back end of Kirstenbosch Gardens. I didn’t have more than a rough one-line description of the trail, so I was glad to see that it was well-kept and easy to follow (as promised), though sparsely marked after the start. The weather turned out to be very pleasant; the cloud cover was probably nice, as only about the first half of the hike was covered by forest; the rest was more exposed on a ridge line. Shortly after starting, I ran into a young hiker from… wait for it… Waltham, MA. Crazy; we live 20 minutes apart and meet 12,000 miles away. He had just gotten into town too, was visiting a friend at the University of Cape Town and biding his time until starting the Peace Corps next year. I was glad to see him, because I thought I would be the last person starting the hike for the day by quite a bit. But then it turned out he was planning on taking the cable car down to the other side of the mountain where his friend was meeting him, so I had to push on ahead; I still had to make the whole hike down to get back to my car.

Just after this encounter, the trail got a bit more class-2, scrambling over boulders up a dried creek bed. I passed one person who was coming back down, but otherwise didn’t see anyone else until the summit, where I saw an Aussie and a few others from the cable cars. My friend from Waltham came up a bit later too. The view from the top (Maclear’s Beacon, 1086m) was striking, as all of Cape Town splayed out below, from False Bay to the southeast across to the Atlantic to the west. Robben’s Island (where Mandela was imprisoned for years) lay just offshore in the Atlantic. The whole setting (even down to the former penal colony on an island that now gives tours) reminded me a lot of the Bay Area; this could have been the Berkeley hills or Angel Island!

I decided to come down a slightly different route (Nursery Ravine, which is the next valley over from Skeleton Gorge), and in looking for that trailhead, I passed a natural cave with an entrance over 4 feet high and just wide enough to pass through. It was filled with nasty-looking water at the bottom, and I passed on by, wondering what might live inside. There were tons of bouldering opportunities on this trail (soft sandstone with lots of chicken-heads), and I tried a couple V0-minus-ish problems in my hiking boots. There was also a T-shaped headstone just off the trail with an awesome roof (5.10 and above by eyeball) and a nice but very exposed 30-foot face route that was maybe a 5.8. No question of trying them unprotected, of course, but it’s probably just as well that Parin wasn’t there, given his history in Cappadochio.… Anyway, I briefly lost the trail before finding Nursery Ravine (first clue was a crack in the rock that revealed a fairly sheer 500+ foot drop below me… not part of the game plan), but I was able to retrace and find it without much trouble, and down I went, uneventfully.

Well, that was too much verbiage for what ended up being a very straightforward (but very pleasant) 4 hour round trip. Having eaten only Snickerses since breakfast, I still had the energy to poke around the Gardens a bit more and bypass the on-site restaurant. Instead, I drove farther southwest to Hout Bay, where I set off in search of a restaurant called Fish on the Rocks that got rave reviews in Lonely Planet. I had no map of Hout Bay, and just when I was going to stop and ask (the horror!), I turned a corner and there it was. It was a pleasant little joint on the bay that served fried everything (“Africa’s favorite fish-and-chips”). The calamari was especially good. I ate a LOT after my long day, and it tasted great.

I then tried to take a famous stretch of road past Chapman’s Peak, but it turned out to be closed until December. Alas. Perhaps just as well, since it is a scenic but very windy road perched on sheer slopes above the Atlantic, and I’m still trying to get used to knowing where the sides of my car are. I’ve decided that’s the hardest part, more so than shifting with the left hand or driving on the left side of the road: I don’t have a good feel for the dimensions of the car with the driver’s seat on the right. I end up driving too far to the left (away from the median), but I’m getting better after today’s excursions on windy roads.

Anyway, I made it back home, safe, sound, well-fed, and pretty tired. Since tomorrow’s another early morning (for real this time; I want to see Cape Point in the morning and get out of Cape Town before noon to start the 4-hour drive to Wilderness), I’m just going to do the boring thing and turn in early rather than bust out for a lively Friday night in Cape Town.