Game animals were everywhere when we got to Kruger National Game Reserve, in Mpumalonga state, east of Jo’burg on our fifth day in Africa. We saw the very rare cheetah there, instead of the leopard, which is the most elusive of the Big Five, a creature that is both reclusive and shy, we were told. Also lumbering through the bush wherever we drove in Kruger were wart hogs, hyenas, impala, crocodiles (on river banks), all kinds of exotic birds, mongoose, monkeys/baboons. It was like being on another planet. We went on six safaris in all, with five of them occurring on three consecutive days. In the Kapama Private Game Reserve where we had our after-dark lion encounter related in my first dispatch, we would convene at 4:30 pm for our evening safari that found us back at the lodge at 7:30 just as dark was falling and in time for our huge “bush” buffet dinner of grilled impala, ostrich meat, roast guinea hen, rice, local beans, salad, some type of green vegetables with red pepper and lots of tropical fruit. But midway through the safari, our guides would coordinate a stopping point where our vans would convene and park. Out came a folding table and African-print tablecloth, tin cans displayed holding impala jerky and nuts, and a suitcase opened containing South African wines and beers, and gins and vodkas. How civilized is that for “roughing” it? Well, the British once counted this land as part of its empire and you can tell.
We stayed in the financial district, Sandston, in Johannesburg which was full of huge, glittering buildings and a fabulous shopping plaza named after Nelson Mandela with restaurants and stores for your nourishment and retail therapy. All very high end and we were able to walk the few blocks to nearby restaurants without fear of robbery in that up-scale neighborhood. But then you get out into the “townships”, which is South Africa’s euphemistic term for the slums that were built to contain all black South Africans during the apartheid years, from 1948 until 1994, chock full of falling-down metal shacks and usually found just outside the city center, and it’s a much different story. Much of inner Jo’burg is also sketchy indeed, and the country, full of visible contradictions, has a huge crime problem averaging 47 murders a day, about seven times greater than in the US. Car jackings and robbings are also at epidemic levels, and our guide admonished us never to use an ATM machine that was not inside a building and to preferably visit one only when accompanied by a companion who could stand guard as you withdrew your money.
We loved Cape Town near the bottom of the continent. A stunning, up-and-coming city in a beautiful setting nestled between huge mountains and a crystalline seacoast, it reminded me a bit of San Francisco with its vestiges of Victorian architecture and multi-colored houses on the hilly streets, with a spectacular waterfront. Another couple on our tour, who had spent their professional lives in northern California, told us that they could imagine living in Cape Town, “and we are pretty picky about where we live,” they added. I titled this final chapter of our African odyssey as I did, since our youngest two tour members from Miami opted for a side trip down in a cage off Cape Town to meet some sharks who dwell in the cold and clear waters off the city. I was quite happy to forego that little visit.) It didn’t hurt that we spent our last morning in Africa sunbathing on the roof of our hotel, dipping our bodies into the lap pool and gazing up to the mountains towering over us as well as the harbor in front of us. The day before I had picked up an interesting stone from the Cape of Good Hope, about a 90-minute drive south of Cape Town along a stunning, mountainous coastline, to bring home to my brother who might have been a geologist in a different life. In the city the next day, hoping for some cut-rate diamonds, I priced one tanzanite ring set in tiny diamonds in one tony store: upwards of $2K. Also I looked at a pair of tiny (0.4 karat) diamond earrings set in 18K white gold in Cape Town: $800.00. I thought we might get better deals in South Africa, known for its diamond mines, but I finally concluded that its main claim to fame in the world of cut stones is to have the highest quality diamonds but obviously not the least expensive. I guess it’s back to 47th Street in New York for any serious gem shopping I might envision in my future.
And oh, those amazing South African wines, which I now believe are a most well-kept secret from the average wine-swilling consumer in the US; the white wines from Stellenbosch, in particular — which is the Western Cape’s version of Napa Valley, but with bigger mountains — grows and ages astonishing chenin blancs, chardonnays, and sauvignon blancs that are the equal of any wine I have drunk from California, Italy, or France. At $3 a glass, or $5 to $8 per bottle, you feel like you have been sucked back in time to the 1950s with prices that low — except, of course, we had no good wines in the 1950s in South Africa or the US!
On Monday Dec 1st, we dragged ourselves out of the aforementioned rooftop pool and packed our 12 wooden animals, two soap stone elephants, three African pashminas in purple, red, and gray for Kittson, Ronon and Emily, tee shirts from Kruger park for the sons-in-law, hats, hippos, beaded necklaces and bowls and boarded our bus for the airport in Cape Town. That was a South African Airways wide body, disappointingly cramped for a long-haul carrier that should know better, and flew to Jo’burg where we would be driven to the other end of the airport with our carry-on luggage in tow, and then have to wend our long way back to the international terminal, go through security two more times, and get back on the same SAA Airbus 340 for JFK in NYC, with a refueling stop in Dakar (remember, that’s the city that is EIGHT HOURS away by plane. So much for Ebola contagion jumping over 5000 miles or more to the southernmost part of the continent!) And no one seemed to board the plane in Dakar except for some security men who strangely made us remove our carryon bags from the overhead bins so they could look behind them. No kidding. Then they sprayed us with some kind of disinfectant, and an hour later we were airborne for the final nine hours to New York. Cramped in our narrow seats with our American butts, more than one of us complained of an aching tail bone when we disembarked at JFK at 7am local time the next day. Even so, it was all worth it. Africa is still dominant in my dreams.
FYI: our tour company was Friendly Planet (not Lonely Planet, which makes tour books), based in Pennsylvania. Our 17-day tour of South Africa was called “Best of South Africa” and it cost about $3500 for the basic tour; we signed on to the extension trip to Zimbabwe which added about another $1200 to the bottom line. That included your airfare in high season, all 4- and 5-star hotels which were over-the-top in luxury and comfort; all of our breakfasts (from fruit and cereal to oatmeal to eggs, bacon and scones!), four dinners, and three lunches. They also sponsor tours to Israel, Kenya (maybe not now), China, South America and Europe, among other places. We thought they offered an exceptionally good value with excellent tour guides and top-of-the-line Mercedes busses. A word about tours: you might cringe at the thought that you have become one of “those people” who are on a tour bus but we have found one great feature of tours: they take all the hassle and (subliminal) anxiety out of travelling to an exotic location. From arranging your transport to a hotel as well as conveyance of luggage, they do it all. And tour guides often can offer lots of tidbits about travel in the country you chosen as well as many interesting details about the people and country itself. And they do all that for far less money than if you arranged it yourself.
Ellen, once of Africa, now back in Connecticut
INTO AFRICA/Part 3: SWIMMING WITH THE SHARKS
Game animals were everywhere when we got to Kruger National Game Reserve, in Mpumalonga state, east of Jo’burg on our fifth day in Africa. We saw the very rare cheetah there, instead of the leopard, which is the most elusive of the Big Five, a creature that is both reclusive and shy, we were told. Also lumbering through the bush wherever we drove in Kruger were wart hogs, hyenas, impala, crocodiles (on river banks), all kinds of exotic birds, mongoose, monkeys/baboons. It was like being on another planet. We went on six safaris in all, with five of them occurring on three consecutive days. In the Kapama Private Game Reserve where we had our after-dark lion encounter related in my first dispatch, we would convene at 4:30 pm for our evening safari that found us back at the lodge at 7:30 just as dark was falling and in time for our huge “bush” buffet dinner of grilled impala, ostrich meat, roast guinea hen, rice, local beans, salad, some type of green vegetables with red pepper and lots of tropical fruit. But midway through the safari, our guides would coordinate a stopping point where our vans would convene and park. Out came a folding table and African-print tablecloth, tin cans displayed holding impala jerky and nuts, and a suitcase opened containing South African wines and beers, and gins and vodkas. How civilized is that for “roughing” it? Well, the British once counted this land as part of its empire and you can tell.
We stayed in the financial district, Sandston, in Johannesburg which was full of huge, glittering buildings and a fabulous shopping plaza named after Nelson Mandela with restaurants and stores for your nourishment and retail therapy. All very high end and we were able to walk the few blocks to nearby restaurants without fear of robbery in that up-scale neighborhood. But then you get out into the “townships”, which is South Africa’s euphemistic term for the slums that were built to contain all black South Africans during the apartheid years, from 1948 until 1994, chock full of falling-down metal shacks and usually found just outside the city center, and it’s a much different story. Much of inner Jo’burg is also sketchy indeed, and the country, full of visible contradictions, has a huge crime problem averaging 47 murders a day, about seven times greater than in the US. Car jackings and robbings are also at epidemic levels, and our guide admonished us never to use an ATM machine that was not inside a building and to preferably visit one only when accompanied by a companion who could stand guard as you withdrew your money.
We loved Cape Town near the bottom of the continent. A stunning, up-and-coming city in a beautiful setting nestled between huge mountains and a crystalline seacoast, it reminded me a bit of San Francisco with its vestiges of Victorian architecture and multi-colored houses on the hilly streets, with a spectacular waterfront. Another couple on our tour, who had spent their professional lives in northern California, told us that they could imagine living in Cape Town, “and we are pretty picky about where we live,” they added. It didn’t hurt that we spent our last morning in Africa sunbathing on the roof of our hotel, dipping our bodies into the lap pool and gazing up to the mountains towering over us as well as the harbor in front of us. The day before I had picked up an interesting stone from the Cape of Good Hope, about a 90-minute drive south of Cape Town along a stunning, mountainous coastline, to bring home to my brother who might have been a geologist in a different life. In the city the next day, hoping for some cut-rate diamonds, I priced one tanzanite ring set in tiny diamonds in one tony store: upwards of $2K. Also I looked at a pair of tiny (0.4 karat) diamond earrings set in 18K white gold in Cape Town: $800.00. I thought we might get better deals in South Africa, known for its diamond mines, but I finally concluded that its main claim to fame in the world of cut stones is to have the highest quality diamonds but obviously not the least expensive. I guess it’s back to 47th Street in New York for any serious gem shopping I might envision in my future.
And, oh those amazing South African wines, which I now believe are a most well-kept secret from the average wine-swilling consumer in the US; the white wines from Stellenbosch, in particular — which is the Western Cape’s version of Napa Valley, but with bigger mountains — grows and ages astonishing chenin blancs, chardonnays, and sauvignon blancs that are the equal of any wine I have drunk from California, Italy, or France. At $3 a glass, or $5 to $8 per bottle, you feel like you have been sucked back in time to the 1950s with prices that low — except, of course, we had no good wines in the 1950s in South Africa or the US!
On Monday Dec 1st, we dragged ourselves out of the pool and packed our 12 wooden animals, two soap stone elephants, three African pashminas in purple, red, and gray for Kittson, Ronon and Emily, tee shirts from Kruger park for the sons-in-law, hats, hippos, beaded necklaces and bowls and boarded our bus for the airport in Cape Town. That was a South African Airways wide body, disappointingly cramped for a long-haul carrier that should know better, and flew to Jo’burg where we would be driven to the other end of the airport with our carry-on luggage in tow, and then have to wend our long way back to the international terminal, go through security two more times, and get back on the same SAA Airbus 340 for JFK in NYC, with a refueling stop in Dakar (remember, that’s the city that is EIGHT HOURS away by plane. So much for Ebola contagion jumping over 5000 miles or more to the southernmost part of the continent!) And no one seemed to board the plane in Dakar except for some security men who strangely made us remove our carryon bags from the overhead bins so they could look behind them. No kidding. Then they sprayed us with some kind of disinfectant, and an hour later we were airborne for the final nine hours to New York. Cramped in our narrow seats with our American butts, more than one of us complained of an aching tail bone when we disembarked at JFK at 7am local time the next day. Even so, it was all worth it. Africa is still dominant in my dreams.
FYI: our tour company was Friendly Planet (not Lonely Planet, which makes tour books), based in Pennsylvania. Our 17-day tour of South Africa was called “Best of South Africa” and it cost about $3500 for the basic tour; we signed on to the extension trip to Zimbabwe which added about another $1200 to the bottom line. That included your airfare in high season, all 4- and 5-star hotels which were over-the-top in luxury and comfort; all of our breakfasts (from fruit and cereal to oatmeal to eggs, bacon and scones!), four dinners, and three lunches. They also sponsor tours to Israel, Kenya (maybe not now), China, South America and Europe, among other places. We thought they offered an exceptionally good value with excellent tour guides and top-of-the-line Mercedes busses. A word about tours: you might cringe at the thought that you have become one of “those people” who are on a tour bus but we have found one great feature of tours: they take all the hassle and (subliminal) anxiety out of travelling to an exotic location. From arranging your transport to a hotel as well as conveyance of luggage, they do it all. And tour guides often can offer lots of tidbits about travel in the country you chosen as well as many interesting details about the people and country itself. And they do all that for far less money than if you arranged it yourself.
Ellen, once of Africa, now back in Connecticut
INTO AFRICA/Part 3: SWIMMING WITH THE SHARKS
Game animals were everywhere when we got to Kruger National Game Reserve, in Mpumalonga state, east of Jo’burg on our fifth day in Africa. We saw the very rare cheetah there, instead of the leopard, which is the most elusive of the Big Five, a creature that is both reclusive and shy, we were told. Also lumbering through the bush wherever we drove in Kruger were wart hogs, hyenas, impala, crocodiles (on river banks), all kinds of exotic birds, mongoose, monkeys/baboons. It was like being on another planet. We went on six safaris in all, with five of them occurring on three consecutive days. In the Kapama Private Game Reserve where we had our after-dark lion encounter related in my first dispatch, we would convene at 4:30 pm for our evening safari that found us back at the lodge at 7:30 just as dark was falling and in time for our huge “bush” buffet dinner of grilled impala, ostrich meat, roast guinea hen, rice, local beans, salad, some type of green vegetables with red pepper and lots of tropical fruit. But midway through the safari, our guides would coordinate a stopping point where our vans would convene and park. Out came a folding table and African-print tablecloth, tin cans displayed holding impala jerky and nuts, and a suitcase opened containing South African wines and beers, and gins and vodkas. How civilized is that for “roughing” it? Well, the British once counted this land as part of its empire and you can tell.
We stayed in the financial district, Sandston, in Johannesburg which was full of huge, glittering buildings and a fabulous shopping plaza named after Nelson Mandela with restaurants and stores for your nourishment and retail therapy. All very high end and we were able to walk the few blocks to nearby restaurants without fear of robbery in that up-scale neighborhood. But then you get out into the “townships”, which is South Africa’s euphemistic term for the slums that were built to contain all black South Africans during the apartheid years, from 1948 until 1994, chock full of falling-down metal shacks and usually found just outside the city center, and it’s a much different story. Much of inner Jo’burg is also sketchy indeed, and the country, full of visible contradictions, has a huge crime problem averaging 47 murders a day, about seven times greater than in the US. Car jackings and robbings are also at epidemic levels, and our guide admonished us never to use an ATM machine that was not inside a building and to preferably visit one only when accompanied by a companion who could stand guard as you withdrew your money.
We loved Cape Town near the bottom of the continent. A stunning, up-and-coming city in a beautiful setting nestled between huge mountains and a crystalline seacoast, it reminded me a bit of San Francisco with its vestiges of Victorian architecture and multi-colored houses on the hilly streets, with a spectacular waterfront. Another couple on our tour, who had spent their professional lives in northern California, told us that they could imagine living in Cape Town, “and we are pretty picky about where we live,” they added. It didn’t hurt that we spent our last morning in Africa sunbathing on the roof of our hotel, dipping our bodies into the lap pool and gazing up to the mountains towering over us as well as the harbor in front of us. The day before I had picked up an interesting stone from the Cape of Good Hope, about a 90-minute drive south of Cape Town along a stunning, mountainous coastline, to bring home to my brother who might have been a geologist in a different life. In the city the next day, hoping for some cut-rate diamonds, I priced one tanzanite ring set in tiny diamonds in one tony store: upwards of $2K. Also I looked at a pair of tiny (0.4 karat) diamond earrings set in 18K white gold in Cape Town: $800.00. I thought we might get better deals in South Africa, known for its diamond mines, but I finally concluded that its main claim to fame in the world of cut stones is to have the highest quality diamonds but obviously not the least expensive. I guess it’s back to 47th Street in New York for any serious gem shopping I might envision in my future.
And, oh those amazing South African wines, which I now believe are a most well-kept secret from the average wine-swilling consumer in the US; the white wines from Stellenbosch, in particular — which is the Western Cape’s version of Napa Valley, but with bigger mountains — grows and ages astonishing chenin blancs, chardonnays, and sauvignon blancs that are the equal of any wine I have drunk from California, Italy, or France. At $3 a glass, or $5 to $8 per bottle, you feel like you have been sucked back in time to the 1950s with prices that low — except, of course, we had no good wines in the 1950s in South Africa or the US!
On Monday Dec 1st, we dragged ourselves out of the pool and packed our 12 wooden animals, two soap stone elephants, three African pashminas in purple, red, and gray for Kittson, Ronon and Emily, tee shirts from Kruger park for the sons-in-law, hats, hippos, beaded necklaces and bowls and boarded our bus for the airport in Cape Town. That was a South African Airways wide body, disappointingly cramped for a long-haul carrier that should know better, and flew to Jo’burg where we would be driven to the other end of the airport with our carry-on luggage in tow, and then have to wend our long way back to the international terminal, go through security two more times, and get back on the same SAA Airbus 340 for JFK in NYC, with a refueling stop in Dakar (remember, that’s the city that is EIGHT HOURS away by plane. So much for Ebola contagion jumping over 5000 miles or more to the southernmost part of the continent!) And no one seemed to board the plane in Dakar except for some security men who strangely made us remove our carryon bags from the overhead bins so they could look behind them. No kidding. Then they sprayed us with some kind of disinfectant, and an hour later we were airborne for the final nine hours to New York. Cramped in our narrow seats with our American butts, more than one of us complained of an aching tail bone when we disembarked at JFK at 7am local time the next day. Even so, it was all worth it. Africa is still dominant in my dreams.
FYI: our tour company was Friendly Planet (not Lonely Planet, which makes tour books), based in Pennsylvania. Our 17-day tour of South Africa was called “Best of South Africa” and it cost about $3500 for the basic tour; we signed on to the extension trip to Zimbabwe which added about another $1200 to the bottom line. That included your airfare in high season, all 4- and 5-star hotels which were over-the-top in luxury and comfort; all of our breakfasts (from fruit and cereal to oatmeal to eggs, bacon and scones!), four dinners, and three lunches. They also sponsor tours to Israel, Kenya (maybe not now), China, South America and Europe, among other places. We thought they offered an exceptionally good value with excellent tour guides and top-of-the-line Mercedes busses. A word about tours: you might cringe at the thought that you have become one of “those people” who are on a tour bus but we have found one great feature of tours: they take all the hassle and (subliminal) anxiety out of travelling to an exotic location. From arranging your transport to a hotel as well as conveyance of luggage, they do it all. And tour guides often can offer lots of tidbits about travel in the country you chosen as well as many interesting details about the people and country itself. And they do all that for far less money than if you arranged it yourself.
Ellen, once of Africa, now back in Connecticut