OUT OF SOUTH AFRICA

By South African Airways instead of the train

Well, tomorrow, 1 October, we fly out of Cape Town for Namibia. It has been a great visit. South Africa has felt very strange though. We enjoyed it but something was not quite right. Though I enjoyed the country and visit, unlike almost every country I have been to, I am not in love with it. I could not figure out why until we talked with Edy at the Best Little Guest House in Oudtshoorn. She says the problem is that it feels so “familiar”. “Look around, this could be anywhere in the western part of the U.S.” “The people all speak English, so really, there is nothing new to your senses here other than the game parks.” And she is right. My favorite town, Cradock, could be any little working town out west.

 Don’t take this the wrong way, that I did not enjoy the trip. I enjoyed it immensely and Vicki will be talking about it the rest of her life because of the animal encounters.

The politics of the country are interesting. There is no way that in 30 days I can comprehend it all but there are some basics. Apartheid was brutal and wrong up until it was changed in 1994. There are three groups in South Africa: the Whites, the Blacks and the Coloreds and they describe themselves in those terms. Now the Blacks have the political power and the Whites have the economic power and the Coloreds are left on the fringe. There is an uneasy relationship among the three. Everybody in every country dislikes their government so that gives the Whites an even greater reason to attack theirs and blame everything on the Blacks. Some is merited but mainly it is just back to the Black/White issue. Hopefully, that in future as the children mix in school and become more comfortable with each other things will work themselves out.

know what this is? a nipple protector. it was ok for a black to wet nurse a white baby and the baby to drink the milk, but it was not ok for a white baby's lips to touch black skin.

I did not get to mix with the man on the street as much as I would have liked as most of the mixing was with elephants.  But the ones I did meet were warm and out going Black or White. At no time  did we worry about our safety.

There is a immigrant population here from surrounding countries that are here just like the in U.S. They are mostly in the service sector and all the employers like them better than the South African Blacks. Like anywhere else in the world, the economic immigrant just wants to make a living to send money back home to support their families.  Something we should not begrudge them.

There is a strange exception to the immigrants here and that is the ones from Zimbabwe. Sandra, of the Victoria Manor in Cradock, said they are better educated, more comfortable dealing with other people, highly literate and more outgoing. We found this to very much to be the case.  Odd, since they come from such a depressed country, but their education system seems to still be working, where South Africa's seems to be failing.  They act more as an equal to the White as opposed to subservient. 

This trip was too busy with too much moving to tell all the stories we came across. Hopefully, at some time in the future I might be able to do so. Here are some that I would write.

• Sam, a economic refugee from Zimbabwe, who works at the Victoria Manor in Cradock, and his close relationship with Lambert, the black and white dog, that was left behind when his owner took a job in a foreign country. Lambert knows exactly when Sam is supposed to come to work and is visibly upset if he is late. During the whole shift Lambert stalks him were ever he goes.
• Dick, a rare art book seller, and his intriguing stories of the profession. How his father would not pay for Dick’s degree in Art History because “there is no way to make a living in that”. His father’s outlook was tempered by having been a POW in Berlin during WWII and then, when the city was liberated, having been jailed by the Russians as they thought he had some value as a scientist, which he was not. After six months and proving that he was just a Dutch POW they released him and he had to walk from Berlin back to Holland.
• Daniele and her many years working throughout Africa as a consultant mainly for British American Tobacco and “believing all those bloody ads” who now is a chain smoker busy hacking up her lungs. Her stories of working in all the different countries was intriguing.
• Eric and his famiy's history of farming in the Karoo
• The Nieu-Bethesda story.
• The street band in Cape Town
• Roger, Janet and her sister

There is a little of American in South Africa and not all of good.

IN AND AROUND CAPE TOWN

View Larger Map

We left Penguinville and headed down to the Cape of Good Hope, which many people think is the most southern point, but thanks to my adventures you now know that it is Cape Agulhas. I did not know that the Cape of Good Hope does not even have the lighthouse. I discovered the lighthouse is at Cape Point just down the road. 

 these are the first big tourists bus's we have seen in the country

me and the cape of good hope

We wandered back into Cape Town along a very scenic route.

Saturday we wondered around downtown and to the Victoria and Alford wharf that was pretty crowed from holiday weekend for the schools.

Saturday night went to Janet's apartment with Roger and Janets sister Sandy.  We met them in Agulhas and like most South Africans are extremely out going and friendly.  Janet is more the most and is just a ball of fun to we with.  Always laughing and with a great outlook on life.  After dinner they drove on a night tour of the town.  Roger is from Cape Town and is very proud of his city and loves to show it off.  We drove up to the top of Signal Hill, just under 2000 feet high, for a wonderful night time view of the city.  It was very clear so we could see all the way to the horizon.  They dropped us off at midnight which was way beyond my bed time but I was not the least bit sleepy from all the fun that we had.

Scooters in Cape Town

 From the My Cross Egypt Challenge blog.

Enroute to the Cross Egypt Challenge, I made a little detour to South Africa. I remember reading on MV of some crazy people that were going to ride from Cape Town, South Africa to Dublin, Ireland in 2013. I did a little search and found their website and contacted Chris Venter, the organizer.  He invited me out to his house to look at his stable of scooters and discuss the ride.  This is a amazing under taking. There will no support vehicle.  Everything on goes on the scooter. http://scooteraddicts.co.za/ There are three riders from South Africa and Dave from Orlando.   LNL, better know as Stella's to us, is sponsoring them with 4 scooters.  I asked why the 2 strokes and Chris said the LNL is over all the best choice for their gearing, power through sand, spares enroute and reliability.  They can work on them and though the modern Vespa is a great machine, the modern parts, like the electronics, are not easily repaired in the field. There are two branches to their fund raising.   The planning going in to this is tremendous.  We in the U.S. do not appreciate what it takes for other people to travel the world.  Dave, the American, will only need two visas as the South Africans need visas for 6 different countries. So, one of the major logistical challenges is getting all the paper work, not only for themselves, but their scooters to pass through all the countries they will be visiting.  Astonishingly all the route is paved, except where the potholes are bigger than scooters.

The most important is the Red Cross Children's Hospital. They will be stopping in other Children's Hospitals in various countries during the ride. Then they are getting sponsors to cover their expenses. If you have interest in helping in either area, go to their website.

Chris is pretty much a scooter adventure junkie.  He has even started on this yet and is rolling ideas around in his head....Alaska to Argentina......the four corners of the U.S.......including Hawaii.....

The planning calendar.

The map.  The upper in the African part of the journey changes as the political situation changes.

Chris and three of the four scooters

The motorcycles we have seen in SA have the plastic yellow covers that really make the bike more visible.  It is just a piece of plastic cut and attached with Velcro.  I am getting me one made when I get home.

We also stopped into the Vespa dealer in Cape Town.  This is the way a Vespa dealer should look.  They have a great big genuine Vespa espresso machine and kindly offered us a cup.  Mike and Tom are the main guys and Steve, a college student, is a new part time salesman.  We had a great chat about Vespa's and Vespa.  They get no marketing support Vespa and have been surviving on their own for over 10 years.  I was told earlier in this trip when I came across a group of guys on Russian Ural sidecars, the reason there are not more scooters in South Africa is they are "bloody expensive".  A new 300 is 85,000 Rand or over $10,000. Ouch! A new owner of a scooter, all of 24 hours, came riding into the showroom, literally and they installed a fly screen for him.   We bought a Vespa hat and a locally produced bead art Vespa from Steve so we would be his first sale of working there.

You can follow the Cross Egypt Challenge on my blog http://crossegypt2012.blogspot.com/  and the official Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/CrossEgyptChallenge   (no sign in required). I will start a thread on the forum rides next week and try to keep it updated but I am not sure how available the internet will be once the ride begins.

Lets Go See The Penguins

OK, so we are in a nice comfortable place in the middle of wino country. A great place to stay until we move to Cape Town for the farewell party. But no, there is one more animal stop on the tour and that is the Penguins at Bolder Beach on the peninsula south of Cape Town. So we load up, say good by to Daniele   and Dick and all the animals and off we go in the rain.

First stop is to see some of the rarest animals of the 20th century.  How many can you identify.

Slide show here http://sfe2012.blogspot.com

This place has horses, animals, wine, grapes and some fantastic scenery.

see the strip up the mountain? that is grapes.

 On we go to Simon's Town, home of the penguins.

We arrive in Simmons Town after spotting our dinner spot, check into the Quay Hotel, our first hotel of this trip and set out in search of Penguins. "It is really great", she says, "I saw it on a special on TV (my first warning) and there were penguins everywhere." "On the beach stealing from the sunbathers and they had their own cross walk in town".

So here is what we found:

video here http://sfe2012.blogspot.com

Twenty hours of flying, thousands of KM in the car, untold amounts of money and it was a zoo. Or close enough to be a zoo.  I saw better penguins in the Boston Aquarium than these guys.

For payback I got to choose the place to eat. We had passed Cape to Cuba restaurant with a "revolutionary hour".  I do anything that is pro-Cuba.  Not that their government is of my liking, but what my government does I have such a strong disliking of.  Our embargo of Cuba is the epitome of what is wrong with our government.  It is only in place because of $$$$ from Cubans who tell me they are Cubans first and Americans second. I have long first hand stories of this BS but I will not bore you with it as, like most Americans, you do not know or care about the policy. Why should you?  It does not affect your daily life.  Did you know a Cuban "American " can fly to Cuba and spend dollars but you a "regular" American cannot? Like I said I will not go into it further other than to say the only reason it is there "is they give too much to the party" and it is what "they want".  It is a fine example of how $$$ from a minority group can control a policy for all America.

But, I digress. So off we go to Revolutionary hour. Now to get there is no easy task.  There is road construction on the little two lane road and it is only one way for about 1 Km.  It takes about 30 minutes to go this 1 Km.  Once we get there it is great.  The food is great, the decor is great and the staff is great.  In the end, after the revolution, it is just us and three other Americans playing cards at the next table.  "You are losing faster than I can win" seems to be the theme of the card game. 

damn! somebody put some liquor in that!

 they even give blankets

I found this picture interesting. Che's picture is being lit by the screen from the credit card machine. He would be rolling over in  his grave if he knew all the money that is being made off his likeness.