Thanks for reading, and see you soon!
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Au Revoir, South Africa
I've just about run out of things to say about our South Africa trip, so I'll leave you with a few more cute animal pictures. And I invite you to bookmark this site, as I'll be returning to it each time we take a trip to post more pictures and stories ... in the meantime, enjoy these last few shots:
Thanks for reading, and see you soon!
Thanks for reading, and see you soon!
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
The Wild Kingdom
When people asked me before the trip if we were going on safari, I said no -- thinking that "safari" meant porters and tents and dressing for dinner in the jungle.
But in the modern Africa, a safari can be as simple as checking into an air-conditioned hotel with a good wine cellar and then, twice a day, driving around in a big Jeep to look for wild animals.
There's no jungle, either, at least not in this part of the world. We went to a lodge in Pilanesberg National Park, about two hours' drive northwest of Johannesburg, near the Sun City resort complex. Like most of the safari country of southern Africa, it is semiarid scrubland reminiscent of the American West:
This type of vegetation makes it much easier to see animals from the "game drive" vehicle, which looks like this:
It helps, as well, that the animals are generally habituated to humans in trucks and tend not to run away. This is at least partly because many of the parks and game reserves where safaris occur are fenced in, to keep poachers from killing the animals and to keep the animals from wandering outside the park and killing the local farmers. So the animals have had quite some time to get used to nonthreatening humans.
This results in close-up encounters like these:
We even managed to get close to a pride of lions, which can be hard to spot because they're exactly the same color as the grass:
They did notice us and sat up:
The guide told us that we were perfectly safe, in an open-sided truck 10 yards from the lions, because the lions can't conceive of a truck full of people; they simply see the truck and assume it is a big animal that they can't eat and that doesn't want to eat them. Of course, if anyone had gotten out of the truck, it would have been a different story.
The most amusing animal encounter actually happened at our hotel, though. We checked in and, not having been told otherwise, opened the window for some fresh air. The minute we turned our backs, a vervet monkey dashed in, went straight for the minibar, grabbed a plastic-wrapped cookie and then took it back outside to eat:
Clearly, he had done this many times before.
But in the modern Africa, a safari can be as simple as checking into an air-conditioned hotel with a good wine cellar and then, twice a day, driving around in a big Jeep to look for wild animals.
There's no jungle, either, at least not in this part of the world. We went to a lodge in Pilanesberg National Park, about two hours' drive northwest of Johannesburg, near the Sun City resort complex. Like most of the safari country of southern Africa, it is semiarid scrubland reminiscent of the American West:
This type of vegetation makes it much easier to see animals from the "game drive" vehicle, which looks like this:
It helps, as well, that the animals are generally habituated to humans in trucks and tend not to run away. This is at least partly because many of the parks and game reserves where safaris occur are fenced in, to keep poachers from killing the animals and to keep the animals from wandering outside the park and killing the local farmers. So the animals have had quite some time to get used to nonthreatening humans.
This results in close-up encounters like these:
We even managed to get close to a pride of lions, which can be hard to spot because they're exactly the same color as the grass:
They did notice us and sat up:
The guide told us that we were perfectly safe, in an open-sided truck 10 yards from the lions, because the lions can't conceive of a truck full of people; they simply see the truck and assume it is a big animal that they can't eat and that doesn't want to eat them. Of course, if anyone had gotten out of the truck, it would have been a different story.
The most amusing animal encounter actually happened at our hotel, though. We checked in and, not having been told otherwise, opened the window for some fresh air. The minute we turned our backs, a vervet monkey dashed in, went straight for the minibar, grabbed a plastic-wrapped cookie and then took it back outside to eat:
Clearly, he had done this many times before.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Soweto: The Other Side of Town
As someone who went to college in the United States at the height of the divestiture controversy, it was quite a thrill to actually get to visit where it all began:
Soweto, an acronym for "South West Township," was originally built as segregated housing for transient black mineworkers. Some of the old barracks buildings still stand, although here, as elsewhere in the country (including the shantytowns near the Cape Town airport) the government is doing its best to upgrade slum-dwellers to modern middle-class-style housing:
There is still much abject poverty in Soweto -- many people don't yet have running water, and need to fetch it from a communal pump:
But there is also at least one neighborhood of comfortable middle-class housing ....
... and even a country club and shopping mall, which we saw from afar. And it is rife with the sites of protests and battles against the former apartheid government, including this Roman Catholic church, which the white army stormed in 1976 during the uprising that led to the divestiture movement and ultimately to the end of apartheid:
To this day, you can see bullet holes in various parts of the sanctuary of the church, and in panels from the windows that the caretaker has saved to show to visitors:
The 1976 uprising began as a protest by black students against the white government's decision to make them take all their classes in Afrikaans, a language many of them did not even speak. One of the first casualties was a 12-year-old boy, Hector Pieterson, gunned down while unarmed and protesting peacefully.
A museum now stands near the spot, but a better museum opened more recently between Soweto and downtown Johannesburg. Called the Apartheid Museum, it vividly recreates life under the segregationist regime:
I could not have imagined, back in 1984, that apartheid would end peacefully and with a real degree of reconciliation between the races. It is a tribute to all South Africans that it did.
Soweto, an acronym for "South West Township," was originally built as segregated housing for transient black mineworkers. Some of the old barracks buildings still stand, although here, as elsewhere in the country (including the shantytowns near the Cape Town airport) the government is doing its best to upgrade slum-dwellers to modern middle-class-style housing:
There is still much abject poverty in Soweto -- many people don't yet have running water, and need to fetch it from a communal pump:
But there is also at least one neighborhood of comfortable middle-class housing ....
... and even a country club and shopping mall, which we saw from afar. And it is rife with the sites of protests and battles against the former apartheid government, including this Roman Catholic church, which the white army stormed in 1976 during the uprising that led to the divestiture movement and ultimately to the end of apartheid:
To this day, you can see bullet holes in various parts of the sanctuary of the church, and in panels from the windows that the caretaker has saved to show to visitors:
The 1976 uprising began as a protest by black students against the white government's decision to make them take all their classes in Afrikaans, a language many of them did not even speak. One of the first casualties was a 12-year-old boy, Hector Pieterson, gunned down while unarmed and protesting peacefully.
A museum now stands near the spot, but a better museum opened more recently between Soweto and downtown Johannesburg. Called the Apartheid Museum, it vividly recreates life under the segregationist regime:
I could not have imagined, back in 1984, that apartheid would end peacefully and with a real degree of reconciliation between the races. It is a tribute to all South Africans that it did.
Johannesburg: Urban Dystopia
800 miles inland and 5,000 feet up on a plateau, Johannesburg is as different from Cape Town as it could possibly be. It sprawls for more than 40 miles across rolling prairie, a sort of Blade Runnerish version of Dallas. Had we not had a friend there to show us around, I'm not sure we would have been able to even start to get a handle on it.
Johannesburg, of course, has a fearsome reputation for crime. Our friend, Abe, told us it was not as bad as it used to be, and said he could even drive around in the central city during the day if he wanted. However, he said it was too risky to take us there, so we had to content ourselves with this view from the freeway:
The northern suburbs look much like Pasadena, except for the eight-foot-high walls topped with electric fences that surround every home:
Many homes even have private guard shacks outside the gate:
It is so bad that even Nelson Mandela now lives behind fortifications like these rather than among his people. Home invasions and carjackings are the main dangers; gated communities are set up to make it difficult both for burglars to get in and for car thieves to get out with their loot. And even in fairly distant suburbs, you see signs like this:
There is another nightmarish aspect to the city, as well. It was founded on gold mines and even close to downtown is still dotted with giant slag heaps:
This, at least, is being addressed. Apparently new technology makes it possible to go through the slag and extract significant amounts of gold that the old miners missed, so much of the slag is being slowly carted away for reprocessing.
I don't want to leave the impression that Jo'burg is nothing but nasty, though. We did have fun at a gay bar there, as well as a couple of good meals. If you've got money, you can live very well, at places like the poolside bar of the Hotel Westcliff:
And while Nelson Mandela apparently must fear street crime like any ordinary citizen, he has lent his name (willingly or not) to a brand new upscale shopping mall in a white neighborhood, surely the ultimate mark of economic and political reconciliation:
Johannesburg, of course, has a fearsome reputation for crime. Our friend, Abe, told us it was not as bad as it used to be, and said he could even drive around in the central city during the day if he wanted. However, he said it was too risky to take us there, so we had to content ourselves with this view from the freeway:
The northern suburbs look much like Pasadena, except for the eight-foot-high walls topped with electric fences that surround every home:
Many homes even have private guard shacks outside the gate:
It is so bad that even Nelson Mandela now lives behind fortifications like these rather than among his people. Home invasions and carjackings are the main dangers; gated communities are set up to make it difficult both for burglars to get in and for car thieves to get out with their loot. And even in fairly distant suburbs, you see signs like this:
There is another nightmarish aspect to the city, as well. It was founded on gold mines and even close to downtown is still dotted with giant slag heaps:
This, at least, is being addressed. Apparently new technology makes it possible to go through the slag and extract significant amounts of gold that the old miners missed, so much of the slag is being slowly carted away for reprocessing.
I don't want to leave the impression that Jo'burg is nothing but nasty, though. We did have fun at a gay bar there, as well as a couple of good meals. If you've got money, you can live very well, at places like the poolside bar of the Hotel Westcliff:
And while Nelson Mandela apparently must fear street crime like any ordinary citizen, he has lent his name (willingly or not) to a brand new upscale shopping mall in a white neighborhood, surely the ultimate mark of economic and political reconciliation:
Monday, May 11, 2009
March of the Penguin
There are three colonies of penguins in South Africa: on Robben Island , near the Cape of Good Hope and further east along the coast. They stink like bagoong (Filipino fermented shrimp paste), but if you can get past that they are actually quite cute:
You can get quite close to them, particularly at the Simon's Town site near the Cape of Good Hope. The penguins there seem quite habituated to people. This one got out of the water and, apparently unfazed by the paparazzi, began staggering up the beach:
It looked rather dazed and confused, and we weren't sure it knew where it was going, but then it headed straight for a bush -- and its spouse, in the nest:
And then, just like in the movies, it (you can't easily tell whether they are male or female) began regurgitating its dinner to feed its spouse, with a very loud noise. In fact, because of the noise, these were originally known as "jackass penguins," but in the new, ultra-politically-correct South Africa, that term has been banned and they are now called "African penguins."
Not quite as majestic as the ones in the movie, but a hell of a lot easier to see in the wild.
You can get quite close to them, particularly at the Simon's Town site near the Cape of Good Hope. The penguins there seem quite habituated to people. This one got out of the water and, apparently unfazed by the paparazzi, began staggering up the beach:
It looked rather dazed and confused, and we weren't sure it knew where it was going, but then it headed straight for a bush -- and its spouse, in the nest:
And then, just like in the movies, it (you can't easily tell whether they are male or female) began regurgitating its dinner to feed its spouse, with a very loud noise. In fact, because of the noise, these were originally known as "jackass penguins," but in the new, ultra-politically-correct South Africa, that term has been banned and they are now called "African penguins."
Not quite as majestic as the ones in the movie, but a hell of a lot easier to see in the wild.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Sundowners
The western edge of Cape Town, facing the Atlantic Ocean, is a series of upper-class residential neighborhoods cut off from downtown by the backside of Table Mountain. Although it's a bit of a hike to get there, it's popular to go there at nightfall and watch the sun set into the Atlantic.
The play of light on Table Mountain itself is fascinating, as you can see from these pictures, the first taken about an hour before sunset, and the second taken maybe 45 minutes later:
And the sunset itself is indeed beautiful:
It is the local custom to have a drink in one's hand while watching this; such drinks are called "sundowners," and that has become the name throughout South Africa for what we would call "happy hour."
We will be adopting the term "sundowners" for drinks served at nightfall at our Fire Island house forthwith ...
The play of light on Table Mountain itself is fascinating, as you can see from these pictures, the first taken about an hour before sunset, and the second taken maybe 45 minutes later:
And the sunset itself is indeed beautiful:
It is the local custom to have a drink in one's hand while watching this; such drinks are called "sundowners," and that has become the name throughout South Africa for what we would call "happy hour."
We will be adopting the term "sundowners" for drinks served at nightfall at our Fire Island house forthwith ...
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