Cape Town: Where Ann Arbor, Michigan ............. meets Selma, Alabama

See our Cape Town album at Cape Town

After our safari tour of southern Africa ended at the Johannesburg airport, we headed to Cape Town on a six-day independent exploration with friends Gail and Janet.  What a beautiful city!  It sits on a gentle slope above a wide bay, dominated by an enormous  sandstone  monolith called Table Mountain, rising 3500 feet into the sky and flat as… well… you know.

It was out first real encounter with modern African culture, and we were charmed.  Our prior three weeks were spent in four remote bush camps—beautiful, well-appointed, and well-staffed, to be sure—but the tour was designed for the wildlife, not the people.  We spent eight days in Botswana, and never even saw their currency.  Our only contact outside the bush was the last couple of days in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe.  The Falls, on the Zambezi River, were magnificent and the small city of Vic Falls on the Zimbabwe side of the river was dotted with craft markets and outfitters and hotels, but they had a supermarket and local restaurants, too.  It was way low season, so there weren’t a lot of tourists around.  There is something dreadfully wrong in Zimbabwe (South Africa’s neighbor to the north) and we mention it here as a counterpoint to what we would find in Cape Town.

We knew something was wrong immediately when the hawkers began thrusting Zimbabwe bills at us through the bus window when we pulled into Victoria Falls.  They are selling their old hyper-inflated currency to the tourists for more than it was worth when it was in circulation. So you can buy a $30,000,000,000,000 note (that’s thirty trillion dollars) for a couple of bucks, and various denominations in the millions and billions for something less.  While you wouldn’t have known it from our experience at the bush camps, Zimbabwe is fucked up.

Zimbabwe bank note 2008;
Below its current value in constant dollars

 

The whites in Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia at the time) were rightfully dethroned in 1980, but it has been on a tragic, downward trajectory ever since.  The government is comprised of equal parts corruption and incompetence, with an icing of oppression. It’s all headed up by Robert Mugabe, who has been in power since independence.  Transparency International ranks Zimbabwe near the top of the list for corruption, with only a dozen countries ranked more corrupt (including Iraq and Afghanistan, two regimes that we die for and pay for).  Hyperinflation just four years ago was running at figures variously described as 23.1 million per cent, or 11.4 million per cent.  Whichever.  It was a lot.  Their currency became worthless (hence the hawkers), and they finally gave up.  THEY HAVE NO CURRENCY.  They use U.S. dollars almost exclusively, and the bills are dark, shop-worn, and thin; though they are fairly new, they would have been burned in the U.S .years ago.  These bills have been around.

A friend sent us an article that described the current economic condition.  After the government paid salaries and expenses at the end of 2012 (that’s a few weeks ago), the cash balance in Zimbabwe was $217, “the same financial standing as a fourteen-year old girl after a really good birthday party.”  Unemployment is 80%, and they been importing basic grain for the past dozen years from neighboring Zambia , to which Zimbabwe had expelled its successful white farmers beginning in 2000. 
 

Zimbabwe makes Detroit seem functional.

 

Now to Cape Town

Like Zimbabwe, South Africa extricated itself from minority white rule.  But the results were very different, if our six days in Cape Town gave us an accurate observation. 

The city is beautiful, with colonial architecture, and tremendous views of Table Bay to the west and Table Mountain to the east.  It has remarkable city parks and botanical gardens, including the 17^th century Company’s Gardens, a Dutch legacy that is right downtown, and Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, the 19^th century wonder bequeathed by Cecil Rhodes.  Occasionally a stiff southeasterly wind blows over Table Mountain, creating a thick white blanket of clouds that locals call the Table Cloth.  It is a glorious sight, with thick billows of white pouring over the rim of the mountain like a waterfall.  The clouds dissipate over the edge before reaching the city on the slope, which basks in bright summer sunshine.  (See the album; it is amazing.)

'Table Cloth' cascading over Table Mountain, from city park

Cape Town is a functioning cosmopolitan city, too. Nelson Mandela took over as national president in 1994, and his progressive philosophy of Truth and Reconciliation seems to have taken root in Cape Town. It is far more racially integrated than Detroit.  You see it at concerts, at museums, in the parks, in the shops and restaurants. 

 

And the city seems to work!  There is almost no litter, the street lights function, they pick up the trash, they developed their waterfront into a tourist mecca, and they meticulously maintain their many parks with pride.  They have public transportation, an aggressive public recycling program, strict zoning laws to prevent decay, and they maintain what seems to be a sustainable level of public corruption, like Chicago. Their seaside suburbs and public beaches are gorgeous.  It was enough to make us Detroiters envious as hell.

 Their legislation, post independence, is decidedly inclusive and progressive.  It is known as the Gay Capital of  Africa (same-sex marriage has been recognized since 2006, we were told), and virtually all forms of discriminatory laws on the books have been corrected since independence.  They celebrate their past, and revel in how far they have come.  Robben Island, their version of Alcatraz in Table Bay where Mandela was imprisoned for 18 of his 27 convict years, is a national park and World Heritage Site.  They have public statues and historical plaques everywhere, and several museums are dedicated to the anti-apartheid struggle; it is impossible to come away from Cape Town ignorant of the social transformation that has taken place there in less than two decades.

We weren’t deluded into believing that South Africa is a harmonious Utopia, though, and there is trouble in paradise.  You don’t have to travel far from Cape Town to see the Townships—the enormous segregated slums that ring Cape Town—and the other South African cities, too.  They were legislated as racial ghettos by the white government in the the early 1900s, and blacks and ‘coloureds’ were forcibly relocated from the cities.  They are still there. And some of the Townships, like Langa, one of many near Cape Town, have populations over a million.  The legislation that created the Townships for ‘non-whites’ is long gone, but the segregation and the poverty are not.
 

There is a quirky side to the South African racial relations, too.  There was a U.S. Civil War naval battle in Cape Town in 1863, and it had an impact. (We heard about it from a couple of sources in Cape Town, and we didn’t believe it, either.  But we later found it on the internet, so it is true).  The Confederate warship CSS Alabama operated around Cape Town in 1863, conducting raids on Union commercial shipping.  Some of the naval engagements were big events in Cape Town, as the residents gathered on the slopes above the city to watch the spectacle play out in Table Bay.  We’d say they were rooting for the South, if we had to guess.  The sailors of the Alabama were treated as celebrities on shore leave in Cape Town, and they left behind some cultural pollination that continues to flower today.  Like minstrel shows.  Minstrel shows!  And the New Year celebration known locally as “klopse”, where the local blacks parade in colorful silk outfits and face make-up and parasols, accompanied by brass bands and dancing.  It is a big local holiday on January 2, and the parades continue through the neighborhoods on Saturdays for the rest of the month (which is where Linda, Gail, and Janet were engulfed in it.  See album.) 




Cape Coons



We described the scene to an elderly Afrikaner woman a few days later.  “Oh.  You mean the Coons”.  “I beg your pardon?” we asked, not sure we had heard right.  “We call them the Cape Coons,” she repeated, smiling sweetly.  We asked if this were a derogatory term, and she assured us that it was not; they are commonly referred to as the Cape Coons.  “But the tourists are starting to complain,” she explained.  “Some are starting to call them the Cape Minstrels.”   We found this on the internet, too, so we know it to be true.

We learned a few other peculiar terms.  Like kaffir ,which is like the N word, only worse; moofie, a term for a homosexual (an Afrikaans term derived from a Dutch word that refers to a castrated sheep); and bergie, their term for the street people, and it refers to the homeless who live in the hills (“bergs”, in Afrikaans) and wander around parts of the city during the day. “They are very funny,” another older Afrikaner woman told us, then she launched into a pretty clever imitation of a toothless bergie complaining about the quality of her handout.  “And they walk around pushing shopping trolleys!” she said.  We didn’t tell her we’d seen it before.
 

This same woman, whom we met during intermission at a folk music concert at the University of Cape Town, gave us a little background on some Bushman folk tunes from the Kalahari we had just heard.  “We used to hunt them, you know, until the 1930’s,” she said with what might have been remorse.  We had heard the story before, but it’s not a subject you pursue with any enthusiasm with a local black bush guide in Botswana. “Wow,” Roger ventured.  “Like as a nuisance, or for sport?”  “For sport,” she said.  “But we don’t talk about it.”

 

Being a Tourist on the Cape



Cape Point, as far south as you can go in Africa

The townships notwithstanding, The Western Cape is one of the most beautiful places we’ve seen.  We took a day-trip tour to the Cape of Good Hope.  Along the way we saw some of the most dramatic seascapes anywhere, and we include Nova Scotia and northern California in this assessment.  We visited a penguin colony near the Cape, biked around the national park , and climbed the dramatic cliffs that divide the Atlantic from the Indian Ocean.  We took the cable car to the top of Table Mountain (one of the Seven Wonders of the Natural World, and a national park), where we hiked the craggy trails and marveled at the panorama spread out before us 3500 feet below.  We hiked around the amazing botanical park at Kirstenbosch, and took another day tour to the beautiful wine country near Stellenbosch.





Our favorite Japanese tourists thought Roger was a tourist attraction.

And we finally got to meet real locals and fellow travelers, too. Our tour of southern Africa was just a chip-shot, but for serious travelers Africa begins or ends in Cape Town.  We stayed at Shanti Gardens, an upscale but raucous backpacker hostel a short walk from downtown.  Being geezers, we opted for their quieter “residential annex” where we had rooms in a converted colonial home around the corner. We met dozens of travelers at Shanti Gardens, many on their way to or from the famous cross-continent truck safaris—taken on behemoth heavy-duty truck-buses—that go from Cairo to Cape Town and points in between.  We met an elderly trip leader, who drives the truck, but only as far north as Nairobi (“I’m getting too old for the long hauls,” he apologized.)  We met optimistic aid workers on R&R, and crazed Japanese tourists on a boating excursion out of Hout Bay.  And we met Nikki and Peter, a young couple from Holland who had a room at our “residence”.  They were an amazing pair, on holiday from their police jobs, and they were determined to suck out every bit of adventure the Cape had to offer.  Self-drive bush safaris.  The world’s highest bungi jump.  Cage scuba diving with the Great Whites.  Sand dune surf- boarding.  Night clubbing til dawn.  And they weren’t too busy to spend quality wine time on the patio with four geezers from the Midwest.  Not such an adrenalin rush there, to be sure, but they seemed to enjoy themselves just fine.

Animal Planet Got Nuthin' on Us!

See our animal album at African Animals

Looking for and at animals is the main reason for this trip, so it seems only fair to write about them. First of all, you need to know that Africa has a shitload of animals, but it is a HUGE place, so they are not always evident. A very common sighting throughout the trip was the "African Salute"', the rear end and tail of an animal who heard us coming and decided to get the hell out of there.

The first park we visited, Chobe National Park in Botswana, has an elephant herd estimated to be 130,000 strong, so were pretty confident we'd see some. We did, up close and personal. Our guide would drive down the "road" and was very skilled at finding them. He'd shout out,"Six elephants are on your left!" and, sure enough, there they were. After we got close enough to take a zillion photos, the herd would take notice and slither off into the woods. Slither! What was freaky was the fact that they would take a few steps and be gone. Elephants! Enormous, bulky elephants in a not very dense forest would stroll behind a scrub tree and become invisible. They were graceful and surprisingly fast, and were one of our favorite animals.

Hands down winners of the "cutest animal butt" award were the zebras, which should be no surprise to anyone who has ever visited a zoo. A group of them is called a "dazzle of zebras" because their stripes confuse predators and thus protect them. We saw a lot of them, too, often hanging out with wildebeests, one of the "ugly five". The other four uglies are hyenas (didn't see those), vultures, maribou stork, and warthogs, of which we saw plenty.

The biggest thrills were the cats. On our arrival at Hwange Park in Zimbabwe we took a game drive before dinner. (Hwange National Park is HUGE.  It is the size of New Jersey, but bettter organized). It was cool (cold) and rainy, and we wore our own rain gear covered up by the camp's flannel-lined ponchos. Our guide and driver, Mafuka (be careful how you pronounce that one!), drove through the woods like a bat out of hell. We sat there shivering and thinking,"If you aren't even going to look for animals, take us back to the lodge so we can have a drink and warm up, for crying out loud!!" Some of us thought in cruder language, but you get the idea. Then, ahead of us in the road, ww saw a pride of lions. There were 11 of them, with a huge, black-maned male lying in the road with three cubs. Some of them walked very close to our vehicle, five feet away from us, and we were truly awestruck. Mafuka explained that the animals see the vehicle as one large entity, so we were in no danger at all. But it was very freaky to make eye contact with a wild lion the size of a Harley-Davidson and NOT be a little shaken. Back at our camp, we heard lions roar at night when we were in bed. Very cool.

We also saw a lion in Botswana that had killed a cape buffalo (not too recently, if the hordes of hovering flies mean anything) and was standing guard over it. An enormous flock of vultures stood guard, too, waiting for an opportunity to dine. There must have been over a hundred, waiting, watching, and occasionally skulking toward the buffalo, looking exactly like they appear in cartoons. Once, several sneaked all the way to the kill and started tugging at its innards, spurring the lion to run toward them, scattering them like leaves on a windy day. The lion then loped back up the hill to sit, wait, and watch, and the scene replayed itself several times. Our guide pointed out that the lioness was a nursing mother and would need to return to her hidden cubs soon, leaving the kill to the vultures who would strip it of meat in a few hours.



Mike and what was once a wildebeest. Yuck.

We witnessed the aftermath of another lion kill where vultures and jackals were sharing the remains. Mike, our guide that day, drove right up to the carcass, which resulted in the animals scattering. He explained that the animals understood the hierarchy well, and since we were higher on the current food chain, they would defer to us. This was a wildebeest who had been killed the previous night. With CSI- like precision, Mike deconstructed the scene, showing us where the kill occurred, where the lions had dragged the body, and showed us the footprints of those involved. Babies were part of the feast since some of the small lion prints showed claw marks. Lions can't retract their claws until they are 4 months old, and the tiny prints showed tiny claws as well. The big lion prints were massive. The photo shows a lion print with Linda's foot for scale, so please disregard the chipped toenail polish. We are roughing it, after all.

Lion, left. Linda, right.

Leopards are shy and not easy to find, but we were fortunate enough to see two on this trip. Two of our group members had been on five safaris, and had never seen one before. One of the leopards got bored lying on a tree branch while we watched, so he climbed down the tree and sauntered into the woods. There should be a video in the photo album, so check that out. We also found a cheetah, but he did nothing but sleep, so he was not as much fun to watch.  



Dung beetle on a roll.

Our favorite insect on this trip, and possibly in the whole world, is the African dung beetle. You can imagine that with all the hippos and elephants walking around that there is an abundance of dung. Well, these male beetles, about two inches long, take that dung and roll it into baseball-sized balls. Then, upside down, they roll them down the road, with their hind legs on the ball and their front legs walking on the ground. A good ball attracts a female (uh-huh) who deposits larva into the ball. The kiddies have lots of undigested elephant food to eat as they grow and develop so they will be strong enough to roll their own balls of dung when they grow up. We have videos of them too, of course!

We saw many, many animals, as you might imagine, and quickly became jaded toward some of them. "Oh, it's just a herd of impalas." We never got tired of the babies, though. We saw nursing elephants and zebras, week-old baboons riding on their mom's backs, baby hippos, impalas, waterbucks, and giraffes, and even the baby wildebeests were adorable. The birds were impressive even for us non-birders. Linda was quite taken with the Carmine Bee-eater, nearly falling out of the Land Rover trying to get a shot of them in flight. We took lots of photos and immediately forgot the names of most of the birds we shot. With a little luck, research,and Gail's assistance,  we will try to caption the photos in the album properly. If we are not successful, call them what we do, "Pretty Bird".

An Intense Travel Day

See our Safari  album link at African Safari

This African safari is an organized tour. Although we have traveled a lot, the idea of Africa was intimidating, and Overseas Adventure Travel was our go-to company for this trek. The basic itinerary took us from Detroit to Atlanta, to Johannesburg South Africa, Chobe National Park in Botswana, the Okavango Delta in Botswana, Kafue National Park in Zambia, Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe, and Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. We added an additional 6 days in Capetown, South Africa on our own with friends Gail and Janet since we were in the neighborhood, and didn't know if we would ever pass this way again. We took a total of 13 flights and about two dozen game drives, so we spent a lot of our trip in motion. The description that follows is one of several similar travel days that would have been a nightmare to arrange on our own.

"You had me at $40 Million!"

Today our group was scheduled to switch hotels, from Banoka Camp in the Okavango Delta in Botswana, to Lufupa Camp in Kafue Park in Zambia. That sounds simple enough. It turned out to be a wild ride. We began with a very civilized 7:00 am wakeup and hit the road in our caravan of three land rovers at 8:00 am, right on schedule.  The drive to the airstrip only took about 15 minutes. We were in the third truck with six other travelers. We drove through a wet, muddy, deep boggy area that both other vehicles had already traversed. Alas, we did not quite make it through. Linda took responsibility because she had had that second piece of toast with lime marmalade for breakfast.  We bottomed out on some hidden object, and the four-wheel drive couldn't dig us out. Chief, our resourceful guide and driver, called his colleagues to help out, so Moses dropped off his passengers and parked nearby, just close enough for us to make a dry crossover to his vehicle. Whew! Problem solved! He proceeded to head towards the planes, drove twenty feet when, surprise, immediately got stuck. Sort of a vehicular Tar Baby.  A THIRD driver was summoned, looked at the vehicle full of Americans with an expression that could only be translated as WTF!!, and told us we needed to take off our shoes and walk through the muck to his truck.  We decided not to tempt fate a third time and opted to walk all the way to the plane this time.  A few moments later, slightly muddied, we were ready to board the 12-passenger plane that had been waiting for us. Oops, a slight issue....the PLANE was stuck in the mud. A little shoveling and engine revving, and we are off to Kasane airport.



Zebras on the airstrip? We never had THAT in Detroit!

 On arrival, we made a quick transfer to a minibus, and drove to the Botswana exit border, where our papers were checked and we were permitted to continue a few miles to the Zambia entry point. Most African land borders are set up this way, with a country exit, a "no man's land", and a country entry. Thank goodness that we had Wallace, our trip leader, handling our visa applications.  We never left the bus.  He bundled up our passports, collected our fees, and turned them in wholesale to the immigration office.  We were given our entry visas and admitted into Zambia sight unseen. Roger was appalled. What kind of security is THAT? The area was very intimidating, full of trucks, people, touts selling everything, and it was a wonderful thing to NOT be on our own. Group travel can be a great thing!



Here's the plane; now will we actually fit inside?



A short drive later, we hopped off the bus and onto a ferry that crossed the Zambezi River, then onto another bus for an hour-long ride to the Livingstone airport, where we were rushed to our departing flight. This time, we boarded a 4-passenger plane for the hour and half ride to Kafue Park, landing on a gravel airstrip in the forest. A 15 minute land rover drive brought us to the Lufupa Camp, where we were greeted by the staff playing drums, dancing, and singing. You know how restaurant staffs sometimes sing a dismal version of "Happy Birthday"? Well imagine that the waiters, busboys, chambermaids,and dishwashers are concert-quality singers and dancers, and look happier than Disney World employees. It was impressive. A welcome drink and snacks (we are not talking Doritos and carrot sticks but wood-fired pizza and chocolate brownies) were served by staff that immediately learned our names (which is more than we can say for some of our fellow travelers) , and we lounged on the deck overlooking the Kafue River, where hippos and crocodiles live.

We had an hour or so to relax before supper and a night drive, similar to deer-spotting in northern Michigan, except we didn't have an open beer between our legs;  it is legal; and you see hippos in the woods. We were quite astounded to see an enormous hippo cross the road in front of our vehicle and disappear into the woods. How, in God's name, did he fit his two-ton body between those densely packed trees? I guess when you are that big, you blaze your own trail every time you move. Our bedtime orientation talk stressed that we must never walk at night, since the predators are active and there are no fences to keep lions, crocodiles, leopards and the like away from the camp. Hippos can roam up to 20 miles away from the river at night to eat, have a top running speed of 40 mph, and are the leading cause of animal-related human deaths in Africa. It seemed prudent to follow the rules since our plan was to return home alive. We had a long, extremely tiring day, and we were very ready for a good night's sleep. Tucked in under our mosquito netting, we felt secure until about 2 am, when we were awakened by 2 hippos eating grass just beyond our tent's deck..about 10 feet from our not-so-secure, lightweight, non-locking screen door. It was a thrilling reminder that we're not in Allen Park anymore.

 

Next Post:  Animals of Africa



Pretty sweet accomodations for a "tent"!



 

This is Africa

As I begin to write this, I must tell you that I am looking across a pond at a father and three baby ostriches eating and drinking at the edge of the pond. Flocks of birds are flying, and dozens of termite mounds are poking out of the grass, like small monuments at an overgrown cemetery.  Everyone else in camp is having a siesta, so I am alone on the open deck of the lounge with my feet on a table, sipping a cold drink. Heavenly.

 We are in Africa. The trip here was painless, as painless as 22 hours of travel can be. We all had aisle seats, decent food, and many, many movies to choose from. The one crying baby was more whiney than screaming, and we hardly noticed him after the first hour or so.  We arrived Sunday afternoon and  spent our first night at a charming hotel with excellent food and a lush garden. Roger attempted to go for an early morning stroll, but was advised not to leave the grounds. He explained that he had no money, so robbery would not be an issue, but out host explained that people would kick him since he was a foreigner. Good to know. He showed his maturity by NOT going out. Way to go, Rog! We have met an interesting man who went to Nepal in his 20's and never left...he's been there 30 years, and he and Roger shared memories of the hippie cafes from the 70s. He's in Africa visiting his wife, a physician in Madagascar, before he heads back to work. Fascinating.

 We transferred hotels to meet our tour group, and spent out first afternoon on a tour of Johannesburg and Soweto, a township where 3 1/2 million black citizens were forcibly relocated in the 1970's, and has since become a city in its own right. Jet lag and a historically confused  tour guide made it less interesting than it should have been (or, as Roger says, more interesting).  We did wave to Nelson Mandela, who was recuperating at his home. I am pretty sure I saw him peeking out an upstairs window when we shouted to him. I think he waved back.

Our group tour, Ultimate Africa, focuses on staying in tented lodges and seeing African wildlife, so it seems like a good idea to give you a snapshot of a typical day. With few exceptions, ALL of our time here is similar to the day we'll outline here.



View from Camp

Wake-up calls have either been drumbeats or a cheery "Good morning, tent three!", and have usually been at either 5:00 or 6:00 am. A half-hour later is continental breakfast at the main lodge, and a half-hour after that we board the Land Rovers. The trucks have two or three rows of tiered seating, a canvas roof, and open sides, all the better to see the animals. Our driver/guide changes every day as do our seats, so we get as much variety as possible with our vantage point and with the expertise of our guide. We drive for hours over a maze of roads through woods that sometimes look a lot like the Upper  Peninsula of Michigan, minus the pines. There are other stretches that look surprisingly like golf courses, with widely-spaced trees, shrubs, sand traps, and water hazards that have hippos instead of geese. Some of the landscapes look like farmland that has been abandoned is is covered with small trees that appear to be poorly pruned orchards.  That is done by the local elephants who eat the sides and tops of small trees, giving them a stunted look. Other areas are filled with the trunks and branches of huge fallen trees that the elephants have uprooted so they could eat their delicious leaves when other food was scarce. What has amazed us is the variety of landscapes and the lack of the typical African landscape imprinted in our brains by old movies: vast plains of  golden grasses or dense jungle with Tarzan -sized vines. I'm sure that they are here somewhere, just nowhere we have been.

 After a few hours of driving, seeing animals, and "learning and discovering", we stop for a short break. Men and ladies have separate bushes to use the "loo with a view", and the guides set out coffee, tea and cookies. Then, back into the vehicles until we return to camp about for brunch at about 11:00 am, followed by siesta until 3:30 or so. High tea is at that time, and we relax with snacks and beverages while we get a lecture by one of the guides about pertinent topics. Then, we clamber back into the vehicles for another game drive. During the game drive, we stop for a "sundowner", beer, wine and cookies.

The roads deserve some description. Nearly all are two-tracks at best. One park had put in gravel roads a couple of years ago when they built the gravel air-strip. Many of those roads are impassable at time of high rain, such as right now. At one point, we drove down a deeply rutted gravel road and it disappeared directly into a wide, swift river that had a small set of rapids, followed by a road coming out on the river's other side. Isaac, our guide, laughed and said in his James Earl Jones voice, " Those rapids are really the bridge on this road. Maybe we will not go this way today."  Good call, Isaac.

Because we are here during the rainy season, many of the roads are extremely muddy and rutted. Others are completely submerged, and driving down them gives us the feeling that we are driving down a river, or through a large pond. One group was stuck twice in one day. At one point, they all had to get off of the truck in the dark while Wallace, the trip leader, cut tree limbs with a machete to stick under the offending tire until they were able to finally move. One expression we have heard often here is, "This is Africa", which explains everything from the impassable roads, to intermittent electricity, to cool hot water, to huge changes in travel itineraries. The group traveling immediately before us missed 3 days in one of the parks because it was too wet to fly, or, more accurately, too wet to land.  One must be flexible here or it may not be a pretty picture.

Dinner is Served

When the afternoon game drive is finished, dinner is served. Like all the other meals and snacks, the food is plentiful and delicious. As tired as we are, I fear that we aren't burning off too many calories bouncing on the seats in those trucks. All of the lounge and dining areas at the places we have are open to the outdoors, and every lodge has had stunning views. By the time dinner is finished, Wallace gives us a schedule for the next day, and we make our way to our tent. Of course it isn't safe to walk without an escort to protect us from the animals. In Zimbabwe, they are armed with rifles with ammo the size of chunky dry-erase markers ( obviously a teaching reference). We head off to bed, usually too tired even to read. We climb under the mosquito netting, cover up with the warm blankets (yes, we are in Africa in the summer, so cool weather just doesn't seem right, does it?) and pass out. That wake-up call comes before you know it!

Quito, Galapagos, and End of the Road

See our Quito-Galapagos album at
Quito-Galapagos Album#
Ecuador has been the subject of much travel buzz for the last year or so as "The new Costa Rica"--beautiful, cheap, exotic, hospitable, and expat-friendly.  We saw none of that.  For us, Ecuador was Quito as a jumping-off point for the Galapagos.  Ecuador needs a second visit!

Quito
Quito, a lesser prize of Spanish plunder, is a modern city with a colonial core (like Lima and Cusco).  We stayed in the modern financial district, though, which was pretty much closed up for the weekend when we arrived.  The blowing litter and shuttered store fronts made us think of home; it looked sort of like Detroit, but with fewer wig shops.

We met our guide, Roberto, who would shepherd us through our week in Ecuador, and Sylvia, who would show us around the Quito portion.  Roberto gathered us together in a hotel meeting room for our orientation get-together. Sandy was feeling a bit puny, though, and didn't attend.  We didn't know it then, but an emergency room visit with an IV antibiotic drip was in her immediate future.  Roberto lacked the optimistic enthusiasm of Pavel in Peru, but he was a serious man with a great sense of humor--a wonderful combination.   He was a university-trained  experienced naturalist and third-generation Galapagan--just the sort of expertise we would need in the Archipelago.  But Quito?

Sylvia: Cute as a guinea pig!

But we had Sylvia!--young, bubbly and and effusive, passionate about her city, and cute as a guinea pig.  Roger wanted to put her in his pocket and take her home with us. Linda said no. She handled the goofy gringo tourist portion in Quito while Roberto took care of more serious business, like taking Sandy and big sister Linda to the clinic, arranging for hotel doctor visits, scouring the city for pharmacies in the middle of the night--that sort of thing.

We visited the Middle of the World, sort of a geographic Disneyworld just outside of Quito. It sits squarely on the Equator (marked with a prominently painted red line, so you can't miss it), and we were treated to all manner of physical demonstrations of equatorial oddities. There was a cultural element, too, like the shrunken heads.  We saw a mummified sloth head (see album) and then the park guide displayed a wooden box, from which he removed with great solemnity a shrunken human head of a long-dead native chieftain.  "But you cannot take pictures," Sylvia warned us.  It was out of respect, the park guide said.  We're not making this up.  Roberto watched the whole circus with detached bemusement.  His feet might have been in Quito, but his heart was in the Galapagos. 

The Galapagos

Our Galapagos portion of the trip began with an early morning flight. Service was quite wonderful, with Roberto handling our bags and even our boarding passes. By this point we had become well-trained group travelers dependent on our leader, much like a group of three-year-olds,"What are we doing today? What should we wear? What's for dinner? Is it bedtime yet?" Docile, but not totally tamed.

By lunch, we were aboard the Tip Top II, a small ship built to hold exactly 16 travelers. Our routine aboard the ship included fine food and two or three excursions daily. The ship's two zodiacs would ferry us to shore for hikes, or to various rocky reefs for snorkeling. We were busy and active, but had plenty of time to lounge about the ship, much like the chubby sea lions on the beach. Our Cipro consumption dropped, and everyone returned to our pre-trip levels of well-being (Welcome back, Sandy!).

The islands were astounding. This is not a terrific description, but vocabulary constraints keep us from describing them accurately. The Galapagos are inhabited by 38,000 people, but 97% of the land is a national park, under very strict control. No one may visit without a naturalist guide, and the islands are pristine. We saw other tour groups, but not many, since access to each island is strictly monitored. Animals were everywhere, and had no fear of people at all. We tried to stay the requisite 6 feet from the animals, but they were often right on the trail. Roberto knew them all, and our heads spun with the names of dozens of birds and lizards. The sea lions, giant tortoises, and absolutely precious blue footed boobies were our favorites, as you can tell from our photo album. Thank God for digital cameras. If we had been shooting photos with film we would have spent a fortune.

How was the snorkeling? Even better than the hiking. As a prelude to this, you should know that Linda is an ocean wuss. As soon as she's in water over her head, thoughts of giant squid, great white sharks, and swift undertows throw her into a near-frantic, gasping wreck. It isn't the best state of mind to enjoy an underwater experience. Fortunately for us, Roberto owns a dive shop and is a skilled diver and group leader. Confidence in him made all the difference between panic and pleasure. The animals were close to us and abundant. In addition to schools of spectacular fish, we watched huge sea turtles munching sea algae, sting rays gliding below us, and (gasp) hammerhead sharks. Linda's biggest thrill of the trip occurred when a playful sea lion swam up to her and touched her mask with its whiskered nose. Yep, she'll want to snorkel again! The only unpleasant event was Roger losing his wedding band in 35 feet of water. At least that's the story he told Linda. No ladies, he's NOT available.

We had five days aboard ship, hiking, swimming, eating, and sunning. What a wonderful way to wrap up this trip! We headed back to Quito for a farewell dinner and our flights home. Thankfully Roberto did not give a heart-wrenching speech, so we laughed instead of cried. It was an amazingly full three weeks. We made good friends, got lots of exercise, and saw sights we had dreamed of for a lifetime. What a great trip!

Coming up next January: South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. You'll hear from us then!

Peruvian Andes

A Post-trip Blog Retrospective: Adventures in The Peruvian Andes and the Galapagos Archipelago  in an action-packed trilogy in two parts!

We had neither time nor Internet access in South America, so we're catching up with two post-posts from the safety of Detroit, all things being relative. 

Click on our Peruvian album link at
Peru Album


We left the Amazon in the same way most intrepid explorers have departed--swarming with viruses, bacteria, and parasites.  The Amazon is an amazing ecosystem designed to consume or destroy everything that invades its turf, and we were gracious hosts; by the end of the trip we were all popping Cipro antibiotics as casually as breath mints after a dinner of roasted guinea pig. So we fourteen ticking time bombs returned to Lima, where we met Lee and Ellie, the couple from Tuscon who completed our tour group for the rest of our trip.

Our tour company, Overseas Adventure Travel, seems to be designed for Active Geezers, and they worked our asses off.  We took an early morning tour of the Incan Sun Temple, a feature of nearly every pre-Spanish Incan city, but we found it interesting in Lima because the sun rarely shines there.  The modern city was founded by Francisco Pizzaro on January 18, 1535, apparently because he liked the weather.  What he didn't realize is that the sun shines about four weeks a year (mid January to mid February, we're guessing), and the rest of the year it is dominated by a weather system known locally as garua, (Spanish for 'shitty weather').  Cool and drizzly, which doesn't seem fair for the tropics at sea level.

"I scored some fresh coca leaves..."

Roger had done his homework, and he began badgering our top-
notch Peruvian guide, Pavel, for access to fresh coca leaves. Pavel agreed that it is commonly (and legally) chewed by the indigenous population in the mountainous villages of the Andes, and its properties counteract altitude sickness, provide energy for arduous mountain hiking, and it constitutes an important part of the rural cultural heritage that we probably shouldn't miss during our Andean adventure. But in case we hadn't noticed, he kept reminding us, we were in the middle of a modern capital city. And we were at sea level.

Cusco and the Sacred Valley

Gonzalo Pizzaro: a Major Asshole

We then flew to Cusco for our Andean Adventure.  Cusco is the ancient Inca capital and is nestled in a valley at over 11,300 feet.  It was occupied by the notorious Pizzaro brothers shortly after the Conquest, and they plundered and raped and murdered with reckless abandon.  Not to be judgemental, here, but Gonzalo Pizarro, the youngest of the five, seems to have been a real asshole. 




Cusco is the jumping off point for throngs of tourists en route to the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu--some via the four-day Inca Trail through the mountains, others by modern bus.  We were in the second group.  Our first stop in the Valley was the town of Pisac, where we arrived in the middle of a local native celebration.  As in Guatemala, their religion is a unique blend of pagan animism and Catholicism.  Our impression in Lima (and from what we had read), was that the Spanish ruthlessly crushed the native culture, religion, economy, and language.  True enough in Lima, but in the villages we realize that maybe the Spanish didn't do such a thorough job after all.  The celebration included a bizarre procession of music and dancing, with animal heads, monkey costumes, and masks with giant penis noses,  followed by a solemn float with a statue of the Virgin Mary.  Sort of like The Wicker Man meets The Song of Bernandette.  We then proceeded to the ruined Inca city of Pisac, located a couple of thousand feet above the town.  The Inca apparently built their cities among their mountain gods; the Spanish relocated them to the valleys. This was our first experience with Inca ruins, and we hiked along ancient wind-swept terraces, dodging the odd llama, with Andean pan-flute music wafting through the hills.  Pretty cool.
     We spent the night and a day at the town of Urubamba (yes, it is named for the river), where we visited a local school and had a lunch hosted by a local family.  We were served roasted cuy--guinea pig--which we believe to be  a local delicacy.  Either that, or it was the old "let's-feed-the-tourists-a- roasted-greasy-rodent-and-see- if- they-eat -it" trick.  We did.
     The next day we visited Ollantaytambo, a village as charming as its name.  We toured the ruins and astronomical sculptures in the hills above the town.  Add the glaciers shimmering in the distance, and the tableau is complete.  As great as this was, we knew it was just a prelude to the Big Banana the next day:  Machu Picchu.

Machu Picchu
Never believe the travel tales that tell you the place you are about to visit has been ruined by tourism so don't waste your time.  We have heard those tales for nearly fifty years, and if we believed them we would not have gone anywhere.  It is the most transparent form of travel elitism.  Machu Picchu was fantastic (don't waste your time, though; it has since been ruined by rampant tourism!)

The trick to our great experience at Machu Picchu had much to do with the expertise and the timing of our tour company, Overseas Adventure Travel.  We caught a narrow gauge train at Ollantaytambo, traveled though magnificent canyons along the Urubamba River, and arrived at the town of Aguas Calientes shortly after noon.  Aguas Calientes is located at the base of the ruins, which is its only reason for existence.  It is the terminus of the rail line (the only access to Machu Picchu other than hiking the Inca Trail), and it is the site from which you board the park's buses, which run in a non-stop stream up 2000 ft. of switchbacks to the park entrance.  The criticism of Machu Picchu is that it is crowded with tourists.  The truth is, they limit the number to 2000 a day, and nearly all of these are day-trippers whose schedules are defined by the rail schedule from Ollantaytambo.  We were able to arrive at the park in late afternoon, as the throngs were leaving.  By the end of day, we were nearly alone.  We spent the night in a local hotel, and Pavel roused us at 5:00 am so we could be at the park when it opened, where we saw the sunrise and enjoyed the ruins WAY before the first tourists began arriving from Ollantaytambo.  Books have been written on the beauty and engineering marvel that is Machu Picchu (and a couple of really bad movies, too.  We do not recommend The Secret of the Incas starring Charlton Heston and notable as a particular stinker.)  So we leave it to what we hope are creditable pictures on our Picassa Album (link provided near the beginning of this post).

We returned to Cusco for our last night in Peru. Pavel, our trip leader, arranged a pre-dinner debriefing session in the hotel bar. Our Arno school friends would have recognized this as a "Sue Vokal year-end staff meeting". Sue, our principal, would ask us to share our positive thoughts about the past year, which really sounds pretty harmless. The meeting would quickly degenerate into teary heartfelt soul-bearing until the staff was emotionally exhausted, surrounded by piles of soggy tissues.  How does this translate to Peru? Pavel, the most sincere man EVER, had us sniveling with his gratitude that we had chosen HIS country, of all the places on earth, to visit. By the time we finished sharing our personal memories of Peru, we were blubbering like the audience of An Affair to Remember. A box of tissues later, we had pretty much recovered, and were ready for part three of the trip, Quito, Ecuador and the Galapagos. We're aiming for fewer tears and more animals. Read our next installment to see if we accomplish that!

Coming next:  Quito, Ecuador and the Galapagos Archipelago.

Roger and Linda in South America

Roger and Linda on the Road Again…in South America

see our linked album at Amazon#


Amazon Sunrise

Roger and Linda are back at it, on a three-week tour of the Amazon rain forest, Machu Picchu, and the Galapagos.  We're all packed up with micro-fiber travel clothes, more sophisticated electronic gear than the Mercury space missions, and we're carrying more drugs than a Detroit Middle schooler
This is our first group trip, and there is assembled here in the jungle an intrepid group of  fourteen adventurers.  There is among us a loose association of friends and friends of friends that comprise nine of the fourteen (the Michigan Mafia)—so even if the group turned out to be made up of total social misfits, we figured, they would be US.
The Cast, in order of aqppearance

The Michigan Mafia

Linda and Roger (your humble narrators)
Sandy-Linda's sister and, as it turns out, Roger's sister-in-law

Chris and Gary--life-long friends from Arizona, (formerly of Michigan)

Gail- Linda’s college roommate (with Chris) and fellow traveler

Carrie-Linda’s former colleague at Arno Elementary

Michele-Gail’s friend from Port Huron (and Roger’s former colleague)

Ellen-Michele’s friend from Port Huron

Our Fellow Travelers

Eric and Debbie, delightful couple from Staten Island—he a retired cop, she a retired school counselor.  They immediately bonded with the group and are as determined as the rest of us to suck every bit of fun out this excursion.

Nels and Tess, from Colorado---she retired last month and he a semi-retired engineer.  Nels is a real rocket scientist (No, we mean this literally.  He managed the guiding systems for all of NASA’s Mars missions.

Barb from Oklahoma—recently retired and bravely traveling singly.
One more couple- we'll meet them today.

Lima, Peru –where micro mini skirts continue to thrive

We arrived at our hotel around midnight on Saturday night, and everyone crashed immediately after a LONG day of traveling.  Except Roger, who on some flimsy pretext managed to wander the neighborhood around the hotel alone, attracted by the street bustle and the electric glow of the small casinos.  Like a moth to the flame.  Lima is home to over nine million people, many of them living in crowded, crushing poverty, we have heard.  You cannot prove it by us.  Our neighborhood is called Miraflores, a very upscale and cosmopolitan area of the city.  It is sort of like Detroit, but with clean sidewalks and throngs of well-dressed people on the streets after dark.  In case you were wondering what happened to the micro miniskirt fashion of the sixties and seventies, apparently they all migrated to Miraflores, where they host a convention on Saturday nights. Not exactly the third-world scene we were expecting, but an interesting experience nonetheless. Our city exploration time was short, but we managed to find a city park where 200+ cats are protected and fed by volunteers, a dog convention selling any clothing your shaggy pet might need, and a Zumba experience on the city streets.

The Amazon Rain Forest

On Monday morning we flew from Lima to Iquitos, a city of 700,000 in eastern Peru, deep in the Amazon basin.  Iquitos is accessible only by boat and by air (the largest city in the world with those attributes).  From Iquitos we took a boat upriver-- dodging floating tree trunks the size of, well, tree trunks--about an hour and half to our ecolodge called Exlporama.  The hotel was pretty basic—kerosene lighting in the rooms and cold showers—but the food was good and the thatched construction charming.

Our days have been packed with activities that sounded like fun, and have turned out to exceed all expectations. So far, we have fished for piranha (caught and ate some), Roger was gored by a catfish (flashback to India), we visited Monkey Island (where Carrie fell in love), hiked in the rainforest and walked the longest aerial canopy walkway in the world (119 feet high and astounding), bird~watched, saw a native shaman and got tattoos after our healing ceremony, visited a jungle clinic, went to an authentic village and market, and did a night~time boat trip (way-cool sounds!). We visited an enormous Cieba tree where our guide, Roger (yes…confusing!) promised we can swing like Tarzan, and took a night hike. That turned out to be more exciting than anticipated. We stopped walking to watch Roger (guide Roger) poke a tarantula with a stick (perfectly safe!), and those crafty fire ants saw their opportunity to chomp on North American flesh. We finished the hike, doing an ants-in-the-pants dance the whole way back, and hopping from foot to foot to prevent new one from latching on. If someone would have been filming this, it would have been the most popular viral youtube video yet. Whew…no wonder we’re tired, and that the blog is behind schedule!