South Africa and Swaziland

Click a date on the calendar at left to jump directly to a particular day.

Saturday
9/6/03

From our home in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, Kennedy Airport in New York is not easily accessible. Our travels began with our friend and neighbor, Chris Kemper, driving us to the Hyatt Hotel in West Windsor, where we caught the Princeton Airporter shuttle to Newark Airport. There we picked up a second shuttle to JFK. Considering the shuttle schedule and the advance arrival required for international flights, we had already spent 7 hours traveling before our plane even left the ground at around 6 pm EDT!

Sunday
9/7/03

Flying through the night, we arrived in Johannesburg mid afternoon on Saturday. We were met at the airport by a Thompson's representative and driven to our first night's lodging - the Rosebank Hotel - very nice, although curiously not the one indicated in our tour package. After checking into our room, we walked around a nearby open-roofed, very modern shopping mall, where we noticed that the escalators in South Africa, like the cars, were on the "wrong" side. We had a light dinner at an outdoor salad place called "Steam," and then returned to our hotel. At this point, we had been given no further tour information than we had originally gotten from our travel agent, but we met one of our trip mates in the hotel lobby who confirmed that we were supposed to meet our Thompson's guide at 8 the following morning. We set our alarm accordingly and went to bed.

Monday
9/8/03

Our guide, Don Enright, a retired geologist and mining engineer, appeared in the lobby at the appointed hour, along with our other traveling companions for the first week of our tour:

	Ruth Collins, from California
	Edan and Maureen Cosgrove, from Ireland
	Steve Dennis (Ruth's nephew), also from California
	Glenn and Leslie Dettman, from Arkansas
	Fred Garza, from Texas
	Lindsay Stevens, from Texas
	Pat Stevens (Lindsay's mom), from California
	Kathleen Wilkin, from Ireland

We all boarded our travel vehicle, a Mercedes "Sprinter" minibus, where we were introduced to our driver, David, and off we went towards Pretoria, the administrative capital of South Africa.

En route, I began to organize the photography gear I had brought with me. Less than a week before our vacation was to begin, I had dropped my Canon PowerShot G2 digital camera, and its damage was too severe to have it repaired in time for our trip. Biting the bullet, I replaced it with the newer Canon PowerShot G3, which proved to be serendipitous, as the upgraded camera proved ideal for this vacation, a virtually perfect blend of portability, functionality, and ease of use.

One of the many great features of the G3, I soon discovered, is its ability to record sound clips over previously shot images, which enabled me to make "audio notes" to identify my photos as I shot them. (On the down side, I periodically felt the need to explain to curious observers why I was talking to my camera!) Other equipment included a 2x tele-converter, which when mounted yielded magnification comparable to a 280 mm lens on a 35 mm film camera, a spare rechargeable battery, a small tripod and most importantly, an array of flash memory cards with a total of about 900 megabytes of image storage capacity. I also brought my PDA (a.k.a. "Palm Pilot") on which I attempted to keep a running journal.

Our first stop was the Voortrekker Monument. Begun in 1938 and completed after World War II in 1949, this monument honors the Voortrekkers (Afrikaans for pioneers, literally "those who move ahead"), white Afrikaner farmers who in the 1830s and 1840s emigrated from the British-controlled Cape Colony into the black-populated areas north of the Orange River, all in what is now South Africa. Early successes in battles against local native tribes led to the establishment of a number of small Afrikaner republics, which slowly coalesced into the Orange Free State and the South African Republic. These two Afrikaner states survived until their annexation (1900) by Britain during the Boer War.

Next, we drove around the Pretoria city center, where we stopped at the Union Building, designed by Sir Herbert Baker in the English monumental style from light sandstone. The building has a half-round floor plan, with two wings at the sides representing the Boerish and the English parts of the population respectively. The building's name comes from the time of the South African Union, which was only changed in 1961 to the current name, the Republic of South Africa.

Leaving town, we continued on to the Premier Diamond Mines. The 3,106-carat Cullinan Diamond was found here in 1905 and is still the biggest rough diamond ever found in the world. This diamond was given to King Edward the 7th of England on his 66th birthday. It was cut into 9 major stones, the largest of which, at 530 carats, is called the Great Star of Africa and is set in the British royal scepter.

We stopped for lunch at a beautiful country house whose owner greets small tour groups with weekly feasts that she prepares with a small staff. Our hostess furnished an explanation of each course as it was served, and everything was very tasty.

After lunch, we drove on to Mpumalanga, one of South Africa's nine provinces, arriving at the Royal Hotel in Pilgrim's Rest, where we had dinner and spent the night.

Tuesday
9/9/03

We then proceeded east for a short distance, turning north at the town of Graskop, with a stop to photograph a picturesque waterfall in Berlyn. The highway continued along the ridge between the Highveld to the west and the Lowveld to the east, with the escarpment separating the two providing dramatic views across the Blyde River Canyon at almost every turn. We eventually arrived at the northern-most destination of our route, known as the Three Rondavels Lookout, named for rock formations that whose shapes mimic those of traditional South African thatch-roofed dwellings (which I somehow neglected to photograph).

Now backtracking, we stopped at a number of the scenic attractions we had bypassed on the way up. A particularly beautiful southbound stop bore the unusual name "Bourke's Luck Potholes," after a gold digger, Tom Burke, who staked a claim nearby. Although he never personally found any gold, he correctly predicted that large deposits of the precious metal would be found in the area. Over thousands of years, the swirling whirlpools of this striking natural phenomenon, which occur as the Treur River plunges into the Blyde River, caused waterborne sand and rock to grind huge, cylindrical potholes into the bedrock of the river.

After spending a considerable amount of time exploring (and digital memory card space photographing) the Potholes, we proceeded to a number of different vantage points from which the majesty of the escarpment could be more thoroughly appreciated. The best known of these is "God's Window," and although it provided superb views, most of our group found the "Wonder View" vistas, which we had encountered only a few minutes earlier, even more picturesque

We stopped for lunch at Harrie's Pancakes in our second pass through Graskop. Outside the restaurant, about a dozen men were competing with one another hawking plastic bags of fresh cashew and Macadamia nuts, but we resisted. Inside, the pancakes we ordered were rolled like crepes and came with some very good fillings. When we finished eating and went outside, we found that the asking price for the nuts had dropped to half what it had been, and we bought one bag of Macadamia nuts for 10 Rand (about $1.40). Sampling the nuts (which we speculated had come from Mozambique) as we drove away, we found them scrumptious, and since we never saw them again in our travels we wished that we had purchased lots more when we had the chance.

We drove onward to Kruger National Park, which covers a land area about equal in size to the entire State of Israel, and entered through the Paul Kruger Gate. Because of our having lingered at our various stops during the day, we didn't arrive at the gate to the rest camp where we were staying until shortly before 6 pm, when it is closed for the night. Though our actual safari wasn't to take place until the next day, we were greeted with a nice preview of elephants, impalas, giraffes and a warthog.  While I was able to photograph most of these species over the next couple of days, the Pumba look-alike (the warthog in Disney's "Lion King"), was ensconced too deeply in the bush for a decent snapshot.

Our lodging for this and the following night was Pretoriuskop Rest Camp. (Yes, we finally got to spend two nights in a row in the same place.) While the camp had a somewhat rustic look, the primitive appearance was deceiving. The housing consisted of a collection of individual cylindrical bungalows with cone-shaped thatched roofs, styled after Zulu rondavels. Ours had air conditioning and was equipped with a complete, modern kitchenette -- outdoors.

We dined that evening with David, our driver, and had an interesting conversation with him about his personal life.  We learned that he is a Zulu and speaks 9 languages!  (South Africa officially recognizes 11 languages -- English, Afrikaans, and nine major tribal languages.)  David also disclosed that he was engaged to a young woman in Johannesburg, which required that he pay a dowry to her father -- in the form of cows.  So far, he had furnished 9 cows to his future in-law, and still owed another two for his obligation to be completed.

There was a full moon that evening, and the planet Mars was visible in the same part of the sky, so I set up my tripod outside our bungalow and experimented photographing both heavenly bodies, knowing that I could easily erase my attempts if they turned out to be (if you’ll excuse my pun) less than stellar.

Wednesday
9/10/03

A second Thompson's Tour had been running in tandem with ours, and the groups were shuffled for the safari. We were joined by the Cosgroves, as well as two more very nice couples:

	Hans Schmidt and Manja van der Neut, from Holland
	Peter and Yvonne Smyth, from Ireland

Over the course of the day, we encountered plenty of elephants and water buffalo and one male lion sunning himself on a rock, but no rhinos or leopards. (We narrowly missed seeing a leopard that had apparently hidden after dragging a large crocodile it had killed up a tree.) But we hardly felt cheated, as we saw numerous other animals that are less hyped but equally as interesting to see in the wild, such as giraffes, zebras, baboons and a host of different members of the antelope family.

Thursday
9/11/03

In the "no-mans land" between the Republic of South Africa and Swaziland, we visited a relatively new Swazi Cultural Village, (We were never able to find out why this facility is not actually located inside the actual borders of Swaziland itself.) The "residents" of the village claimed to be members of a single, large family and live right there in thatch huts and without any modern conveniences. They also performed several Swazi dance numbers for us, at the end of which the dancers pulled several members of our tour group up to dance with them, including Ruth, who was surprised by their singing Happy Birthday to her in English, as this was the actual day of her 90th birthday!

(Ruth is as sharp as a tack and quite agile; I never would have pegged her for anywhere near this age. Also, this was the second birthday we commemorated during our trip, as Lindsay, our youngest member, had turned 25 just two days earlier.)

After having our passports stamped, we then crossed the border into the "real" Swaziland. As best we could tell, most of what this little country has for tourists is in the form of stuff to sell them. In that context, we went to the Ngwenya Glass Works (Ngwenya is Siswati for "crocodile"), where we watched glass blowers at work and bought a small glass elephant.

As we headed towards our hotel in Mbabane, Swaziland's capital, several of us asked to be dropped off near a long strip of local market stalls to shop. As we browsed, virtually every vendor offered to give us a "special price" on his or her wares. Anne found a small carved wooden crocodile that she liked, and we also picked out a nicely executed batik depicting African women pounding grain.

Our bus returned to pick up the shopping contingent and transported us to our hotel, the Ezulwini Sun, which bills its décor as "a mélange of refreshing colours of blue and white, highlighted with turquoises and soft coral pinks carried throughout the hotel, creating an evocative Caribbean theme." Whether this characterization is accurate or not, it was an attractive and well-equipped facility.

Friday,
9/12/03

This morning we made another shopping stop, this time at the Swazi Candle Factory, where artisans hand craft wax candles in the shapes of indigenous animals as well as more conventional forms with intricately decorated outer "skins" in paisley, jungle and many other themes.  The candles were both unique and beautiful, but we weren't sure that they would survive the temperatures in an airplane's cargo hold, so we didn't end up purchasing any.

Our brief visit to Swaziland now completed, we continued south and crossed the border back into South Africa, entering the province of KwaZulu Natal.  We stopped briefly at the hotel for this evening, Zulu Nyala Heritage Hotel in Hluhluwe, to drop off our luggage trailer, and proceeded to the nearby, open-air Ilala Weavers restaurant for lunch.

After lunch, we went for an optional boat tour on the St. Lucia estuary, the largest in Africa. For the first time since our trip began, the sky was overcast and a few drops of rain even fell, so conditions weren't optimal for photography, but viewing was still okay. We saw lots of hippos' heads piercing the water surface, but it was unfortunately too cool for the hippos to go ashore and enable us to see the rest of their bodies. Our boat was able to get really close to a few crocodiles and we saw many different varieties of birds with the aid of binoculars, although these were generally too far away for decent photography. We then returned to our hotel for dinner, followed by a short Zulu dance show in a small outdoor arena called a boma.  When the show was over and almost everyone had left, we were further entertained (and amused) when one of the dancers and Don, our guide, attempted a dance duet.

Saturday
9/13/03

We awoke to our first overcast day and headed off after breakfast for the 3½ hour drive to Durban, stopping at a market along the way whose wares were a combination of fresh fruits & crafts, where our guide and driver stocked up on pineapples to take back to their families.  As we passed mile after mile of tree plantations, the earlier mist gradually turned to real rain, despite Durban's reputation for in excess of 300 sunny days each year.  Our bus dropped us off at the Holiday Inn Garden Court, Marine Parade, a fine hotel, except that our Thompson's itinerary indicated that we would be spending this evening at a different hotel in the same chain call North Beach.  (Pity anyone back home who might have tried to reach us based on the contact information we had given them before we left.)

(Two theories about the unusual name,  "bunny chow," courtesy of the Web:  1. combination of "bun" and "achar" or "atchar" a spicy Indian/Malay pickle or relish; 2. from the words "banya chow." Banya was an old name for the Indian population in Durban.  I have no idea if either is correct.)

That evening, with Durban having the most concentrated Indian population in the country, we decided that the availability of good curry should be the basis for selecting a dinner spot.  So we asked around about where the local Indians eat. At the recommendation of the hotel's concierge, we took a cab to the Jaipur Palace in north Durban, where we found both the food and the service to be excellent, and as far we could tell, authentically Indian.  When we were nearly ready to leave, we gave our waiter the phone number of the cab driver who had transported us to the restaurant, and were picked up shortly thereafter by the same driver, a convenience we later realized was typical protocol throughout South Africa.

Sunday,
9/14/03

The dreary rain continued as we boarded a 737 for our flight from Durban to Port Elizabeth.  Lucky for us, the sun greeted us upon our arrival in Port Elizabeth.  Here we were met by our new Thompson's guide, Mark Bayman, and his driver, Anwar.

	Tom & Karol Brandt, from Illinois
	Mattie Gleason, from Florida.

The Brandts had not been on the week 1 tour and came directly from KwaZulu-Natal, where they were spending their third season working on a church-sponsored mission. During the first week, Mattie had been riding with the other group, and was the only person in either who was spending evenings in the luxury lodging alternatives.

We set off together on what is known as the "Garden Route," so named not for any man-made gardens along its length but rather because of the wealth of naturally beautiful scenery than surrounds it.

Our route took us through Tsitsikama National Park, where we passed the world's highest bungee jump. At 216m (708 ft), it is reported to be a 7 second free fall, and the abrupt deceleration at the end, we were informed, frequently results in torn retinas. We all decided to forgo the thrill of this giant leap, and since there was no good place for our bus to pull over, I have no photograph of the perilous plunge either.

Soon afterward, we arrived at the Paul Sauer Bridge, spanning the Storm River Gorge, from which the drop is a mere 130 meters. Here, however, there was a good parking spot and pedestrian bridges on each side of the roadway, interconnected by means of a boardwalk under the road to deter sightseers from attempting to dart across the high-speed vehicular traffic above.

The next stop was for a short hike to what is known as the "Big Tree." It is an Outeniqua Yellowwood, the national tree of South Africa. This particular specimen, estimated to be about 800 years old, is 36.6 meters tall and has a circumference of 18.3 meters.

We continued our drive, pausing at Nature's Valley and a number of other scenic photo ops along the Garden Route, as well as when we encountered a troop of baboons cavorting along the edge of the road.

Our lunch stop was in Plettenberg Bay at a restaurant called Moby Dick's Grill, whose slogan is "Seafood the local way." This particular day, however, the reality was "any food the slow way," as it took about 1-1/2 hours for our meals to be severed. The delay was presumably attributable to the fact that there was a scheduled power outage, and the restaurant was doing the best it could in operating without electricity. Anne and I usually share our meals when eating out, but today she wanted a dish including mussels, calamari and clams, none of which appeals to me, so I tried their beef "espetadas," cooked on a skewer and served on a unique, specially-designed vertical hanger.

Eventually, we left Moby Dick's and headed for the nearby resort town of Knysna, where we checked into the Knysna Log Inn, reputed to be the largest timber-log structure in the Southern Hemisphere, where we would be spending two nights. Whether true or not, the two-story-plus atrium, constructed with exposed log framing, was very pleasant, made even more so by large stained glass windows on two opposing exterior walls.

Once we had dropped off our luggage at the hotel, we explored Knysna's main street, which was very touristy, but nevertheless appealing. The power outage that we had encountered in Plettenberg Bay also affected Knysna, but we learned from one of the merchants that it had apparently been pre-planned for system maintenance. As the dusk fell, power was restored at almost exactly the time promised. Unfortunately, by the time this happened, it was past the scheduled closing of the internet cafes, so our plans to email the outside world during our walk were thwarted for the time being. We retuned to the inn for dinner, and were entertained afterwards by a group of high school age amateur dancers from one of the nearby townships.

Monday
9/15/03

Upon arrival at the nature reserve, we were driven in a pair of open trailers pulled by jeeps to the top of the ridge on which the reserve is situated. From there, we spent an hour or so hiking down a trail whose route passed a number of access points to dramatic views of the Indian Ocean, including the "Knysna Heads," two giant sandstone cliffs that mark the Knysna River's entrance. At the trail's end, there were several enclosed pens housing small, exotic animals, including 3 or 4 blue duikers, the tiniest members of the antelope family. We ate lunch at a restaurant near the ferry dock and then boarded the ferry for the return trip across the lagoon.

Arriving back in town, most of us boarded the Outeniqua Choo-Tjoe, a restored old train pulled by a steam engine, for a leisurely 3-1/2 hour ride from Knysna to George. Yvonne and Peter decided instead to chase the train with their guide Dieter in the second Thompson's microbus, so they could photograph it (and us) along the way, and hopped aboard the train at a midpoint stop in Sedgefield. We all made the return trip to Knysna via microbus rather than the train, which was less picturesque although significantly quicker.

Upon our return, we finally found an open Internet cafe. To our frustration, however, the connection speed turned out to be too slow to be of much use in communicating with anyone back home. We joined our group for dinner at an excellent restaurant called JJ's, at the Knysna waterfront, where we were entertained by the kitchen staff performing a medley of Xhosa songs.

Tuesday
9/16/03

Our next stop was Safari Ostrich Show Farm in Oudtshoorn, known as the 'Feather Capital' of the world because of its large ostrich industry. That appellation has been relegated to historical reference status, however, as the primary appeal of ostrich feathers during their heyday was for adornment of women's ornate hats, a fashion that faded with the impact of World War I on the world's economies and fashions and the advent of the enclosed automobile in which the expansive headgear simply would not fit . Today, the farm derives more income from the tourist trade than from the sale of pricey ostrich products, now targeted exclusively at the luxury market.

We arrived at the farm just in time for lunch, the main course of which was (as you might have guessed) ostrich steak. Ostrich meat, we found, is much more similar in character to beef that to any traditional fowl, and it is virtually free of fat, so it is considered to be particularly healthful. By contrast, ostrich eggs, which we also sampled in their scrambled form, are especially high in cholesterol. These eggs have a shell that averages 2 mm in thickness and can easily sustain the weight of an adult standing on them. And their content is roughly equivalent to two dozen chickens' eggs.

The highlight of our visit to the farm, however, was the opportunity to actually ride an ostrich. Among our group, Anne, Lindsay and I rose to this unique challenge (which was offered to a maximum of three members of each group, with a weigh limit of 75 kilos to ride). Our ostrich "steeds" were led into an enclosed corral blindfolded. While the attendants kept the birds still, we climbed onto their backs (there was no saddle or bridle), wrapped our legs around their chests and grabbed hold of their wing "shoulders." Once we were more or less secure, the blindfolds were removed and the ostriches took off, darting around the corral liked greased lightening, barely avoiding collisions with humans and their feathered brethren in the fenced enclosure. Anne characterized the scene as similar to amusement park bumper cars. Miraculously, each of us walked away from this challenge without a scratch, and the brief ride was great fun. Afterwards, we watched two of the professional ostrich jockeys race one another, and we realized how klutzy we must have looked before we even got to see the photographic evidence of our adventure.

Our lodging for this evening was the Queens Hotel in Oudtshoorn. After dinner at the hotel, we finally found a nearby, properly functioning Internet cafe. Unfortunately, our daughter, Lauren, who is attending college in upstate New York, was not online at the time, but we did get to IM with my sister Elaine, Anne's dad and her sister Nanci, and we also sent an email "post card" to a bunch of friends and family members. This night, we dined on rack of lamb and other delicacies at the hotel and previewed some of our photos by connecting our camera to the TV in our room.

Wednesday
9/17/03

Our route next took us through miles (kilometers, if you prefer) of intensely bright yellow fields of canola. Around noon, we arrived in Hermanus, which claims to be the "world's best location for whale watching." Most members of our group perched, cameras in hand, waiting for the huge creatures we could see offshore to strike a photogenic pose, but when the whales didn't seem to be cooperating, all of us but Lindsay shot off a few uninspiring frames and then wandered off to grab some lunch or to shop.

Given the location, it seemed only fitting that our lunch should consist of seafood, so Anne and I decided to have fish and chips. While that doesn't sound exactly like local fare, I should add that the fish in this case was hake and snoek, neither of which I had ever heard of before, but which were both tasty.

After lunch, we wandered through the stalls of the local market, where we came upon a pair of men playing a local variation of the African game of Mancala. Following the usual negotiation, I purchased a small Senegalese drum from one of them for 100 Rand, and by the time the transaction had been completed, our bus was about ready to depart for our next destination. As we all boarded, we learned that Lindsay had been rewarded for her patience at the shore, and after a wait of about 1-1/2 hours had captured on film several whales breeching in all of their glory.

Despite the reports from earlier in the day that the cable car to the summit of Table Mountain, Cape Town's best known landmark, was closed due to high winds, seeing some patches of blue sky motivated Mark to check one more time by cell phone, and he was quite excited to learn that the cable car had reopened. We rode the unusual rotating cylindrical cab to the summit, where we were greeted by a rock dassie, a cute creature about the size of a groundhog and, believe it or not, the closest relative of the African elephant. Anne, Lindsay, Steve and I set out on what we believed to be one of the short loop trails that would bring us back to our starting point. As a dense fog rapidly began to set in, however, we began to realize that in the haze we had chosen a trail that led down the mountain, an alternative for which we were clearly not prepared, so we backtracked to the cable car station and rode down instead.

Once back at sea level, we checked into the Protea President Hotel in Bantry Bay, a well-equipped, contemporary facility with a complete kitchen in each guest room. To me, however, the most noteworthy feature of our room was the shower curtain in our tub, which was wide enough to fill the entire tub opening. While this might be the norm in the US, we had discovered in our travels over the past week-and-a-half that most South African shower curtains are, for no apparent reason, about two feet narrower than the opening, so I of course I routinely ended up with a wet floor after showering at every other hotel.

While I'm on the subject of differences between American and South African standards, I'll digress for a moment to highlight a few more. The flush valve on toilets, which is on the left side of our fixtures, is typically located on the right side of theirs. Virtually all electrical outlets, which require a large plug that is different in design from almost every other country in the world, have an integral switch to turn the power on and off. The on position for toggle-type light switches is down, whereas ours is up. Finally, in the course of our travels, we attempted to verify an often alleged difference between the northern and southern hemispheres, namely the direction of water's spiraling descent as it goes down the drain, but our experiments yielded roughly equal instances of clockwise and counterclockwise rotation, so who knows.

You may recall that I began this lengthy treatise by stating that our trip to South Africa had been inspired in the first place by the fact that our daughter, Emily, was spending a semester studying at the University of Cape Town. Well, the opportunity had finally come to actually spend some time with her. The hotel concierge hailed a cab for us, a comfortable Mercedes, and the driver, Leonard, gave us his handmade business card, identifying him as President of Leonard Rossouw Transport, as he dropped us off at a restaurant selected by Emily called the Africa Cafe.

Emily had brought along one of her friends from the University of Cape Town, a girl named Atang who is from Botswana, and our dinner conversation was a mix of Emily's, Atang's and our respective experiences in South Africa, each quite different from the other two. Emily gushed about practically everything she had encountered since her arrival in July, while Atang expressed her discomfort about the vestigial racial prejudice, something she had never encountered in her home country, and also complained about how cold Cape Town weather was in comparison to Botswana's perpetually hot climate.

The meal at Africa Cafe, a bit pricey by South Africa standards, consisted of a seemingly endless array of dishes from all over the African continent, served by a wait staff in traditional African dress. It was very enjoyable to spend the evening with Emily and her friend. As planned, Leonard picked us up after dinner and drove us back to our hotel, the second of a series of pleasant encounters we were to eventually have with this very accommodating gentleman.

By the way, on this and each subsequent occasion we were with Emily, I left my camera behind for various reasons, so there are unfortunately no photos taken by me of Emily in South Africa included in this journal.  (My apologies, Emily.)  As a substitute, I have inserted a shot of Emily at the airport in Philadelphia, as she departed for Cape Town in July, and another of her dancing somewhere in Cape Town with her new, South African friends.

Thursday
9/18/03

Our next stop was the Cape of Good Hope, which is marked by a sign identifying the location as the "south-western-most point in Africa." That's because, contrary to popular opinion, the Cape of Good Hope is not the most southern point on the continent. The latter distinction is held by the obscure Cape Agulhas, which is relatively inaccessible and unspectacular and hence not a usual tourist destination. Apparently, its having edged out the Cape of Good Hope for "most southern" status is recent, based on measurements made using more precise surveying equipment than was available back in the days of Vasco de Gama and other European explorers.

Notwithstanding the qualified uniqueness of this landmark, the Cape of Good Hope is a common location for "we were there" snapshots, so our group assembled behind the sign marking the spot, while Mark shot off a bunch of identical souvenir photos of us with each of our cameras. From there, we made the short drive to Cape Point, which is also a bit further south than the Cape of Good Hope, further explaining the need for the its better known neighbor to be precise in calling attention to its uniqueness.  We rode up to the upper lighthouse at Cape Point on a funicular, then hiked down the curving trail to savor the many stunning views of the Atlantic along the descent.

Lunchtime had arrived, and we dined at a restaurant called Seaforth, whose roof was supported by exposed wood trusses reminiscent of an Alpine ski lodge or perhaps a small structure made of popsicle sticks. After lunch, a short walk took us to Boulders Beach, where several hundred African penguins (a.k.a., Jackass penguins), attired in their "permanent tuxedos," entertained us with their antics. From there, we drove to the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens, displaying a beautiful collection of plants and flowers, including the King Protea, South Africa's national flower, and a hybrid bird of paradise given the name Mandela Gold in 1966 in honor of Nelson Mandela.

The return route from the gardens to the Protea President Hotel passed near the University of Cape Town's lower campus in Rondebosch.  Anne and I arranged to be dropped off, so we could walk to the house that Emily was sharing with about 11 other UCT students. We bid farewell to Mark and Anwar, as this was the last day they would be with our group.

When we arrived at Emily's house, she introduced us to those of her housemates who were home at the time, and she showed us her room, which was quite spacious in comparison to the dorms she has lived in at Williams College, but which has no central heating or landline telephone. We then went to dinner at a Cape Malay restaurant called Biesmiellah with Emily and another of her friends, Mashudu, from Limpopo (formerly Northern Province), South Africa. The place was low key, but the food was quite good, and the tab was about a third of what we paid the previous evening. Since we had kept Leonard's card from the previous night, we had the restaurant call his cell phone for the return trip to the Protea President for our final night's stay there, as Emily and her friend returned to her house.

Friday
9/19/03

Our first destination of the day was the Afrikaans Language Museum and Monument in the nearby town of Paarl, constructed in 1975 to commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary of "Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners" (G.R.A., 'Company of True Afrikaners'), whose goal was to elevate the status of Afrikaans from a spoken to a written language. The monument is a very modern composition of soaring abstract forms executed in concrete. In the post apartheid era, its original symbolism has become understandably controversial, but it is quite impressive when viewed purely as sculptural expression and it does serve as a reminder of a significant milestone in the history of South Africa, to be remembered if not revered.

Leaving Paarl, we made our way to Plaisir de Merle, a wine estate in Simondeum. Our visit consisted of a tour of the winery, followed by a tasting session, during which we sampled about four different wines. Neither Anne nor I are connoisseurs, so we don't really know if the wines were ordinary or outstanding, but we enjoyed ourselves nevertheless.

The next stop was the Huguenot Memorial and Museum in Franschhoek. The Huguenots were French Calvinists who fled France near the end of the 17th century to escape religious persecution. The monument was a classical structure, in striking contrast to the stark Afrikaans Language Monument, and an informal poll of our group revealed a roughly equal split between those who preferred the traditional and those who preferred the contemporary aesthetic. We stopped briefly in the museum, but I could only get a cursory sense of what the exhibits were about, since most of the signage was in French.

We then had lunch at a nearby cafe aptly named the French Connection, where we sampled our first springbok. In the short remaining time before our bus was scheduled to depart, we found some cute marionettes attired in native African dress in a shop a few doors away, and we purchased a Xhosa one for Emily and a Zulu one for Lauren.

The afternoon drive began with a brief stop in Stellenbosch, home of Stellenbosch University, among whose graduates were 6 of the 8 apartheid prime ministers and Zola Budd of 1996 Olympics notoriety. We stopped briefly in a shop across the street, where Anne bought some tasty guava "leather."

Our final stop was at the nearby Spier Estate, home to a winery, a cheetah conservation project and a raptor rehabilitation park. For a fee, visitors could pet a cheetah (an option we passed up). More interesting was "Eagle Encounters" a close-up flying demonstration of a variety of raptors. Then we headed back to the hotel and said goodbye to Marissa and Arthur.

While our Thompson's tour had now officially ended, several of our travel mates and we wanted to extend our time together. We all piled into the hotel shuttle and rode down to the Victoria and Albert Waterfront for dinner at Balducci's Restaurant.

Saturday
9/20/03

Several of our Thompson's travel companions had also decided to visit Robben Island, and they all left on the hotel shuttle shortly before 8. We assumed we would rejoin them shortly on the ferry. As the minutes ticked away, however, the rental car had not arrived, so we began to suspect that something had gone awry. Anne had the hotel desk clerk call the rental company and was informed, much to our dismay, that they thought the car was to be delivered at 9 rather than 8.

What to do? If we waited for the car, we would miss the ferry. We quickly decided to cancel the car reservation, stash our luggage with the hotel bellman and figure out later how to retrieve it, and grab a cab down to the waterfront. Once again, Leonard was our driver, and he got us to the boat well before it was to leave the dock. In retrospect, not having a car at our disposal was just as well, as we were feeling pretty apprehensive at the prospect of driving on the "wrong" side of the road.

As we waited for the ferry to board, we spotted Maureen, Edan and Kathleen, who were not able to get onto the 9 am tour and had therefore made reservations for a later departure. At least this gave us the opportunity to say goodbye to one another. We had already bid farewell to our trip mates who weren't planning the Robben Island excursion back at the hotel, and would later run into Pat and Lindsay again, but sadly the mix-up resulted in missing a proper parting with Leslie and Glenn. But who knows, it's a small world, and perhaps our paths might again cross one day in the future.

Before boarding, we also had a bit of time to look at a small exhibit of artwork created by Nelson Mandela himself. The most amazing piece was a limited edition handprint. It was only after examining the unretouched image of Mandela's left hand that observers noticed the unmistakable outline of the African continent in the center, a wonderful testament to the notion that Mandela held the future of Africa "in the palm of his hand."

The trip out to Robben Island was most scenic at the stern of the ferry, as it afforded scenic views of Table Mountain and the Cape Town skyline. Upon arrival at the island, we boarded a bus for a guided tour that included a stop at the limestone quarry where prisoners were forced to mine the stone from which their cellblocks were subsequently constructed. The high reflectivity of the light colored limestone resulted in many prisoners, working long hours with no eye protection, suffering significant loss of sight. We also saw the relatively posh residences in which the prison's administrative staff were housed.

At the end of the bus route, we entered the prison itself on foot. The tour of the prison was conducted by an actual former inmate, who told us the disturbing story of his own, inhumane period of incarceration. To his credit, like most of the former political prisoners, he has emulated Nelson Mandela's attitude of reconciliation rather than bitterness, sending a very positive message to the group of schoolchildren who were with us on the tour.

The final stop inside the prison was at the cell in which Nelson Mandela himself was held during his 18 year stay. Seeing that stark, cold cubicle, it is difficult to imagine how he managed to avoid simply giving up his quest for parity among the races that make up the population of South Africa. He is truly an amazing human being.

We caught a ferry back to the mainland and wandered around the waterfront, where we bumped into Pat and Lindsay. Then we ate lunch al fresco at Harrie's Pancakes, another branch of the same chain we had dined in when we were in Mpumalanga. Then we wandered some more and stopped to watch the visiting Norwegian gymnastics team who were performing in an amphitheater within the shopping area, but the weather this day was alternating back and forth between sun and rain, and the sky unfortunately opened up almost immediately after the gymnasts came on stage, so we retreated to more protected indoor spaces.

It now became necessary for us to work out the logistics of getting back to the hotel, picking up our luggage and then making the trip to Rondebosch where we would be spending our final night in Cape Town. This wasn't a particularly efficient scheme, since the two destinations were in more or less opposite directions.

As I recall, it was Anne who suggested that we call the hotel and ask them if they could send our luggage with a cab, and then have the cab driver pick us up and take us to our final destination. My initial reaction was that the reply would be a polite "sorry, but we can't possibly arrange that," but concluded in short order that it was at least worth a try. Anne phoned the hotel, and was told, to my pleasant surprise, that they would send someone with our bags exactly as we had requested.

The cab arrived to pick us up about 15 minutes later, and we immediately recognized both the now familiar vehicle and its driver. It was trusty old Leonard in his Mercedes, who had come to our rescue once again. He then transported us and our luggage to Rondebosch, where we thanked him and promised to include him in the journal of our South Africa visit. This promise has now been fulfilled.

Our lodging for this final night was a handsome bed and breakfast called the Knightsbury Guest House, located just a few blocks from Emily's place. The house had a beautiful garden in its front yard, and the rooms that we saw were very nicely appointed.

After stashing our baggage, we walked over to Emily's house.  Not long after we got there, her friend, Chrétien, arrived.  Chrétien, who lives with his family on the outskirts of Cape Town, is a civil engineering student at UCT, and he and I had an interesting discourse comparing his current engineering curriculum to my own in architecture many years ago.  We then headed off to dinner, stopping to pick up another of Emily's friends, Mony, a psychology major from Rustenberg (Northwest Province), along the way.

Our dining spot was an upscale Cape Town restaurant called Five Flies, which is also a national historic site. Despite its strange name (the flies are a reference to the restaurant's founder and to a sister restaurant in Amsterdam housed in five 17th century houses), the cuisine was superb. It was far too difficult to select a single entree among the many enticing options, so each of us ordered something unique and then we shared everything, all of us except Emily, that is, whose vegetarian dietary preference enabled her to share her meal but not receive very much in return.

Mony and Chrétien were both very good company, and of course it was great to spend another evening with Emily. When dinner ended, we returned by cab to Emily's neighborhood, dropped the kids off at Emily's house and continued to our guest house, where we did some of our packing for our flight back to the US before crawling under the covers for the night.

Sunday
9/21/03

As a further introduction to how "real" South Africans live, we hailed a taxi to take us downtown. In South Africa, cab and taxi are not synonymous, as the later describes a minibus into which they pack as many bodies as is humanly possible, with milk crates serving as supplementary seating. (Of course, this form of transportation costs only a fraction of the price charged by the cabs.) I was wedged into a corner of the rear-most seat with reggae music blaring from the speaker immediately behind my head. I wouldn't want to do this every day, but it was fun in a strange sort of way.

When we arrived in town, we wandered through Company's Garden Park, named for the Dutch East India Trading Company who originally established the garden for provisioning the Dutch colonists. We had limited time, so we had to pass up a number of the interesting places, such as the National Gallery, we otherwise would have visited.

The one place we did spend a reasonable amount of time was the South African Jewish Museum. The building was located behind a wrought iron fence with a locked gate, and we would have concluded it was closed on Sundays if we hadn't read otherwise in one of our guidebooks. As we strolled along the sidewalk peeking through the gate, a guard emerged from the building and asked us if we wanted to visit the museum. We concluded that the uninviting barricade was a security measure, necessitated by the building being located in a somewhat crime-prone neighborhood.

The museum is mostly housed in a contemporary structure that has been integrated with the original 1845 synagogue, which was replaced with a new house of worship on the adjacent site in 1905 when the congregation outgrew the older building. It has a permanent collection that focuses primarily on South African and world Jewish history of the past 100 or so years, as well as large exhibit of beautiful ritual art objects. The current show was titled "Hadassah - From Sketch to Stained Glass Windows," graphically telling the story of Marc Chagall's creation of a series of 12 windows, representing each of the tribes of the Israelites in the Old Testament, for the synagogue at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. We especially enjoyed that, since we had seen the actual windows during a family visit to Israel about 9 years ago.

The museum had a small cafe, where we grabbed a quick lunch. Then we visited the actual current synagogue next door, where we spoke with one of the synagogue members who was serving as a docent. Among the interesting things we learned were that this synagogue, like most others in South Africa, was both physically configured and liturgically aligned with the traditions of the Orthodox movement of Judaism, the most strictly observant of the major Jewish groups, and that the more liberal Conservative and Reform movements have virtually no presence in the country. Curiously, however, most South African Jews are not especially religious in their daily lives, suggesting that the Orthodox model is motivated more by tradition than religiosity. We also were informed that the majority of Jews currently residing in South Africa are descended from refugee from Lithuania.

Upon leaving the museum, we returned to the part of town where all of the minibus taxis assemble in stalls marked with their respective destinations. There appeared to be hundreds of these vehicles in the "taxi rank," which struck me as a miniature version of the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City. We climbed aboard a car in the bay marked "Wynberg" and were transported inelegantly but efficiently back to Emily's neighborhood.

We still had time left before we needed to head out to the airport, so we hiked up the hill that is Emily's daily route to the upper campus of the University of Cape Town. We stopped for a few minutes to watch a rugby match, with absolutely no idea of how the game is played. Then we climbed the "Jammie Stairs," the nickname for a massive flight of steps leading to Jameson Hall, reminiscent of those at the Philadelphia Art Museum that Sylvester Stallone ascending triumphantly in the original Rocky movie. Emily played tour guide, although she was not prepared with the volume of trivia that was part of her training when she did the same thing at Williams College, her "regular" school, during the early part of the summer in an official capacity. Since it was Sunday, the whole place was rather deserted, but it was still nice to see where Emily was taking some of her classes.

We then went back to the Knightsbury Guest House, where we had pre- arranged for Enid Knight to drive us to the airport. Emily came along for the ride at our suggestion to max out our time together. We all hugged one another and said goodbye, as we entered the terminal.

Once inside, we spotted Pat and Lindsay, whom we expected to see, since we knew were going to be on the same flight as we were. After a standing in a long line to check our luggage, Anne made a couple of purchases the duty-free shop, while I went to cash a refund check we had been issued as a refund of value added tax we had paid during our visit. It wasn't that much longer before we boarded the plane for our long journey home.

Monday
9/22/03

After clearing customs, we rejoined Pat and Lindsay one last time for our final goodbyes. Then, after a brief layover, we boarded a Delta flight to Newark International Airport in New Jersey. Claiming our luggage once again, we took the monorail to the airport stop of the New Jersey Transit Northeast Corridor train line. A ride of about an hour brought us to the Hamilton station. Finally, the "Kemper Express," this time driven by Erica, transported us the few remaining miles to our own house. By my reckoning, the total duration of the return trek was about 27 hours.

What an adventure! How could we best preserve the wonderful memories, both to share them with family and friends and to enable us to continue to savor the experience as the details inevitably fade over time? Why not assemble the photos and associated narrative into a web site that could be either quickly scanned or perused in depth whenever one was so inclined. So that's exactly what I decided to do. I hope you enjoy your vicarious visit to the fascinating part of our planet that is known as South Africa.