Cold as Hell in NYC

I was actually scared taking this picture that one of the members would open the door and disapprove of my souvenir photography

South African Journal: Day Twenty -33 hour flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg to Dakar to Washington DC to New York City. I had a window seat next to this guy who was too big for his seat so his 'overflow' occupied a good part of my seat for 15 hours. You don't get much for $1,500 these days. At least South African airlines had TV monitors in the seat backs. Elizabeth with Cate Blanchett is a great movie (and not just because I have a crush on Cate Blanchett).

T-shirt in Dulles International Airport.

I [heart] NY

An appropriate photo considering the state of our country. Lower East Side, NYC.

Top o' the Table

South African Journal: Day Eighteen - Highlight of the day was climbing Table Mountain. A fast, steep climb. Mom and Ben took the cable car up while Meg, Miles, Thea, Rolando and I raced the sun to get to the top. Made it up the Platteklip Gorge trail in about an hour and a half and joined mom for wine just as the sun was setting (which was around 9:30pm; its summer down here baby).

More 20,000 Year Old Art

One day Ben, one day

South African Journal: Day Sixteen – Today is Boxing Day in Great Britain and in her former colonies. Has nothing to do with the sport boxing or putting items in a box. It has something to do with St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, who was stoned to death in Jerusalem around A.D. 34-35, but few Christians can remember what the celebration is all about. To most of the consumer world... I mean Christian world, this is a day to shop, with huge discounts. In South Africa, it has been changed to Day of Goodwill, a day to give gifts to the less fortunate members of society.

Thea & Meg fire-up the cycles

Rode the motorcycles again today to see some more 20-40,000 year old art carved into stone and another stone gong.

20,000 year old ostrich, gemsbok and lion

The Veld

Agave Americana, the desert Christmas tree

South African Journal: Day Fifteen – Christmas day, fruit and croissants for breakfast, kids opened presents. I got a bottle of wine and Antony Osler's book Stoep Zen (Stoep is Afrikaners for porch/patio were people gather; a place for conversation and reflection).

Maeder and Les sporting their new Jamas on Christmas day

Went back out into the veld (the land), this time saw some indigenous art carved into rocks on Maeter's property. An academic from the Free State University came and looked at this rock art that they are guessing it could be between 20,000-40,000 years old based on similar art from around the region.


Maeter also showed us a rock gong thought to be from the same era. This was a group of large rocks, all different sizes, that were specially balanced so that when they were struck with a baseball sized rock, each 'gong' made different tones. It was like a drum kit with a seat and five 'drums' in a horseshoe design around the stone seat. Academics looked at these as well and confirmed they are way old.

20,000 year old drum set

Doesn't look like much but this was used by a prehistoric old Neil Peart

I have to say, there are few things more fun than chasing baboons around the Karoo on a 185cc off-road Kawasaki... ok, didn't really chase baboons around the semi-desert. Baboons are all over this area but we didn't see any tonight as Rolando, Meg, Thea, Miles, Ben and I ripped it up on three motorbikes and a Jeep. There were a few rabbits that almost feel pray to this knobby wheeled Japanese pleasure craft but no distant relatives of man were harassed by our motoring fun. Can't think of a better way to spend Christmas day then by speeding 40 mph through the African desert on two wheels, avoiding aardvark holes at sunset. Good fun.


So my nephew Ben had his first driving lesson today. He is five years old, just. And the jeep didn't have power steering. My sister Meg worked the gas and break while he managed the steering wheel. Aside from almost driving me off the dirt road when I was trying to pass them, he did a pretty good job. Good thing not too many cars transverse this stretch of dirt road. He found a porcupine quill as well, which added to the excitement of his first day of driving.

Happy Birthday Mom & Ben

South African Journal: Day Twelve – Today was HOT, “like Africa hot,” as Matthew Broderick said in the 1988 movie Biloxi Blues. It was pretty obvious from early on that it wasn't going to be a very physical day. It was my mother's and nephew's birthday; mom achieving the age of 65 and Ben excited about being five. Ben wanted to go to the beach but it felt like 96 degrees in the shade at 10:00am. We decided to jump in the Land Rover, crank the AC, cross the Umzimvubu River, and drive north on a fairly bumpy dirt road to see what we could find.


The four kilometers of beach was nearly empty as the waters are a breading ground for sharks. We eventually climbed a few switchbacks which gave my mother white knuckles as she watched the goats navigate the near shear drop to the ocean just outside her car door. The hill finally leveled off to a beautiful view of a few villages that overlooked the Indian Ocean. These were black African villages, of the Xhosa people. Their colorful, conical thatched roofed, round houses dotted the bright green hills.


We came back down the hill and stopped off at the Cremorne Hotel for a late lunch. The college aged black waiter serving us spoke nine languages. And not like I “speak” Spanish (I can say 'beer' and 'I love' you and count to 100 on a good day). We lounged around the beautiful grounds of the Cremorne for most of the afternoon. Ben swam in their pool then met an Afrikaners kid about his age. Ben said hello in English, the boy said something in Afrikaners, they realized they didn't understand each others language and then played together for about an hour.



Ate dinner at Fish Eagle for the second night in a row. Some of the best thin crust, brick oven pizza I have ever eaten. My mother and I joined two tables by the river and decorated the umbrella with balloons for Ben. We ate pizza, ate cake and played a game of Cranium Cadoo. Just before we left, Ben gave away most of his balloons to three other kids at the restaurant. One little girl was so happy she walked around the restaurant waving the balloons for over half an hour. I felt 'white guilt;' the privileged, rich, white foreigners giving the poor African kids balloons. My brother-in-law must have sensed my feelings and commented that if these black families are eating in this restaurant, they were probably rich folk from Cape Town or Jo'burg here vacationing just like us. He said, “they probably all have Mercedes Benzs.” We walked to the parking lot which was full of Mercedes.

Only Two Shark Attacks!

South African Journal: Day Eleven – Today was a beach day. We rented two surfboards from the Wooden Spoon at Beach #2 for 50 Rand each (US$5.00) and they threw in a decent Boogie board for free. The guy who rented it said there were only two shark attacks in the last three years and only the last one ended in a death. It was less than a year ago that they only found the two chewed up bloody fins of a life guard, no body. They guessed it was a tiger shark.

So the guy renting us the boards felt we had good odds of living. From the sharks at least. Miles and I are not exactly known for our surfing skills, though you have to admit we look like we know what we are doing in these pictures. And Thea, well, let me start from the beginning.

Cows don't surf

First of all, we are all strong swimmers and in pretty good shape for folk our age. Miles has hardly surfed and my skills are bad at best, though I can usually stand on a long enough board. Though the waves were not that powerful, a four to five foot face is still intimidating. So Miles and I rode the ripe tide out beyond break and paddled into the zone.

They may not know what they're doing but they sure look good

Meanwhile, Thea got caught in the rip and couldn't get out. If she didn't have the boogie board, she said she could have swam out of the current that was dragging her toward India, but with the Styrofoam board she couldn't escape. So the lifeguards blew their whistles and three of the four of them paddled out to get her (or as Thea put it, “I was tired but saw three buff guys coming toward me). The yellow capped water crusaders threw a flotation can to my little sis and brought her in. They showed her where the rip current was and suggested she stay clear of it.

Miles and I were enjoying the warm water and floated over a few sets before we tried out our luck. As I said, the waves were weak so we had to kick as well as paddle in our attempts. I finally caught a decent wave, stood for what seemed like only seconds before I bailed. I forgot to mention that we didn't have leashes, so my board shot out toward the beach.

Thea had caught her breath just as she saw me get separated from my board. Being the good sister that she is, she jumped back into the water and quickly recovered my surfboard. Unfortunately the recovery found her back in the rip. Back out came the aquatic saviors. Miles and I were now in the rip and I was getting tired trying to fight it to get my board. Miles gave me his board to catch my breath and the two of us got to Thea about the same time the two of the lifeguards did. Thea gave me my board and she let one of the lifeguards “save” her. The other lifeguard made sure we made it out of the rip before paddling his kayak back to the beach.

Future ASP World Junior Champion


Rolando does 'vacation' right with a snooze on the boogie board

Later when my our other sister Meg went to thank the lifeguards, they commented, “that girl doesn't listen.” A local said to Meg, “I was surprised how calm your mother and other family members were when your brother and sister were in trouble.” She didn't know that 'Trouble' is all of our middle names.

"That girl doesn't listen"

The Transkei no longer exists. It is now called the Wild Coast.

Blogging with a view

South African Journal: Day Ten - The drive from Kragga to Port St. Johns took a bit over seven hours. We passed over the Skei river pretty early in the trip into an area that used to be called the Transkei (Trans: to pass, Skei: the name of the river you pass over). The Transkei was the black area. Whites rarely came here and if they did, they needed to show ID. This was a homeland the colonialists forced the indigenous blacks to move to. I had read about this area in the 80's when I was protesting outside of the South African embassy in London against Apartheid (meaning separateness in Afrikaans; 1948-1991, the white minority of South Africa used force to oppress the black majority by forcing them into segregated homelands and denying them equality).

Had to slam on the breaks to avoid hitting these bulls who were fighting on the highway. All sorts of obstacles are on the road from children to drunks to sheep.

As soon as we crossed the bridge into the-area-previously-known-as-the-Transkei (now named the East Cape or the Wild Coast), we saw an adolescent young man in traditional dress, his dark black body painted white, walking into the bush with a walking stick. This is a right of passage. He was the age of my students, sixteen or seventeen, and it made me thinking of them; except he was just circumcised and was being sent into the bush for a week to become a man. We have definitely crossed into a different part of South African.

Watched some of the five day cricket test match, South Africa vs. Australia (image stolen from the interwebs)

Been watching cricket with my brother-in-law Miles, a five day test match between Australia and South Africa. I think I understand the sport by now. Very slow and very strategic. The South African team, The Proteas (after the national flower) is very diverse. They actually have a quota to have non-white races represented on the team. Kinda strange to see a blond haired, pasty white skinned British looking guy playing side-by-side with a dark skinned Muslim with a long, bushy beard. Very cool actually. And to see my brother-in-law get excited about a play that I can barely tell that something happened was amusing. Our sports are so full of flair, home runs where the batter freezes at the end of his swing or a basketball player spinning in the air and slam dunking the ball. Where they do have us is with the length of the game and the score. Though there are one day cricket events, a test match lasts five days with a score of 475 to 490 not too uncommon. Miles has been to a test match. He told me that some of the big games will have over 60,000 fans attending from 10:00am 'till 5:00 or 6:00pm, all five days. Whole lotta beer drinking going on.

Hashim Amla of the South African Cricket team (image stolen from the interwebs)

Rhinos and Elephants and Warthogs, oh my

Some people wake up to birds or squirrels outside their window. This is what was outside ours this morning

South African Journal: Day Nine – Woke to three rhinos right outside our accommodations, which is ironically called Rhino House. Meg, Thea and I started the day a 'bit' hung over. Luckily, Miles was ok so he drove us and mom out early to Ado Elephant Park. This is the type of reserve most people see when they come to Africa. Huge tracks of land in which you drive your own vehicle around endlessly trying to see animals. You usually see the big ones. The elephants, the giraffes, etc. Warthogs seem to be all over these parks and are actually a lot of fun to watch, especially the babies. I was most excited to see a dung beetle. Almost thought a mid-sized, tusked elephant was going to push over a car. But over all, the park where we are staying in is much more exciting.



Back at our game park accommodations, we went on an elevated, wooden planked walkway around a bunch of cheetahs who seemed as if they could have easily jumped over the low, electrified, chain linked fence enclosure for an evening snack of human.



We had a pretty mellow night as we were looking at a seven to nine hour drive the next day. Ate leftovers and watched the Italian Job on South African television as we packed.