JOHANNESBURG, SOWETO, AND BACK TO SAN FRANCISCO

May 18, 2018

It was absolutely heavenly to not have to get up before dawn for a change.  The big, noisy tour group that had invaded our hotel the night before had gone off to Kruger National Park before we ever got up, so we had a pleasant breakfast.  Then we loaded into the bus and drove up onto the Drakensburg Escarpment, which is also referred to as the high veld.  The views on the “Panorama Route” were fantastic, but we were at nearly 7000 feet and it was chilly up there.  Our first stop was at an overlook called God’s Window where we could look down on the low veld  and Kruger National Park stretched out beneath us. 

The View of the Low Veld and Kruger National Park from God's Window

Bourke's Luck Potholes

We followed the Blyde River canyon.  At one point, Dutch settlers had been trying to figure out how to get their wagons down to the ocean from the high veld.  The men left the women and children camped beside a river and told them to give up and turn back if they didn’t return in two months.  Two months passed and the men hadn’t returned, so the women very sadly turned back.  They named the river where they had camped the “sad” river.  A couple of days into their retreat, the men overtook them as they camped beside a different stream.  They named that river the Blyde (or happy in Dutch) River.

The "Sad" River

Monica and Meo at the Blyde River

We stopped at the Bourke’s Luck Potholes where the two rivers meet.  The river 

                                                                                                              

Dancers at the Three Rondavels

had eroded the stone into a series of circular pools.  The stone was colorful and the waterfalls and rock formations were whimsical.  Bridges had been built across the canyons so that visitors could view the potholes and throw coins into the water for good luck.  We paused there and took lots of photographs.  Then we moved a little further down the canyon to the Three Rondavels, three rock outcroppings in the shape of African huts that loomed above the canyon.  Our vista point offered spectacular views and we all snapped numerous pictures.  Some of our group members were chased by baboons on their way back to the bus, but I didn’t see any.  I was on a mission to get coffee.

Roadside Market at the Three Rondavels

The Three Rondavels

Panorama at the Three Rondavels Overlook

The Rose Cottage in Dullstroom

We stopped for lunch at the Rose Cottage in Dullstroom.  Dullstroom has 559 inhabitants and it seemed like all of them were aggressively hawking macadamia nuts on the street.  It would have been pleasant to stroll the main (and only) street, but the vendors made it stressful.  Most of us took refuge inside the restaurant where our orders had been called in ahead of time.  I ate a beef patty and chatted with Jan, Ramona, Lucy, and Ciro.  Electra made a dash for the whiskey store on the far side of town to buy a gift for her house sitter.  Ramona zoomed off to find a pharmacy after lunch and I kept Jan company, as he wasn’t feeling well.

Scenery in the Coal Region

 After lunch, we drove down into the coal mining region of south Africa.  The hundred-meter-high stacks of coal fired power plants dominated the skyline.  The surface was agricultural and we saw troupes of baboons foraging in the fields.  We stopped for a break at a strip mall that sold gasoline and coffee.  I bought a latte in the Shell station convenience store that had an espresso bar in the back.  South Africans knew how to make espresso drinks but their drip coffee was generally awful.

Mountains of Mine Tailings

The last hour and a half of our journey brought us to the region surrounding Johannesburg, which had been a gold, platinum, and diamond mining region.  It was the mining industry that fueled the growth of Johannesburg into the massive city it is today.  Everywhere, there were the artificial mounds of mine tailings.  With today’s high price for gold, many of these mounds were being reprocessed to recover metals left behind by earlier, less efficient processes.  The government was concerned that Johannesburg was built on top of old mine shafts and might one day collapse.  While it had survived a recent 5.5 magnitude earthquake, the tailings were being pumped back underground after being processed a second time.

Downtown Johannesburg

Our Room at the Protea Fire and Ice, Melrose Arch

We drove across Johannesburg to the northern suburbs where our hotel, the Protea Fire and Ice, Melrose Arch, was located inside a gated compound containing hotels, luxury apartments, offices, restaurants, and a shopping mall.  So many immigrants had flocked to downtown Johannesburg that it had become a vast slum.  The businesses that had formerly had their headquarters there had fled to the suburbs, leaving the office blocks to become overcrowded and crumbling tenements.  Downtown Johannesburg was a wreck and we passed it by.

Unfortunately, Melrose Arch, where we were deposited, was glitzy and featureless.  The stores were all expensive international chains.  Nothing was recognizably South African.  There was a large piazza surrounded by restaurants and dominated by a huge video screen.  Workers were busy laying AstroTurf and setting up bean bag chairs so that patrons could watch the royal wedding “on the lawn.”

The Protea Fire and Ice Hotel

We checked into the hotel, rested for an hour, and then went out to find an ATM and eat pizza and pasta for dinner.  With no early call on Saturday, Electra and I joined Monica, Meo, Lucy, and Ciro for drinks after dinner.  Upon our return to the hotel, Electra and I went to our room, not being big drinkers, while the rest of the group went for a nightcap.  Somewhere between the lobby and the bar, Lucy’s phone disappeared, possibly picked from her pocket in the elevator.  Security footage confirmed that she took a photo of the next day’s schedule in the lobby, got into the elevator, but did not appear to have her phone once she reached the bar.

May 19, 2018

The next morning, I was just about to hop in the shower when Lucy pounded on our door, asking Electra’s advice about what to do about a lost iPhone.  Since Lucy had not backed up her data or activated the security features, there wasn’t much Electra could tell her.  We finished dressing and hit the breakfast bar.  I wasn’t feeling well, so couldn’t take advantage of the impressive spread.  I had a little granola and yogurt and a glass of orange juice.  I went down to the lobby to meet the group and was suddenly overcome by nausea.  I went running to the bar, hoping there was a restroom back there, but the only restroom was one floor up.  I turned around and tried to make it but ended up vomiting all over the carpet in the bar.  I felt better immediately.

Our Guide, Andani

Soweto

Vilikazi Street in Soweto

We had a half day tour of Soweto scheduled for that morning.  Our guide was Andani, a very stylish gentleman who was a native of Soweto.  He met us attired in tie and sport coat, wearing mirrored shades worthy of a rap star and wild socks.  Soweto is an acronym that once stood for “South Western Townships.”  The townships were established when the apartheid government moved the black mine workers outside Johannesburg proper and deposited them there with no services.  The original dwellings were shacks made of sheet metal and tar paper.  Having heard about the unrest there during the 1980s, I was expecting a scary slum.  Instead, we found a pleasant suburban neighborhood, far safer than central Johannesburg.  

"Informal Settlement" in Soweto

Nelson Mandela's House

Today, Soweto is much improved.  Seventy percent of the inhabitants are middle class and live in tidy brick homes.  Over twenty percent are classified as “rich” and live in large, modern homes.  The small percentage of poor mostly live in the former hostels that once housed single male mine workers.  These hostels have been converted to family housing and the poor who reside there live there for free, not even paying for utilities.  A few shacks remain, occupied by illegal aliens who cannot qualify for better housing.  According to Andani, Soweto is safe because the natives beat up anyone caught committing a crime.  Even the criminals who live in Soweto commit their crimes elsewhere for fear of retribution.

Nelson Mandela's Living Room

We drove through Soweto until we reached Vilikazi street, the only street where two Nobel Peace Prize winners have resided.  The former homes of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela were only about two blocks apart.  Tutu’s house was surrounded by trees and impossible to photograph.  Vilikazi Street had become a tourist mecca and was lined with stalls selling food and trinkets.  The bus stopped outside Nelson Mandela’s house, which had become a museum.  We went inside.  Winnie Mandela lived there with her two daughters while Nelson was incarcerated.  The bricks bore the scars of firebombs and bullets.  The living room floor showed a scar where she had erected a brick wall (now removed) to protect them from stray bullets.  The house was small and modest.  We could barely pack the whole group inside at once.  We took a few photographs and then returned to the bus.

The Hector Pieterson Museum

Our next stop was the Hector Pieterson Museum.  Hector Pieterson was the first casualty in the violence that erupted during a student protest in June of 1976.  The apartheid government had established a separate and inferior system of education for black South Africans called Bantu Education.  Bantu education was designed to teach minimal reading, writing, and math skills so as to keep the working class productive, but not encourage them to rise above their stations.  The students had long resented this.  Students were required to study in English, which was a foreign language for them.  In 1976, the government decided that 50% of instruction must be in Afrikaans, a second foreign language that even many of the teachers did not speak or understand.  The students went on strike and organized a march 20,000 strong from the high school to the soccer stadium where they planned to present their demands.  When they reached the site of the museum, they were met by 200 white police.  The police began by firing tear gas canisters, but the wind blew the gas back towards the police and it was ineffective.  Next, they released German shepherd dogs but the students beat and stoned the dogs to death.  Then the police opened fire with live ammunition.

Hector Pieterson's Body

Hector Pieterson, 13, who was only a bystander and was just trying to cross the road to join his sister, was the first child to be killed.  Dozens more would follow.  While black South Africans had been suffering under apartheid since 1948, the murder of these youths finally caught the attention of the foreign press.  Sanctions against South Africa followed.  The economic effects of these sanctions eventually led to the end of apartheid.

Our Tour Group at the Hector Pieterson Memorial

We visited the museum and learned the story of the student march that finally accomplished what all the adult dissidents had failed to do.  I think each of us thought immediately of the student protests against gun violence going on in the United States and hoped that they might be similarly successful, although far more students had already been killed in school shootings than were ever shot down in Soweto.

Largest Soccer Stadium in Africa

The Apartheid Museum

We left Soweto after visiting the museum and drove past the largest soccer stadium in Africa to the Apartheid Museum adjacent to a casino and amusement park in a suburb of Johannesburg.  When you purchase a ticket to the museum, you are randomly assigned a racial status.  I was assigned non-white.  You must then enter by the appropriate door and proceed through the exhibits about the classification by race and assignment of government ID which differ depending on which status you have been assigned.  The non-white group had to use the stairs to ascend to the second level while the white group got to use a ramp.  The two groups eventually merged after the point had been made.  Somehow, the randomness of the assignment emphasized the ridiculousness of dividing human beings by race.

The museum was divided into two sections and photographs were not allowed.  The first section offered an exhibit about Nelson Mandela and his long history of resistance to Apartheid.  All non-white citizens were issued a pass book that they were required to keep on their persons at all times.  These books were called Dompass books or “stupid pass” books in Afrikaans.  The books showed a person’s racial status and where they were allowed to be at which times.  Black people were allowed to be in white areas when they were scheduled to work there, but otherwise had to return to the townships where they lived.  Nelson burned his Dompass book which led to his arrest.  He was imprisoned for twenty-seven years, eighteen of those years at Robben Island, far from his family in Johannesburg.

Nelson Mandela Burning His Dompass Book

Nelson’s story was moving, but ultimately triumphant.  Winnie Mandela had a hard life.  She suffered government harassment and had to raise her children in that environment without a partner.  She didn’t always handle it perfectly, which made her a controversial figure, but she was still honored at the museum by the title of “Mother of Her Country.”

The second part of the museum showed how Apartheid came to be in 1948, how it was implemented and, ultimately, how it fell.  Economic sanctions from the rest of the world ultimately forced the government to end apartheid.  Ironically, the worst violence against the people came just after the end of apartheid, when government soldiers killed thousands of civilians in South Africa and just over the borders of adjacent countries.  South Africa still has its divisions, but it is amazingly unified considering that Apartheid only ended in 1994.  Politically, they are less divided than the United States, which I found astounding.  

Divisions, today, are largely economic.  While they avoid racial divisions, class divisions are everywhere.  I fear that the educational system, with its four different levels from completely free to completely private, will perpetuate classism in South Africa.  At least, today, students are allowed to choose which languages (other than English, which is required) they will study.

The "Lawn" Set up on the Piazza for the Royal Wedding

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After the Apartheid Museum, part of the group continued on to Pretoria with Andani and the rest of us returned to the hotel in Melrose Arch.  Electra and I relaxed for an hour and then went to the grocery store in the basement of Woolworth’s to pick up something for lunch.  Nothing looked good to me, so I settled for a bag of crisps and a ginger ale.  We perched on the edge of a planter box to eat our lunch.  The place still looked deserted with the exception of one young mother changing her baby’s diaper on the tailgate of her Range Rover.  They were building luxury apartments across the street.  While the exterior architecture was glitzy, the interior walls were constructed of rough red brick.  The concrete slab floors were being held up by jack stands until the bricks were in place, which didn’t give me a lot of confidence in the integrity of the building.

After lunch, we went back to our room and I spent the rest of the afternoon working on my blog.  There was a lot to cover.

My Scrumptious Springbok Dinner

Saturday evening was our farewell dinner at a restaurant in the mall called Pigalle.  The cuisine was continental, although there were some African bush meats on the menu.  I had a springbok loin with a lovely balsamic reduction that was possibly the most wonderful meat I had ever eaten.  It was tender enough to melt in my mouth.  Our group had dwindled.  One couple had already left for home and another family had eaten too much at lunch to make it to dinner.  The remainder of the group enjoyed a beautiful dinner organized by our guide, Dale, with fine food and plenty of South African pinotage.  It was a lovely, bittersweet party since we would have to say goodbye to our traveling companions the following day.

Meo, Dale and Monica at Pigalle

May 20-21, 2018

It was wonderful not to have a schedule on Sunday morning.  I slept until 8:00 and didn’t get to breakfast until after 9:00.  Electra and some of the others left at 9:30 to go to a farmers’ market outside the gates, but I elected to stay in and work on my blog.  I really wanted to complete a blog post before I left Africa, but the internet connection was slow and there were many photographs to upload.  I didn’t make as much progress as I would have liked.  I wasn’t hungry, so I just kept my nose down and worked until it was almost time for my ride to the airport at 4:00.  Dale had arranged late checkout for us, so I was able to remain in our room.

I reported to the lobby fifteen minutes early so that I would have a chance to say goodbye, but the shuttle was already there.  Dale was coming with us as were four of the other group members.  Two of them were missing, however.  It turned out that Jan, Ramona, Electra, Larry, and Barbara had gone out for an African lunch and service being “chill” in Africa, they barely made it back by 4:00.  Larry and Barbara scurried to collect their luggage while I said goodbye to Jan, Ramona, and Electra.  It was a little sad but mitigated by the possibility that I would see Jan and Ramona in Ensenada in a few weeks and the fact that Electra was likely moving to California soon.  Those of us leaving piled into the van and we were off.

The Johannesburg airport was so quick and efficient that I was whisked through check-in and security and half way through passport control before I realized that I had neglected to declare my purchases so that I could claim a VAT refund.  There was no returning once I had checked out of the country, so I said goodbye to that $50.

Johannesburg was another airport where they didn’t announce the gates ahead of time.  I shopped for last minute gifts and then sat in the middle of the shopping mall until they announced the gate.  Even after they announced the gate, they didn’t open the door until they started to board.  I sat across the hall from the gate and attempted to converse with an African woman in French.

The flight to London took ten and a half hours.  I had an aisle seat.  The seat next to me was vacant but, once again, the armrests didn’t fold up.  There wasn’t room to learn forward, so I bunched my pillow up on top of the armrest and leaned over to the side.  I slept for maybe two hours that way.  Fortunately, there were good movies to watch and they served us drinks and a nice late dinner with wine.  This time, I avoided the spicy curry so I didn’t get sick.  We arrived at Heathrow about 7:30 in the morning.

This time, my flight was listed when I arrived at Terminal 5 C Gates.  The monitor told me to proceed to the A Gates.  My flight out wasn’t until 2:30 in the afternoon, so I had lots of time to kill.  I walked a long way and then took the train to the A Gates.  Fortunately, I didn’t have to change terminals, so didn’t have to endure security a second time.  I got coffee and a muffin at Starbucks and settled down to wait.  Thanks to my pillow, I actually managed to nap for a couple of hours in the airport lounge.  

Finally, at 1:00, they announced my gate which was back at the C Gates where I had started.  I had to make the long trek back again and go through a particularly annoying security screening where I had to peel off all of my layers of clothing to get to my completely metal free money belt which I foolishly admitted to wearing.  The whole exercise could have been avoided if they had just let me stay where I had arrived.  I would avoid connecting through Heathrow in the future.

My next eleven-hour flight was in a middle seat.  Fortunately, it was an endless afternoon and I didn’t even try to sleep.  I just watched movies, did sudoku, and ate and drank when food was put in front of me.  We arrived in San Francisco at 5:30. The line for passport control took an hour.  There were only about three agents trying to process two wide-body planes full of passengers.  I was tired, my backpack was heavy, and the wait was agonizing.  Fortunately, collecting my bag and clearing customs was a breeze.  The agents barely noticed my passage.  Then I had a long walk through the international terminal to the BART train where I collapsed in a seat and tried with minimal success to stay awake for an hour and a half until we got to Pleasant Hill.

Sandra was supposed to have picked me up and I had texted her my itinerary a few days before.  Somehow, she thought I was arriving the next day and had gone to work.  Since she hadn’t responded to any of my texts from the airport, I was not overly surprised that she wasn’t there to meet me.  I was too tired to care.  I called an Uber, rode home, showered, and collapsed in my big, comfortable bed.

INTO THE BUSH – HLUHLUWE-IMFOLOZI, SWAZILAND, & KRUGER NATIONAL PARK

May 14, 2018

After a 5:30 am wake-up call and a 6:00 breakfast that my stomach wasn’t awake enough to face, we were hustled onto the bus and driven to the Cape Town airport to catch an 8:30 flight to Durban.  The flight had encountered difficulty in Johannesburg and we didn’t get off the ground until after 9:00.  Security for domestic flights was easy.  We didn’t have to remove our shoes or take computers out of bags.  We were even allowed to bring liquids on the plane.  It was quite refreshing.

The Durban airport was quick and convenient.  We collected our bags, used the bathrooms, and then dragged our bags outside to our waiting coach.  Our new coach was much smaller than the previous one and two people with backpacks didn’t fit comfortably into a pair of seats because the overheads were too small for the backpacks and there wasn’t enough foot room to put them on the floor.  Electra and I had to separate once everyone got settled.

Boarding Our Boat in St. Lucia

Crocodile

We drove north from Durban, paralleling the coast, until we reached the St. Lucia estuary.  At this season, the estuary was not open to the sea, so was forming a large fresh water lake.  We boarded a pontoon boat called the Born Free to cruise on the lake in search of hippos and crocodiles.  We did see some crocodiles, but the water had been stirred up by the wind and was very muddy, so we could only see a few bumps on the top of the water as they passed.  The hippos, however, were quite visible.  We saw about two hundred of them gathered in numerous family groups of as many as twenty hippos of varying ages.  There were a lot of young ones and a few tiny babies that had to stand on the backs of the mothers to avoid drowning.  Hippos are too heavy to swim, so they stand or lie in shallow water during the day and only come ashore at night when the sun doesn’t dry their skin.

Family of Hippos

Baby Hippo Standing on His Mother's Back

Hippos are vegetarian, but they are aggressive and can apply a ton and a half of pressure when they bite.  Just the week before, a man in the town of St. Lucia went outside to see why his dogs were barking and had his leg bitten off by a hippo.  We cruised around the estuary looking at hippos for two hours until the sun set and the hippos started climbing out of the water.  In addition to hippos, we saw several African fish eagles roosting in the trees by the banks.  It was cold and threatening to rain, but watching wild hippos was endlessly interesting.

African Fish Eagle

We were tired by the time the cruise ended and we piled back onto the bus.  We drove for another hour to the Protea Hotel in Richards Bay, arriving well after   dark.  We could tell that the hotel was beautiful, but we never got to see it because it was pitch black when we arrived and still dark when we left again.  We were shown to our rooms and then convened in the hotel restaurant for a buffet dinner.  Everything was very spicy and I didn’t eat much because I was still feeling slightly nauseated.  It was all I could do to stay awake long enough to get back to our room and hit the sack.  We were asleep by 9:00 pm.

Sunset on the St. Lucia Estuary

May 15, 2017

The 5:00 am wake-up call was brutally early and there was no time to wake gradually because we had to have out suitcases outside by 5:20. There was coffee in the lobby, but my stomach wasn’t awake and all I could do was sit like a lump on the couch until the bus left at 6:00.  The hotel packed each of us a box lunch to take with us.

We drove out of town as it started to get light and arrived at the Memorial Gate of the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Reserve at 7:00 am.  The Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Reserve was founded by the king of the Zulus in 1895. The only older park in the world is Yellowstone National Park in the USA.  At the time of its founding, rhinos were already endangered (there were only about 20 left) and the park was founded to protect the rhinos.  The park encompasses 96,000 hectares and today has a population of around 2,000 rhinos.

Safari Vehicles at Hluhluwe-Imfolozi

Rhino poaching is still a very serious problem because rhino horn brings $10,000 per kilo on the Asian market.  Poachers climb the fences, drive in disguised as tourists, and even arrive by helicopter.  Today, the only creatures hunted in the park are human poachers.  The government has given the rangers permission to shoot poachers on sight.  We saw a group of three armed rangers patrolling for poachers as we left on our game drive.

Family of Warthogs

Cape Buffalo

Warthogs gathered around the entrance to the park, rooting in the drainage ditches.  Our group loaded into three Toyota Land Cruisers set up as open-air safari vehicles.  Each row of seats was elevated slightly above the one in front so that everyone had a good view.  Our guide’s name was Sabelo and he was a personable and knowledgeable fellow.  The three vehicles set off in different directions but the drivers stayed in contact via radio.  We drove slowly through the veld, in search of animals.  The first thing we saw was an old Cape buffalo lying by the side of the road.  Then we saw a number of graceful impala.  When one driver spotted something interesting, he informed the others and then we went tearing off down the dirt track, hoping to reach the spot before whatever had been sighted disappeared.

In Africa, if something looked like a rock, it was a rhino or an elephant.  If something looked like an antelope, it was a dead tree.  We saw several groups of rhinos hiding in the bushes and also a few groups of elephants.  It was cold and windy and the animals were mostly hiding in ravines or bushes to keep out of the wind.  When we finally came upon a lion, he was lying under a bush right next to the road.  Although he was no more than ten feet away and we could smell him, we couldn’t really see him.  The best photo I could get was of a tuft of fur through the bushes.

Male Impala

Rhinos at Hluhluwe-Imfolozi

Elephant at Hluhluwe-Imfolozi

Lion Sleeping in a Bush

We drove for an hour and a half and then stopped at a rest camp for breakfast.  While most of our group went to the restrooms, I headed for the buffet and encountered two beautiful striped female bushbuck that looked as though they had been drizzled with icing.  They were curious and came to check out the food but left before the rest of the group 

arrived.

We had a nice breakfast of eggs, sausage, and muffins with juice and coffee.  The employees were selling handmade, stuffed rhinos and elephants as a fundraiser to help protect the

Female Bushbuck at the Rest Camp

rhinos and we were all so enamored of the rhinos that we bought their entire stock.  I had wanted to see rhinos before they became extinct but had never considered them one of my favorite animals until I actually saw them in the wild.  They were just majestic and so prehistoric looking.  The thought of someone killing one for its horn nearly moved me to tears.

After breakfast, we drove to the other side of the park where we saw more rhinos and elephants and also saw a giraffe and a herd of zebras.  The zebras came right up to the jeep.  They were very cute with dainty black muzzles and black, white, and brownish stripes.  There were lots of babies and they were adorable.  

The Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Reserve

Handsome Zebra

Herd of Zebra Checking Us Out

Giraffe

Baby zebra are born with legs as long as those of an adult so that when a predator looks at a herd of zebra clumped together, they cannot identify the young.  We stayed in the park an extra half an hour and the three and a half hours that we spent there flew past.  I could easily have spent all day driving around and looking at animals.  The scenery was beautiful, as well.  I had not expected the countryside to be so lush and green.  Herds of game in South Africa are generally small because there is always plenty of food and the animals do not need to group together to undertake long migrations.  Water was plentiful, so the animals did not gather around watering holes.  The only creatures we saw near the water were a big crocodile and a tree full of weaver birds.

African Crocodile

Tree Full of Weaver Bird Nests

Resting Rhino

It was sad to leave the park but we had a lot of ground to cover.  We left the park and continued north until we reached the border with Swaziland.  At the border, we got our exit stamp from South Africa and then walked across no man’s land to where we were stamped into Swaziland.

Swazi Scenery

Swaziland was a much poorer country than South Africa.  Two thirds of the country lives on $1 per day.  The king takes most of the revenue of the country for himself and was said to be worth $200 million.  In Swaziland, the king is the most powerful person and the second most powerful person is his mother whom they call the “she-elephant.”  Together, they decide who will be the ministers who rule the country.  The king had something like 13 wives and had been known to kidnap women he found attractive.  We were warned to keep an eye on each other, although we were all much too old for his tastes.

Condom Dispenser in Swaziland

Swaziland has a terrible problem with HIV and 28% of the population was infected.  Unlike South Africa where the government provided free medication to those with HIV, Swazis were on their own.  The United States provided some aid and funded the free condoms (both male and female varieties) that were found in dispensers in the restrooms.  The king did not do much to help prevent the spread of HIV, although he did ban sex for those under age eighteen at one point.  He then married a sixteen year old girl, broke his own law, and had to pay a fine of one cow.

Coffee Shop at the Swazi Candle Factory

Batik Artwork

Giraffe Sculpture in Swaziland

We drove across the Swazi countryside for a couple of hours until we came to the city of Manzini.  Then we headed up into the hills before stopping at a roadside shopping area attached to the Swazi Candle Factory.  We spent an hour and a half perusing the shops and craft items displayed by vendors or sat to drink a beer or coffee.  I had intended to buy nothing and just drink a coffee, but there were colorful batik wall hangings back lit by the sun and glowing like jewels.  Business was slow and, though I only had 100 rand, I still managed to purchase one of a group of giraffes that had been priced at 150 rand.  That left me nothing with which to buy coffee, but I wandered around, took pictures, and 

then sat with Jan while he had a beer.  It was nice to get off the bus and the sun had come out and felt pleasantly warm.

View from the Mountain Inn

After leaving the shopping area, we drove for another hour to the town of Mbabane and then up the hill to the Mountain Inn overlooking the valley.  The hotel was a little past its prime, but adequate.  It was very cold once the sun went down.  We arrived before 5:30 and I had a couple of hours to try to catch up on my blog before Jan, Ramona, and I went out for dinner in the hotel restaurant.  Jan and Ramona had steaks and I had baby chicken stuffed with chicken livers in a mild curry sauce.  It was very good, but the chicken livers were quite rich and I could only eat about a third of it.  I was back in the room by 9:00.  Electra went to sleep but I stayed up to write.

May 16, 2018

The Ngwenya Glass Factory

Our 6:30 wake-up call felt like we were sleeping in.  We didn’t leave the hotel until 8:00 but had to have our suitcases out by 7:00.  That gave us plenty of time to enjoy breakfast and some rather awful coffee.  If the hotels didn’t have as espresso machine, the coffee was generally quite poor.

Blown Glass Zebras

We drove for an hour or so through the rain to the Ngwenya (crocodile) Glass Factory where they make beautiful blown glass vessels and animal figurines from recycled glass collected by the local children.  I loved the blown glass zebras but had to settle for a picture of those and a small glass rhino.  The zebras, with their mix of black and white glass, didn’t come in the smaller sizes.  We climbed upstairs and watched the glassblowers at work.  They were mostly making animals, so were doing more forming than blowing.

There was a small group of shops clustered around the glass factory, but nothing that piqued by interest.  I enjoyed watching the peacocks and met an adorable spotted kitten who wanted to be my friend.  We spent a little more than an hour there before climbing back on the bus and driving for another couple of hours through the mountainous portion of Swaziland to the South African border where we passed into the South African province of Mpumalanga.

Kitten at the Glass Factory

We checked out of Swaziland and back into South Africa and then returned to no man’s land where there was a Matsamo Swazi village for tourists.  We got there just before lunchtime and just in time to catch the local show.  The show began with the young girls singing and dancing, followed by the married women.  The young girls were allowed to kick their legs high when they danced, but the married women weren’t even allowed to run and had to dance more sedately.

Following the women’s dances were the dances of the young men who kicked their legs very high and then imitated animals.  The young men were dressed in animal skins with woolly goatskin “legwarmers” around their shins.  After the dancing was over, the entire troupe sang several songs.  They were an award-winning choir that had toured in Europe.  I bought a copy of their CD.

Matsamo Man Thatching a Hut

After the show, we received a tour of the village.  The huts were constructed from thatched grass over wooden frames.  Matsamo men may have as many wives as they can afford.  Each wife must be purchased from her parents for about fifteen cows.  Each wife has her own hut for herself and her children.  The men have small huts of their own.  They do not sleep with the wives but merely come to “visit” them.  The largest hut in the village belongs to the chief’s mother.  Her hut serves as the meeting place for the village.  We went inside the “grandmother’s” hut to see how it was constructed and listen to our guide talk about the village customs.

Inside the Grandmother's Hut

After our tour, we had lunch in the village restaurant.  Lunch was a buffet with rice, corn, or polenta and a variety of meat sauces, as well as a selection of salads and ice cream and banana tart for dessert.  The restaurant was open air and sited next to a lily pond and had a slightly Asian feel to it.  It rained while we were eating lunch and Jan and Ramona, who were sitting on the outside edge, had to run for cover.

Cane Fields on the Way to Kruger National Park

After lunch, we continued driving north towards Kruger National Park, stopping for half an hour at a strip mall while the coach went to refuel.  I had time to visit an ATM to get an infusion of rand and the local grocery store to buy Cadbury chocolate and a soda to wake me up.  After a final hour of driving, we arrived at the Protea Hotel in Hazyview, close to Kruger National Park.

Our hotel room was larger than some apartments we had lived in and the beds were very comfortable.  Unfortunately, there was no WiFi in the rooms.  Electra and I lounged for half an hour and then joined some of her family members in the bar.  I had a hefty glass (no stingy pours there) of pinotage and chatted with the other members of the tour until it was time for dinner.  It was nice to arrive somewhere early enough to socialize before dinner because our early morning departures made it difficult to do so afterward.

Our Room at the Protea Hotel in Hazyview

Dinner was a buffet in the hotel because the hotel was located in a remote location that offered no other services.  We seemed to be almost the only guests, so it was a relaxed affair.  They offered a Mongolian BBQ style stir fry, as well as African fare.  I had a lovely slice of perfectly roasted impala haunch that was juicy and flavorful and by far the best thing I had eaten since leaving Mexico.  The dessert table and broad array of ice cream flavors was a treat, as well.  Another glass of pinotage came with dinner and, knowing that we had a 4:45 wake-up call, we went straight to bed after dinner.  I was asleep before 8:30.  It had been a tiring couple of days.

May 17, 2018

Dawn in Kruger National Park

I had a nightmare that the hotel staff had commandeered our room at 4:15 AM and left me with nothing but my pajamas.  Though I went back to sleep, I knew the wake-up call was coming and did not sleep deeply.  I had laid out my clothes the night before, so was able to throw on my clothes, turn in my suitcase and make it to the lobby by our 5:15 departure.  I couldn’t face coffee at that hour but nibbled on a rusk so that my malaria pill wouldn’t upset my stomach.  We were at the Phabeni Gate of Kruger National Park in time to load into safari vehicles and be at the entrance when the park opened at 6:00 AM.

Running Rhinos

It was just barely light when we entered the park and a bit dark to take photos.  I really wanted to take a picture of the sunrise but our guide never stopped long enough for me to take a photo in that low light.  The first animals that we came across were zebra.  It was fun to see them but nothing like the photo opportunity we had had with the zebras in Hluhluwe-Imfolozi.  It was too dark to get good photos of them.  The next creatures we came across were a mother rhino and her large son.  They wanted to cross the road and ran alongside the jeep for quite a way until they could cross in front of us. It was amazing to see such ponderous animals running at speed through the bush.  We really got a sense of their power and it was very thrilling.

Wild Dogs Running Down the Road

Shortly after seeing the rhinos, we came across a group of wild dogs running down the road.  The dogs were black, white, yellow, and brown spotted, almost like calico cats.  The ranger in Hluhluwe-Imfolozi had told us that it was rare to see them, so it was exciting and we got some decent shots of them, although the light was a bit low to focus well on moving targets.

Wildebeest

We drove a bit further and saw a solitary wildebeest and then a mother hyena with a couple of babies nursing near the side of the road.  I always think of hyenas as being ugly, but they seemed quite beautiful in that pastoral setting.  The park was absolutely crawling with impalas.  Our driver didn’t even slow down for them.  We saw herds of females with a dominant male and also groups of male “losers” as the rangers called them, the males that couldn’t win the competition to dominate the females.  Impalas like to run and play in the morning and they were bounding about but not dashing with a purpose as they would have if something were chasing them.

Mother Hyena with Babies

The power to my charger had gone out the night before and my camera was not charged.  The battery gave up the ghost by 7:30, which was discouraging.  I didn’t have a whole lot of charge on my cell phone, either, so I mostly just watched the animals and only attempted to take photos when I had a clear shot.  Our driver, Sinki, was not a good driver for photographers.  He seldom stopped long enough to focus a shot and, when he did, always seemed to stop where the animals were obscured by a tree.  I was sitting in a middle seat and always seemed to have a camera, a head, or part of the jeep in whatever shot I tried to compose.  After getting so many great photos at Hluhluwe-Imfolozi, I was very disappointed to have so little luck on our full day game drive.

Lions off the Road

By 8:30, we stopped at the Skukuza rest camp to buy coffee and eat some of the food from the bag breakfasts that the hotel had provided.  We were given 45 minutes to eat and use the restrooms, which barely left enough time to dash into the gift shop and buy a booklet about the animals.  I didn’t have time to shop for anything else, although I was eyeing the purses made of springbok hide that I had first admired in Stellenbosch.

Female Kudu

After breakfast, we headed back into the bush and came across a small herd of kudu.  The males have impressive horns but the females that we saw had only lovely fringed ears.  Then our driver heard of a sighting of lions and we dashed off down the road to see them.  There were a couple of lions lying quite a way from the road.  One was completely immobile and we couldn’t determine which sex it was, although it was quite large and looked like a boulder.  One female picked up her head to look at us but she was too obscured by brush to get a good photograph.

Lilac-breasted Roller

Southern Yellow-billed Hornbill

Helmeted Guineafowl

We drove around for the rest of the morning, seeing numerous impala and some nice birds like the colorful rollers and red and yellow hornbills, as well as the helmeted guinea fowl with their bright blue heads.  We saw elephants but they were busy eating trees and we didn’t have a clear view of them.  We also saw a giraffe at a distance.

Herd of Impala Crossing the Road

Elephant Eating a Tree

Giraffe in the Distance

Lion Cubs Stashed in a Pile of Rocks

Finally, we got another call that there was a lioness with cubs and we went dashing off to see them.  There was an annoying group of tourists in their own car who refused to let others take turns looking, so we saw little of the lioness and her kill, although at one point I could make out the carcass of a wildebeest.  The cubs, however, had been stashed in a pile of rocks and we could see them from a distance.  There were three of them and they were quite young.  They were playing, ate a little, and then stretched out to nap.  A flock of buzzards perched in the surrounding trees, waiting for the lions to finish with the kill.  We could smell the carrion from a distance.  

A lioness with small cubs will leave the pride so that she doesn’t have to share her kill with the male.  That way, they cubs can get something to eat.  Otherwise, the male would eat first and take all the meat.

Cubs Playing

Vultures Waiting Their Turns

Sleepy Cubs

Jan and Ramona at the Skukuza Rest Camp

At 1:00, we returned to the rest camp to spend an hour eating lunch and shopping.  I succumbed to the temptation to purchase a stunning springbok hide shoulder bag.  It wasn’t cheap but was half the price of the ones I had seen in Stellenbosch and, unlike the other styles I had seen, the fur was not cut abruptly at the edges but left shaggy.  It was a piece that I could use for a lifetime.

My Springbok Bag

Zebras

After lunch, our driver made a beeline for the gate, which was 39 km from the rest camp.  He whizzed past herds of impala, zebra, and giraffes, although we did get him to stop briefly to watch a mixed herd of giraffes and zebras.  Other animals like to travel with the giraffes because they can see the predators coming and act as lookouts.  Impala were everywhere.  The park was a lion smorgasbord.

Our driver did take one detour to a watering hole where we saw hippos, crocodiles, zebras, and giraffes.  It was a scenic spot and one hippo was up and walking around, posing for our cameras.  We could have stayed there all afternoon but our driver wanted to get us out of the park by 3:00, so we reluctantly allowed him to drive us away.  We left the park and then took photos of each other at the entrance sign until the third jeep finally arrived and we could load up the coach for a short drive back to the hotel.

Hippo at the Watering Hole

Electra and Ramona at the Phabeni Gate

Electra and I relaxed for an hour and then took showers before repairing to the bar for a drink before dinner.  I took my computer to the bar and worked on my blog while I started on a glass of pinotage.  The bar was crowded with members of another, large tour group.  We all found their noisy presence stressful.  Our group was much more laid back and our guide, Dale, had always kept us much better briefed that this clueless group that kept asking us questions.

Dinner was a chaotic affair and there was no lovely haunch of impala to be sliced to order for that horde.  To make matters worse, the power went out and plunged us into blackness while we were eating.  Fortunately, it came back on quickly.  I was served another glass of wine with dinner and was ready to come back to my room after we ate, although I did stay up long enough to catch up on my blog before falling asleep.