We've been in Bali, Indonesia's small but oh-so-famous island, for a little less than a week now; but in that time, we have gotten rich, enticing tastes of many aspects of this beautiful place: the art and music and dance, the landscape, the food. It didn't start out so wonderful. We arrived in Kuta, a crowded, cheap-feeling resort town where RipCurl and Billabong stores line the main street and stalls selling vulgar t-shirts and low-quality clothes line the alleys. Needless to say, we weren't planning on spending much time there, just stopping for a night because of its convenience to the airport. Our plan was foiled, though, by the fact that our luggage had apparently liked Sydney (where we had a stopover on the way out of New Zealand) and decided to stay there. So until it arrived, which turned out to be two full days later, we were stuck. Not wanting to hang out at the beach in my underwear, which was all I had for a swimsuit, we spent much of our time at the hotel pool instead, which was beautifully set in a lush garden. We also walked around the town, as much as we could stand. We stared at the ground a lot, watching out for the daily offerings of flowers, food, and incense within a palm leaf that Hindus (the majority in Bali) set out on the ground each morning-- one of many ways in which mundane things are made beautiful here. We also visited the stark and moving memorial to the 200+ victims of the nightclub bombings that terrorized Kuta in 2002.
Finally getting our bags and leaving Kuta, we headed for Ubud, a small, artsy inland city that feels a little like Northampton. Here, unlike Kuta, the reason that so many people we respect got googly-eyed when talking about their own trips to Bali became much clearer. Ubud attracts a lot of tourists, meaning that there are of course a lot of touts; it is impossible to walk down the street without every 3 meters having hopeful voices ask, "Transport? Taxi?" while miming steering a scooter. But "no, thank you" is accepted with a smile, unlike in Egypt (although here they'll usually say, still hopeful, "Maybe tomorrow?"), and the high-intensity, jumbled, colorful beauty of the town more than compensates for any annoyance.
Ubud is known particularly as a center for the arts, and we have enjoyed exploring that side of it. We visited two museums, one noticeably better funded than the other, but both quite delightful and interesting with their collections of both traditional and more recent Balinese paintings and sculptures. The traditional works center around the great Indian epics and stories of the Hindu gods, and are rendered in extraordinary detail-- reading the paragraph-length captions accompanying the pictures gave us some idea of what was going on, but the artists always showed much more than was described. Many of the more recent pieces from the 60s and after, called "Young Style", were influenced by the presence of various European artists in Ubud, some of whom stayed here permanently. Some were described as having a "Western aesthetic," mostly for the use of perspective and, sometimes, the focus on one or two characters instead of many. But they also had a very distinct look from any European art we've seen, with an often extraordinary use of pattern, detail, and color. All three of those elements seem to be a central part of the visual life here: the shops spill over with gorgeous (sometime, er, irresistible) batik fabrics and clothes, which are also worn by people visiting the temples and the women who carry baskets full of offerings on their heads. There was rarely a painting of people that did not include representation of the fabric of their sarongs.
Besides the museums, we also took in two performances. The first was a series of traditional dances, accompanied by 15 or so musicians playing traditional (clangy, I have to say, to my ears) instruments. Some of the dances, mostly involving two or more female performers wearing tightly-wrapped silk bodices and skirts, would have been entertainments for a king in his palace. One, a warrior dance, would have been done at ceremonies to extol the virtues of Balinese-style manliness. (It was interesting for us to think about how this dance, which celebrated dexterity and fine movements, would have been different if it were an American warrior dance!) The most amazing thing about the dances was the incredible control the dancers had over every part of their body. They would hold their ring-fingers at impossible angles while quick-stepping their feet, always in a forward bended squatting position, and then move their eyeballs purposefully and keep their eyes open to painful-looking sizes. The next night was quite a different scene, as we went to a shadow-puppet show. We couldn't follow the story much, as the only bit in English was the occasional joke (including one with a puppet named Monica Lewinsky who has another puppet kind of drooling all over her, who then invites her for a honeymoon in Iraq... no, how about Bali instead... odd, no?). But it was cool to see the outlines the metal puppets made, backed by a glowing flame.
Although the main streets of Ubud are quite busy with traffic, not far off them are dirt roads, often narrowing into stone or dirt paths that lead through rice paddies to people's homes. We walked along two of those, one climbing gently along a ridgeline, and the other meandering past people working and ducks, cows, and chickens hanging out in the paddies. The green of all of it is both brilliant and calming. In addition, just at the bottom of one of the main streets is a quite enchanted-feeling, sacred monkey sanctuary and temple complex. Stone carvings of dragons, komodo and otherwise, seat peacefully in their moss-covered state, seeming quite breathingly alive. Meanwhile, the ubiquitous monkeys demonstrate the aptness of the phrase, monkeying around. They topple off walls, chase each other in circles, pounce on each others' stomachs and pick off bugs, beg for bananas, tackle the hard shell of coconuts-- all in all, quite a scene. We also took a little field trip out of Ubud to visit an excellent bird park. Set in a lush garden (everything here seems to be lush), the park had separate areas for South American and African birds, many of them cage-free, as well as groups of birds from several of the Indonesian islands; two of these exhibits, Bali and Papua, were set in miniature jungles enclosed by huge nets. There was also a bird show in which eagles, parrots, and owls flew from handler to handler chasing bits of meat, all backed by a landscape of rice paddies.
Given all these paddies, it should be no surprise that a food we've been eating a lot of lately is rice. We've sampled several of the typical Balinese dishes that go with it, and they've been almost universally delicious. One favorite is nasi camphur, which basically seems to mean a mini-smorgasbord of yummy vegetable, tempeh, and chicken preparations centered around some rice. We've also had jackfruit in a couple preparations, which tastes like a cross between artichoke and heart of palm; whole fish with forceful garlic sauces; gado gado, steamed veggies with peanut sauce; and rendang, a nicely spiced sauteed beef. There are also fruit juices of all sorts, sometimes ambrosia-good. (Although the avocado and chocolate juice was, I think, a one-time type of thing!). Tonight we've placed an order for a specialty dish: a whole duck, smoked with delectable spices. And the irony of it is that it costs less that one bowl of noodle soup we ate for lunch in our long day at the Sydney airport.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Sunday, February 18, 2007
N.Z. Post-biking: Queenstown, Christchurch, and Wellington
After our Backroads bike trip concluded in Queenstown, the "Adventure Capital of New Zealand" and where local A.J. Hackett brought bungy jumping to the world, we spent a couple days there, in Christchurch, and then Wellington before saying goodbye to N.Z. Although we were finished riding, our Backroads guide Michael didn't let us get away without a few more culinary experiences, including the Ferg Burger, and a great breakfast at Joe's Garage. On our first full day in Queenstown post-biking, we took a walk along its beautiful lakeshore, caught up on email, and had a nice dinner in and Scrabble game that evening. We also acquired a lovable stuffed kitty, who we named Queenie and who has been sleeping on our beds ever since. On the second day, Rachel and I did a great kayaking trip on the lake, with really choppy water. The scenery was still magnificent, and our kayaking guide was a real character who said he was a friend of A.J. Hackett (the bungy innovator). That afternoon, we visited the Kiwi Park, a piece of land that had been reclaimed by a family from a dumping ground and made into a bird sanctuary, where N.Z. birds including the elusive, nocturnal Kiwi were on display. We also watched (and participated in- see photos) a Maori cultural show there.
The next morning we set out on the long drive to Christchurch, the South Island's most populous city, and one of N.Z.'s most England-like places (sort of- a few pretty old buildings downtown and a beautiful botanical garden/park, but otherwise the same incredible N.Z. natural setting but marred by ugly sprawl). Allan and Sally drove the rental car, and, like us driving in Australia, could never quite get the hang of the turn signal/windshield wiper distinction on these cars. Apart from a break to watch people bungy jumping (they all made it look easy), we drove most of the day, enjoying some of our last glimspes of the amazing N.Z. landscape. The Seascape Escape Bed and Breakfast we stayed at in Christchurch was spectacularly located with a great view of the ocean, and we enjoyed their hospitality, as well as the hot tub we were wishing for after the days of biking! The next day we visited the Canterbury museum and a cool Arts Centre (the original university building, now made up mostly of working artist studios, a little like what used to be in the Colt building in Hartford). That afternoon we managed, despite technical difficulties, to talk to Rachel's sister Karen over Skype, did a little packing and enjoyed one last delicious dinner together.
Before going to the airport the next day, we visited the Antarctic Experience (70% of people going to Antarctica leave from Christchurch). In addition to live penguins and a "storm" room where we had to don boots and coats for a few minutes of cold temps, we also took a ride in a Haaglund tank-like vehicle over a land and water course behind the museum. At the airport we said goodbye to Allan and Sally, and they mentioned that at that point it was only 98 days until we come home! (Makes it sound like not very much time for all the countries we still plan to visit.) While they headed back to the U.S., we flew to Wellington, where we stayed with my friend Matt during our last days in N.Z.
I first met Matt at a hostel in London, when I stayed for a couple weeks after Rachel's and my Europe trip in the summer of '02, and then lived with him again in London while I was traveling in the spring of '03. Despite not having seen each other for 4 years, he was generous enough to host us, and it was great to catch up with him and his girlfriend Chrystyna. The afternoon we arrived, we took advantage of the fabulous sunny weather and Matt's friend's boat to do some wake boarding in the harbor: Chrystyna at an impressive level, Matt even more so, and myself, in my second time trying it, making a little progress so that i could actually stand up for a fraction of a second.
The next couple days, we slept in, caught up on email, picked up our Vietnamese visa and applied online for our Cambodian visa, and saw an exhibit which included photos of sheep wearing sweaters at the City Gallery. It was great both to see Matt and to regenerate before moving on to Bali!
The next morning we set out on the long drive to Christchurch, the South Island's most populous city, and one of N.Z.'s most England-like places (sort of- a few pretty old buildings downtown and a beautiful botanical garden/park, but otherwise the same incredible N.Z. natural setting but marred by ugly sprawl). Allan and Sally drove the rental car, and, like us driving in Australia, could never quite get the hang of the turn signal/windshield wiper distinction on these cars. Apart from a break to watch people bungy jumping (they all made it look easy), we drove most of the day, enjoying some of our last glimspes of the amazing N.Z. landscape. The Seascape Escape Bed and Breakfast we stayed at in Christchurch was spectacularly located with a great view of the ocean, and we enjoyed their hospitality, as well as the hot tub we were wishing for after the days of biking! The next day we visited the Canterbury museum and a cool Arts Centre (the original university building, now made up mostly of working artist studios, a little like what used to be in the Colt building in Hartford). That afternoon we managed, despite technical difficulties, to talk to Rachel's sister Karen over Skype, did a little packing and enjoyed one last delicious dinner together.
Before going to the airport the next day, we visited the Antarctic Experience (70% of people going to Antarctica leave from Christchurch). In addition to live penguins and a "storm" room where we had to don boots and coats for a few minutes of cold temps, we also took a ride in a Haaglund tank-like vehicle over a land and water course behind the museum. At the airport we said goodbye to Allan and Sally, and they mentioned that at that point it was only 98 days until we come home! (Makes it sound like not very much time for all the countries we still plan to visit.) While they headed back to the U.S., we flew to Wellington, where we stayed with my friend Matt during our last days in N.Z.
I first met Matt at a hostel in London, when I stayed for a couple weeks after Rachel's and my Europe trip in the summer of '02, and then lived with him again in London while I was traveling in the spring of '03. Despite not having seen each other for 4 years, he was generous enough to host us, and it was great to catch up with him and his girlfriend Chrystyna. The afternoon we arrived, we took advantage of the fabulous sunny weather and Matt's friend's boat to do some wake boarding in the harbor: Chrystyna at an impressive level, Matt even more so, and myself, in my second time trying it, making a little progress so that i could actually stand up for a fraction of a second.
The next couple days, we slept in, caught up on email, picked up our Vietnamese visa and applied online for our Cambodian visa, and saw an exhibit which included photos of sheep wearing sweaters at the City Gallery. It was great both to see Matt and to regenerate before moving on to Bali!
Friday, February 09, 2007
Sore Bottoms and Happy Hearts
Having just had the fantastic opportunity to get to know the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island at very close range (by moving over it at about 13 kilometers per hour on a dreamy titanium-frame bicycle), several words come immediately to mind to describe it. Hilly might come in at number one. But also: lush; wild; craggy; peaceful; unique; astounding; gorgeous. Some days, the individual components of the landscape were not all that novel; fields with sheep and cows grazing that could have been in Wisconsin, an untouched coast similar to Oregon, dense green forest, distant rocky mountains. But what was astonishing was the fact that all of these components were to be found right in the same frame. The rainforest came right down to the pastures, and on the other side of the street, across another small field, lay the mountain-framed coast. Spending hour after hour riding in the midst of this landscape was sometimes a transcendent experience. As we got further down the West Coast, the landscape became even more extraordinary. Glaciers became visible on some of the distant and not-so-distant peaks, and on one glorious day these mountains and others were reflected perfectly by the slate-colored face of the tannin-filled glacial lakes by whose sides we got to spend many hours. Our views were, by great luck, enhanced by a string of marvelously sunny (but not too hot) days-- in one of the wettest places on earth, we only got rained on sporadically on our first two days of riding, and got ideal riding conditions after that.
Of course, not even spectacular scenery could prevent completely some of the un-pretty sides of cycling from catching up with us, and we were all plenty afflicted with saddle sore and muscle fatigue from time to time. But our Backroads guide, Michael, did everything possible (short of butt massages) to keep those concerns to a minimum. Every morning there was a groaning snack table at our disposal (basically so we could restock on m&m's and whatever other chocolate he'd put out; we never seemed to reach the bottom of the nuts and raisins in our bags...), and the van was always available to shuttle us if we needed it, which we were all quite grateful for during a couple of particularly trying hill series. On a trip that usually runs with 16-24 people, we somehow ended up being the only members of our group, meaning that we got to set our own pace and preferences to an almost outrageous degree. It also gave us the freedom to eat at little places instead of in the hotels-- an opportunity Michael took full advantage of, bringing us to some high-quality little cafes with great local wine lists. Besides being an avid foodie and oenophile, Michael was also very knowledgable about New Zealand flora, fauna, history, and culture, and very easy and fun to talk to.
The distances between towns along the coast means that, for cyclists, there aren't many choices about where you're going to stay on a given night, but finding ourselves in several isolated, non-touristy places was a really cool aspect of the trip. There was Greymouth, a coal-mining and fishing town that has turned a floodwall into a walkway down to the harbor; Hari Hari, which has a population of around 50, all of whom seemed to be in the one pub, enjoying giant servings of chips and televised rugby on a Friday night (we were also treated to a slideshow by a local nature-lover and former park ranger, who's been doing the same show for almost 20 years); Inangahua Junction, pop. 100, where we stopped for lunch at a convenience store that has been run by the same couple (and possibly carrying some of the same stock) for 25 years, and where a country music festival attracting 4000 people is now held. (The local police took advantage of last year's festival to ticket every car parked along the street-- despite there being no other parking in town-- leading the festival's organizer to offer to pay for everyone's tickets.) Intermixed with these quirky, character-filled towns were the basic tour-bus stops, with fancy-sounding, overpriced (but occassionally very good) food and rows of shops selling greenstone jewelry, wool sweaters, kiwi toys, and the like. These were always enjoyable enough to spend a little time in, but the real flavor of the coast seemed to lie much more in the less glamourous places.
We did have a couple days off our bikes, in more touristy towns, and got to do some amazing (and butt-resting) activities there. In Fox, we took a helicopter ride landing on the Fox Glacier (one of the only advancing glaciers in the world currently), and then did a guided hike with crampons around the glacier before being picked up again. I found it terrifying, but everyone else seemed to love it; the turquoise-colored ice in the caves and crevasses was definitely cool. From Wanaka, an Aspen-30-years-ago type town on the shores of a phenomenally gorgeous mountain-ringed lake, we took a flightseeing trip over several mountain ranges to the fjord known popularly as Milford Sound. On a day that our pilot, Theresa, described as once-a-year perfect in terms of weather, we got a bird's-eye view of Mount Cook (New Zealand's tallest), as well as close-up encounters with the variety of craggy mountains through which multi-day walking tracks wend and off which adrenaline-crazy Kiwis ski after being dropped off by helicopters. We had a couple hours on a boat cruising around the fjord before, including a dousing under one of the many 100+ foot waterfalls cascading down the rocks into it, before flapping back off to Wanaka with Theresa in our flying machine. Awesome as those off-day activities were in themselves, they were greatly amplified by the sense of knowing the country, even if just fleetingly, that we had from our days of riding. Chafed cheeks and all, I'll stick to this mantra: It's always better to see somewhere from a bike.
Of course, not even spectacular scenery could prevent completely some of the un-pretty sides of cycling from catching up with us, and we were all plenty afflicted with saddle sore and muscle fatigue from time to time. But our Backroads guide, Michael, did everything possible (short of butt massages) to keep those concerns to a minimum. Every morning there was a groaning snack table at our disposal (basically so we could restock on m&m's and whatever other chocolate he'd put out; we never seemed to reach the bottom of the nuts and raisins in our bags...), and the van was always available to shuttle us if we needed it, which we were all quite grateful for during a couple of particularly trying hill series. On a trip that usually runs with 16-24 people, we somehow ended up being the only members of our group, meaning that we got to set our own pace and preferences to an almost outrageous degree. It also gave us the freedom to eat at little places instead of in the hotels-- an opportunity Michael took full advantage of, bringing us to some high-quality little cafes with great local wine lists. Besides being an avid foodie and oenophile, Michael was also very knowledgable about New Zealand flora, fauna, history, and culture, and very easy and fun to talk to.
The distances between towns along the coast means that, for cyclists, there aren't many choices about where you're going to stay on a given night, but finding ourselves in several isolated, non-touristy places was a really cool aspect of the trip. There was Greymouth, a coal-mining and fishing town that has turned a floodwall into a walkway down to the harbor; Hari Hari, which has a population of around 50, all of whom seemed to be in the one pub, enjoying giant servings of chips and televised rugby on a Friday night (we were also treated to a slideshow by a local nature-lover and former park ranger, who's been doing the same show for almost 20 years); Inangahua Junction, pop. 100, where we stopped for lunch at a convenience store that has been run by the same couple (and possibly carrying some of the same stock) for 25 years, and where a country music festival attracting 4000 people is now held. (The local police took advantage of last year's festival to ticket every car parked along the street-- despite there being no other parking in town-- leading the festival's organizer to offer to pay for everyone's tickets.) Intermixed with these quirky, character-filled towns were the basic tour-bus stops, with fancy-sounding, overpriced (but occassionally very good) food and rows of shops selling greenstone jewelry, wool sweaters, kiwi toys, and the like. These were always enjoyable enough to spend a little time in, but the real flavor of the coast seemed to lie much more in the less glamourous places.
We did have a couple days off our bikes, in more touristy towns, and got to do some amazing (and butt-resting) activities there. In Fox, we took a helicopter ride landing on the Fox Glacier (one of the only advancing glaciers in the world currently), and then did a guided hike with crampons around the glacier before being picked up again. I found it terrifying, but everyone else seemed to love it; the turquoise-colored ice in the caves and crevasses was definitely cool. From Wanaka, an Aspen-30-years-ago type town on the shores of a phenomenally gorgeous mountain-ringed lake, we took a flightseeing trip over several mountain ranges to the fjord known popularly as Milford Sound. On a day that our pilot, Theresa, described as once-a-year perfect in terms of weather, we got a bird's-eye view of Mount Cook (New Zealand's tallest), as well as close-up encounters with the variety of craggy mountains through which multi-day walking tracks wend and off which adrenaline-crazy Kiwis ski after being dropped off by helicopters. We had a couple hours on a boat cruising around the fjord before, including a dousing under one of the many 100+ foot waterfalls cascading down the rocks into it, before flapping back off to Wanaka with Theresa in our flying machine. Awesome as those off-day activities were in themselves, they were greatly amplified by the sense of knowing the country, even if just fleetingly, that we had from our days of riding. Chafed cheeks and all, I'll stick to this mantra: It's always better to see somewhere from a bike.
Absolutely Positively Wellington!
We arrived in New Zealand's capital city Wellington (whose slogan is "Absolutely Positively Wellington"-a little catchier than "New England's Rising Star" for Hartford), located on the southern tip of the North Island. After going through our most extensive and strict screening upon arrival at the airport (in an effort to preserve its biodiversity, NZ doesn't allow in any food or plant items, and inspects any outdoor gear- we had to present our hiking shoes, which passed inspection as we'd washed them in Australia), we spent the night in a backpackers before returning to the airport the following morning when Allan and Sally flew in- yay! This was a moment we'd been anticipating for a long time, and one that we looked forward to especially during holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas when we were away from family. And all of a sudden, there they were!
Although the NZ temperatures were much warmer for Allan and Sally, for us and our endless summer it's the coldest weather we've experienced in a long time, probably since Turkey. From the airport we passed a "Wisconsin Burger" restaurant chain (NZ has another Wisconsin aspect: lots of dairy farms (the modern milk machine was invented in NZ) and excellent cheese and ice cream!) on our way to our home for the next few days, a hotel suite downtown. Wellington looks a little like a Pacific Northwest city, with San Francisco-like hills: we took a cable car up from near our hotel to the botanical garden, and looked at the observatory. After a brief trip to the Vietnamese Embassy for our easiest-yet visa application (fingers crossed it comes through), we relaxed and caught up with Allan and Sally for the rest of the day, watching some Australian Open tennis on tv.
The next day we set out for the huge Te Papa (Maori words, which we think means "the nation" or "the people") Museum, an excellent natural and social history museum on the waterfront. We learned about New Zealand's geology (lots of earthquakes, given its location on a fault line), how it split from the ancient landmass of Gondwanaland (which also included Australia, India, and Antarctica), and all the weird flora and fauna, like the now-extinct giant moa bird and of course the Kiwi bird. Much of the museum was devoted to Maori artifacts and culture, including a giant canoe and a Marae, or Maori meeting house. New Zealand, while not as recently inhabited by humans as Mauritius, was only settled by the Maori sometime around 500 A.D. After the museum we walked to St. Paul's, a beautiful old wooden church, and then went out to a great dinner that night.
On our third day in Wellington we first visited the City and Sea museum, with more well-presented social history exhibits. We then walked through the steep botanical gardens during a Teddy Bears' Picnic children's day, and saw more of the festival in a cool dowtown outdoor Civic Center performing space. Early the next morning we boarded the ferry to the South Island, a very comfortable ride with views that reminded us of Alaska, with amazing mountains and water. We arrived in a little town called Picton, and endured a couple hour bus-ride with a crazy-talking driver past vineyards, sheep, and deer farms to the town of Nelson, where we arrived just before the rain and looking forward to the start of our Backroads bike trip the next day.
Although the NZ temperatures were much warmer for Allan and Sally, for us and our endless summer it's the coldest weather we've experienced in a long time, probably since Turkey. From the airport we passed a "Wisconsin Burger" restaurant chain (NZ has another Wisconsin aspect: lots of dairy farms (the modern milk machine was invented in NZ) and excellent cheese and ice cream!) on our way to our home for the next few days, a hotel suite downtown. Wellington looks a little like a Pacific Northwest city, with San Francisco-like hills: we took a cable car up from near our hotel to the botanical garden, and looked at the observatory. After a brief trip to the Vietnamese Embassy for our easiest-yet visa application (fingers crossed it comes through), we relaxed and caught up with Allan and Sally for the rest of the day, watching some Australian Open tennis on tv.
The next day we set out for the huge Te Papa (Maori words, which we think means "the nation" or "the people") Museum, an excellent natural and social history museum on the waterfront. We learned about New Zealand's geology (lots of earthquakes, given its location on a fault line), how it split from the ancient landmass of Gondwanaland (which also included Australia, India, and Antarctica), and all the weird flora and fauna, like the now-extinct giant moa bird and of course the Kiwi bird. Much of the museum was devoted to Maori artifacts and culture, including a giant canoe and a Marae, or Maori meeting house. New Zealand, while not as recently inhabited by humans as Mauritius, was only settled by the Maori sometime around 500 A.D. After the museum we walked to St. Paul's, a beautiful old wooden church, and then went out to a great dinner that night.
On our third day in Wellington we first visited the City and Sea museum, with more well-presented social history exhibits. We then walked through the steep botanical gardens during a Teddy Bears' Picnic children's day, and saw more of the festival in a cool dowtown outdoor Civic Center performing space. Early the next morning we boarded the ferry to the South Island, a very comfortable ride with views that reminded us of Alaska, with amazing mountains and water. We arrived in a little town called Picton, and endured a couple hour bus-ride with a crazy-talking driver past vineyards, sheep, and deer farms to the town of Nelson, where we arrived just before the rain and looking forward to the start of our Backroads bike trip the next day.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Great Barrier Reef
Leaving Alice Springs after our epic (at least in terms of amount of driving) Outback tour, we had what was hands down our easiest flight experience ever. There was no one in line ahead of us to check in (where they didn't even ask for I.D.), nor in security; we boarded about 20 minutes after that and got our bags minutes after touching down in Cairns.
Cairns (pronounced locally like the French film festival town "Cannes") is the most popular town from which to visit the Great Barrier Reef. When we stepped off the plane the humidity was 85%, so although the temperature was almost 20 degrees F cooler than temperatures we'd had in the Outback desert, it felt much hotter. Dowtown Cairns isn't much, sort of like a miniature version of Cancun.
The next day we toured the Great Barrier Reef. When we were in Mexico, we met an
Australian woman who said that much of the reef could be gone in as little as 10 years time if current levels of coral destruction continue. Despite requiring an extra flight and our limited time here, this uncertain future was one of the reasons we felt we needed to see the reef on this trip. We were lucky with the weather--after getting rain in the desert, today in the rainy season of the Queensland tropics was bright and sunny.
Our experience definitely didn't disappoint: outfitted with wetsuits to protect against poisonous jellyfish and sting rays (famed Australian "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin's killer) but more importantly against the intensity of the sun, we snorkeled first at Michaelmas Cay, which was inhabitated by what seemed to be thouands of birds. After a great lunch on the boat, our second snorkeling stop was Paradise Reef. While we saw a few brightly colored fish (not as many as snorkeling in Mexico), the main attraction was definitely the coral, which was present in an incredible variety of shapes (including sponges, spiky trees, and all kinds of curvy, wavy-lined shapes) and colors (mostly brown, yellow, and orange but also splotches of brilliant blues, purples, and greens. We saw a ray and a little shark. The sea floor below was littered with dead coral, which we hope is not the future for the rest of this amazing environment.
After seeing the reef we're feeling ready to say goodbye to Australia and eagerly awaiting meeting up with Allan and Sally in New Zealand!
Cairns (pronounced locally like the French film festival town "Cannes") is the most popular town from which to visit the Great Barrier Reef. When we stepped off the plane the humidity was 85%, so although the temperature was almost 20 degrees F cooler than temperatures we'd had in the Outback desert, it felt much hotter. Dowtown Cairns isn't much, sort of like a miniature version of Cancun.
The next day we toured the Great Barrier Reef. When we were in Mexico, we met an
Australian woman who said that much of the reef could be gone in as little as 10 years time if current levels of coral destruction continue. Despite requiring an extra flight and our limited time here, this uncertain future was one of the reasons we felt we needed to see the reef on this trip. We were lucky with the weather--after getting rain in the desert, today in the rainy season of the Queensland tropics was bright and sunny.
Our experience definitely didn't disappoint: outfitted with wetsuits to protect against poisonous jellyfish and sting rays (famed Australian "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin's killer) but more importantly against the intensity of the sun, we snorkeled first at Michaelmas Cay, which was inhabitated by what seemed to be thouands of birds. After a great lunch on the boat, our second snorkeling stop was Paradise Reef. While we saw a few brightly colored fish (not as many as snorkeling in Mexico), the main attraction was definitely the coral, which was present in an incredible variety of shapes (including sponges, spiky trees, and all kinds of curvy, wavy-lined shapes) and colors (mostly brown, yellow, and orange but also splotches of brilliant blues, purples, and greens. We saw a ray and a little shark. The sea floor below was littered with dead coral, which we hope is not the future for the rest of this amazing environment.
After seeing the reef we're feeling ready to say goodbye to Australia and eagerly awaiting meeting up with Allan and Sally in New Zealand!
Monday, January 22, 2007
Adelaide to Alice: The Outback
We arrived in Adelaide,a beautiful city ringed by parks, on Sunday, January 14, although couldn't return our rental car since the office had closed at 4pm. Luckily, we met up with our Servas hosts Brian and Chris at the office and were able to return the car the next morning; they said that the typical response to the office being closed then would be "that's Adelaide," with its reputation as a sleepy backwater city in comparison with Melbourne and Sydney.
Brian and Chris continued our experience of having great Servas hosts. Brian was a child in London during WWII, which he said wasn't scary to him but actually fun and exciting, with explosions and bomb shelters seeming like an adventure. He was sent to the countryside later in the war, and as a teenager became one of the "ten pound immigrants," those, many of them English but also many Greek and Italian, who paid a mere ten pounds for the weeks-long sea voyage to begin a new life in Australia. Referred to as "history's most successful voluntary migration scheme," it more than doubled Australia's population, which it felt was necessary after nearly being taken over by Japan in WWII.
The next day was the 6th anniversary of our first date, and we celebrated by seeing 2 movies (Little Miss Sunshine and Volver) and having a great fancy Greek lunch, as well as strolling through the botanical garden. It was nice to take a break from the usual tourist site routine and rest up for the start of our big tour: 7 days in the Outback from Adelaide to Alice Springs, with 18 passengers and 1 guide (a friendly, laid-back native of the Torres Strait Islands [off Cape York in Northeast Australia] named Kevin) in a big bus/van.
Leaving Adelaide on the first day of our tour, we drove through Australia's wheat belt. Farmers there don't use irrigation and so rely entirely on rainfall; because of the record drought this year most of their wheat crops yielded almost no grain and were harvested stalks and all as cattle feed instead. In less than a day's drive from the southern coast of Australia, we passed the "Goyden Line," the farthest point north that a 19th century surveyor declared wheat could be grown. North of the line is only suitable for sheep and cattle grazing. Later that day we also visited the Aboriginal Yourambulla Cave paintings. We spent the night in a hostel located smack dab in the middle of the Parachilna Gorge of the Flinders Ranges Mountains, which despite their relatively small size now (1100? m) used to be taller than the Himalayas. Going even farther back in geologic time, most of inland Australia was once a giant inland sea, and after that a dense forest, both of which are hard to imagine given the current vast, mostly flat arid plains.
On our second day, we made multiple stops to break up the driving: an ochre pit, a coal mine, a local eccentric named Talc Alf (for his talcstone carvings), the ghost town of Farina (Italian for "flour," the town was planned to grow wheat but never produced a single grain) and last but not least some giant "hippie sculptures" out of materials such as a windmill, small plane, and a bus. The ochre pit was the source of paint colors for Aborigines; those who collected and traded the ochre lived in the Northern Territory near Darwin and would walk over 2,000 km to reach this pit, and then carry back over 60 pounds of ochre on each of their heads for the return journey. That afternoon we saw a dingo cross the road, a dog-like animal that originally came to Australia from Thailand thousands of years ago.
Much of our drive on the second day (almost all on unpaved roads called "tracks") followed the route of the explorer John Stuart, who in 1862 became the first European to cross the interior of Australia, laying the way for the Overland Telegraph Line and then the steam engine train. The only reason that Stuart's expedition succeeded was the vast source of ground water, known as the Great Artesian Basin (which also provided the water necessary for the steam train). And the only reason he found this water is that the Aborigines (who of course, like with the ochre trade example, had likely been crossing the interior for thousands of years) showed it to him.
We spent the second night in the "town" of William Creek, population 6. It's the base for the William Creek Cattle Station, which with an area of over 22,000 square km is bigger than Belgium. It normally has around 20,000 cattle, but with the drought this year is down to just 1,000. No romantic images of cowboys on horseback here: the station is operated mostly by computer, and ranchers use planes instead of horses to cover the huge distances. Despite the high technology for ranching, a few of the locals at the pub proved to be slightly more stereotypical Outback residents, including one extremely intoxicated guy about my age who worked in a coal mine and had driven *6 hours* to come to the pub that night. Another interesting part of local culture given the Outback isolation is a one night "ball" held once a year where young people who may rarely see people their age where they live come from huge distances in the hope of finding a partner (or, as we guessed, just to have a good time). We drove past the grounds for one of these balls, which of course was now completely empty.
The rain began during the night at William Creek. A storm system had come down from tropical northern Australia and was pounding the outback in various places; it looked like the places we were heading were next to be hit. So the next morning, with our destination of Coober Pedy just 150 km away, we were forced to turn completely around to the next available paved road to avoid getting stuck. On our way, we passed (and actually nicked with our trailer) a rival tour company bus stuck in the mud. They were eventually able to get out by using the rail ties (called "sleepers") that are scattered next to the dirt road, remnants of the famous Ghan railway. The Ghan was named for the Afghans who brought camels to use for transport in the Outback desert after horses had failed. Australia currently has the world's largest population of wild camels, which we spotted several times as well as wild horses.
The rest of day three consisted of slightly scary, difficult driving over soft mud and flooded roads, (with some incredible views of ponds forming all over the desert), but Kevin successfully navigated us and the bus onto the paved road and to our stop in the town of Quorn that night. After a 4:30 wake up call the next morning, we were back on the road and by the middle of day 4 had reached Coober Pedy, the "Opal Mining Capital of the World": a day late and after 1,200 km of extra driving. The rain was still falling heavily, so much so that some of the hillside next to our "underground" hostel crumbled away. Because of its extreme desert environment, much of the town of Coober Pedy is built into the hillsides, where the opal mines were dug.
That night we went to an "underground" pub/club, and while Rachel and I were happy to go to bed early, unfortunately some of our group had other plans and managed to wake up not only our group but most of the other tour groups staying there by dragging one guy's bed into the hallway sometime around 3am, then staying up talking and laughing for an hour. (They also spent the whole next day laughing about it and refused to acknowledge that it might have been just a wee bit inconsiderate...). As I type this it sounds much funnier than it did at the time, and unfortunately this incident (and probably moreover the absurd amount of driving we were doing) led to a major rift in tour group dynamics.
On day 5, after driving most of the day, we arrived at Yulara, the accomodation area for Uluru (formerly Ayers Rock). Uluru is a huge monolith (all one rock, formed by the rest of the rock around it eroding) in the middle of nowhere, and a very sacred site for the Aborigines. The last few days of our tour unfortunately highlighted our leader Kevin's biggest weakness, timing (although again I'm sure he was exhausted from driving). After setting up camp we barely made it to Uluru in time for sunset, as we hiked past regular tour buses (first time we've seen them in the Outback!) to the lookout point. The sunset and Uluru's change of color with the light were impressive, but perhaps even better were the spectacular stars in the night sky, and the fact that we saw a comet that's even rarer than Haley's.
Day 6 was supposed to begin with a sunrise hike, but since Kevin and most of the group overslept we missed that. It was cool to walk around Uluru and see all the different formations in the rock, and learn a little about some of the ways parts of it were used in Aboriginal ceremonies/rituals. We definitely didn't want to climb it, which the Aborignals strongly urge people not to do but we saw several people doing anyway. When the Australian government finally "gave back" (in the form of a 99 year lease) Uluru to the Aboriginals in 1986, one of the conditions they required is that it remain open to climbing by tourists. In the cultural center, we saw the "sorry book" filled with letters from tourists who mailed back pieces of rock they took from Uluru, also forbidden by Aboriginal culture and supposed to bring very bad luck.
In the afternoon we were looking forward to hiking the Valley of the Winds in Kata Tjuta, another Aboriginal sacred site made up of a canyon and mountain formation near
Uluru. However, Kevin said it was too late and too hot, so instead we did a short hike, which wasn't great. After that we drove on to
Watarka (King's Canyon), a short day of driving at only 4 hours. That night the mood in the campground was a little better.
On our 7th and last day, we hiked through Watarka (albeit at an extremely slow pace for much of the way), which is formed by sand being pressed together so we could see the many layers of rock, some formed into beehive domes. There were also sides of the canyon that looked completely smooth from stone falling away. I swam in a pool in the Garden of Eden spot on the canyon floor, where giant cycads (ferns) from the time of the dinosaurs grew. Another of the amazing desert plants Kev pointed out was the ghost gum, a white-barked eucalyptus tree with the ability to cut off the water supply to one of it's branches if necessary in a dry time for the good of the rest of the tree.
Just as we've been reflecting more on political and cultural elements of the U.S. during this trip, on our trip through the Outback we found ourselves comparing the landscape to the West of the U.S.; despite the many wonders of the Outback, to us it just couldn't stand up to the majestic mountains and deserts we have at home.
Brian and Chris continued our experience of having great Servas hosts. Brian was a child in London during WWII, which he said wasn't scary to him but actually fun and exciting, with explosions and bomb shelters seeming like an adventure. He was sent to the countryside later in the war, and as a teenager became one of the "ten pound immigrants," those, many of them English but also many Greek and Italian, who paid a mere ten pounds for the weeks-long sea voyage to begin a new life in Australia. Referred to as "history's most successful voluntary migration scheme," it more than doubled Australia's population, which it felt was necessary after nearly being taken over by Japan in WWII.
The next day was the 6th anniversary of our first date, and we celebrated by seeing 2 movies (Little Miss Sunshine and Volver) and having a great fancy Greek lunch, as well as strolling through the botanical garden. It was nice to take a break from the usual tourist site routine and rest up for the start of our big tour: 7 days in the Outback from Adelaide to Alice Springs, with 18 passengers and 1 guide (a friendly, laid-back native of the Torres Strait Islands [off Cape York in Northeast Australia] named Kevin) in a big bus/van.
Leaving Adelaide on the first day of our tour, we drove through Australia's wheat belt. Farmers there don't use irrigation and so rely entirely on rainfall; because of the record drought this year most of their wheat crops yielded almost no grain and were harvested stalks and all as cattle feed instead. In less than a day's drive from the southern coast of Australia, we passed the "Goyden Line," the farthest point north that a 19th century surveyor declared wheat could be grown. North of the line is only suitable for sheep and cattle grazing. Later that day we also visited the Aboriginal Yourambulla Cave paintings. We spent the night in a hostel located smack dab in the middle of the Parachilna Gorge of the Flinders Ranges Mountains, which despite their relatively small size now (1100? m) used to be taller than the Himalayas. Going even farther back in geologic time, most of inland Australia was once a giant inland sea, and after that a dense forest, both of which are hard to imagine given the current vast, mostly flat arid plains.
On our second day, we made multiple stops to break up the driving: an ochre pit, a coal mine, a local eccentric named Talc Alf (for his talcstone carvings), the ghost town of Farina (Italian for "flour," the town was planned to grow wheat but never produced a single grain) and last but not least some giant "hippie sculptures" out of materials such as a windmill, small plane, and a bus. The ochre pit was the source of paint colors for Aborigines; those who collected and traded the ochre lived in the Northern Territory near Darwin and would walk over 2,000 km to reach this pit, and then carry back over 60 pounds of ochre on each of their heads for the return journey. That afternoon we saw a dingo cross the road, a dog-like animal that originally came to Australia from Thailand thousands of years ago.
Much of our drive on the second day (almost all on unpaved roads called "tracks") followed the route of the explorer John Stuart, who in 1862 became the first European to cross the interior of Australia, laying the way for the Overland Telegraph Line and then the steam engine train. The only reason that Stuart's expedition succeeded was the vast source of ground water, known as the Great Artesian Basin (which also provided the water necessary for the steam train). And the only reason he found this water is that the Aborigines (who of course, like with the ochre trade example, had likely been crossing the interior for thousands of years) showed it to him.
We spent the second night in the "town" of William Creek, population 6. It's the base for the William Creek Cattle Station, which with an area of over 22,000 square km is bigger than Belgium. It normally has around 20,000 cattle, but with the drought this year is down to just 1,000. No romantic images of cowboys on horseback here: the station is operated mostly by computer, and ranchers use planes instead of horses to cover the huge distances. Despite the high technology for ranching, a few of the locals at the pub proved to be slightly more stereotypical Outback residents, including one extremely intoxicated guy about my age who worked in a coal mine and had driven *6 hours* to come to the pub that night. Another interesting part of local culture given the Outback isolation is a one night "ball" held once a year where young people who may rarely see people their age where they live come from huge distances in the hope of finding a partner (or, as we guessed, just to have a good time). We drove past the grounds for one of these balls, which of course was now completely empty.
The rain began during the night at William Creek. A storm system had come down from tropical northern Australia and was pounding the outback in various places; it looked like the places we were heading were next to be hit. So the next morning, with our destination of Coober Pedy just 150 km away, we were forced to turn completely around to the next available paved road to avoid getting stuck. On our way, we passed (and actually nicked with our trailer) a rival tour company bus stuck in the mud. They were eventually able to get out by using the rail ties (called "sleepers") that are scattered next to the dirt road, remnants of the famous Ghan railway. The Ghan was named for the Afghans who brought camels to use for transport in the Outback desert after horses had failed. Australia currently has the world's largest population of wild camels, which we spotted several times as well as wild horses.
The rest of day three consisted of slightly scary, difficult driving over soft mud and flooded roads, (with some incredible views of ponds forming all over the desert), but Kevin successfully navigated us and the bus onto the paved road and to our stop in the town of Quorn that night. After a 4:30 wake up call the next morning, we were back on the road and by the middle of day 4 had reached Coober Pedy, the "Opal Mining Capital of the World": a day late and after 1,200 km of extra driving. The rain was still falling heavily, so much so that some of the hillside next to our "underground" hostel crumbled away. Because of its extreme desert environment, much of the town of Coober Pedy is built into the hillsides, where the opal mines were dug.
That night we went to an "underground" pub/club, and while Rachel and I were happy to go to bed early, unfortunately some of our group had other plans and managed to wake up not only our group but most of the other tour groups staying there by dragging one guy's bed into the hallway sometime around 3am, then staying up talking and laughing for an hour. (They also spent the whole next day laughing about it and refused to acknowledge that it might have been just a wee bit inconsiderate...). As I type this it sounds much funnier than it did at the time, and unfortunately this incident (and probably moreover the absurd amount of driving we were doing) led to a major rift in tour group dynamics.
On day 5, after driving most of the day, we arrived at Yulara, the accomodation area for Uluru (formerly Ayers Rock). Uluru is a huge monolith (all one rock, formed by the rest of the rock around it eroding) in the middle of nowhere, and a very sacred site for the Aborigines. The last few days of our tour unfortunately highlighted our leader Kevin's biggest weakness, timing (although again I'm sure he was exhausted from driving). After setting up camp we barely made it to Uluru in time for sunset, as we hiked past regular tour buses (first time we've seen them in the Outback!) to the lookout point. The sunset and Uluru's change of color with the light were impressive, but perhaps even better were the spectacular stars in the night sky, and the fact that we saw a comet that's even rarer than Haley's.
Day 6 was supposed to begin with a sunrise hike, but since Kevin and most of the group overslept we missed that. It was cool to walk around Uluru and see all the different formations in the rock, and learn a little about some of the ways parts of it were used in Aboriginal ceremonies/rituals. We definitely didn't want to climb it, which the Aborignals strongly urge people not to do but we saw several people doing anyway. When the Australian government finally "gave back" (in the form of a 99 year lease) Uluru to the Aboriginals in 1986, one of the conditions they required is that it remain open to climbing by tourists. In the cultural center, we saw the "sorry book" filled with letters from tourists who mailed back pieces of rock they took from Uluru, also forbidden by Aboriginal culture and supposed to bring very bad luck.
In the afternoon we were looking forward to hiking the Valley of the Winds in Kata Tjuta, another Aboriginal sacred site made up of a canyon and mountain formation near
Uluru. However, Kevin said it was too late and too hot, so instead we did a short hike, which wasn't great. After that we drove on to
Watarka (King's Canyon), a short day of driving at only 4 hours. That night the mood in the campground was a little better.
On our 7th and last day, we hiked through Watarka (albeit at an extremely slow pace for much of the way), which is formed by sand being pressed together so we could see the many layers of rock, some formed into beehive domes. There were also sides of the canyon that looked completely smooth from stone falling away. I swam in a pool in the Garden of Eden spot on the canyon floor, where giant cycads (ferns) from the time of the dinosaurs grew. Another of the amazing desert plants Kev pointed out was the ghost gum, a white-barked eucalyptus tree with the ability to cut off the water supply to one of it's branches if necessary in a dry time for the good of the rest of the tree.
Just as we've been reflecting more on political and cultural elements of the U.S. during this trip, on our trip through the Outback we found ourselves comparing the landscape to the West of the U.S.; despite the many wonders of the Outback, to us it just couldn't stand up to the majestic mountains and deserts we have at home.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Melbourne and the Great Ocean Road
We had heard a lot about Melbourne as a city of artsy and culturally diverse character, and in our few days there we got a yummy taste of both of those. We stayed with Jane, a SERVAS host who is a teacher and a psychologist, working mainly with the large Indian and Bangladeshi student population in Melbourne. On vacation now, she likes to spend some part of her mornings at cafes reading the newspaper and people watching, and on our first day in the city she took us to a neighboring suburb to hers, where we sat at an Ethiopian-owned cafe and then walked through the maze of small shops filling the blocks: Indian grocery stores, with shelf after shelf of different chutneys; Sudanese variety shops, displaying long, colorful cotton robes of the type we saw in Upper Egypt; general South Asian stores selling everything from fake-bamboo mats to plastic buckets to decorative figurines. Our favorite was a large Vietnamese supermarkets, that was in reality a collection of separate stands, all of them brimming with a fresh, colorful variety of fruits and vegetables, and dotted with vendors shouting out the prices and quality of their wares in Vietnamese. While we couldn't understand what they were saying, we could understand the sticky plates of free samples that were found on each stand, and helped ourselves more than once. There was also a fish section of the market, with some still-flopping half-dead fish lying on ice, while others swam in small tanks helplessly awaiting the rubber mallet-wielding butchers who pulled them out for customers. We also walked through Chinatown, in the center of the city, and visited the Museum of Chinese-Australian History, an impressive small place with lots of information about the Chinese experience here, as well as an interactive multimedia exhibit that took us as "migrants" from Hong Kong harbor in 1857 to the hot, dusty goldfields of Australia. The story of Chinese migrants in Australia is quite similar to that of Chinese migrants to the western U.S.: numbers were very high in the late 19th century as they did extremely difficult and dangerous work, but as that work faded and the Chinese began to establish themselves more culturally and economically, both countries established harsh anti-Chinese measures (in the U.S. they couldn't own land or other property, and in 1905 they became the only group ever to be banned from immigrating to America; in Australia, the families of migrants were not allowed to come over, and the 1901 "White Australia" policy cut immigration from China and elsewhere in Asia until the mid-1960's). Somehow, the communities in both countries persevered, and have firm and important places in present society.
As for art, we got to see quite a lot of it in Melbourne, in both more and less traditional forms. In the two buildings of the National Gallery of Victoria, we wandered through galleries of 19th and 20th century Australian paintings, some of which resembled the romantic, adventurous nature scenes of the Hudson River School. The collection of Aboriginal artwork was astounding; beautiful to look at, it was also incredible to grapple with the way of thinking the paintings represented. I am only beginning to learn about Aboriginal beliefs and not even close to beginning to understand them, but what I think I can understand is that it is a worldview that is truly, thoroughly different from the one I'm used to-- and the fact that worldviews can be so different is pretty amazing in itself. The galleries also had a few quirky exhibits, some of which pushed the definition of art and culture in an interesting way: there was a stunning collection of mid-century hats by Melbourne's foremost milliner, a gallery of mint-condition sneakers analyzing their manifestations of form and function, and an interactive playing area tracing the development of video game effects and graphics! The feel of much of the city, with several funky-looking pedestrian bridges spanning the central river, a plaza with live-music containing several museums right near the downtown businesses, art deco buildings near the beach, and buzzing outdoor cafes absolutely everywhere seemed to encourage the art-viewing, art-making vibe.
Leaving Jane, her two cats, and the city, we took the plunge and rented a car for a drive along the coast. The disconcerting scariness of our first time driving on the left was certainly compounded by the fact that we hadn't driven on either side of the road in six months; but, once we got out of the city and away from the most crowded parts of the twisty-turny Great Ocean Road, we were actually able to relax and enjoy our two days of driving. The part of the road that was right on the coast, which lasted for several hours the first day, was quite beautiful, although I couldn't say it has anything over Rte. 101 on the Oregon Coast. One highlight was the statuesque limestone rocks called the Twelve Apostles, and another was leaving the crowds behind once we passed that landmark. The coolest thing was seeing koalas in the wild-- we pulled over in a spot where we saw a few other cars pulled over, and there they were, sleeping in the crooks of the trees! Toward dusk, as we drove through a long stretch of extremely dry fields, we came to a road sign warning of kangaroos in the next 30 kilometers-- and indeed, as we drove, we saw 20 or more in small groups along the edge of the forest (and, sadly, several that had been run over by the side of the road). They were super skittish and jumbed into the trees whenever we pulled over, but the thrill of seeing them lasted even if photos didn't. We spent the night in a room in a pub, an Aussie tradition (we've been told) that we enjoyed a lot, even though we were too tired to take advantage of the proximity of the bar. After a quick stop in the Coonawarra Valley wine region the following day (tasting at 9:30 in the morning really doesn't appeal), we drove on through more fields all the way to Adelaide.
As for art, we got to see quite a lot of it in Melbourne, in both more and less traditional forms. In the two buildings of the National Gallery of Victoria, we wandered through galleries of 19th and 20th century Australian paintings, some of which resembled the romantic, adventurous nature scenes of the Hudson River School. The collection of Aboriginal artwork was astounding; beautiful to look at, it was also incredible to grapple with the way of thinking the paintings represented. I am only beginning to learn about Aboriginal beliefs and not even close to beginning to understand them, but what I think I can understand is that it is a worldview that is truly, thoroughly different from the one I'm used to-- and the fact that worldviews can be so different is pretty amazing in itself. The galleries also had a few quirky exhibits, some of which pushed the definition of art and culture in an interesting way: there was a stunning collection of mid-century hats by Melbourne's foremost milliner, a gallery of mint-condition sneakers analyzing their manifestations of form and function, and an interactive playing area tracing the development of video game effects and graphics! The feel of much of the city, with several funky-looking pedestrian bridges spanning the central river, a plaza with live-music containing several museums right near the downtown businesses, art deco buildings near the beach, and buzzing outdoor cafes absolutely everywhere seemed to encourage the art-viewing, art-making vibe.
Leaving Jane, her two cats, and the city, we took the plunge and rented a car for a drive along the coast. The disconcerting scariness of our first time driving on the left was certainly compounded by the fact that we hadn't driven on either side of the road in six months; but, once we got out of the city and away from the most crowded parts of the twisty-turny Great Ocean Road, we were actually able to relax and enjoy our two days of driving. The part of the road that was right on the coast, which lasted for several hours the first day, was quite beautiful, although I couldn't say it has anything over Rte. 101 on the Oregon Coast. One highlight was the statuesque limestone rocks called the Twelve Apostles, and another was leaving the crowds behind once we passed that landmark. The coolest thing was seeing koalas in the wild-- we pulled over in a spot where we saw a few other cars pulled over, and there they were, sleeping in the crooks of the trees! Toward dusk, as we drove through a long stretch of extremely dry fields, we came to a road sign warning of kangaroos in the next 30 kilometers-- and indeed, as we drove, we saw 20 or more in small groups along the edge of the forest (and, sadly, several that had been run over by the side of the road). They were super skittish and jumbed into the trees whenever we pulled over, but the thrill of seeing them lasted even if photos didn't. We spent the night in a room in a pub, an Aussie tradition (we've been told) that we enjoyed a lot, even though we were too tired to take advantage of the proximity of the bar. After a quick stop in the Coonawarra Valley wine region the following day (tasting at 9:30 in the morning really doesn't appeal), we drove on through more fields all the way to Adelaide.
"Kin's Kin" on Beach Rd.
Flying from Mauritius to Sydney, Australia we got to gaze at the full moon lighting up the night sky as we moved 7 hours into the future. So, after leaving on Thursday afternoon, we arrived at 6 on Friday morning, January 5. My second cousin (my dad's cousin's son; our grandmas were sisters) Toby Monson, while not from the Beach side of the family lives on Beach Rd., and although neither of us could remember having met before (possibly at a family reunion long ago), he and his friend and housemate Shannon were super generous and friendly during the time we stayed with them. When we thanked him for hosting us he quoted a Michael J. Fox movie line "Kin's kin." Plus, since Toby works for a travel company called Let's Trek Australia, affiliated with Trek America (and knows our Backroads leader Allison!, for those readers from the Alaska trip), he was able to give us tons of great suggestions and set us up with tours for the rest of our time in Australia.
After sleeping a few hours, we set off to explore downtown Sydney. I was surprised by the look of Toby's neighborhood: most of the houses were brick, many in Victorian style with beautiful ironwork trim. Toby's had an added organic feature of at least 4 to 5 huge spiders that built webs every night on the front porch and sidewalk, so that we had to duck going out. Mysteriously, by morning the webs were gone (we said maybe the spiders took them down). Sydney (and later Melbourne) felt very different from the large cities in South Africa: very clean, totally safe feeling, and good public transportation.
Getting off the train at the Circle Quay stop downtown, we walked around the harbor, took photos of the Opera House and walked across the Harborside Bridge, where we saw groups of people strapped on with safety equipment doing the 4-hour climb to the top of the bridge. That night Toby showed us the family history research he's done on the computer program "Family Tree Maker," and we added Rachel's vital stats to my entry.
The next day (Saturday), Toby drove us to the nearby Blue Mountains, where we saw the 3 Sisters rock formation, and took a short walk down and "the world's steepest train" (like a roller coaster) back up the mountain. Getting on the train was difficult as we had to physically restrain a group of Chinese tourists from taking our seat from us! That night we enjoyed Rachel's birthday present from her parents- tickets to The Marriage of Figaro at the Opera House. It was a beautiful production in an amazing building--at night it looks a little like a cathedral with the lights from inside.
On Sunday we went to the Bondi Beach market, with all the latest in retro clothes fashions, and Rachel found a great red, white, and black dress. That afternoon Toby fired up the barbecue and we hung out with his friend Dennis, who's part Aboriginal and owns a dijeridu and art making company near Darwin, in the Northern Territory of Australia. We tried kangaroo steak: red meat which has a sweet taste a little like ostrich--I liked it, Rachel not so much.
On Monday we visited the Hyde Park Barracks, a very good museum in a building which housed first the convicts transported to Australia from Britain, and later immigrant and poor women. We walked through Hyde Park and the row of giant fig trees, as well as through the Strand arcade--while suburban malls and shopping centers are becoming more popular here, we were surprised to see so much shopping downtown. For our last night in Sydney we (mostly Rachel) made a delicious dinner of shrimp curry, salad and peach pie.
The next day we visited the Powerhouse Museum, a combined science/natural history/children's museum, on our last morning in Sydney before heading to the airport for our flight to Melbourne; we'd planned to take the bus but the flights were $50 (Australian) cheaper! Getting around in Australia is similar to back home; it dwarfs even the distances between places in South Africa, which were probably the longest we've had on the trip otherwise.
After sleeping a few hours, we set off to explore downtown Sydney. I was surprised by the look of Toby's neighborhood: most of the houses were brick, many in Victorian style with beautiful ironwork trim. Toby's had an added organic feature of at least 4 to 5 huge spiders that built webs every night on the front porch and sidewalk, so that we had to duck going out. Mysteriously, by morning the webs were gone (we said maybe the spiders took them down). Sydney (and later Melbourne) felt very different from the large cities in South Africa: very clean, totally safe feeling, and good public transportation.
Getting off the train at the Circle Quay stop downtown, we walked around the harbor, took photos of the Opera House and walked across the Harborside Bridge, where we saw groups of people strapped on with safety equipment doing the 4-hour climb to the top of the bridge. That night Toby showed us the family history research he's done on the computer program "Family Tree Maker," and we added Rachel's vital stats to my entry.
The next day (Saturday), Toby drove us to the nearby Blue Mountains, where we saw the 3 Sisters rock formation, and took a short walk down and "the world's steepest train" (like a roller coaster) back up the mountain. Getting on the train was difficult as we had to physically restrain a group of Chinese tourists from taking our seat from us! That night we enjoyed Rachel's birthday present from her parents- tickets to The Marriage of Figaro at the Opera House. It was a beautiful production in an amazing building--at night it looks a little like a cathedral with the lights from inside.
On Sunday we went to the Bondi Beach market, with all the latest in retro clothes fashions, and Rachel found a great red, white, and black dress. That afternoon Toby fired up the barbecue and we hung out with his friend Dennis, who's part Aboriginal and owns a dijeridu and art making company near Darwin, in the Northern Territory of Australia. We tried kangaroo steak: red meat which has a sweet taste a little like ostrich--I liked it, Rachel not so much.
On Monday we visited the Hyde Park Barracks, a very good museum in a building which housed first the convicts transported to Australia from Britain, and later immigrant and poor women. We walked through Hyde Park and the row of giant fig trees, as well as through the Strand arcade--while suburban malls and shopping centers are becoming more popular here, we were surprised to see so much shopping downtown. For our last night in Sydney we (mostly Rachel) made a delicious dinner of shrimp curry, salad and peach pie.
The next day we visited the Powerhouse Museum, a combined science/natural history/children's museum, on our last morning in Sydney before heading to the airport for our flight to Melbourne; we'd planned to take the bus but the flights were $50 (Australian) cheaper! Getting around in Australia is similar to back home; it dwarfs even the distances between places in South Africa, which were probably the longest we've had on the trip otherwise.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
More Mauritius: Philately, Pamplemousses, 2007...
Departing Mahebourg, we made the slow, jerky bus ride to Port Louis, Mauritius's capital city. We stayed 4 nights there with our Servas hosts Mineswar and Rambah. (As well as our final night (Jan. 3) in Mauritius, having had to return to collect our Indian visa: they were generous enough to host us despite the day falling smack in the middle of their exhausting-sounding New Year's social calendar, where they said everyone is visiting and inviting friends over from Dec. 31- Jan. 8!)
Mineswar works as the assistant to the Deputy Prime Minister; it was interesting to talk with him about the politics of Mauritius. He was very proud of the fact that Mauritians are literate, well-educated people, and told us the story of how, after gaining independence in 1968, Mauritius introduced free and compulsory education in 1977, which he attributed to causing the grip that a mere 7 families held on the economy of Mauritius to be peacefully broken in 1982. To me, Mauritius has an interesting in-between feel: there are still some very visible examples of poverty (shacks, things being older/broken, litter), while also having a good amount of wealthier tourist infrastructure and a high standard of living for the local population.
Our first full day in Port Louis, we headed for the tourist-friendly waterfront, recently renovated into shops and restaurants. We visited the Blue Penny museum, where we learned the meaning of the word "philately" (stamp collecting) in reference to the museum's name, as it houses the "world-famous" 1 and 2 penny red and blue stamps from the 1850s: aside from the ones in the museum, there are only a few others in existence, a pair of which recently sold for $5 million! More interesting to us than the stamps and postal history exhibit of Mauritius were the rooms of old maps (including the first globe, circa 1493?) and model ships, and the colonial history both of the country and the city of Port Louis.
Having acquired a bit of a taste for Bollywood movies after watching "Bunty and Bably" at Henrik's apartment in Cairo (a song from which was playing on the radio at our Servas family's house; they said it was the "song of the year" for 2006), we prepared ourselves for another 3 hours worth, seeing "Bhagam Bhag" in a waterfront cinema. We were surprised that it didn't seem to feature as many song and dance numbers, but still enjoyed the antics of a story that had an Indian dance troupe performing in London searching to replace its heroine.
The next day we set out for the nearby town of Pamplemousses, visting first a sugar museum and then the botanical gardens. Entitled "the Sugar Adventure," the museum was housed in a sugar producing factory that closed in 1999. Across the landscape of Mauritius you see old stone towers, which we learned there were smokestacks for sugar factories: like cheese factories in Monroe, WI, a landscape that used to be dotted with factories has seen their number dwindle with increased consolidation and "efficiency." We learned more about the history of Mauritius, and quickly walked through the exhibits of the science of sugar making to the tasting of 8 special kinds of sugar (the molasses sugar was our favorite) and 2 kinds of rum at the end. The gardens were lovely, a 65-acre area of shade filled with palms of all types, some of them exceedingly skinny and reaching to the sky, others short and bottle-shaped, others in the shape of massive Japanese fans. There were also a variety of kinds of water lilies, including some in the center of the garden that had diameters of 2 feet or more-- a funny-colored duck walking from one to the other looked very small in comparison.
Our final full day in Port Louis we visited the nearby Eureka mansion, a beautiful 19th century home with a "natural air-conditioning" architecture, including 109 doors! It also had a "Chinese room", which the guide there said was de rigour for a wealthy family of the time "to show how rich they were." In the afternoon we followed our travel guide's suggested walking tour for Port Louis, and enjoyed seeing the variety of architecture and cultural influences in the city. We trekked up the hillside to the Citadel for a view of the city, and walked by the stunning white-sand castle with green accents Jummah mosque (a good example of the city's mix of diverse cultures, the mosque is located right next to the Chinatown gate).
The following day we left Port Louis for Grand Baie, our third location in Mauritius and where we planned to spend most of our time on the beach (with the weather mostly cooperating despite a few spatterings of rain). We were pleasantly surprised at the atmosphere of the beach: while more touristy than the beach in Mahebourg, there were often a majority of Mauritians on the beach. Our pre-conception (especially based on the look that people gave us when we told them we were going there!) of tourism in Mauritius was that it was a much richer and ritzier atmosphere; we're sure some of that exists also but everywhere we've been has been pretty laid back.
On New Year's Eve we went out to a super-rich meal (which included lobster bisque, foie-gras, heart of palm, and veal) and then watched the fireworks on the beach. There were more fireworks in one place than I've ever seen: lots of big ones in the sky but also small ones (some incredibly loud) being set off by people all around us. The next day there were big piles of red firecracker wrappers so thick in the streets that looked like piles of leaves in the fall! And of course the holidays means a time to watch football: while we wanted to watch the Wisconsin Badgers in the Capital One Bowl on Jan. 1, unfortunately the closest we could come was watching an English "football" game between Manchester United and Newcastle.
Our last full day in Grand Baie, I (Rachel) had my first adventure of the new year: parasailing! The parachute was, at times, up as high as 60 or 70 meters above the water-- with the wind buffeting me around, the rope holding me to the boat looked pretty wavery, and I had to close my eyes to not think about snapping off and flying away, or crashing down into the water (and also just not to get sick). But it was also exhilarating and beatiful; looking out (which I did when the wind was quieter or I was lower down), I could see all the gradations in color and texture in the water, and the green of the sugarcane fields stretching inland. We also savored the finer side of beachfront fast food: small pineapples held by the stem and carved so they looked a little like a lolly-pop (see photo), roti/dhal puri (Indian tortillas filled with beans and hot pepper sauce), and delicious homemade ice-cream pops with flavors like coconut-vanilla and almond-pistachio. Back in Port Louis, we picked up our passports from the Indian High Commission, happily replete with Indian visas, and got ready to fly east to Australia.
Mineswar works as the assistant to the Deputy Prime Minister; it was interesting to talk with him about the politics of Mauritius. He was very proud of the fact that Mauritians are literate, well-educated people, and told us the story of how, after gaining independence in 1968, Mauritius introduced free and compulsory education in 1977, which he attributed to causing the grip that a mere 7 families held on the economy of Mauritius to be peacefully broken in 1982. To me, Mauritius has an interesting in-between feel: there are still some very visible examples of poverty (shacks, things being older/broken, litter), while also having a good amount of wealthier tourist infrastructure and a high standard of living for the local population.
Our first full day in Port Louis, we headed for the tourist-friendly waterfront, recently renovated into shops and restaurants. We visited the Blue Penny museum, where we learned the meaning of the word "philately" (stamp collecting) in reference to the museum's name, as it houses the "world-famous" 1 and 2 penny red and blue stamps from the 1850s: aside from the ones in the museum, there are only a few others in existence, a pair of which recently sold for $5 million! More interesting to us than the stamps and postal history exhibit of Mauritius were the rooms of old maps (including the first globe, circa 1493?) and model ships, and the colonial history both of the country and the city of Port Louis.
Having acquired a bit of a taste for Bollywood movies after watching "Bunty and Bably" at Henrik's apartment in Cairo (a song from which was playing on the radio at our Servas family's house; they said it was the "song of the year" for 2006), we prepared ourselves for another 3 hours worth, seeing "Bhagam Bhag" in a waterfront cinema. We were surprised that it didn't seem to feature as many song and dance numbers, but still enjoyed the antics of a story that had an Indian dance troupe performing in London searching to replace its heroine.
The next day we set out for the nearby town of Pamplemousses, visting first a sugar museum and then the botanical gardens. Entitled "the Sugar Adventure," the museum was housed in a sugar producing factory that closed in 1999. Across the landscape of Mauritius you see old stone towers, which we learned there were smokestacks for sugar factories: like cheese factories in Monroe, WI, a landscape that used to be dotted with factories has seen their number dwindle with increased consolidation and "efficiency." We learned more about the history of Mauritius, and quickly walked through the exhibits of the science of sugar making to the tasting of 8 special kinds of sugar (the molasses sugar was our favorite) and 2 kinds of rum at the end. The gardens were lovely, a 65-acre area of shade filled with palms of all types, some of them exceedingly skinny and reaching to the sky, others short and bottle-shaped, others in the shape of massive Japanese fans. There were also a variety of kinds of water lilies, including some in the center of the garden that had diameters of 2 feet or more-- a funny-colored duck walking from one to the other looked very small in comparison.
Our final full day in Port Louis we visited the nearby Eureka mansion, a beautiful 19th century home with a "natural air-conditioning" architecture, including 109 doors! It also had a "Chinese room", which the guide there said was de rigour for a wealthy family of the time "to show how rich they were." In the afternoon we followed our travel guide's suggested walking tour for Port Louis, and enjoyed seeing the variety of architecture and cultural influences in the city. We trekked up the hillside to the Citadel for a view of the city, and walked by the stunning white-sand castle with green accents Jummah mosque (a good example of the city's mix of diverse cultures, the mosque is located right next to the Chinatown gate).
The following day we left Port Louis for Grand Baie, our third location in Mauritius and where we planned to spend most of our time on the beach (with the weather mostly cooperating despite a few spatterings of rain). We were pleasantly surprised at the atmosphere of the beach: while more touristy than the beach in Mahebourg, there were often a majority of Mauritians on the beach. Our pre-conception (especially based on the look that people gave us when we told them we were going there!) of tourism in Mauritius was that it was a much richer and ritzier atmosphere; we're sure some of that exists also but everywhere we've been has been pretty laid back.
On New Year's Eve we went out to a super-rich meal (which included lobster bisque, foie-gras, heart of palm, and veal) and then watched the fireworks on the beach. There were more fireworks in one place than I've ever seen: lots of big ones in the sky but also small ones (some incredibly loud) being set off by people all around us. The next day there were big piles of red firecracker wrappers so thick in the streets that looked like piles of leaves in the fall! And of course the holidays means a time to watch football: while we wanted to watch the Wisconsin Badgers in the Capital One Bowl on Jan. 1, unfortunately the closest we could come was watching an English "football" game between Manchester United and Newcastle.
Our last full day in Grand Baie, I (Rachel) had my first adventure of the new year: parasailing! The parachute was, at times, up as high as 60 or 70 meters above the water-- with the wind buffeting me around, the rope holding me to the boat looked pretty wavery, and I had to close my eyes to not think about snapping off and flying away, or crashing down into the water (and also just not to get sick). But it was also exhilarating and beatiful; looking out (which I did when the wind was quieter or I was lower down), I could see all the gradations in color and texture in the water, and the green of the sugarcane fields stretching inland. We also savored the finer side of beachfront fast food: small pineapples held by the stem and carved so they looked a little like a lolly-pop (see photo), roti/dhal puri (Indian tortillas filled with beans and hot pepper sauce), and delicious homemade ice-cream pops with flavors like coconut-vanilla and almond-pistachio. Back in Port Louis, we picked up our passports from the Indian High Commission, happily replete with Indian visas, and got ready to fly east to Australia.
Saturday, December 30, 2006
White (sand) Christmas
Geographically-minded as our friends and family are, we've gotten quite a few "where exactly are you?" questions since arriving on Mauritius. The answer is that we're on a teeny tiny island in the Indian Ocean, a bit east of Madagascar, a while still west of Australia. (It was a 4 hour flight from Jo'burg to here; it will be a 12 hour flight from here to Sydney.) Officially part of Africa, the population of Mauritius is majority of Indian descent, followed by Creoles (the descendents of Africans originally brought here as slaves), Chinese, and a small number of Europeans, mainly French. There are no indigenous people here-- I think the first place we've ever been where that's the case-- and there seems to have been something very evening about the fact of everyone being an immigrant, as the culture is syncretic in every realm, and the Mauritian identity seems to be stronger than any separate ethnic one. Which is not to say that the island's history isn't full of the same bad stuff as so many other places: it was the subject of battles between colonial powers, going from Dutch to British to French; it was built on the labor first of African slaves and then of Indian indentured servants; and it was long taken advantage of in the colonial model as a producer of sugar cane for its European rulers. But since independence in 1968, Mauritius has had free, multi-party elections every five years, educated a highly literate and largely bilingual population, and developed its economy in a diverse manner.
Our first several days were spent in Mahebourg, in the island's southeast, which is relatively undeveloped for tourism. The town itself was sleepy and relaxed, although the streets were packed with holiday bustle on Christmas Eve. One of the highlights of such a mixed population is, for us, the food: many restaurants serve Indian, Creole, Chinese, and French dishes, or a mixture thereof, in addition to others that specialize in one of the same. We rented bikes for easy rides to the beach, tried to visit a long-running cookie factory (they were closed, so we just had to buy the cookies in a supermarket), and visited a nature reserve called Ile aux Aigrettes. The latter is a small island just off the Mahebourg coast, where the Mauritian Nature Conservancy has gotten rid of all exotic species and replaced them with native species, including ebony, palms in different shapes, the large Aldabra tortoise, and the very rare pink pigeon. We got a glimpse of the pigeon, which was not as excitingly bright as we had hoped, but did have a definite pinkish hue. We also went for a hike up Lion Mountain, the most prominent natural landmark in the area-- or I should say I tried to go for a hike, and Erik actually did. Not far into it, we encountered a stretch of vertical rock that required climbing, not hiking; I made it up that one, but when we immediately ran into another, I gave up, dizzy already. Erik kept going, climbing more than hiking for much of the way, and was rewarded with gorgeous views. I sat looking at the ocean and sang myself Christmas carols (a little sadly, I'll admit).
On Christmas Eve we joined our hotel owner at a Catholic service, all in French, which may have served to make us more homesick rather than less. We went for Chinese food that night, which made me feel a bit more at home in the spirit of a wonderful New York Times piece I remember from 15 years ago, "Erev Christmas"-- about all the Jews in New York gathering at Chinese restaurants (the only thing open) on Christmas Eve. Our hotel had placed a little Christmas tree in our room, which we decorated with flowers that had fallen off a tree, and Santa did manage to find it, even putting an orange in Erik's dirty sock. We spent Christmas on the beach, which we certainly can't complain about, but it sure didn't feel right. It helped, though, that the beach was packed with Mauritian families, for whom a sandy Christmas picnic WAS the tradition. So for a day, we tried to pretend it was ours too-- and also talked a lot about past and future years, at home.
Our first several days were spent in Mahebourg, in the island's southeast, which is relatively undeveloped for tourism. The town itself was sleepy and relaxed, although the streets were packed with holiday bustle on Christmas Eve. One of the highlights of such a mixed population is, for us, the food: many restaurants serve Indian, Creole, Chinese, and French dishes, or a mixture thereof, in addition to others that specialize in one of the same. We rented bikes for easy rides to the beach, tried to visit a long-running cookie factory (they were closed, so we just had to buy the cookies in a supermarket), and visited a nature reserve called Ile aux Aigrettes. The latter is a small island just off the Mahebourg coast, where the Mauritian Nature Conservancy has gotten rid of all exotic species and replaced them with native species, including ebony, palms in different shapes, the large Aldabra tortoise, and the very rare pink pigeon. We got a glimpse of the pigeon, which was not as excitingly bright as we had hoped, but did have a definite pinkish hue. We also went for a hike up Lion Mountain, the most prominent natural landmark in the area-- or I should say I tried to go for a hike, and Erik actually did. Not far into it, we encountered a stretch of vertical rock that required climbing, not hiking; I made it up that one, but when we immediately ran into another, I gave up, dizzy already. Erik kept going, climbing more than hiking for much of the way, and was rewarded with gorgeous views. I sat looking at the ocean and sang myself Christmas carols (a little sadly, I'll admit).
On Christmas Eve we joined our hotel owner at a Catholic service, all in French, which may have served to make us more homesick rather than less. We went for Chinese food that night, which made me feel a bit more at home in the spirit of a wonderful New York Times piece I remember from 15 years ago, "Erev Christmas"-- about all the Jews in New York gathering at Chinese restaurants (the only thing open) on Christmas Eve. Our hotel had placed a little Christmas tree in our room, which we decorated with flowers that had fallen off a tree, and Santa did manage to find it, even putting an orange in Erik's dirty sock. We spent Christmas on the beach, which we certainly can't complain about, but it sure didn't feel right. It helped, though, that the beach was packed with Mauritian families, for whom a sandy Christmas picnic WAS the tradition. So for a day, we tried to pretend it was ours too-- and also talked a lot about past and future years, at home.
Friday, December 22, 2006
Homelands and Hartford: Experiences of Race in Post-Apartheid South Africa and the U.S.
Throughout our travels we've been forced to rethink many of our conceptions of our native land, the good ol' U.S. of A. In many instances, despite their articulating severe criticisms of the American government/foreign policy, we've been surprised to find that so many people across the world have such a positive view of what the U.S. represents, and less surprised but still overwhelmed about how many people we meet ask us how they can move to the U.S.
South Africa felt different from any other country that we have visited on this trip, and also the most similar to the U.S. (and especially Hartford). Despite having our camera stolen in Mexico, and despite having been hassled and verbally harassed to some degree in nearly every place we've visited, before South Africa we haven't felt afraid or endangered. By contrast, in South Africa everyone we talked to tried to make us afraid, and we also felt some of that fear ourselves. In thinking about this feeling and South Africa's history of Apartheid (and the "Homelands," politically semi-autonomous Black areas that were supposed to demonstrate to the outside world that South Africa's racial separation worked for all) , we wanted to write more retelling and reflecting on our experiences of race there compared to our experiences of race in Hartford. We'll focus first on South African perceptions/stories of race, next on some of our own experiences/conversations there, and finally our reflections/comparisons to the U.S.
[Since our relatives are the primary readership of this blog, we want to first make clear that we were (and continue to be) very cautious and careful not to put ourselves in dangerous situations. Our only personal experience with crime in South Africa happened the day we arrived in Cape Town, a half-joking attempt at intimidation by 2 young men]
In our experience, an overwhelming aspect of race today in South Africa is all about crime and fear. Fear there is of an entirely different degree from the racial fear in the U.S. At least a part of this fear is justified by reality, by the statistics. South Africa has an incredible amount of violent crime: 52,000 murders per year in a country of 4 million whites and 40 million blacks (along with millions of people classified as coloured or Indian), and the highest (rate/number?) of rapes of any country in the world.
Again and again, we heard from people stories and personal experiences about crime. Our friends in the Peace Corps told us that P.C. volunteers are not allowed to visit Johannesburg. Several volunteers they know have been mugged. One had been "barred" (choked from behind with a steel bar) and bitten in Pretoria; he had to undergo the incredibly toxic and painful HIV-preventive vaccination. Bitten--like the stereotype of savagery, the humanity of the attacker being transformed into animal fury.
Johannesburg is portrayed as the center of all evil. Marcus, the English journalist that we traveled with in Ghana, had been working on a free lance piece in Nigeria before we met him. He was mugged his first day in Lagos. Marcus had worked previously for three years in Mexico; he said that Mexico City was like Disneyland compared to Lagos, and then later told us in an email that people in Nigeria said that Johannesburg is more dangerous than Lagos. Driving at night in Joburg, people don't stop at red lights, for fear of being highjacked.
The occupation with the highest death rate in South Africa is police officer: police are targeted and assassinated by criminals, and some police stations have hired private security firms to protect their police stations. The second most deadly occupation is a farmer, since farms are often isolated and therefore more vulnerable to attack.
While we were in Cape Town, 2 township tours were mugged. A year before, a bus full of German travel agents who were visiting was mugged on a township tour, and they caught the next flight back to Germany. Like the biting aspect of the P.C. volunteer's attack, here is another example of the outburst of anger: targeting those (whites on a township tour) who are actually trying to bring in money, tourism, etc. to impoverished areas.
It wasn't just whites who were afraid of crime: driving from Manyeding with the bride and groom, the bride told us to be careful walking around, and that she had recently been "barred" for her cell phone. Like in the U.S., many of the victims of crime are nonwhite: our Cape Town host's cleaning woman, who lives in a township, has her house robbed every few months. Our host told us she pretends to be asleep when the robbers enter so that she isn't harmed, knowing that the robbers will be back as soon as they've given people time to acquire new goods.
Like Rachel mentioned in her Urban Experiences blog, everything in South Africa has at least a fence around it, and probably more. (One of the more lighthearted examples of security was a few blocks from our host's house in Cape Town, the entrance to the hiking paths is padlocked (neighborhood residents are given a key) to keep out "sangomas:" traditional healers who were stripping the bark from some of the trees near the entrance to use in their medicines.) If plastic bags used be referred to as the "national flower" of South Africa (a problem which has since been solved by charging a minimal amount for plastic bags in stores), then razor wire is the "national plant." Never have we seen so much anywhere: at a gas station, the sidewalk fence between the pumps and the store entrance was looped with razor wire, presumably to deter would be robbers looking to make a quick getaway. The schools around Manyeding village were fenced with razor wire; they, like many of the houses with razor or electric wire fences and bars on the windows, looked more like prisons. One German told us about his friend who lived in a gated community outside of Pretoria. I almost had to laugh when he said that she's been robbed there several times, wondering if _anyone_ in the U.S. would live in a "gated community" that despite that status still has regular robberies.
Although we had many interactions with people around the issue of race, two of them stand out. The first was in Nature's Valley, talking at the pub with a white couple (an Afrikaaner man and an American woman) who owned a contracting business that employed about 40 workers. They spoke about the problems they have with all (whites included) workers, and their disagreements with Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), the South African version of affirmative action. While genuinely reflecting the realities of their situation, they also used the phrase "I'm not a racist but..." several times, as well as the half-joke, "What's the difference between a tourist and a racist? Two weeks." While we certainly disagreed with some of what they said, it was an interesting conversation in terms of giving us a glimpse of some of the issues from a very different perspective than our own: that of small business owners trying to make their company work in a new political and economic climate. Their attitudes were not just a simple as "black and white."
The second interaction occurred poolside in the Drakensberg mountains. A group of Colored (again, the South African term for people of mixed race: not as far as we can tell considered inappropriate by anyone but still difficult for us to write/say because of its history as a derogatory term in the U.S.) people about our age were starting their weekend, drinking and talking loudly. A white man who was sitting nearby came and condescendingly yelled at them, playing the race card from the start by first of all saying "I don't know whether you're staying here," and then justifying his own rights there by saying that although he lived in England now, he was born in South Africa. When he returned to his seat, the Colored people grumbled loudly "Go back to England" before eventually one of them offered him a glass of wine and some kind of reconciliation took place. This interaction was notable for its boring predictability, and the fact that while race wasn't really at issue (people being loud), that's what came to the forefront. In some small way maybe it represents the difficulty, the understandable wariness that all racial categories of people have in trying to live together in the "new" South Africa, which despite massive amounts of crime and violence has also experienced incredible change (our Servas hosts in Durban telling us that the downtown has basically gone from being 95% white to 95% black since Apartheid, and that this has happened peacefully).
In closing with a few thoughs on similarities to race in the U.S., one large factor in the perception of both is the media. In South Africa, the media seemed to relish the bloody headlines in a sensational, tabloid way. While it's clear that there is a reality to the crime and problems around race, it's also clear to us that, like our walking tour of Soweto demonstrated, crime and the perception of race as a type of fear is far from the only reality.
But crime does exist in South Africa, and because it's a part of daily life, it's how most whites experience the category of race and Apartheid inequalities directly. Living in a poor area of Hartford, we were also victims of crime: in some way, the statistics say it's almost bound to happen, if not to you directly than at least to someone you know closely. Fear and crime are the individual experiences, which understandably obscure the structural, the historical inequalities. Like in the U.S., those who are able flee these areas in their self-interest of avoiding crime--we heard time and time again about white relatives who were urging family still in South Africa to leave the country.
We felt that while talking with the white business owners in Nature's Valley gave us valid angles on social and economic questions of the present, it did not give possible answers to the sometimes insurmountable-seeming question of how to work to redress past wrongs. Some of the more extreme attempts at doing this (at least in Africa) seem like complete failures, for example president/dictator Mugabe's seizure of white farms in Zimbabwe (although these have the additonal problem in our view of not being done with sincere intentions but rather for Mugabe's own political preservation).
One white resident who, coming back from a hike, gave us a lift back to our lodge in the Drakensberg expressed surprise that the U.S hasn't been able to solve our race "problem," given that the demographic numbers are reversed (with blacks being 12% and whites over half of the U.S. population; and a much higher ratio of blacks to the white minority in South Africa). Maybe these numbers are part of the reason that the U.S. doesn't have quite the same fear--whites are more able to exist in the suburbs, away from inner cities and nonwhite populations, whereas, even with the hyper-segregation of Apartheid, it seems much more difficult for whites to live apart in South Africa. The numbers are not in their favor.
Despite this difference in numbers, what does feel very similar to the U.S. is the vast inequality between people, with much of this based in racial categories. While we don't believe that inequality is the only cause of crime, it certainly seems to be one of the main factors. In South Africa, people committing crimes don't just target whites, they target people who have something attractive to steal, and the majority of these are still white. Although the U.S. has the history of slavery to overcome, even its evils seem less in comparison to the acts of Apartheid. One example of this difference of degree, and still the strongest visual example of inequality in South Africa, is the housing. Blacks and other nonwhites were housed in "townships" under Apartheid, and today structures ranging from flimsy shacks to more solid small houses still stand, usually still completely separated from a nearby town or white residential area. Taking Hartford as an example, the housing of the poorest (and nonwhite) residents is certainly unequal, but even the worst public housing project does not resemble the total segregation of Apartheid townships. Most of the U.S. non-project housing differs from wealthier housing not necessarily in terms of the type of structure, but in terms of upkeep. Again despite its inequality and inadequacy, in comparison the housing for the nonwhite poor in U.S. cities seems like something which developed because of neglect mixed with racism but still in a slightly more organic process, compared to the stark, completely unnatural, hyper-racialized construction of the Apartheid townships. We write this not to excoriate the conditions of race in the U.S., but in attempt to demonstrate the degree of difference in South Africa.
One positive way in which South Africa differs from the U.S. on race is the willingness to confront some of these issues, and the belief that a way can be found to live together peacefully. These beliefs have a long history: in the African National Congress's 1955 Freedom Charter, it rejects the contemporary Pan-African Congress claim of Africa for the Africans and instead resolves that all residents of South Africa can live together. In comparison to leaders like Mugabe, whose attempts to overcome racial wrongs of the past seem to lead only to more problems, leaders like Mandela and now Mbeki have not blamed all the problems of the nation on its history or its white residents. On the Soweto tour, the Colored brother (who also told us that he didn't think blacks should be leaders of a nation!) of an ANC member who hosted secret meetings with Mandela remarked that he was very impressed by a speech Mandela made recently saying that blacks have a lot to learn from the successes of whites. The ANC goes to seemingly great distances to support its rhetoric of forgiveness, to build on some of the successes of the post-Apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Committee: it even offered a state funeral to P.W. Botha, the last hardline Apartheid leader in the 1980s, when he recently died.
South Africa is a place of extremes, simultaneously extreme hope and extreme despair. It has experienced some successes in overcoming Apartheid, and in these we think may provide a model for working to achieve harmony among different peoples and overcome the categories of race by working towards greater economic and social equality.
South Africa felt different from any other country that we have visited on this trip, and also the most similar to the U.S. (and especially Hartford). Despite having our camera stolen in Mexico, and despite having been hassled and verbally harassed to some degree in nearly every place we've visited, before South Africa we haven't felt afraid or endangered. By contrast, in South Africa everyone we talked to tried to make us afraid, and we also felt some of that fear ourselves. In thinking about this feeling and South Africa's history of Apartheid (and the "Homelands," politically semi-autonomous Black areas that were supposed to demonstrate to the outside world that South Africa's racial separation worked for all) , we wanted to write more retelling and reflecting on our experiences of race there compared to our experiences of race in Hartford. We'll focus first on South African perceptions/stories of race, next on some of our own experiences/conversations there, and finally our reflections/comparisons to the U.S.
[Since our relatives are the primary readership of this blog, we want to first make clear that we were (and continue to be) very cautious and careful not to put ourselves in dangerous situations. Our only personal experience with crime in South Africa happened the day we arrived in Cape Town, a half-joking attempt at intimidation by 2 young men]
In our experience, an overwhelming aspect of race today in South Africa is all about crime and fear. Fear there is of an entirely different degree from the racial fear in the U.S. At least a part of this fear is justified by reality, by the statistics. South Africa has an incredible amount of violent crime: 52,000 murders per year in a country of 4 million whites and 40 million blacks (along with millions of people classified as coloured or Indian), and the highest (rate/number?) of rapes of any country in the world.
Again and again, we heard from people stories and personal experiences about crime. Our friends in the Peace Corps told us that P.C. volunteers are not allowed to visit Johannesburg. Several volunteers they know have been mugged. One had been "barred" (choked from behind with a steel bar) and bitten in Pretoria; he had to undergo the incredibly toxic and painful HIV-preventive vaccination. Bitten--like the stereotype of savagery, the humanity of the attacker being transformed into animal fury.
Johannesburg is portrayed as the center of all evil. Marcus, the English journalist that we traveled with in Ghana, had been working on a free lance piece in Nigeria before we met him. He was mugged his first day in Lagos. Marcus had worked previously for three years in Mexico; he said that Mexico City was like Disneyland compared to Lagos, and then later told us in an email that people in Nigeria said that Johannesburg is more dangerous than Lagos. Driving at night in Joburg, people don't stop at red lights, for fear of being highjacked.
The occupation with the highest death rate in South Africa is police officer: police are targeted and assassinated by criminals, and some police stations have hired private security firms to protect their police stations. The second most deadly occupation is a farmer, since farms are often isolated and therefore more vulnerable to attack.
While we were in Cape Town, 2 township tours were mugged. A year before, a bus full of German travel agents who were visiting was mugged on a township tour, and they caught the next flight back to Germany. Like the biting aspect of the P.C. volunteer's attack, here is another example of the outburst of anger: targeting those (whites on a township tour) who are actually trying to bring in money, tourism, etc. to impoverished areas.
It wasn't just whites who were afraid of crime: driving from Manyeding with the bride and groom, the bride told us to be careful walking around, and that she had recently been "barred" for her cell phone. Like in the U.S., many of the victims of crime are nonwhite: our Cape Town host's cleaning woman, who lives in a township, has her house robbed every few months. Our host told us she pretends to be asleep when the robbers enter so that she isn't harmed, knowing that the robbers will be back as soon as they've given people time to acquire new goods.
Like Rachel mentioned in her Urban Experiences blog, everything in South Africa has at least a fence around it, and probably more. (One of the more lighthearted examples of security was a few blocks from our host's house in Cape Town, the entrance to the hiking paths is padlocked (neighborhood residents are given a key) to keep out "sangomas:" traditional healers who were stripping the bark from some of the trees near the entrance to use in their medicines.) If plastic bags used be referred to as the "national flower" of South Africa (a problem which has since been solved by charging a minimal amount for plastic bags in stores), then razor wire is the "national plant." Never have we seen so much anywhere: at a gas station, the sidewalk fence between the pumps and the store entrance was looped with razor wire, presumably to deter would be robbers looking to make a quick getaway. The schools around Manyeding village were fenced with razor wire; they, like many of the houses with razor or electric wire fences and bars on the windows, looked more like prisons. One German told us about his friend who lived in a gated community outside of Pretoria. I almost had to laugh when he said that she's been robbed there several times, wondering if _anyone_ in the U.S. would live in a "gated community" that despite that status still has regular robberies.
Although we had many interactions with people around the issue of race, two of them stand out. The first was in Nature's Valley, talking at the pub with a white couple (an Afrikaaner man and an American woman) who owned a contracting business that employed about 40 workers. They spoke about the problems they have with all (whites included) workers, and their disagreements with Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), the South African version of affirmative action. While genuinely reflecting the realities of their situation, they also used the phrase "I'm not a racist but..." several times, as well as the half-joke, "What's the difference between a tourist and a racist? Two weeks." While we certainly disagreed with some of what they said, it was an interesting conversation in terms of giving us a glimpse of some of the issues from a very different perspective than our own: that of small business owners trying to make their company work in a new political and economic climate. Their attitudes were not just a simple as "black and white."
The second interaction occurred poolside in the Drakensberg mountains. A group of Colored (again, the South African term for people of mixed race: not as far as we can tell considered inappropriate by anyone but still difficult for us to write/say because of its history as a derogatory term in the U.S.) people about our age were starting their weekend, drinking and talking loudly. A white man who was sitting nearby came and condescendingly yelled at them, playing the race card from the start by first of all saying "I don't know whether you're staying here," and then justifying his own rights there by saying that although he lived in England now, he was born in South Africa. When he returned to his seat, the Colored people grumbled loudly "Go back to England" before eventually one of them offered him a glass of wine and some kind of reconciliation took place. This interaction was notable for its boring predictability, and the fact that while race wasn't really at issue (people being loud), that's what came to the forefront. In some small way maybe it represents the difficulty, the understandable wariness that all racial categories of people have in trying to live together in the "new" South Africa, which despite massive amounts of crime and violence has also experienced incredible change (our Servas hosts in Durban telling us that the downtown has basically gone from being 95% white to 95% black since Apartheid, and that this has happened peacefully).
In closing with a few thoughs on similarities to race in the U.S., one large factor in the perception of both is the media. In South Africa, the media seemed to relish the bloody headlines in a sensational, tabloid way. While it's clear that there is a reality to the crime and problems around race, it's also clear to us that, like our walking tour of Soweto demonstrated, crime and the perception of race as a type of fear is far from the only reality.
But crime does exist in South Africa, and because it's a part of daily life, it's how most whites experience the category of race and Apartheid inequalities directly. Living in a poor area of Hartford, we were also victims of crime: in some way, the statistics say it's almost bound to happen, if not to you directly than at least to someone you know closely. Fear and crime are the individual experiences, which understandably obscure the structural, the historical inequalities. Like in the U.S., those who are able flee these areas in their self-interest of avoiding crime--we heard time and time again about white relatives who were urging family still in South Africa to leave the country.
We felt that while talking with the white business owners in Nature's Valley gave us valid angles on social and economic questions of the present, it did not give possible answers to the sometimes insurmountable-seeming question of how to work to redress past wrongs. Some of the more extreme attempts at doing this (at least in Africa) seem like complete failures, for example president/dictator Mugabe's seizure of white farms in Zimbabwe (although these have the additonal problem in our view of not being done with sincere intentions but rather for Mugabe's own political preservation).
One white resident who, coming back from a hike, gave us a lift back to our lodge in the Drakensberg expressed surprise that the U.S hasn't been able to solve our race "problem," given that the demographic numbers are reversed (with blacks being 12% and whites over half of the U.S. population; and a much higher ratio of blacks to the white minority in South Africa). Maybe these numbers are part of the reason that the U.S. doesn't have quite the same fear--whites are more able to exist in the suburbs, away from inner cities and nonwhite populations, whereas, even with the hyper-segregation of Apartheid, it seems much more difficult for whites to live apart in South Africa. The numbers are not in their favor.
Despite this difference in numbers, what does feel very similar to the U.S. is the vast inequality between people, with much of this based in racial categories. While we don't believe that inequality is the only cause of crime, it certainly seems to be one of the main factors. In South Africa, people committing crimes don't just target whites, they target people who have something attractive to steal, and the majority of these are still white. Although the U.S. has the history of slavery to overcome, even its evils seem less in comparison to the acts of Apartheid. One example of this difference of degree, and still the strongest visual example of inequality in South Africa, is the housing. Blacks and other nonwhites were housed in "townships" under Apartheid, and today structures ranging from flimsy shacks to more solid small houses still stand, usually still completely separated from a nearby town or white residential area. Taking Hartford as an example, the housing of the poorest (and nonwhite) residents is certainly unequal, but even the worst public housing project does not resemble the total segregation of Apartheid townships. Most of the U.S. non-project housing differs from wealthier housing not necessarily in terms of the type of structure, but in terms of upkeep. Again despite its inequality and inadequacy, in comparison the housing for the nonwhite poor in U.S. cities seems like something which developed because of neglect mixed with racism but still in a slightly more organic process, compared to the stark, completely unnatural, hyper-racialized construction of the Apartheid townships. We write this not to excoriate the conditions of race in the U.S., but in attempt to demonstrate the degree of difference in South Africa.
One positive way in which South Africa differs from the U.S. on race is the willingness to confront some of these issues, and the belief that a way can be found to live together peacefully. These beliefs have a long history: in the African National Congress's 1955 Freedom Charter, it rejects the contemporary Pan-African Congress claim of Africa for the Africans and instead resolves that all residents of South Africa can live together. In comparison to leaders like Mugabe, whose attempts to overcome racial wrongs of the past seem to lead only to more problems, leaders like Mandela and now Mbeki have not blamed all the problems of the nation on its history or its white residents. On the Soweto tour, the Colored brother (who also told us that he didn't think blacks should be leaders of a nation!) of an ANC member who hosted secret meetings with Mandela remarked that he was very impressed by a speech Mandela made recently saying that blacks have a lot to learn from the successes of whites. The ANC goes to seemingly great distances to support its rhetoric of forgiveness, to build on some of the successes of the post-Apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Committee: it even offered a state funeral to P.W. Botha, the last hardline Apartheid leader in the 1980s, when he recently died.
South Africa is a place of extremes, simultaneously extreme hope and extreme despair. It has experienced some successes in overcoming Apartheid, and in these we think may provide a model for working to achieve harmony among different peoples and overcome the categories of race by working towards greater economic and social equality.
Urban Experiences: Durban, Johannesberg, and Soweto
Our stint in backpackerland took a welcome break when we arrived in Durban, South Africa's third-largest city and the southern hemisphere's busiest port. Although the Baz Bus didn't drop us off there until close to midnight, our SERVAS hosts, Alex and Tracey, picked us up and brought us home for a curry dinner with their two cats, Candy and Gidgy. Alec is a lifelong Durban resident; Tracey grew up in rural KwaZulu-Natal (Zululand), and has lived in Durban for many years. (Tracey now runs a Zulu crafts cooperative, working closely with local women and taking regular trips to various parts of the world to sell the goods.) They are enthusiasts of both their city and their region, and provided us with a wonderful introduction to the area. This included sampling Durban's iconic food, bunny chow-- an Indian curry served inside a hollowed-out quarter loaf of bread. Durban has the world's largest Indian population outside of India, and much of the food of the city is reflective of that, but the particular story of bunny chow is that it was used in past days (when servants were the rule and styrofoam didn't exist) as a way for servants to carry hot lunches to their bosses. The word for boss sounded, to English ears, something like "bunny", and so what had been called "boss chow" got its new name.
We spent some of our first day in Durban hanging out downtown, after successfully visiting the U.S. Consulate to get additional visa pages added to our passports. We visited an impressive art museum in the City Hall, which also has a natural history museum and a library branch, and walked around the surrounding streets a bit. We really liked the feel of the city-- vibrant was the main word that kept coming to mind, with the streets full of people walking, shopping, eating, and working. There was a dense concentration of small businesses, and a swarming outdoor market with long lines at the bunny chow stand. Alec estimates that, since the end of apartheid, when the restrictions on which "race" could live in the city finally ended, the population of Durban has shifted from about 95% white to 95% non-white. It felt a bit like walking around Park Street in Hartford. Also like Hartford, Durban has been busily developing its waterfront, although we must admit that the scale of their projects certainly dwarfs ours. Durban's municipal budget runs in the black, even as they build new stadiums for World Cup 2010 and keep the city beachfront in beautiful shape. We spent a thoroughly unintellectual but very fun day at the largest waterfront development, an aquarium and water-park where we oggled unlikely-looking fish, watched a dolphin show, and scooted down water slides.
Arriving in Johannesburg had quite a different feel, as the Baz Bus drove from one extensively-secured suburban hostel to another. Our hostel ran regular shuttles to a couple different places in the city-- the museum, a mall-- but strongly discouraged walking anywhere, and did not offer any opportunities to go out at night, such as for a jazz show as we'd been hoping. We felt pretty stuck, between the fear that the hostel worked to instill in us and, moreso, the high cost of getting around by taxi, given the dismal state of public transportation in the city. Every house in the suburbs had a solid fence topped with razor-wire, a gated driveway, a sign warning passers-by of armed guards on call. Is this how Canadians look at Americans, with our alarm systems and locked doors?
The first of our two days in Jo'burg was spent at the Apartheid Museum, an extensive, moving collection. I was very impressed with the museum both from a historiographic perspective and from a tourist's perspective. The museum was chock full of well-presented artifacts-- video footage of speeches and police beatings, photos, decrees, etc.-- and, through a smart counterpuntal exhibit, analyzed the factors behind the rise of apartheid, the effects of apartheid on life in South Africa, and the resistance to apartheid thoughtfully and simultaneously. The explanation, for instance, of how race and class were manipulated by the nationalist leaders to leverage the support of poor Afrikaaners was nuanced without being exculpating; the presentation of resistance movements and leaders was similarly complex, not idolatrous. We spent hours reading the texts and examining the photos, and could have spent much longer. But the museum was also well set up for the large portion of visitors who don't have or want to spend so much time; just walking through the exhibits, as we saw many people doing, one could still get a strong sense of the horrors of apartheid and the power of resistance. In our view, they missed a lot, but at least they got something.
We did have a rather unpleasant experience leaving the museum: the taxi we were in broke down on the highway, and we had to sit in it for 45 minutes waiting for another taxi from the same company to retrieve us. And then they wanted to be paid the full (and very high) fare! We disagreed.
Our second day in Jo'burg, and last day in South Africa, was spent in Soweto. Until we actually spent time there, Soweto loomed in somewhat mythic proportions in our heads: the center of the great student resistance movement that started in 1976, the one-time home to leaders like Steve Biko, Nelson Mandela, and Desmond Tutu-- and also one of the world's most notorious ghettoes, a word synonomous with poverty and despair. So we thought. The Soweto we were introduced to, in a day of walking and taking local minibuses with a local guide, Eunice, was immeasurably more multilayered, more alive, and more spirited than anything we had ever read or heard about it had led us to believe.
We spent time in three neighborhoods-- the first surprise for us being that Soweto HAD neighborhoods. What we had pictured as a monolithic area of shacks was actually a whole metropolis in itself, home to 4 million people (a Kiwi we met that morning said that was equal to the whole country of New Zealand). We started in Orlando East, a working-class area composed almost entirely of the brick homes that every family is entitled to apply for once. Many of these one-room houses had been added onto (at the owner's expense); many also had one or more shacks in the backyard, lived in sometimes by family members in Soweto seeking work, sometimes by renters who were on the waiting list for a government house. Our first stop was in the shack where one of the guides lived, where we spent some time talking to her sister-in-law, who is a local activist focusing on issues of violence against women. As we left the shack and walked along the streets, we were struck by the absence of security fences, and the presence of children playing and people walking-- streetlife that was absent from the suburban area where the hostel was. We were also shown the house where Mpanza, known as "the father of Soweto" for his fight to get housing built there, had lived.
Leaving Orlando East, we took a minibus to Kliptown, a severely neglected area that fit more closely to our prior image of Soweto. This neighborhood has neither electricity nore plumbing, garbage pick-up nor schools: the government wants people to leave the area, has wanted this for decades, and therefore does not provide any services to it. But of course the fact is that people do live there, lots of people, and the government's refusal to acknowledge this has only exacerbated the situation. On the outskirts of Kliptown, we visited the homes of two interesting people. The first, Porto Lollan, was a 75 year old "coloured" man whose house, under the initiation of his late brother, had hosted secret meetings of Mandela and other leaders in the years before they were imprisoned. He had an interesting collection of photos and newspaper articles, but we were quite put-off actually talking to him, as he said something like "Black people aren't fit to be president." After him, though, we met an extremely inspiring man, Bob, who ran an NGO called Soweto-Kliptown Youth. He himself had been an abandoned child, taken in by a local activist and, in his words, told that he mattered and given a chance at life. He has used that chance to work tirelessly and effectively to improve the lives of Kliptown children, running a variety of programs and initiatives. He now has links with a charitable fund of the NBA, and photos of giant basketball players sitting in too-small plastic chairs in Kliptown, watching children performs gumboots dances, line his walls. In his work, he has also deeply touched the lives of some American children; he runs an exhange program with the exclusive Nobles School in Boston, and has received emails from the parents of the privileged students who have spent time in Soweto saying they don't know what he did, but they thank him for the effects that time had on their children.
Our final stop of the day was Orlando West, now Soweto's wealthiest neighborhood (referred to as Beverly Hills), and the location of the main sights that tourists usually see. (We saw several groups of tourists, in vans and buses, stopping off for a few minutes at these places, on the "Soweto tours" offered by every travel agency-- we were so thankful that a man we'd met at Inkosana had told us about the walking tour instead!) These sights were certainly powerful: the corner where a 13 year old boy, Hector Pieterson, was shot by police in 1976, the first casualty of the Soweto student uprising; the memorial museum for Hector Pieterson, overseen by his sister; Vilakazi Street, where Tutu and Mandela lived and where Pieterson was shot. But what will stick with us even more is the feeling of walking around the Soweto streets, of spending time in a neighborhood in the full sense of the word-- a real place, with problems certainly, but also with pride, with spirit, with identity.
We spent some of our first day in Durban hanging out downtown, after successfully visiting the U.S. Consulate to get additional visa pages added to our passports. We visited an impressive art museum in the City Hall, which also has a natural history museum and a library branch, and walked around the surrounding streets a bit. We really liked the feel of the city-- vibrant was the main word that kept coming to mind, with the streets full of people walking, shopping, eating, and working. There was a dense concentration of small businesses, and a swarming outdoor market with long lines at the bunny chow stand. Alec estimates that, since the end of apartheid, when the restrictions on which "race" could live in the city finally ended, the population of Durban has shifted from about 95% white to 95% non-white. It felt a bit like walking around Park Street in Hartford. Also like Hartford, Durban has been busily developing its waterfront, although we must admit that the scale of their projects certainly dwarfs ours. Durban's municipal budget runs in the black, even as they build new stadiums for World Cup 2010 and keep the city beachfront in beautiful shape. We spent a thoroughly unintellectual but very fun day at the largest waterfront development, an aquarium and water-park where we oggled unlikely-looking fish, watched a dolphin show, and scooted down water slides.
Arriving in Johannesburg had quite a different feel, as the Baz Bus drove from one extensively-secured suburban hostel to another. Our hostel ran regular shuttles to a couple different places in the city-- the museum, a mall-- but strongly discouraged walking anywhere, and did not offer any opportunities to go out at night, such as for a jazz show as we'd been hoping. We felt pretty stuck, between the fear that the hostel worked to instill in us and, moreso, the high cost of getting around by taxi, given the dismal state of public transportation in the city. Every house in the suburbs had a solid fence topped with razor-wire, a gated driveway, a sign warning passers-by of armed guards on call. Is this how Canadians look at Americans, with our alarm systems and locked doors?
The first of our two days in Jo'burg was spent at the Apartheid Museum, an extensive, moving collection. I was very impressed with the museum both from a historiographic perspective and from a tourist's perspective. The museum was chock full of well-presented artifacts-- video footage of speeches and police beatings, photos, decrees, etc.-- and, through a smart counterpuntal exhibit, analyzed the factors behind the rise of apartheid, the effects of apartheid on life in South Africa, and the resistance to apartheid thoughtfully and simultaneously. The explanation, for instance, of how race and class were manipulated by the nationalist leaders to leverage the support of poor Afrikaaners was nuanced without being exculpating; the presentation of resistance movements and leaders was similarly complex, not idolatrous. We spent hours reading the texts and examining the photos, and could have spent much longer. But the museum was also well set up for the large portion of visitors who don't have or want to spend so much time; just walking through the exhibits, as we saw many people doing, one could still get a strong sense of the horrors of apartheid and the power of resistance. In our view, they missed a lot, but at least they got something.
We did have a rather unpleasant experience leaving the museum: the taxi we were in broke down on the highway, and we had to sit in it for 45 minutes waiting for another taxi from the same company to retrieve us. And then they wanted to be paid the full (and very high) fare! We disagreed.
Our second day in Jo'burg, and last day in South Africa, was spent in Soweto. Until we actually spent time there, Soweto loomed in somewhat mythic proportions in our heads: the center of the great student resistance movement that started in 1976, the one-time home to leaders like Steve Biko, Nelson Mandela, and Desmond Tutu-- and also one of the world's most notorious ghettoes, a word synonomous with poverty and despair. So we thought. The Soweto we were introduced to, in a day of walking and taking local minibuses with a local guide, Eunice, was immeasurably more multilayered, more alive, and more spirited than anything we had ever read or heard about it had led us to believe.
We spent time in three neighborhoods-- the first surprise for us being that Soweto HAD neighborhoods. What we had pictured as a monolithic area of shacks was actually a whole metropolis in itself, home to 4 million people (a Kiwi we met that morning said that was equal to the whole country of New Zealand). We started in Orlando East, a working-class area composed almost entirely of the brick homes that every family is entitled to apply for once. Many of these one-room houses had been added onto (at the owner's expense); many also had one or more shacks in the backyard, lived in sometimes by family members in Soweto seeking work, sometimes by renters who were on the waiting list for a government house. Our first stop was in the shack where one of the guides lived, where we spent some time talking to her sister-in-law, who is a local activist focusing on issues of violence against women. As we left the shack and walked along the streets, we were struck by the absence of security fences, and the presence of children playing and people walking-- streetlife that was absent from the suburban area where the hostel was. We were also shown the house where Mpanza, known as "the father of Soweto" for his fight to get housing built there, had lived.
Leaving Orlando East, we took a minibus to Kliptown, a severely neglected area that fit more closely to our prior image of Soweto. This neighborhood has neither electricity nore plumbing, garbage pick-up nor schools: the government wants people to leave the area, has wanted this for decades, and therefore does not provide any services to it. But of course the fact is that people do live there, lots of people, and the government's refusal to acknowledge this has only exacerbated the situation. On the outskirts of Kliptown, we visited the homes of two interesting people. The first, Porto Lollan, was a 75 year old "coloured" man whose house, under the initiation of his late brother, had hosted secret meetings of Mandela and other leaders in the years before they were imprisoned. He had an interesting collection of photos and newspaper articles, but we were quite put-off actually talking to him, as he said something like "Black people aren't fit to be president." After him, though, we met an extremely inspiring man, Bob, who ran an NGO called Soweto-Kliptown Youth. He himself had been an abandoned child, taken in by a local activist and, in his words, told that he mattered and given a chance at life. He has used that chance to work tirelessly and effectively to improve the lives of Kliptown children, running a variety of programs and initiatives. He now has links with a charitable fund of the NBA, and photos of giant basketball players sitting in too-small plastic chairs in Kliptown, watching children performs gumboots dances, line his walls. In his work, he has also deeply touched the lives of some American children; he runs an exhange program with the exclusive Nobles School in Boston, and has received emails from the parents of the privileged students who have spent time in Soweto saying they don't know what he did, but they thank him for the effects that time had on their children.
Our final stop of the day was Orlando West, now Soweto's wealthiest neighborhood (referred to as Beverly Hills), and the location of the main sights that tourists usually see. (We saw several groups of tourists, in vans and buses, stopping off for a few minutes at these places, on the "Soweto tours" offered by every travel agency-- we were so thankful that a man we'd met at Inkosana had told us about the walking tour instead!) These sights were certainly powerful: the corner where a 13 year old boy, Hector Pieterson, was shot by police in 1976, the first casualty of the Soweto student uprising; the memorial museum for Hector Pieterson, overseen by his sister; Vilakazi Street, where Tutu and Mandela lived and where Pieterson was shot. But what will stick with us even more is the feeling of walking around the Soweto streets, of spending time in a neighborhood in the full sense of the word-- a real place, with problems certainly, but also with pride, with spirit, with identity.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Sweet Mountain Retreat
We spent part of last week at the Inkosana Lodge in the central Drakensberg range, and can officially say it was the nicest place we've paid to stay at any point on this trip. Composed of one airy, low-roofed but high-ceilinged main building, and a series of thatched-roof huts all set within a multi-level yard and garden area, almost every window, path, and seating area at the lodge had views of the tufted green mountains a short distance away. Our hut had autumnal batik curtains with elephat motifs, and a traveler-suited design in addition to the fine aesthetics, with lots of tucked-away shelf space and a wooden clothes rack. (More and more, we are finding that things like having lots of hooks, a large sink for hand-washing, and good knives in the kitchen make the big difference between feeling thrilled or frustrated by the places we stay.) The kitchen at Inkosana also definitively topped our "best" list, with castiron kettles and ant-free brown sugar available for use. And in addition, there was the pool, a spring-fed, cast-cement version of a fancy suburban infinity pool, where we could soak in the cool and the view.
We had three main activities during our time at Inkosana: hiking, lounging, and eating. In the former category, we started out, the afternoon of our arrival, with just a walk along the roads near the lodge, which contained the delicious finger-staining surprise of a whole row of blackberry bushes laden with a first crop of ripe berries. Erik braved the brambles to pick them, while I supportively held out the bag to fill and tried not to eat them as soon as they came off the branch. The following day we just got our legs a little warmer, hiking in the morning from a meadow, down through a damp and (to me) claustrophobic forest, to a waterfall. The highlight of the hike was coming upon a troop of baboons, who sent out a couple of guards to bark angrily at us while the rest of the group ran away. The best hike, though, came the next day. We set out on a cloudy morning with a friendly, interesting Canadian couple we'd met at breakfast and headed up through forest into a long, gently climbing stretch of meadow (where Erik got in touch with his Swiss roots by attempting a little yodeling, with some measure of success). Once we reached the end of that trail, at the point where a final peak ascent would start, we turned and began to traverse the grassy ridgeline. On our way to the shallow pool that was our goal and picnic spot, we spotted a white-tailed antelope and watched as lightning flashed and crackled on other parts of the mountains, bringing with it thunder that lasted for a Beethoven-length timpani roll. When we reached the pool, the sun was bright and hot, although the wind tormening the grasses suggested another storm ahead. As we headed back along the ridge, that storm hit, bringing not just thunder and lightning (not too close) but also hail, which we waited out under some trees. The storm subsided for the rest of our descent-- then, just as we reached the parking lot, opened up full force, pouring down sheets of rain that continued for a couple hours. But by that point, we were back at the lodge, luxuriating in the comfort of a good day of activity. We did one more hike the next day, going back up to the end of the trail but skipping the ridge walk this time, and rounded out our time with another blackberry picking mission before going back to our regular backpacker life on the bus.
But what of those other two categories, lounging and eating? A joy in their own right, the hikes also provided pleasant justification for those activities. The windowledge in our little hut made a perfect table for afternoon tea and cookies (a habit I am completely ready to take up when we get home!) Ed, the owner of Inkosana, made wonderful hard, biscotti-like cookies called rusks which were perfectly suited for tea-dipping, and which I now have the recipe for (although I may need to find a way to modify the pound of butter called for in the original...). We would sit in our room reading and drinking tea, as afternoon thunderstorms invariably pounded and danced outside. The showers were walled but open-roofed; as the cold water of the rain mixed with the hot water of the faucet, we could watch the lightning touching down on the hills and illuminating the sky. Most nights the rain would quiet before dinner, allowing us to get to the main lodge or the kitchen unsoaked. Along with being a baker, Ed was an excellent cook, preparing huge, heavy dinners for many guests each night. We enjoyed eating his food once, but also enjoyed the opportunity it gave us to splurge on more gourmet groceries than we usually get-- since the only choices were Ed's restaurant (pricey, for us) or groceries, spending a little more than usual still meant spending less than the alternative. So we grilled (or braied, in South African) steak, lunched on smoked salmon, and ate strawberries and peaches with fresh cream so thick it needed to be scooped with a spoon. We were completely spoiled for four days, and enjoyed every moment of it.
We had three main activities during our time at Inkosana: hiking, lounging, and eating. In the former category, we started out, the afternoon of our arrival, with just a walk along the roads near the lodge, which contained the delicious finger-staining surprise of a whole row of blackberry bushes laden with a first crop of ripe berries. Erik braved the brambles to pick them, while I supportively held out the bag to fill and tried not to eat them as soon as they came off the branch. The following day we just got our legs a little warmer, hiking in the morning from a meadow, down through a damp and (to me) claustrophobic forest, to a waterfall. The highlight of the hike was coming upon a troop of baboons, who sent out a couple of guards to bark angrily at us while the rest of the group ran away. The best hike, though, came the next day. We set out on a cloudy morning with a friendly, interesting Canadian couple we'd met at breakfast and headed up through forest into a long, gently climbing stretch of meadow (where Erik got in touch with his Swiss roots by attempting a little yodeling, with some measure of success). Once we reached the end of that trail, at the point where a final peak ascent would start, we turned and began to traverse the grassy ridgeline. On our way to the shallow pool that was our goal and picnic spot, we spotted a white-tailed antelope and watched as lightning flashed and crackled on other parts of the mountains, bringing with it thunder that lasted for a Beethoven-length timpani roll. When we reached the pool, the sun was bright and hot, although the wind tormening the grasses suggested another storm ahead. As we headed back along the ridge, that storm hit, bringing not just thunder and lightning (not too close) but also hail, which we waited out under some trees. The storm subsided for the rest of our descent-- then, just as we reached the parking lot, opened up full force, pouring down sheets of rain that continued for a couple hours. But by that point, we were back at the lodge, luxuriating in the comfort of a good day of activity. We did one more hike the next day, going back up to the end of the trail but skipping the ridge walk this time, and rounded out our time with another blackberry picking mission before going back to our regular backpacker life on the bus.
But what of those other two categories, lounging and eating? A joy in their own right, the hikes also provided pleasant justification for those activities. The windowledge in our little hut made a perfect table for afternoon tea and cookies (a habit I am completely ready to take up when we get home!) Ed, the owner of Inkosana, made wonderful hard, biscotti-like cookies called rusks which were perfectly suited for tea-dipping, and which I now have the recipe for (although I may need to find a way to modify the pound of butter called for in the original...). We would sit in our room reading and drinking tea, as afternoon thunderstorms invariably pounded and danced outside. The showers were walled but open-roofed; as the cold water of the rain mixed with the hot water of the faucet, we could watch the lightning touching down on the hills and illuminating the sky. Most nights the rain would quiet before dinner, allowing us to get to the main lodge or the kitchen unsoaked. Along with being a baker, Ed was an excellent cook, preparing huge, heavy dinners for many guests each night. We enjoyed eating his food once, but also enjoyed the opportunity it gave us to splurge on more gourmet groceries than we usually get-- since the only choices were Ed's restaurant (pricey, for us) or groceries, spending a little more than usual still meant spending less than the alternative. So we grilled (or braied, in South African) steak, lunched on smoked salmon, and ate strawberries and peaches with fresh cream so thick it needed to be scooped with a spoon. We were completely spoiled for four days, and enjoyed every moment of it.
Babes (and Dudes) in Backpackerland
Leaving Andrea and Adam, we caught a ride with the bride and groom to Kimberley, with another man in the front seat so Rachel, the bride and I sat in the back seat of the small car, us holding our luggage and she holding wedding presents on our laps. Our train wasn't scheduled to depart until later that night, so we walked to The Big Hole. No surprises here--it is a very big hole, the largest open pit diamond mine in the world. We went through the museum, which did an ok job of telling the story of how the discovery of diamonds in 1867 helped shape South Africa's history. Eventually the English imperialist Cecil Rhodes won out in the struggle to control the diamond mines.
We didn't have the best feeling waiting at the Kimberley train station, after hearing so many stories about crime in South Africa, and with the circumstances being similar to the night in Palenque (Mexico) when we had to sit on the floor for a long time at night in an overcrowded station, and then our camera ended up being stolen on the ride. But, while the train ride certainly wasn't the most comfortable, fortunately that's where the similarities to our Palenque experience ended. We'd booked third class tickets (the first class was full), and the waiting area was packed with families: kids first playing/sliding across, and then sleeping on blankets spread out on the floor. After about an hour's delay we finally boarded the train, uncomfortably trying to sleep on top of our big packs in order to decrease the possibilities of having something stolen. When we tried to squeeze ourselves into the seat a man said it was no problem to put the bags on the luggage racks, and he was probably right: it seemed to be what everyone else did, and, with babies and kids all around us, the family atmosphere continued for the entire trip. Creeping along the tracks through the barren Karoo desert, the train was extremely cold at night and then very hot during the day. The trip was scheduled to take 18 hours; fortunately we were able to get off before Cape Town and catch a commuter train to our destination, Stellenbosch, arriving there about 5pm.
From Stellenbosch until Durban (in between staying with Servas hosts and Manyeding village), we were a part of the "backpacker scene" (hostels, as well as the individuals carrying the backpacks, are called "Backpackers" in South Africa). Although some of the Backpackers made us feel a little older, for the most part they were well set up for budget travel: more amenities like kitchens, swimming pools, and bars than we were used to, as well as being nicer overall than Egypt and Ghana's budget offerings, and of course more social.
Stellenbosch is the second oldest town in South Africa, in the heart of the wine region. There is a university but the term had just ended and students gone home, so the town felt quiet and relaxed. After settling in to the "Stumble Inn," we sat around their backyard fire pit, went out to a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant, and were happy to catch up on some sleep. The next day we took a wine tour: 4 vineyards with 5 tastings at each, in addition to one cheese tasting and lunch. A beautiful sunny day, it was a fun tour--we learned a little about wine and enjoyed hanging out with everyone on the tour.
Trying to rest and prepare dinner back at the backpackers, we were a little annoyed by loud music and voices. While we were eating we were glad to talk with Betty and Carla, professors from a small college in Nebraska (whose students we had been annoyed at earlier) who were leading a semester in Africa for 15 students. The students read several books, traveled together on public transport through multiple countries, and did a one week apprenticeship in Malawi. It was really inspiring to talk with them, one of those conversations that happened at the perfect time to lift our spirits. Betty actually has a book coming out in Feb. about her experiences called "Africa on Six Wheels: A Semester on Safari" (BettyLevitov, check out www.doane.edu for more info).
Leaving Stellenbosch, we boarded the hop on/hop off Baz Bus for the first time. South Africa has pretty terrible public transport (probably the worst we've seen actually, maybe rivalled by Egypt), so although the Baz Bus was expensive and had some restrictions on what days we could travel (and was sometimes late etc.), the fact that it not only got us from place to place, but also took us door to door to the Backpackers was a definite plus. It was also a nice way to socialize with people, and to see them again during different legs of our trip. On this day we spent the entire day on the bus, made a little more tolerable by watching "Shrek" and the scenery of the Western Cape coast: first rolling farmland and then beautiful coastline. Around 8pm we finally arrived at our destination, Hikers Haven in Nature's Valley.
Hiker's Haven is a converted vacation home, and with the owners' old books and decorations around it still had that feel--a very nice place. Nature'sValley is a small community (no bank but one all purpose grocery/restaurant/pub) in Tsitsikama National Park, a gorgeous location.The next day we went for a hike with an English and a German woman. The variety of scenery was incredible: we started along the coast, first on sand and then on jagged black rocks, then climbed up through the trees to the mouth of Salt River. From there we ascended again until we reached an open meadow plateau, and finally descended into the valley, following a stream through rain forest. Rachel (barely) overcame her fear of snakes to trail blaze off the path to the road, where we hitched a ride back to town to get out of the rain. As we were making dinner and planning an early bedtime, we got a call from the pub from the people who drove us back to town: Kathy, originally from Minnesota, and her husband Henny, an Afrikaaner. We had a very interesting conversation with them on race (more on that in an upcoming blog).
The next day we walked a little more along the beach, before catching the Baz Bus that evening and making a required stop in Port Elizabeth. Crossing into the Eastern Cape, we moved from the tourism-designated Garden Route to the Wild Coast, and also into the former Ciskei (one of the segregated "Homelands" for Blacks). Back on the road next morning, we arrived around midday at Buccaneers Backpackers in Cintsa, dubbed by the travel guide as the best in South Africa. As the clouds cleared and the sun came out, we tried our luck with a free canoe on a shallow lagoon, before participating in the daily "free activity" and more importantly, the free boxed wine that accompanied it. After a little rag-tag ping-pong and a lot of boxed wine, I was ready to call it a night (at 6:30) but Rachel was up for more socializing and a game of "Killer Pool" (billiards where everyone takes turns).
Buccaneers was really well set up: what started with a grassy hillside back in the '80s now has trees everywhere, with the main building on the hill and accomodations stretching down to the pool and the beach. We had bunk beads in the dorm with a fantastic view over the water. The next day of lounging on the beach unfortunately didn't prepare me for that day's activity, where instead of the wine doing me in, this time it was the sumo wrestling competition that left me with what seems to be a bruised rib muscle that is gradually healing (let the record show that I did win the match). After dinner we hung out a little, and I was only barely able to outlast Rachel, staying up to the late hour of about 10:30.
The next day we enjoyed a little more time by the pool before getting on the Baz Bus around noon for the long ride to Durban. They usually have a trailer for the big backpacks, but today it was broken so for a stretch of the ride we had to cram our packs into the aisle of the bus, which feels ok when taking the local minibuses (like from Kimberley to Kuruman), but not when we're paying what we are for Baz. Arriving in Durban at 11:30 p.m., our Servas host Alec picked us up, and Tracey had dinner waiting for us. Back with the adult crowd, we stayed up talking until around 2 a.m.--later than any night during our adventures in Backpackerland!
We didn't have the best feeling waiting at the Kimberley train station, after hearing so many stories about crime in South Africa, and with the circumstances being similar to the night in Palenque (Mexico) when we had to sit on the floor for a long time at night in an overcrowded station, and then our camera ended up being stolen on the ride. But, while the train ride certainly wasn't the most comfortable, fortunately that's where the similarities to our Palenque experience ended. We'd booked third class tickets (the first class was full), and the waiting area was packed with families: kids first playing/sliding across, and then sleeping on blankets spread out on the floor. After about an hour's delay we finally boarded the train, uncomfortably trying to sleep on top of our big packs in order to decrease the possibilities of having something stolen. When we tried to squeeze ourselves into the seat a man said it was no problem to put the bags on the luggage racks, and he was probably right: it seemed to be what everyone else did, and, with babies and kids all around us, the family atmosphere continued for the entire trip. Creeping along the tracks through the barren Karoo desert, the train was extremely cold at night and then very hot during the day. The trip was scheduled to take 18 hours; fortunately we were able to get off before Cape Town and catch a commuter train to our destination, Stellenbosch, arriving there about 5pm.
From Stellenbosch until Durban (in between staying with Servas hosts and Manyeding village), we were a part of the "backpacker scene" (hostels, as well as the individuals carrying the backpacks, are called "Backpackers" in South Africa). Although some of the Backpackers made us feel a little older, for the most part they were well set up for budget travel: more amenities like kitchens, swimming pools, and bars than we were used to, as well as being nicer overall than Egypt and Ghana's budget offerings, and of course more social.
Stellenbosch is the second oldest town in South Africa, in the heart of the wine region. There is a university but the term had just ended and students gone home, so the town felt quiet and relaxed. After settling in to the "Stumble Inn," we sat around their backyard fire pit, went out to a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant, and were happy to catch up on some sleep. The next day we took a wine tour: 4 vineyards with 5 tastings at each, in addition to one cheese tasting and lunch. A beautiful sunny day, it was a fun tour--we learned a little about wine and enjoyed hanging out with everyone on the tour.
Trying to rest and prepare dinner back at the backpackers, we were a little annoyed by loud music and voices. While we were eating we were glad to talk with Betty and Carla, professors from a small college in Nebraska (whose students we had been annoyed at earlier) who were leading a semester in Africa for 15 students. The students read several books, traveled together on public transport through multiple countries, and did a one week apprenticeship in Malawi. It was really inspiring to talk with them, one of those conversations that happened at the perfect time to lift our spirits. Betty actually has a book coming out in Feb. about her experiences called "Africa on Six Wheels: A Semester on Safari" (BettyLevitov, check out www.doane.edu for more info).
Leaving Stellenbosch, we boarded the hop on/hop off Baz Bus for the first time. South Africa has pretty terrible public transport (probably the worst we've seen actually, maybe rivalled by Egypt), so although the Baz Bus was expensive and had some restrictions on what days we could travel (and was sometimes late etc.), the fact that it not only got us from place to place, but also took us door to door to the Backpackers was a definite plus. It was also a nice way to socialize with people, and to see them again during different legs of our trip. On this day we spent the entire day on the bus, made a little more tolerable by watching "Shrek" and the scenery of the Western Cape coast: first rolling farmland and then beautiful coastline. Around 8pm we finally arrived at our destination, Hikers Haven in Nature's Valley.
Hiker's Haven is a converted vacation home, and with the owners' old books and decorations around it still had that feel--a very nice place. Nature'sValley is a small community (no bank but one all purpose grocery/restaurant/pub) in Tsitsikama National Park, a gorgeous location.The next day we went for a hike with an English and a German woman. The variety of scenery was incredible: we started along the coast, first on sand and then on jagged black rocks, then climbed up through the trees to the mouth of Salt River. From there we ascended again until we reached an open meadow plateau, and finally descended into the valley, following a stream through rain forest. Rachel (barely) overcame her fear of snakes to trail blaze off the path to the road, where we hitched a ride back to town to get out of the rain. As we were making dinner and planning an early bedtime, we got a call from the pub from the people who drove us back to town: Kathy, originally from Minnesota, and her husband Henny, an Afrikaaner. We had a very interesting conversation with them on race (more on that in an upcoming blog).
The next day we walked a little more along the beach, before catching the Baz Bus that evening and making a required stop in Port Elizabeth. Crossing into the Eastern Cape, we moved from the tourism-designated Garden Route to the Wild Coast, and also into the former Ciskei (one of the segregated "Homelands" for Blacks). Back on the road next morning, we arrived around midday at Buccaneers Backpackers in Cintsa, dubbed by the travel guide as the best in South Africa. As the clouds cleared and the sun came out, we tried our luck with a free canoe on a shallow lagoon, before participating in the daily "free activity" and more importantly, the free boxed wine that accompanied it. After a little rag-tag ping-pong and a lot of boxed wine, I was ready to call it a night (at 6:30) but Rachel was up for more socializing and a game of "Killer Pool" (billiards where everyone takes turns).
Buccaneers was really well set up: what started with a grassy hillside back in the '80s now has trees everywhere, with the main building on the hill and accomodations stretching down to the pool and the beach. We had bunk beads in the dorm with a fantastic view over the water. The next day of lounging on the beach unfortunately didn't prepare me for that day's activity, where instead of the wine doing me in, this time it was the sumo wrestling competition that left me with what seems to be a bruised rib muscle that is gradually healing (let the record show that I did win the match). After dinner we hung out a little, and I was only barely able to outlast Rachel, staying up to the late hour of about 10:30.
The next day we enjoyed a little more time by the pool before getting on the Baz Bus around noon for the long ride to Durban. They usually have a trailer for the big backpacks, but today it was broken so for a stretch of the ride we had to cram our packs into the aisle of the bus, which feels ok when taking the local minibuses (like from Kimberley to Kuruman), but not when we're paying what we are for Baz. Arriving in Durban at 11:30 p.m., our Servas host Alec picked us up, and Tracey had dinner waiting for us. Back with the adult crowd, we stayed up talking until around 2 a.m.--later than any night during our adventures in Backpackerland!
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Wedding Crashers 2: Manyeding Village
There aren't too many situations I can think of when 60 hours of being in a place would be worth 40+ hours of travel to get there and away. I wouldn't be too keen to fly from Hartford to Australia for a weekend, for example, although if somehow I could get home from here for one day with friends and family I would certainly do that. Anyway, I digress. The point is, this weekend we had the happy experience of several ridiculously long travel days being fully worthwhile for the couple days we got to spend in between. We visited a friend of Erik's from high school, Andrea, and her husband Adam in the village of Manyeding--four hours north of the diamond city of Kimberley-- where they have been in the Peace Corps for the last 15 months. The particular timing of the visit was centered on their host brother's wedding, which we were generously invited to attend.
Following the local tradition, this was actually the second wedding for the couple-- the first was held a few month's ago in the bride's hometown. However, the fact that it wasn't the first or only celebration did nothing to lessen the scale of the party preparations on the part of the groom's family. When we arrived, a large tent had been set up in the family's front yard, and was full of men hanging decorations and children cleaning tables and chairs. Meanwhile, in the back yard, the groom's mother, sister, aunts, and female cousins were chopping vegetables, stirring massive fire-black kettles, cutting meat, and washing endless cycles of dishes-- activities that Andrea said had been going on all week, and which would continue throughout the weekend. Innards of the two cows and one sheep the family had slaughtered for the celebration were hanging out to dry on the fence post (they make up the traditional night-before-the-wedding dinner, although we chose to eat pasta with Andrea and Adam instead...).
Saturday morning, the dawn was broken by the joyful ululations of the women of the groom's family: the bride and her family, having driven all night in a red minibus, picking people up along the way, had arrived. As out-of-town guests continued to show up throughout the morning, the ululations continued as well, as they did throughout the ceremony itself. A bit after 10, we heard clapping and singing, and went outside to find two groups slowly, rhythmically, melodically making their way toward each other: the women of the groom's family, with him in the center, moving from their yard outward on the village road, and the women of the bride's family, with her in the center, moving from the village road in toward the house. Eventually the two groups met, with ululations and song resounding; then they all turned together to walk to the tent the bride and groom in front of the group, and a couple women symbolically sweeping the path before them with brooms made of brush.
For the first wedding, the bride and groom had worn American-style clothes, but for this one they wore variations on traditional attire, to stunning effect. His shirt and the top layer of her dress were mocha-colored matte silk, while his pants and the under layer of her dress were the same material in a clear sky blue. She had a head wrap of the same fabrics, and also wore a double strand of ping pong ball-sized dark wooden beads around her neck, and matching (but smaller) earrings. Both his shirt and her dress were embroidered with almond-sized, cream colored shells. They sat at the front, at a table on a raised platform decorated with miniature cooking pots, impala skins, and gourds, some of which also graced the tables where the guests sat down. The ceremony was conducted entirely in Tsetswana, the local language, but thanks to a program made by Adam, and some translation by Andrea, we could follow what was going on. An Anglican priest performed a length religious ceremony, interrupted at times by songs when one woman would sing out a first line, and then other people would join in, singing in several-part harmony and dancing at their places. Twice the bride and groom were brought out to dance, led around by their cousins. When the priest was through, there were speeches by two of the older aunts, and some of the couples' friends, followed by toasts and prayers. And then... lunch. The women brought out the bucketfuls of food they had been preparing, dishing up groaning plates of pap (a heavy maize porridge), rice, mutton, and beef, with dottings of vegetables as accompaniment. While the tent had not been completely full when the wedding started, by lunch people were packed in and spilling out into the yard; invitations are not issued, so much of the population of the village comes out for the meal. Indeed, people continued showing up, sitting around, and eating well into the night, and the families stuck around throughout the following day as well-- all of this with no catering, just home cooking! Eek.
On Sunday we were able to see more of the village and hear more from Andrea and Adam about some of the issues they have faced there. They have four schools, one in Manyeding and three in other villages, on their circuit, and have found that the quality of the schools varies massively, according to the will of the teachers and principals-- unfortunately, there is basically no accountability from above. The government has provided some decent resources-- we were particularly impressed by sets of books on AIDS and anti-Apartheid leaders-- but the utilization of these resources is weak. Andrea and Adam have painted world maps, with every country labeled, on a wall of each of their schools, and are putting together lesson plans to try to avoid a similar fate for that initiative. Some of the other main challenges they talked about in the village are AIDS, alcoholism, and unemployment; general health and brain drain are also on the list.
The combination of sometimes feeling total despair at problems that seem insurmountable, and sometimes feeling inspired and moved by the strengths that exist despite so many problems, is something we empathize with from our own work in Hartford. More than once, though, Andrea and Adam told us that although they will not be able to have the largescale impact they dreamed of when they signed up for Peace Corps, the positive effects of their time in the village on both their host family and other villagers, and, especially, on them, have been great. It is stereotypical, but true: knowing people changes your perceptions of them; knowing other lifestyles changes your perceptions of your own life. It is a great threat to prejudice; it could stop war. If only everyone could have an experience like that.
Want to read more? Adam and Andrea's blog is www.thaboandlerato.blogspot.com.
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