From the "What Was I Expecting?" File...

On my own for a few days here in Swakop and so I decided to do some research for the hotel book -- namely, seek out the best place in town and see if I could finagle my first martini in almost a month... : )

So there I am at the Swakopmund Hotel, which is nicely housed in a beautiful old train station... the lobby is fine, with the requisite big comfy chairs and, oh, there it is, the lobby bar! And it appears to be fully stocked (not always a given here in Namibia) and there's more than just Amarula (Angelique...). I approach and tentatively ask whether I can have a martini... the barman says yes and as he pulls out a dusty martini glass (first bad sign), I offer that I would like one of the dry and gin variety. He looks at me perplexed... I decide to not push and resign myself to my luck. Herewith (a favourite word in Namibian English, along with "whereas") the formula:

Asking for a martini in Swakop = receiving a martini glass full of straight white vermouth ("Martini brand") with ice and a slice of lemon... otherwise known as = a tight temple headache roughly 30 mins later...

Happily, my gastronomic luck was better than my alcoholic chance and after consulting with two very nice ladies in a bookstore that I had happened to wander into (one the owner, the other, the Italian proprietor of a local cafe) , I was directed towards the Grapevine, a very popular restaurant for which reservations were de rigeur... lucky for me that one of the ladies happened to be a good friend of the chef and so, having taken a liking to me, I suppose, she armed me with a simple note to transmit to him. It read: "Please find a space for him. Thanks. Paola." Thirty minutes later, there I was sitting at a table enjoying some great wines and two wonderful courses: local asparagus soup (no cream!) and oryx medaillons with spaetzle and gooseberries... yum! wines: a delightful sauvignon blanc (Minelle...) and a rare Merlot/Pinotage mix that had some bottle age on it. A very good recommendation!


Dinner at Grapevine's...

Field Trip

Straight-to-the-point detail on the OYO mini-van

Yesterday, we went out to a local school with the great people from OYO, the group that we had contacted before we left Toronto. They do HIV/AIDS awareness programs with youth via the arts. Luckily, the regional boss from Windhoek was in town so rather than hitchhike, we got ot roll out there in a really funky mini-van that has been painted with all sorts of slogans and images... It gets a lot of looks!


Uh, I think I get it... maybe...

6 of us went to a high school in a mining town some 60 kms away and after meeting with a rather harried principal, we showed a bunch of the learners (what they call students) a movie that OYO had recently produced on a gang-rape case... heavy stuff...

There was this one girl in the assembled crowd who totally impressed me. She made a lot of amazing comments during the Q&A after the screening and really stood up for women's rights and took a bunch of the posing moron guys to task for saying that "no doesn't mean no." She was really engaged in the movie and in the discussion and was getting pretty worked up and passionate about things even though she looked shy when she wasn't in the heat of the moment.

I tried to encourage her afterward by saying that I had really liked her comments and that she looked like she was going to be a leader. The smile on her face when she told me that was exactly what she wanted but that she knew that she had to overcome her shyness first gave me goosebumps. Man, thousands of kilometres away from being a teacher and the basic fact that a few words at the right time can maybe mean a lot to someone is underlined again... I hope that she goes far; she certainly looks like she will.

Does the Pentagon Know?

So out in the middle of nowhere, we came across this bio-weapons lab...

And then some joker wrote this on the back of our truck:



(everywhere you go in Damaraland, people are trying to sell you gems, etc. or key-holders. Yep, lots of key-holders. With your name carved on them. The first time a guy came up to me and asked my name out of the blue and how to spell it, I was kind of wondering what was up and then seconds later, he handed me a personalised little beauty with "BOB" etched into it. We all ended up with one. After that, whenever someone sidled up to the car and casually asked what are names were, we would tell him and then volunteer that we already had key-chains and the poor guy would look crestfallen... but one only has so many keys...

Spitzkoppe: Where Philippe Could Have Bought a Kid

Savanna

We almost didn’t go to what turned out to be perhaps my favourite place in Namibia: Spitzkoppe, a fabulous mountain in the Demaraland. We were all glad that we did, though. There’s a superb community-run campsite around the base and some of the campsites themselves are soooo cool. Check the pics, if you don’t believe me. The granite rocks are easy to climb and the views out over the savanna were breathtaking, especially at sunset. Then, when the stars came out…magic.


Sunset at Spitzkoppe

We hired a guide to take us around right when we arrived and he was pretty good – although he did seem more interested in the Liverpool match on the radio… After he showed us the main cave drawings at the site, he rang the pueblo and directed us over so that we could see a real Demara village. Well, not the swankiest place I’ve ever been and when he further elaborated that we would be visiting the house where they make their own beer, my stomach had distinct Memories of Amoebic Dysentery in Honduras… The crew at that place were exceedingly friendly and we drank a bit of the beer in the end (tasted like a meady lager) and then bought a big bottle of it for 2 bucks. As I bought the suds, Philippe was busy talking to some of the more lubricated locals, one of whom first offered to give Philippe his dog and then told him that he could buy his latest baby for just 500 american dollars… ay yai yai… We booked it out of there and thought we were heading back to our campsite, which still had to be set up before it got too dark, but no, our guide told us to drive up to a nearby shed and said that he needed a drink and a cigarette! So out he hops and pops into a Namibian cantina… he told us to have one too but we all demurred although I’m sure that it would have been one helluva story had we got hammered and then driven back the few kays to camp…


Campsite at Spitzkoppe

Dali’s Giraffes

Giraffes in Etosha Park

Last night at the first campsite in Etosha, I had one of those moments of overlap – not déjà vu, per se, but rather when scenes in your mind’s eye not only coincide with learned images that have become archetypes of common imagination (think: the posters in a 1st year’s university room), but also with what the retina is taking in at that very moment… This happened as two very skittish giraffes, having finally drunk after almost an hour’s equivocation, moved away from the watering hole adjacent to the camp (you can sit some 20 metres away and sip beer or wine behind a small stone wall and an inclined fence that in no way would stop a mildly perturbed lion). With the roar of an only briefly-glimpsed big cat ringing in their ears, these lanky beasts glided into the hazy darkness that marked the boundary between the yellow floodlights’ ken and the dark savanna’s inky reach. They moved further and further and in that precise instant of nether, they became for me Dali's giraffes, my mind stretching their limbs and knobby joints, elongating their necks even more than nature had already generously intended… they were the dream at the edge of an artificial day carved out of the night for tourists’ pleasure, striding shadows in negative, spotted tall yet diminishing still…

With Apologies to James Merrill…

Last night I dreamed the dream called “Clean”…

Tonight is the last night of the “4x4 camping in the wilds of Namibia” phase of the trip. I can’t say that I’m going to miss that green tent attached to the cab of the truck. No sir. Ready for a real bed again and most of all, ready to be able to escape the heat and dust. Did I mention the dust? I feel like grass-cutting/landscaping Bob from many years back… and yes, ha ha, even my carefully cultivated “priest’s hands” are gone; those of you who have only known prissy dressed-up Bob probably wouldn’t have believed that I would eschew the Oriali and Hiltl and bespoke for desert gear and cargo pants... It’s good to change things up a bit, though—and that’s part of what this is all about—but yes, I am looking forward to being clean again… : )

What is more, these last couple of days have been especially hot and this morning in the shower (showers! a benefit of staying here in Etosha’s swank campgrounds), I realised that my core temperature has probably gone up a few degrees as I kept pushing the cold water tap to the right and then felt deflated when I realised that it was already as far as it would go… Swakopmund’s cool breezes are looking particularly attractive right now…

Addendum: Ok, so that last night in the tent was pretty brutal – VERY HOT – no air flow whatsoever and on top of it, the rains have started and with them, the mosquitoes… little bastards… and SO LOUD… it was possible to hear them buzzing outside of the bloody tent and I spent a good couple of hours battling the ones that penetrated the less-than-hermetically sealed canvas box… wouldn’t have been so bad but in your heat-exasperated, sleep-deprived state, the fact that any one of the buggers may be about to inject you with malaria gives things an added edge…

Addendum #2: Am now back in Swakopmund, where it is gloriously cool here beside the Atlantic, just south of the Skeleton Coast.

Namibia Part 1.

Dune 45.

So how does one get as far away as possible from sitting in an office at St. George Campus of the U of T? By going to fucking rural Namibia… to the goddamn desert, that’s how… This very thought came to me yesterday, as I lay in bed (in a tent attached to the top of a 4x4 truck) and tried to get to sleep over the sounds of various critters prowling about outside… The fact that I had never felt so dusty and dried out only heightened the utter disconnect between my circumstances 2 weeks ago and what I’m experiencing now. And this is good. This is partly why I’m on this trip and why I agreed to do the rural Namibia odyssey: to get out of my comfort zone and to challenge myself, to deal with new things (like driving through sand dunes at 100 kph, or on a more serious note, worrying about things a little more primal and base than tenure decisions or book contracts such as “will we find a safe place to sleep tonight?” or “what the fuck do we do if this truck breaks down?” or “how do I reconcile the sheer disparity of experience between myself and the man who assured us that our truck would indeed get through the soft sand at the entrance to Homeb and that no, the jackals wouldn’t be a problem at night”). Being utterly disconnected from everyone is hard for me and man, here in Namibia, when you leave a big town, you may not see another soul on the road for hours… seriously. There is NOBODY out there, let alone an internet kiosk that lets you stay in touch. You’re lucky if there is cell coverage (we have Sarah’s unlocked Sony Ericsson phone… “you’re gonna be a rock star…”.



Campsite at Sesriem

As for the desert, I like it but shit, I would never live out there. The constant dust in everything, the parched land and skin is unreal. At the same time, the beauty of the sun rising over the giant dunes between Sossuvlei and Sesriem is something that I will not soon forget. We got up at 4:30 so that we could pack up the truck and drive the 45 km to the aptly named Dune 45 where we climbed up the spine of the sand dune (not as easy as it sounds) with about 50 other people and then watched the sun come up from the top… And if that wasn’t enough, we then kept going the other 20km to Sossuvlei proper and hiked in to Dead Vlei, a totally surrealistic landscape of dead trees in a dried lake with majestic dunes serving as backdrop… totally stunning but man, oh man, very hot out there.

Dead Vlei

Checking things out in Homeb.

Sunrise at Dune 45.

When we left that park we were headed towards to Walvis Bay and had it been me, we would have just stopped at the first empty campsite we came too because we didn’t have a permit for that night and my mind was still working on the Canadian assumption that there are park wardens, etc. Well, if there are any in Namibia, we haven’t seen them… In any event, Philippe convinced us to push on to Homeb and after some scary incidents involving sand (full disclosure: we got stuck in some soft sand earlier in the day at the popular dune site and needed help getting out, so we were very leery) we made it just in time to set up before full darkness fell. A local man from a nearby village brought us some firewood and started it up for a small fee. I cooked some venison steaks and rice and we ate well far, far, far away from anything in the rest of the world.

When Helene and I first arrived in Windhoek a couple of days ago, we had to wait almost an hour and a half for Philippe to pick us up because he had made the car guys replace the 4x4’s two front tires. I am very glad for that wait given the roads we’ve been on. Luckily for us, Phillipe is used to driving long distances on gravel roads in Quebec and when he saw the wear on the treads he told them “no way.” We went to do a grocery and then 20 km later were in the outback… only gravel roads (the graders are heroes here as far as I’m concerned…) and magnificent scenery that continually changes as you traverse regions.

The Jack Bauer in the Desert look... ha ha!

We arrived in Walvis Bay this morning and checked out the waterfront while looking for flamingos that we learned later, are still up in Etosha National Park… After a quick trip to see a salt plant, we drove to Swakopmund, a German colonial town that will be Helene’s and my base next week as we job shadow a contact who does AIDS awareness with children. This place is crazy – SOOOO german and here in southwestern Africa… Namibia is truly a diverse country…

Here, I got to use some internet but may well be incommunicado for another week until we return on Monday next. I hope not, because being slightly connected helps keep me stress-free… and writing and reading emails from friends as well as news from home helps me deal with the culture/class shock, which is not inconsequential this time round…

When Dead Space Comes Alive

Driving back from the East, madly trying to get back to Cape Town in time to drop off the car and not have to worry about finding a safe place for it during the night, I saw something that utterly transformed my impression of a banal space that I had always taken for granted and thought was either wasted, or deserted or both... the grass islands where expressways meet, on-ramps converge and service roads end.

In the outskirts of Cape Town there are massive shanty-towns with very spotty entrances/exits, which means that people walk kilometres, jump fences and-- mum, close your eyes-- dash across 4 lane highways to get home after work. When you drive into these zones, the normally plain and static highway architecture suddenly becomes vibrant, chaotic and disturbing fluid... you have to avoid people running in front of you and, at the same time, resist the temptation to watch in the rear view mirror to see if the next group made it or not... because there may be more people in front of you.

But people crossing carriageways happens everywhere here in South Africa... what was singularly different about this particular area, though, was that when we passed the green verges, we saw groups of kids on them... and they weren't just sitting or hanging out, they were running, jumping and playing soccer... Simple really, given the lack of green space in the township housing area... So their means of compensating has been to occupy the most readily available piece of grass... and reclaim a space that is never used, except by grasscutters (a trip back in time for me) and illegal garbage dumpers. They have brought to life a dead space that previously only held blank aesthetic value -- a green frame for the concrete roads. Still, if the ball goes out of bounds here, it is really out of bounds... completely dangerously so...

But what does one do when there is no alternative?

Leaving Cape Town

Today was a very relaxed day. Did laundry in the craziest but cleanest laundromat I've ever seen... there was an old raving South African dude (the owner's dad) who came in like a hurricane and flustered everyone... the place was spic and span, though, so who's complaining?

Helene was feeling sick from the bobotie that she ate last night... although the place where she had it, Mama Africa, was awesome: great ambiance (tourists mixing with locals mixing with visiting hipsters) and the live band was incredible. One of their songs was the equivalent to a similar band's entire set in Canada... We also both agreed that the woman standing in front of us hanging out with her friend and fiancee was the most sublimely beautiful African woman we had ever seen. And there was soccer on the telly! And beer! Man, GREAT place! Endorsement!

This afternoon, we walked around the Bo Taap neighbourhood and had a great coffee at a cute place called Rhubarb Room before walking down to the market area and buying almost all the rest of our plane tickets at the Flight Centre (Cochin-Calcutta and Amsterdam-Barcelona still pending). So now we have dates for our trip to Maputo in Mozambique, Dar and Zanzibar (not that one Nestor...) and to India via Qatar airlines on 11 Dec.

The internet is down at the hostal so I did some work on the captions and acknowledgements for the Barcelona book and then came here to a local internet cafe to send the file back to Toronto.

The minibus comes by at 5am to take us to the airport for our 8am flight to Windhoek, where Philippe will pick us up with the 4x4... Then it's out to the bush. I think that we'll be in a town of some sort at the week-end, so that will probably be the next update... because I'm guessing there is not much in the way of internet coverage in the Namib Desert...

IGTC Endorses...

Khaya Ngamay Game Restaurant
267 Long St.
Cape Town, South Africa

This place served me some of the best game I’ve ever had… mmm, those sprinkbok shanks… man, were they good. (For my vegetarian readers -- you know who you are ; ) -- I would have had the vegan version, but they were all out of bean curd...)

Great ambience, good live music and tasty local wines well-picked to go with their varied menu, this place is a winner.

The Cape to Franschhoek

Where the penguins live...


Renting a car in a foreign country always imparts a sense of trepidation… this is even more acute when you know that a) you’re going to be driving on the other side of the road, b) you’re going to be doing all of the driving and c) everyone keeps talking about how dangerous it is to leave your car anywhere in public, etc, etc. and the words “car-jacking” and “South Africa” resonate together…

I shouldn’t have worried; driving in the Cape Town area is easy. The roads are really well-marked, people readily move over to the paved shoulder to let you pass and the surfaces are beautiful – probably because they are investing vast sums of money into infrastructure in advance of SA 2010.

We decided to drive south first the other day so that Helene could see some penguins… It was a good choice because the trip was quite nice and as we pulled into Simon’s Town, where the pinguino colony lives, we saw a bunch of whales just hanging out a few hundred metres offshore! All that time in California searching for whales and here, we just pull up and there they were. [Note: just read about these very same whales in the paper – apparently this is not a regular occurrence]. The penguins were even closer… but man do they smell! The majority of them were resting at the beach or out on the rocks although some had moved up into the scrub above the sand. Their guano was everywhere and the stench kind of took away from their cuteness factor. The next time Disney or Pixar does a penguin movie, they should provide Odorama cards so that the kiddies can get the full flightless bird sensory experience.

Because of the haze (and the fact that I didn’t want to arrive too late in the wine region), we didn’t head all the way down to the Cape of Good Hope. Still the scenery around the parts of the peninsula that we did see was fantastic and the sand dunes and surf were the obvious attractions for the tourists who no doubt flock there during the high season.

Heading north, we came across some shantytown housing on the road to Stellenbosch – it just appears out of nowhere amongst the vines and fruit trees. Lots of people walking on the road and waiting for the combis to come by and pick them up. A pretty bracing reminder of the immense disparities between rich and poor in this country… and by many accounts, it is a division that is increasingly class-based as opposed to strictly racial.

Stellenbosch is very developed as a wine region and Lanzerac, one of the oldest houses puts on an “unabashedly opulent” show as the guide book put it. We had a nice cheese plate lunch and tried some of their wines before pushing on to Franschhoek (or however the hell you spell it…), which is a cute little town that is very reminiscent of Sonoma and Napa. Sarah had suggested a place there and wow, what a great recommendation. This is definitely the swank part of the 5 month trip so we enjoyed it and had a great dinner across the street at the French Quarter’s bistro.

This morning we headed north towards Paarl and the Wellington region to visit Diemersfontein, the best producer of pinotage for my money… It’s a nice winery in a very bucolic setting and was worth the drive, even if it was a little out of our way. The rest of the day was spent driving across vast valleys covered in wild flowers and backdropped by incredible mountain ranges… truly spectacular. One funny wildlife sighting: after we came out of a 4km long tunnel, we saw a couple of baboons! One of them was sitting on the guardrail taking the sun and the other, well, look away now if you’re prudish… well, he was masturbating in the middle of the righthand lane… cheeky monkey….

View through the back window...

I’m happy to say that our little car performed very nicely along and clocked a respectable 120 kph, as per the speed limit. Note: school zones along here were posted at a mere 90 kph… I guess Canadian kids’ reflexes aren’t as good as those of the South Africans, given that they need cars to slow down to 40 or even 20 kph! At times today there were long stretches where we didn’t see one other car… we could have been in rural Texas, it was so flat and straight. The mountain parts got pretty technical, though, and as the sun started to set, I was ready to make it here to Camp Hippy in Wilderness… finding the goddamn place was an adventure in itself as the mapquest directions were pretty fucked up. We made it in the end and some food and beer in front of the Sweden-Portugal world cup qualifier reduced my stress level… This place is called Fairy Knowe and is an old Victorian farm. The bar is a big open air thatched roof jobby that totally reminds me of Expats in Ceiba. Except of course that the young East German girl behind the bar is definitely NOT packing heat like Mark and rather than an assortment of ne’er-do-wells, scoundrels, jewel smugglers, car thieves and arms dealers, this place is currently occupied by hippies. Head hippy seems to be the german girl’s boyfriend and I just got the pleasure of seeing him send her on a guilt-trip for some narcissistic reason before forgiving her for whatever perceived (non-existent) slight had occurred… nice.

Oh, and did I mention the scorpion that I just saw outside the door of our farmhouse room? I told the girl and she said that if it was black, then it is VERY poisonous… it was black. What is it with us and creepy crawly poisonous things? Sigh. Oh well, nothing could possibly beat that hotel at Lago Yojoa in Honduras. Between the electrocution shower, the cockroaches and the coral snake living under the bed, it was a miracle we got out of Longwood alive! : )

The wee beastie that greeted me at the Victorian farmhouse...

Tomorrow it’s off on a hike or a canoe trip or both. Then back to Cape Town for a couple more days before flying to Namibia on Wednesday.

Ps: just went on a wee hike along the Toews river. It’s a very lush zone and the symphony of birdcalls was absolutely brilliant. The highlight of the trail, though, was pulling ourselves across the river on a pontoon… fun! Oh, and when we got back to the road, the ranger lady told us that some guys had just come across a puff adder on the road we were taking to get back to the farmhouse… and me without my machete! Hmmm…

Now it’s off to explore the Garden Route east a bit before the long drive back to CT tomorrow (Cape Town, not Connecticut). And, joy of joys, this one seaside town is famous for its oysters! I do believe that Helene was hiding this from me… ; ) But, ha ha, I read the guide book and discovered it this morning over some seriously yummy granola, yoghurt and fresh fruit. Hippies do granola well.

Cape Town

Oh will they, now? Something about that razor wire tells me differently...

Wandering around Cape Town feels a little like the first time I went to Lorca with Josechu’s family when I went for a walk by myself and while looking at the buildings and houses started wondering why there were so many bars and grates… and why there was broken glass cemented on top of garden walls… Even in a chill town like Cape Town, the security industry is booming. One sees the typical alarm company signs everywhere but unlike in Canada, here they are embellished by the added words “Armed Response.” Armed as in armed with guns not as in “your system is activated.”

This city is strikingly beautiful, though. The setting is magnificent and the air is clean. Today was a massive day of sight-seeing too. We got up and headed to the Kirstenbosch botanical gardens, then went up Table Mountain on the cable car, then visited the waterfront before walking back downtown and feasting on some wild game while listening to live guitar… a great day.

Here are some photos from the gardens…





And the mountain, where the clouds whipped in at incredible speeds…






As for the meal, wow… who knew that springbok shank would taste so good… or grilled ostrich? “Angolan Big Chicken” as they call it. I will definitely do up a separate IGTC Endorses for these guys.

Amsterdam to Africa

The hotel that I had reserved turned out to be quite good: the Museum House near the Concert Hall. I’m glad it was because now that there are all of these sites with people’s comments, etc. it’s hard to find a place for which some cranky prince/princess has not written a whiny screed based on the fact that he/she could hear the water pipes or some such thing. Once we made it into the city, it then took a little while to get out to the hotel from the Centraal Station. We took tram #16, which does not run right in front of the station, but rather a block away, but that was nice because a) I love trams on general principle and b) it’s a nice way to see a city. I had been to Amsterdam on two occasions previously but this time I felt like I really got a better feel for the place. Of course, the first time, back in ’91 was kind of booze-inflected and then the second was more a “take in what we can” 1 day tour after Helene and I had left Herstmonceux Castle and were bumming around for a bit before going home to stay with our respective parents in advance of moving to Ithaca. In any event, to be here this time during the fall was also great; it was nice and cool out and the leaves were changing… the canals were pretty (as were, it must be said, the women on their bicycles!) and it was great to just wander and check out the shops.

Somehow, I found myself talking to a wineseller who specialises in Italian and French (I noticed a couple of nice ’97 Burgundies that were begging to be drunk but there was no way that I could carry wine around at the start of this trip… but still… they made me think of that exquisite Vincent Girardin Aloxe-Corton 1997 that Joe and I shared in the spring of 2003…). Because we were starting to get pretty hungry (I think all that we had eaten was a bit of yoghurt on the plane), I hit up the owner for a nice place to go. He suggested a very much in-demand Italian trattoria and so we used that as our target for another hour’s worth of walking. The Jordaan area of Amsterdam is phenomenal and so pleasant to wander about…

As we were getting close to our destination, we passed another small restaurant and saw the staff eating dinner in advance of the evening service… the smells coming out of there were divine and I made a quick mental note… anywhere that smells that good for the staff meal has got to be worth checking out… It was good that we had walked by that place because, in the end, we did return to this non-descript resto. The one we were looking for turned out to be totally booked already -- even on a Tuesday night. No complaints from us, though, because the at Café Principe Curtis was fan-fucking-tastic. The incredibly friendly Dutch waitress sat us at the communal table, where we spoke to her in Spanish so that she could practice and chatted a bit with a regular from Curacao who apparently stops in every day for his tea. As we ate our bread and oil (sesame coated flatbread with a very soft and nicely spiced oil), the place began to fill up. I enjoyed my bresaola but the winning appetizer was Helene’s grilled tuna… the secret to its wonderfulness? It had been encrusted in fennel seeds, which had then toasted to varying degrees… oh yes, fennel…. Mmm… Am definitely going to try this out at home.

The mains literally took over an hour to come. We figured that the chef had decided that everyone should have their apps… and who were we to complain? Especially given the warm service? The owner brought in a couple of friends with a baby and we talked to them a bit, as well as to a woman from Toronto who sat at the table with us. She gave us a contact in Tanzania who works with children with AIDS and helped found an orphanage. At this point, it was good to have to talk to other people because I was fading fast (not much sleep on the plane after the fainting incident). When the next plates arrived we were as impressed as with the appetizers: my tagliatelle (finer than I’m used to) with wild boar was tasty, as was H’s pasta with rapini and shrimp.

All in all, a wonderful meal and a great evening in Amsterdam. We walked back the couple of kilometres to the hotel and then crashed pretty much immediately, what with having to get up early to catch a bus to Schipol for the flight to Cape Town… we’re about 3 hours out as I write this and just a few minutes ago I realised that I had crossed the equator for the first time! I was watching the great KLM flight tracker and seeing the line bisect Africa totally took me back to those primary school exercises where we had to draw the continents… it’s kind of crazy to think that in the course of a single day, one can go from northern Europe to the southern tip of Africa… isn’t it?

There’s supposed to be a bus of some sort available to take us to the Backpackers’ Hotel where we have a room reserved… I can’t wait to see the night sky, though, and check out the Southern Cross for the first time! Hmm, I wonder if you can see the moon in South Africa? Ha ha… that’s a play on the stupidest question we had at EXPO’92 in Seville… a woman from the Midwest asked Stuart that very thing… it was only later that we decided that the perfect answer would have been to say that no, the moon is kept in a geosynchronous orbit above the US…

Tomorrow it will be up to Table Mountain if the weather is nice and then to explore Cape Town a bit before we rent a car and head out on the swankiest part of our trip: the Garden Route through what is supposed to be some of the most beautiful wine country in the world…

Well, That Didn't Take Long...

So here we are in Amsterdam... but the trip over was not without incident and there's ALREADY a story to tell...

About 4 hours into the flight, Hélène started feeling flushed, dizzy and nauseous so I started walking her to the back of the plane -- to the galley to get some water -- and she almost made it but instead, fainted right there in the aisle... I carried her the rest of the way to the back, laid her down on the floor and put my hand under her head... and then was scared shitless by the totally blank look in her eyes -- she was completely out and staring off into space. Surprisingly, I stayed pretty calm and alerted the stewardesses who were sitting a couple of metres away. They instantly jumped up, mixed some water and sugar and prepared cold compresses. H was out for only maybe 30 seconds or so. When she came to, we were all standing around staring at her, which made her start. When she asked how long she had been unconscious, I told her just for a minute, but that don't worry, we had got some good pictures... and oh, that she's not allowed to sleep on the floor (earlier in the flight, they had made a funny announcement to that effect). Anyway, Hélène sat up and said that she felt better, but still, holy fucking shit... what a way to start a 5 month trip...

We think that it was probably the cholera medication we took before leaving the house... and then she may or may not have had some wine and beer... Later, we found out that another woman on the plane had fainted too, so the pilot added more oxygen to the air (duh! shouldn't that always be high?)

Relaxing now in Amsterdam... off to the cafes in a bit... no spacecake for H tonight, though...

Books...

This is a tough one... what to take to read while sitting in trucks, trains, out of the scorching sun, etc...
I'm sure that there will be some good finds on the way but for now, I'm stashing Don Quixote and The Red and the Black in my bag. Been too long since I read the former and have never even cracked the latter...

So We Leave Tomorrow...

Packing, packing, packing. And I don't even want to take that much stuff. I figure that I can always pick up cheap clothes along the way that suit the weather and I did leave a bunch of things at the flat in Barcelona...

Kind of nervous - not going to lie.

Tomorrow we fly to Amsterdam and spend a night before heading to Cape Town for 6 days or so. That will be nice: exploring the city and then driving along the Garden Route. It's supposed to be some of the most beautiful wine country in the world. Needless to say, that doesn't scare me...

The part after that, though, is a little more daunting just because I've never done anything like what we have planned. We're going to be travelling around Namibia with Philippe, a friend from Shawinigan, in a Toyota Hilux 4x4. The tents actually set up on top of the truck so that animals and snakes and things can't get at you... So it's going to be lots of desert and driving and camping... and I'm praying that it's not a million degrees out because we all know how extreme heat and I get along... : )

Updates to come...