While I continue to compose overdetailed accounts of my life and travels, here are more links to facebook. I have received a few emails that people cant access these without facebook accounts, but they should be public links, available to people without facebook. Please let me know if this is not the case; I will try to put photos up elsewhere but uploading is difficult as is. Two applications might just take up too much time.
Safari Day One
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2023723&l=1a211&id=48101028
Safari Day Two and Blyde River Canyon
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2023726&l=08c44&id=48101028
Capetown
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2023727&l=82484&id=48101028
Cape of Good Hope Tour
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2023778&l=f31ba&id=48101028
I tried to put these in chronological order. So we started out with a safari and Joburg tours and then went on to Capetown where we went to the water front, climbed Table Mountain, went on a wine tour, and went on a Cape of Good Hope Tour.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Friday, January 9, 2009
More about South Africa
I always think that i can recount all of my adventures day by day without getting bored. Despite 26 years of evidence disproving this theory, I still keep trying. I think not this time though. So the abridged version of my trip to SA. Here we go...
I believe we ended with Katie and I eating sushi and having our eyes roll back in our heads with delight. This kind of culinary orgy continued throughout our time in South Africa. Of course there were days that werent quite so nice (we ate at gas stations a few more times than probably necessary but there is something to be said for junk food) but for the most part we indulged ourselves in middle eastern and sushi. Oh the gluttony didnt end. And of course the highlight, the unicorn, the most elusive of elusive cuisines on this side of the globe... MEXICAN FOOD! OK it wasnt that great and the margaritas were pretty weak, but when you are deprived of water, you dont complain if there is a little dirt, right?
Moving on from cuisine which, though a highlight for me, is probably not nearly as exciting for other people. We spent the first two days in Johannesburg essentially farting around, shopping, eating, getting our bearings. The third day we went to Soweto is the largest township in Johannesburg and where both Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela are from. In fact, there houses are about a block from each other on the same street. Which is pretty amazing to think that two such brilliant influential men came from the same place, knowing the same people, learning the same lessons. Its pretty cool to think about who they must have known, the people that were inspirations to them, two men who have become inspirations for so many others. What might those people have done if not restricted by race and poverty?
The Soweto tour was interesting, but I have a tendency to shy away from "misery tourism". When I was in New Orleans, I didnt especially want to see the Lower Fourth ward, I had no interest in seeing the slums outside of Bombay, and I dont want to go to Goma, in the Congo, unless I have something to contribute. Soweto is not nearly as impoverished as these places, although it is certainly poor, and the uprisings there played an important part of South African political history. And, everyone seems proud of Soweto. It was almost as though not visiting Soweto was an insult to the town of Joburg. So we hired a car and went out there with two guys who where staying with us at our hostel, the someone what overambitiously named Backpackers Ritz, and a driver we hired. Now the thing about this driver was he was pretty racist. Now I dont have a problem with a black person from South Africa nursing a lingering resentment of white people, or really for too many non-white people anywhere nursing said resentment. White people in general have a pretty terrible history of exploitation, segregation, dehumanization etc. So really, if there are members of minority groups out there that arent all about my lily white skin, than i get where you are coming from. But maybe, maybe, and I am just putting this out there, you shouldnt be in the tourism industry. When your tour guide is saying some pretty resentful things about white people and white power structures and our continuing work to suppress the black people... well that just gets uncomfortable. He wasnt a terrible man or anything, it was just that sometimes, it was uncomfortable to be lumped in with power structures and histories that I really dont agree with. And when we asked questions about things other than the struggle for apartheid, basically the only answers were that South Africa is great, South Africans are the smartest and the best, and the politicians are honest and true and there is no corruption. Which many other people were quite happy to tell us was not the case at all. National pride and racial pride are great. But that doesnt mean that they are infallible.
Oops in true Linnea fashion I got bogged down in detail and once again one entry for one day. I swear one of these days i will get better at being concise.
I believe we ended with Katie and I eating sushi and having our eyes roll back in our heads with delight. This kind of culinary orgy continued throughout our time in South Africa. Of course there were days that werent quite so nice (we ate at gas stations a few more times than probably necessary but there is something to be said for junk food) but for the most part we indulged ourselves in middle eastern and sushi. Oh the gluttony didnt end. And of course the highlight, the unicorn, the most elusive of elusive cuisines on this side of the globe... MEXICAN FOOD! OK it wasnt that great and the margaritas were pretty weak, but when you are deprived of water, you dont complain if there is a little dirt, right?
Moving on from cuisine which, though a highlight for me, is probably not nearly as exciting for other people. We spent the first two days in Johannesburg essentially farting around, shopping, eating, getting our bearings. The third day we went to Soweto is the largest township in Johannesburg and where both Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela are from. In fact, there houses are about a block from each other on the same street. Which is pretty amazing to think that two such brilliant influential men came from the same place, knowing the same people, learning the same lessons. Its pretty cool to think about who they must have known, the people that were inspirations to them, two men who have become inspirations for so many others. What might those people have done if not restricted by race and poverty?
The Soweto tour was interesting, but I have a tendency to shy away from "misery tourism". When I was in New Orleans, I didnt especially want to see the Lower Fourth ward, I had no interest in seeing the slums outside of Bombay, and I dont want to go to Goma, in the Congo, unless I have something to contribute. Soweto is not nearly as impoverished as these places, although it is certainly poor, and the uprisings there played an important part of South African political history. And, everyone seems proud of Soweto. It was almost as though not visiting Soweto was an insult to the town of Joburg. So we hired a car and went out there with two guys who where staying with us at our hostel, the someone what overambitiously named Backpackers Ritz, and a driver we hired. Now the thing about this driver was he was pretty racist. Now I dont have a problem with a black person from South Africa nursing a lingering resentment of white people, or really for too many non-white people anywhere nursing said resentment. White people in general have a pretty terrible history of exploitation, segregation, dehumanization etc. So really, if there are members of minority groups out there that arent all about my lily white skin, than i get where you are coming from. But maybe, maybe, and I am just putting this out there, you shouldnt be in the tourism industry. When your tour guide is saying some pretty resentful things about white people and white power structures and our continuing work to suppress the black people... well that just gets uncomfortable. He wasnt a terrible man or anything, it was just that sometimes, it was uncomfortable to be lumped in with power structures and histories that I really dont agree with. And when we asked questions about things other than the struggle for apartheid, basically the only answers were that South Africa is great, South Africans are the smartest and the best, and the politicians are honest and true and there is no corruption. Which many other people were quite happy to tell us was not the case at all. National pride and racial pride are great. But that doesnt mean that they are infallible.
Oops in true Linnea fashion I got bogged down in detail and once again one entry for one day. I swear one of these days i will get better at being concise.
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