South Africa

Leaving Amsterdam, 9 september
Today our flight will leave at 9.00 PM. This means we can take our time to drive to Schiphol airport.
For the first time since long we will not have any jetlag symptoms. A night flight seems attractive to us. We will take off in the evening, go to sleep because it is night, and than wake up at our destination.

Although, at first we land in Johannesburg and from there we have to fly four more hours to Cape Town.
For the first time we packed sleeping pills. Hopefully, the combination of the late time and the sleeping pill will, for once, take care for a good sleep during the flight.

On our way to Schiphol I see the clouds tear along the sky. I start to worry about the take off. Once inside the airplane I accost a flight attendant to ask if she expects any problems. She doesn't and of course she's been put in the right.

About an hour after take off we take our sleeping pill and hope it will work.

Arriving in Hermanus, 10 september
Around 7 in the morning we land in Johannesburg. The sleeping-pill didn't work as well as we hoped. We slept an hour, woke up to doze further. But all in all it is better than stay awake the whole flight.

In Johannesburg most passengers leave the plane. A couple of others stay. We are not allowed to leave the plane and no new passengers may enter, since KLM is not allowed to sell domestic flights inside South-Africa.
On a very empty plane we continue our trip to Cape Town. During the landing we have a lot of turbulence. We know that a couple of days ago there was a major storm near Cape Town and this probably is the left-over.

I'm glad that I haven't eaten since yesterday because I am getting so nauseas that otherwise I sure had to use that notorious bag. I also worry if we will make it down in one piece but everything goes well. Around 11.00 AM we are in Cape Town.

After we take our luggage we take up our rental car. Thankfully the employee confirms that we will keep full insurance if we drive over the gravel roads in Namibia.

Once we are on the way to Hermanus it seems as if the plane has secretly turned in our sleep and flew back to the Netherlands. The weather is the same as when we left Amsterdam: a lot of wind, dark clouds and cold. We read Dutch words everywhere. It is just like we are back in the Netherlands. Only the slums, that we pass just after we leave the airport, prove that we are indeed in South Africa.

Soon we reach Hermanus. We have a beautiful room with view on the ocean at the Sandbaai Country House. In the bathroom is an antique bath with legs and outside high waves lash the shore with a lot of noise.

After we are settled we go to Hermanus to find out if we can watch whales. The “whale crier” is around and blows his horn.
There actually are whales to be seen. Unfortunately not so very close to the shore, by which we can not see their apparently huge size. The weather is too bad to take a boat out on the ocean, so we will have to do with this. Sometimes a whale is close enough to see him clearly through our binoculars.

Also during dinner we have a view from our table at these water blowing giants that lift their tales or heads regularly.

When we come back in our hotel we find out that we are the only guests. The owner seems a bit shy and leaves everything to "my girls". These are the dark employees. As we discover that our toilet hasn't been cleaned very well, she rather sends us to another room, than handle the brush and suds herself. But we want to keep our beautiful room so nothing remains for her than to clean the toilet herself. She somewhat grumbles over her "girls" and we hope that she won't take a firm line with them tomorrow morning.

At night she lights a fire in the open fireplace in the living room for us. That is not superfluous since it is rather cold.

Around Hermanus, 11 september
Last the night the storm was still terrible but today starts sunny and the wind has abated. As we leave our room we notice that they have prepared a breakfast buffet just for the two of us. The owner and employees eat from that too, but still we feel a bit embarrassed that we don't eat all of it.

After breakfast we go looking for penguins. We don't feel like driving all the way to the Cape Peninsula. Therefore we go to Stoney Point near Bettys Bay where they should have penguins too.

When we arrive we see nothing so we follow the path that leads to Stoney Point. Before we know it we are surrounded by penguins. We can approach them up about 6 feet. They find us a bit creepy so they hide themselves under a log. But if we stand still they get curious and come to take a closer look at us.

After a while we walk further to Stoney Point. This appears to be the outermost point of a spit of land that is fenced. Behind the fence are hundreds, maybe thousands of penguins. They all walk and twitter by the lot. Some take a dive, others make a nest and some already have chicken.
We stare our eyes out at this swarming mass of penguins. Apparently they feel safe because of that fence since some of them come so close that we can almost touch them.

After a while we leave the place and the weather is getting worse. This means that it is time to go shopping. We made a list at home with items we think we might need on this journey. We take the list to the Somerset Mall.

After we finished shopping Hans has to go to the bathroom. There sounds a radio and he comes back and tells me that he heard that an airplane just flew into the World Trade Center and that an attack is not excluded. We have a small private plane in mind but because it is raining hard by now, we decide to go back to the Sandbaai Country House.

Luckily we have a television set in our room and they have CNN. In the mean time a second plane hit the other tower and they are very concerned about four other flights. The images are constantly repeated and than comes a message that a plane crashed on the Pentagon. We cannot comprehend what is going on and what this will mean for the world. In our subconscious, thoughts of a Third World War loom up.

Before the actual images come on we read the text at the bottom of the screen: “The south tower has collapsed.” I shout: “Hans it is collapsed! The World Trade Center is collapsed!!” Hans: “No, that is impossible, those towers are build to prevent collapsing.” Me again: “Hans, it says collapsed! COLLAPSED!!!”

We watch the screen for hours in horror and it won't take in that those images are life and real.
Beside we have just started our vacation, we have been high up inside the World Trade Center, last year we passed by the Pentagon and we have American friends. Barbara even works as a flight intendant at American Airlines. That makes the whole situation even more surreal.
On the other side, I am very pleased that we just made a flight and that the next one will be only in more than three weeks. Beside the dismay and the unbelief we realize ourselves immediately, and maybe better than the average Dutchmen, what this means for the people in the USA.

At night, when the towers are definite gone and a fourth plane has crashed, we have to tear ourselves away from the TV screen to eat something. At the restaurant comes a buzz from all the tables. Every new guest is being interrogated about the latest news.

To Clanwilliam, 12 september
When we want to pack our car we see a man from the Sandbaai Country House wash our car. This is apparently part of the service. That gives us the chance to have a good look at the property.

The whole ground is walled in and the walls are provided with barbed wire. At the walls are signs that warn that this property is guarded. These measures are more rule than exception in these parts. We ask ourselves if it would be nice to live like this.

When we are fully packed we can set out for Namaqualand. We hope to see some flowers there.

When we come in the vicinity of Cape Town we pass many slums. These are endless plains of square buildings of about ten by ten feet. The walls are made of logs or corrugated iron and the roof is a piece of plastic. These "houses" are all only three feet from each other.
Along the (free)ways are people walking, hitch hiking and people who sell newspapers or fruit. Towards the evening all those people walk in the direction of the slums carrying large faggots or a load of some kind on their head.

In Clanwilliam all the hotel rooms are full. The woman at the tourist information makes some phone calls and finds us a shelter at some peoples home. It is some sort of Bed & Breakfast.
But at first we go for a bite at a restaurant and of course CNN is on the television. The names of all the perished crew members are on the screen. Thank God that we don't read Barbara's name.

After we have settled in the B&B we go watch television with the owners. Of course our conversation is about the events of yesterday, but they also start talking about the apartheid. We conclude (freely) that the apartheid was above all based on fear. In their stories we don't hear so much hate toward their black fellow-citizens, but mostly fear. Sometimes that will be with justice in view of the many slums that you come across here.
On the other side have the dark people as much, if more, to fear from the white South-Africans.

At this moment a colored woman stays at their home. The owners feel cheated. They tell us that a white person called to see if there still was a room free. "They always do that, otherwise we immediately hear the accent of a colored or black person'" says the owner. "And than a colored person arrives, what we just have to accept. We don't dare to send the colored person away, because otherwise in tommorow's newspapers will be printed that we are racists." According to us that would indeed be racist, but well.

A little later she tells that it is probably just an idea in their mind about blacks and not based on facts. Without going bail for them we can imagine that it is hard to chance your feelings, just because the apartheid is being abolished. While that fear and/or hate for blacks is inculcate from when you were born.

To Upington, 13 september
In the morning a comprehensive breakfast is presented by our hostess. It is sort of an English breakfast. We leave to drive in the direction of the Kalahari Gemsbok Park and we will see how far we make it today.

It is still "baie" cold and it is blowing "baie" hard. This means that most of the famous "blommen" of Namaqualand don't feel like flowering. We drive endlessly over gravel roads through vast nothing. We see one bush camper but no other vehicles. We also don't see much wildlife, except for some ostriches, which was probably on an ostrich farm.

In Upington we also look for a Bed & Breakfast. We find one by which we can stay in a luxurious summer-house in the garden, at the river. It has its own refrigerator and bathroom. There is a television set but barely any reception.

We drive to the city center (although that name is to much credit). At first we try to book accommodation for the Kalahari Gemsbok Park at the tourist office. Unfortunately all the camps are already fully booked (it is weekend), but because we have a tent with us we can always go there on spec, they say. And if we are lucky we can still get a bungalow on the spot because of cancellations.

Than we go the supermarket where some queer customers, probably homeless people, stand about. We are molested by beggars. When we park the car in front of a restaurant a little boy comes to ask if he can guard our car for money.

If the stories drove us mad or if our instincts are right is not clear, but we don't feel comfortable here. We have the impression that around every corner there is danger. When we finish our meal we hurry back to our Bed & Breakfast where we can park our car reasonably safe.

Next: Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park