So JJ and I went to South Africa for two weeks over Christmas 2006 and New Year’s. Why South Africa? Well, when you live in a country with unbelievable crap weather like the Netherlands (aka, the New Jersey of Europe), you get a solid six months of winter darkness, meaning only 7 1/2 hours of daylight in December/January. And this past Summer 2006, we had only two or three weeks of decent weather that I recall. After that, there was no way I was going to go that long without beach and sunlight ever again. That meant going South of the Equator over Christmas and New Year’s. With only two weeks to do this, South Africa seemed like a great choice, and was the closest flight (at least compared to Argentina or Australia) that guaranteed decent weather and something to do other than lying on the beach.
We seriously thought about going back to Sri Lanka, to finish our 1994 vacation that got so rudely interrupted, but given that there was still a lot of unrest there, it has to wait.
What clinched it is that my girlfriend JJ and I were raised on nature documentaries (“the nomadic male, kills the female’s cubs, forcing her to propagate his own bloodline”), so we both had a desire to do take a crack at a safari as well.
Now, JJ and I have done plenty traveling, so we have a pretty good idea what we like and what we don’t like. What we hate includes:
- Package tours with loud Dutch families, each one louder and ruder than the next.
- Package tour hotels full of fat Germans in bikini briefs hogging all the deck chairs.
- Package tour buffet meals full of fat Russians and Poles shoving all the dinner rolls into their beach bags for consumption later.
- Touristy locations with drunken, sunburnt Brits passed out everywhere.
- Touristy, overcrowded sites so popular, even Americans who have finally built of enough courage to finally get a passport have made it there. (Easily spotted by their official “traveling uniform”: baseball cap, shorts, sneakers, fanny packs, fat asses.)
What we like:
- Travelling on our own, and visiting all the sites that interest us at our own pace.
- Eating locally.
- Interacting with the locals and eventually finding cool stuff the guidebooks (and the fat bastards mentioned above) never find.
- Something physical (hiking, biking, swimming).
- Learning something while we do it.
So we went through a Dutch travel agent, who created an itinerary for us, booked us accomdation at each location, and set us up with a rental car. Without a doubt, this was one of the best vacations I have had in a long time, for a number of reasons:
- There was no terrorist attack this time. (No Al-Qaeda, no PKK, nothing!)
- There was no natural disaster of any kind this time. (No tsunami, no avalanche, hurricanes, nothing!)
- Hotels were all great.
- Car never broke down (a few close calls).
- No animal or criminal attacks (that we didn’t successfully get away from).
- I didn’t get deathly ill (at least while in South Africa).
Incidentally, South Africa is a fascinating, dynamic place. The reasons why I fell in love with it will become apparent over the next few entries.
December 24, 2006 – Landing in Johannesburg
We landed in Jo’burg on 24 December, late at night. We stayed at an “airport hotel” (nothing like any airport hotel I had every stayed at – this was a small hotel on a farm in a rustic setting 30 minutes from O.R. Tambo Airport (FKA Jan Smuts airport – more on this later)) that night, and were handed our rental car the next morning. A Dutch woman representing the tour operator met us, and a couple of other groups that had signed up for a similar “Fly and Drive” itinerary.
Now, I was crestfallen to see that a number of families with small children had actually signed up for this “Fly and Drive” thing as well. I had quite an image of myself, signing up for a safari into a malaria zone (I even got the shots and the pills!), going into a country with a phenomenal rate of crime (particularly carjacking), and staying in accommodation that wasn’t exactly a Disney hotel. Nonetheless, there are two nationalities that you can always count on to take “relaxing” vacations in the most dangerous places in the world: the Germans, and the Dutch. Sure, Brits, Americans, and others go to these places as well, but they’re all packing malaria pills, jackknives, hidden wallets, mace, copies of our passports, consular addresses, escape routes, etc. The most the Germs or Dutchies will do is buy those stupid safari pants where the trouser legs can be removed with zippers, so you have a handy pair of shorts. Other wise, they comported themselves as if this was just another day on vacation in Marbella or something. All that was missing was the inflatable raft.
So we sat in the hotel lodge reception: two families with six kids between them, another “couple” featuring a far older man (mid 40s) and a younger woman (early 20s) – who claimed they were uncle and niece (to quote Bruce Campbell “and I’m a Chinese jet pilot”) and JJ and I.
The agency had booked us a Renault Clio (which is powered by two gerbils on a wheel), which naturally was missing that morning. A young guy from the agency did not have it on the print out, and boy, did that old Dutch broad get worked up. “But I ssspoke wiss de man at the airport” she protested loudly. The guy was pretty relaxed about the whole thing (as all Africans tend to be – I learned). The woman was freaking out at this point, with her laughable English. The guy’s English wasn’t much better, but he came out about a hundred points ahead of this woman in my book for intelligence and pragmatism.
“Which man,” he asked. “What was his name?”
“I don’t know!” The woman huffed. “He was thick,” she motioned around her middle (it sounded like she had said ‘tick’), “with-” now she started patting her head “-small hair.”
We had to fight to keep from snickering. And this woman told us she had lived in South Africa for 12 years.
In the end, they upgraded us (result!) to a brand new Nissan – which seemed like an Escalade alongside a Clio.
She explained the whole “parking guard” system. Because unemployment was so high, young black South Africans would work as “official” (i.e., they worked for the businesses at which you were parking) or “unofficial” (i.e., you were parking in their hood) parking guards. You paid them a few Rand to watch your car, she explained. I learned the official ones generally wore reflective orange vests.
She also said she generally tipped two or three Rand, max. Now, anyone that knows the Dutch knows they are about the cheapest bastards on planet Earth. I think the only nation that are cheaper might be the Poles, but the Dutch are pretty bad. (Where do you think the term “going Dutch” comes from?) Needless to say, I tipped at least five.
Before we hit the road, the woman gave us a few pearls of wisdom for driving in South Africa:
1. Never have your windows rolled all the way down.
2. Never drive after dark.
3. Only ask white people for directions, as they know more.
Now properly scared spitless about the prospects of driving in South Africa, we hit the road.
