Saturday August 15th Ivory Sands to Vic Falls

A ridiculous 4am wake up call and by 4:30 we are saying good by to Ivory Sands and loaded into an open RR for the cold 30 minute drive to the park entrance. 

We transfer our bags to the cab for the 1.5 hour drive to Kruger Airport.

We pass through Hazy View (aptly named) and we see some beautiful eucalyptus forests that are farmed for pulp as well as macadamia  farms (world's largest producer or these nuts).

We get our bags plastic wrapped for 50 rand/ bag and load up on a South African Airways flight to Joburg. We have a two hour layover and do some shopping in this new terminal that was built for the 2010 Soccer World Cup.

Our British airways flight to Victoria Falls was on time and we are waiting in the typical third world county que for passport control.

We check into our great hotel (the Safari Lodge) and take a sunset Cruise on the Zambezi River. The Zambezi is 2700km long and runs through 4 countries and is the 4th longest in Africa.

Beautiful sunset. Met a couple from England that are teachers in UAE.

Dinner at hotel. Bed at 830.

Nighty night!

Friday August 21, 2015. The day we leave Cape Town.

Friday August 21, 2015.

Felice and I got up and had our continental breakfast at the old Victoria and Alfred hotel on the waterfront with an excellent view of Table Mountain on another gorgeous day.

We strolled around the waterfront and saw a couple of ships in dry dock being refurbished. Then we wandered into the One & Only hotel (swanky).

Lastly we went to the crafts market called Water Shed. There are hundreds of stalls of all local artisans.

We got back to the hotel at 10:45 as planned as we had packed and our driver was due to show up at 11:10. Problem--11:10am was the time of our hotel pickup at Vic Falls.

We see Hayes in the lobby. He shoots out of his chair and says we have to go now our flight is at 12:20.

We run upstairs and smart Hannah is in our room and she has packed our bags so we shove in our purchases and haul tail downstairs, jump in the van and we make it to the airport with a few minutes to spare.

So now I sit on board our flight surrounded by my great family. I'm especially proud of H&H for soldering through all the early wake ups and planes and travel stuff and for Felice and her excellent planning of this trip.

We fly to Joburg and the have a 5 hour layover for a 7p flight that lands in Atlanta at 5am.

Just landed in ATL---chic-fil-a for breakfast as we wait on our 10:30 flight

BY the way, our flight was the second longest flight in commercial aviation at this time---wow!

Rank (Dist.)	From	To	Airline	Flight number	Distance km (mi) [nmi]	Scheduled duration	Aircraft type	First flight
1[11]	Dallas/Fort Worth	Sydney	Qantas	QF 8	13,804 (8,578) [7,454]	16 hr 55 min† 16 hr 50 min‡[12]	Airbus A380-800	29 September 2014[note 1][14][15][16]
2	Johannesburg	Atlanta	Delta Air Lines	DL 201	13,582 (8,439) [7,334]	16 hr 40 min† 16 hr 05 min‡[17]	Boeing 777-200LR	3 June 2009[18]
3	Abu Dhabi	Los Angeles	Etihad Airways	EY 171	13,502 (8,390) [7,291]	16 hr 30 min	Boeing 777-200LR	1 June 2014[19]
4	Dubai-International	Los Angeles	Emirates	EK 215	13,420 (8,339) [7,246]	16 hr 35 min	Airbus A380-800	26 October 2008[20]
5	Jeddah	Los Angeles	Saudia	SV 41	13,409 (8,332) [7,240]	16 hr 55 min† 17 hr 20 min‡[21]	Boeing 777-300ER	31 March 2014[22]
6	Dubai-International	Houston-Intercontinental	Emirates	EK 211	13,144 (8,168) [7,097]	16 hr 20 min	Airbus A380-800	3 December 2007[23]

We made it back to ATL and cleared customs and had a 5 hour layover for our flight to Greensboror. BY 1pm we are back in our home. 

Hayes leaves for Vandy tomorrow. 

We had an amazing trip.

Good day to all.

Wednesday August 19, 2015- Long Walk to Freedom

Wednesday August 19, 2015

We were picked up by our guide Titus at 8 and then picked up a few more guests.

First stop was the District 6 museum. In 1901 Cape Town started segregation.  In 1950 apartheid started. In 1966 the first removal of people from the Cape Town area.

The government Introduced townships and relocated people there. 

The Dutch came first to the cape in 1652. They were trying to find a route to India. The Dutch developed farms and they be ought slaves from Indonesia. Then Brits took over and abolished slavery.

Bubonic plague introduced via shipping. They used this as an excuse in 1901 to move the non-whites, as they called them.

6 districts total and each district was for a particular group;

• Black
• Indian
• Colored- Which means anyone of mixed heritage

Even prisons were segregated.

The Government introduced the Pass law-this meant that 24/7 you had to carry your pass booklet. It dictated your school, work and the areas where you were allowed to be.

The Pencil test was instituted to delineate Blacks. A pencil was put in your hair and if it stayed, you were considered Black.

People born after 1986 are called "born frees" since they were never in a time of Apartheid.

We then went to an area of District 6 called Langa- which means the sun is shining. It is the first and oldest township. We saw a a lot of shanty homes.

25% unemployment in this area. We went into a typical home and it was appalling conditions. Smelly, holes in the roof and broken windows. 2 families lived in this one.

You buy a prepaid electricity card. For your rent you get running water.

Went to a bar of you can call it that. It was a shack of corrugated metal with no electricity and a dirt floor. We tasted the local brew.
2.5% alcohol. $3.50 for a bucket.

Yes, this is the outside of the "Bar."


The brew mistrees filling up a bucket of beer....


Yes, Felice is drinking beer from a paint bucket!



We went into another and more dismal shanty home. It was nothing more than a lean to. It had 4 rooms. A kitchen,den and 2 bedrooms. It is the size of half our kitchen.



We visited a preschool. While the primary through high schools are free, but the pre school is not. The children sang the SA national anthem. The saddest part of this visit is when we were told that these 3, 4 and 5 year olds are taught what child abuse is and how to report it. Felice tells me that the Junior League in WS has been doing this for years.







 Cape Town facts;

• We are 3000 km from Antarctica.
• There are 11 official languages.
• Afrikaans is a combo of Dutch and German.
• Table mountain often has a shroud of fog on top of it. The locals call it "the table cloth"
• SA has three capitals. A legislative (Cape Town) judicial (Pretoria) and  executive (Joburg).

We drove down to the water front and had a fish and chips and then took a 15 minute boat ride to
Robben Island. That's Hayes looking back at Cape Town and Table Mountain.

On the boat a young woman asked me take a picture of her and her friends. After I did, I asked where she was from and she said NC. I said I was from Winston and told her my name. It was Margaret Carlson who was in Hayes' class at Summit starting at 5k. She is in Cape Town on a program from UNC. She and Hayes had a great reunion. 

Robben means penguins and used to have a huge population of them.

Now it is a UNESCO world Heritage Site (opened in 1997) as the former prison where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 25 years in prison. We first took a bus tour.

Besides the many political prisoners it held, Robben held a Leper colony from 1846 to 1931.

1997 opens as a museum.

Lime quarry. Mandela worked there. 13 years.
Doctor seen just once a week. Respiratory problems. Bleeding hands.
1977 hard labor stopped.
20-30 worked at one time. Transfer prison to university. And teach in the sand of the quarry.

1200 former political prisoners had a 1995 reunion. Stone wall and first stone was placed by Mandela.

Had to be 18 to visit your parent in prison.

3000 prisons at peak.

Jama, a former political prisoner was our tour guide.He was 19 when he got here. he helped start the Soweto Riots,
He told us 30 people were in each cell. They slept on mats until 19?? when they got beds.



Showers are sea water. 1973 got hot water.

Prisoner number was 366/64 means prisoner #466 to arrive in 1964.

A got 4 letters per month.

This is the lime quarry where many (including Mandela) worked in brutal conditions. The stone pile (in the foreground next to the blue sign) was started in a 1995 reunion when Mandela placed a single stone and so did all the others.

 Against the wall in the background is the garden where Mandela worked in his later years. As he wrote Long Walk to Freedom, he buried the pages in this garden.

 Mandela's cell

An outside shot of the main prison.

Each prisoner was assigned a group letter For example, if you were in D group were allowed 1 visit and letter every 6 months. Visits were always observed. If you spoke in a language other that the 2 official, the visit was cut short. 30 min max.

It was an incredibly humbling day.

RB

Thursday August 20, 2015 Cape Town

Cheryl, our guide for today, picked us up at 8 and we proceeded to Table Mountain on a beautiful clear day. These types of clear, sunny, not windy and warm days in the winter are quite unusual. Again Africa is kind to us.

Much of what is now Cape Town was water and was filled in to create more land.

Funbos (fine bush) shrub bushes are all over Table Mountain. Trees planted and it killed off natural flora. 9500 kinds of Funbos in the cape area.

Table was awesome. You can see cape of good hope and Cape Point where we will be later in the day. 3000 foot elevation. Cable car floor turns 360. No hurricanes or earthquakes in the cape.

This is a view of Cape Town and Table Mountain from the sea.

The view from the bottom of the cable car station up Table Mountain.

Lions head in the foreground and signal mountain in the background.

In the pic below the last thing you see is the Cape of Good Hope.

Fun Fact-Cape Malay is a term you hear in the area--it is for the predominately Muslim community. Slaves came from Malaysia and Indonesia. 

Then we proceeded on a beautiful coastal drive to arrive at this small fishing village (Hout Bay) where we took a short boat ride to see the seals.

I thought this was a cool photo. I have no idea what the yellow thing is.

Van will be happy that in South Africa, they have a politically correct "Gay Dolphin" store.

We then proceeded through the Table Mountain National park to Cape Point. Cape Point is just East of of the Cape of Good Hope. 

Table Mountain and the city of Cape Town are close to the northern extremity of the same peninsula. The cape is located at 34°21′26″S 18°29′51″EE, about 2.3 kilometres (1.4 mi) east and a little north of the Cape of Good Hope on the southwest corner.^[1] Although these two rocky and beautiful capes are very well known, neither cape is actually the southernmost point in Africa; that is Cape Agulhas, approximately 150 kilometres (93 mi) to the east-southeast.

We went to the Two Oceans restaurant. Superb seafood and a magnificent view. We then took a venicular up towards the lighthouse and climbed the steps to see this structure. We walked all the way down to the parking lot. At an overlook we saw whales. 

For David W!

Our second to the last stop was to see the African Penguins at Boulders Beach part of Simons Town-very stylish!

We ended our African Adventure in Fish Hoek (Hoek means corner) where we met Heidi Sulcas. Heidi was Mindy F's freshman roommate from Augusta, GA. We took a walk on th ebeach and then went to her home for a visit and a delicious dinner.

This dish she served is Bobotie which is. Capes lay dish of Ostrich meat and curry and dessert was malva pudding. 

What a wonderful way to end our trip!

Love to all. We are ready to return.

Hayes leaves for his Junior year on Sunday or Monday and Hannah leaves for her Gap year in 24 days.

Tuesday August 18, 2015- Vic Falls to Cape Town

After a great nights sleep, Felice and I ventured into town for some shopping. The locals were glad to see us ;-)

We returned to the hotel to pack and we had an 11 am pickup then a 30 minute trip to the Vic Falls airport. After the requisite bag wrapping in plastic ($5/bag- by the way I did not send photos of the comedic way Hayes and I wrapped our bags in the USA.) we checked in and went through security. This was the first and only shoe removal of the trip. We saw plenty of signs warning of the dangers of Ebola.

Our trip today is Vic Falls to Joburg with a two hour layover and then we head to Cape Town for a 8p arrival. We left 30 minutes late because the Captain informed us that they had to wait for some animals to clear the runway  before they could land in Vic Falls.

One interesting aspect of international travel is the pre flight insecticide spray. We've seen this several times as the flight attendant strides down the aisle spraying some toxic but nice smelling agent orange and we have to breath this stuff in.

Our hotel (The Queen Victoria) in the cape is great and we are adjacent to the wharf. We had a a very late Sushi dinner at Willoughby & Co. Sushi--so local and fresh---yummy!

Bye.

Sunday August 16, 2015- Victoria Falls

Today we packed a lot in. We got a little bit of extra sleep and then headed to the falls at 9:30 where our guide gave us a one and a half hour tour.

We learned of Dr. Livingston's discovery of the falls and his love for this area. In fact, he asked that when he died that his heart be cut out and buried in Zambia and his body returned to England where it was buried in Westminster Abbey. 

Livingston is revered in at this point because he successfully petitioned the queen to end the slave trade between Great Britain and this area. 

The Zambezi river cuts through and forms Victoria Falls as well as the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. It is the longest and widest falls in the world. It's something to see as the pictures should well describe.

Dr. Livingstone, I presume??

We stopped to see the famous 1600 year old Bau-Bau tree where Livingston ate lunch and George Washington possibly slept there as well. We then went into town to the market where we did some great shopping. 

In Zim they use the US dollar as their main currency as well or other major currencies like the Euro and the South African Rand. This is due to the rampant inflation as evidence by hundred million dollar bills and trillion dollar bills that we saw that could be bought at the market.

Felice holds the Ten Trillion (yes you read that right --Trillion) Zim dollar. Wild inflation in '08-'09.

Lunch brought an interesting diversion as we ate at the lodge and they've introduced a new activity called vulture feeding. Felice, ever the raptor fan, got to go down and get a front row seat to watch the entrails being spilled out by a scared looking attendant.

After lunch we departed for a 15 minute helicopter tour of the falls. This was really exciting and a great vantage point to see that area. Richard spotted a golf course too. 

Next came the crowning achievement of the day as we took a canopy tour (Multiple Zip lines) overlooking the Zambezi river and the Victoria Falls Bridge. This nine station tour had some incredible views. 

Can you spot the low crescent moon?

We went to a traditional African buffet dinner. The Boma restaurant remind me of some of the buffets on a cruise ship. The drumming was fun and it was a good way to end a busy day. 

Love to all.