Setting the Stage

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We are flying over desert -- it looks as if we are over the surface of another planet. We left home about 13 hours ago, flew through Amsterdam (three hour layover) and have 8 hours left of this flight. Today's destination: Cape Town, South Africa. I have never been this far from home. However, flying is a bit like suspended animation -- a slightly annoying and very cramped pause, after which you happily disembark in a new location. So I don't feel very far from home, until I look out the window and feel as if I am on Mars.

Counting travel time we will be gone for two weeks; the longest vacation (other than maternity leave) that I have taken as an adult. Being away from the kids for so long (rather than being so far from home) is the extreme that hits me the most. But this trip is in honor of Leslie's 50th birthday; a few extremes are in order!

It's now an hour later and we are still over desert, but the look of it has changed several times; both in terrain and color. It is still desolate but quite beautiful. We are approaching someplace called "Tamanrasset" -- will have to look that up. The prefix "Tam" seems to be in a lot of the names of places we are visiting. In fact, our first hotel is in a neighborhood called "Tamboerskloof".

We will land at 11pm and then still need to get through passport control and then to our hotel. The trip will start in earnest tomorrow morning. I slept fitfully en route to Amsterdam then soundly for the first three hours of this flight. Other than a short nap I'll try to stay awake so that I can be sure to sleep tonight. The time difference is seven hours and I'm really hoping jetlag won't affect my enjoyment of the first day.

We will spend three nights in Cape Town, then drive through scenic areas to Franschhoek and will stay there for 2 nights of wine tasting and good dining, then more scenic drive to Wilderness and Tsisikamma National Park. Then a two step flight transfer (including a one night stay in Johannesburg) to Kruger Park where we will stay at a game lodge called Elephant Plains. Should be a magnificent trip.

In the spirit of the "L" in LDTG , I have prepared for the trip with some reading and other cultural pursuits. I started with some light reading (actually audiobooks) -- a few volumes from the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith (which takes place in neighboring Botswana.) I then read Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. And The Syringa Tree by Pamela Gien. I am currently reading two books: Long Walk to Freedom -- Nelson Mandela's autobiography; and Jump! -- a collection of short stories by Nadine Gordimer. I also saw the play "Two Girls" (twice) and talked to the playwright/actress of this one-woman show about her family's experiences in South Africa. And I watched the movie Cry, Freedom about Steven Biko and Donald Woods. I also had several conversations with a friend from Malawai. She spoke of the beauty of the continent of Africa and her joy that we are seeing past the troubled side of modern Africa -- the AIDS and poverty and war and corruption -- to realize that it is a beautiful place that is a very worthy travel destination. And we also talked about the vestiges and legacies of colonialism, about how different countries within Africa have come through the aftermath of colonialism in very different ways. And about how much more draconian Apartheid was than the colonialist policies in her country. And on and on. I cannot do the conversations justice here. I was grateful to have these books, plays, movies, and (especially) friends to give me some sense of where I am going, so that I can begin to orient the place and the people in my mind and heart.

I also have a pile of books waiting for me to read after my return. That's how I like it to be; read enough beforehand to lay the groundwork; with more to read afterwards after my horizons have been expanded!

The terrain out my window has changed again - still arid but now a bit mountainous, with what look to be dry riverbeds. I wish I had a better map of Africa so I could know what country we are flying over. The cities of the flight tracker are Niamey and Dosso.

Still another 6 1/2 hours to go! Perhaps I'll do some reading in the guidebook about the places we are going! All that reading and I have hardly cracked the guidebook.

Less than an hour left. The marathon flight wasn't nearly as painful as I thought it would be. I slept on and off, watched two movies, read, and wrote. Looking forward to a hotel bed tonight, for sure!

It is a bit surreal to look at the "flight tracker" map on the screen and see the red line of our flight path. Have I really spent the past 10 hours flying the entire length of Africa? The moon, almost full, is now visible and the light of it is reflecting off of a layer of clouds; it looks as thought the clouds are land and the moon is just above the horizon. And I can see stars as well! Appropriately, Orion is just over the wing of the plane. He helped me feel at home in Rome almost exactly three years ago.

We have arrived! The bed & breakfast is called Leeuwenvoet House, which means "Lion's Foot", and is pronounced loo-en-foot, according to Leslie, our Dutch linguist (or at least the closest we have to one :-). We arrived here at 12:30am and still received a very hospitable welcome and a tour of the very picturesque inn. There is a large common breakfast area with doors out to a patio with a small pool, and downstairs there is a lounge with an honor bar (for the "D" part of the LDTG.) The room is very pretty and spacious. It is now 2am. We enjoyed a bottle of wine in Leslie & Linda's room with a toast and great conversation. Now it is definitely time for sleep!

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Photos

Niger
At least, I think it was Niger.

The Surface of Mars
Really I think it may have been Algeria.