Hi all,

It's taken a lot longer to get access to Internet than I expected! We've been in South Africa for six days now...and it's been good so far. Very busy!

We arrived on Saturday night the 10th after two days of traveling: the night flight from Ontario, CA to NYC, a trip into the city to borrow my friend's South African cellphone and have dinner with Dad and his girlfriend, and then a 17-hour flight from JFK to Johannesburg. (We stopped to refuel on Sal Island in the Cape Verde Islands in the middle of the night.) Long flight, swollen feet, veggie meals, free viewings of "The Queen" and "The Departed." Good times.

Joburg is big. It's a very strange combination of first world and third world, if you will. We took a 1/2 hour taxi ride to the B&B we've been staying at off and on...once we FINALLY made it through customs. (They had one person serving an entire plane full of people from NYC, so it was slow going.)

We're staying in a neighborhood called Melville. It's not too far from two universities and is known as one of the few places where it's safe to walk around at night (within reason) and sit outside restaurants to eat dinner. Every house is behind big walls and fences. It reminds me of Port Moresby, PNG in that respect. All the people you see walking are black. Most of the people you see driving are white.

We decided to do our two full days in Joburg tour-style. There's an organization called Taste of Africa run by an interesting guy named Cedric de la France that I decided on. So we went our first morning to the Apartheid Museum, which was wonderful. Lots of interesting photographs and films and descriptions of what went on during a roughly 50-year span when apartheid was part of the country's laws.

Race relations here are strange. Perhaps it's not right of me to say that as an American, since things aren't exactly peachy in the USA, but blacks and whites seem to stay very separate. Melville is known as a "white area." Soweto, where we spent a night (more on that later) is a "black township." Yes, apartheid officially ended in 1994, but this sense of separate worlds still seems to be very much alive and well. I ask questions of everyone I meet about it, but I don't get any clear answers. It's fascinating and disturbing.

Anyway, after the Apartheid Museum, we went to Soweto. It's the place where the riots against apartheid started in 1976. The birthplace of black power, if you will. I'd always though the townships were full of shacks and nothing else, but there are actually very middle-class neighborhoods bordering some of these tin-covered tiny shacks with shared porta-potties. The population of Soweto is 4 million people, as opposed to roughly 2 million in Johannesburg proper.

We met up with our two guides, Eunice and Spongila. They took us to a few different neighborhoods, including Kliptown, where the Freedom Charter was signed. We talked with a guy who runs an organization called SKY, Soweto Kliptown Youth, and drove around a bit. We stopped at Regina Mundi Catholic Church, where many of the political gatherings were held in the mid-70s. There are still bullet holes on the ceiling! Then we stopped at a shebeen, a local tavern, and had a few beers with the folks that were drinking there. It was fun, relaxing and interesting to see where the conversations led. Over and over again we heard "We're so happy you're here in Soweto. You see, it's a safe place. A good place. Tell your friends in America to come here." After a few drinks, we went to Orlando East, the neighborhood where we were spending the night.

We rented a shack for 100 rand, roughly US$17. It was TINY. A twin bed, a dressing table (where we ate dinner and breakfast) and a chair. The walls were pasted with magazine pages. Our hostess, Amy, cooked us a yummy dinner. We ate it with our hands, by candlelight. Then, as I was recording nighttime sounds outside the shack, she and two of her sons came out. I started interviewing them, as well as her two other sons, and we had a great couple of hours of conversation outside before heading to bed.

The funny thing is that I felt safer in Soweto than I do in Melville. In Soweto you know people are watching what goes on outside their houses. They know their neighbors. Everyone is hidden behind walls in Melville. But I digress.

The next day, after a breakfast of leftovers, we went to Eunice and Spongila's shacks, just a little ways away from where we stayed. I interviewed them and Tony, one of the Taste of Africa drivers, about their thoughts on Soweto and tourism and life in South Africa. Then we drove out to the Hector Pieterson Museum, which commemorates the life of a young boy killed at the beginning of the Soweto Uprising after black South Africans refused to allow schools to be taught only in Afrikaans (a variation on Dutch spoken by the Boers/Afrikaaners whose ancestors settled here generations ago). We drove by the "standard" Soweto spots: Nelson Mandela's former house, Archbishop Desmond Tutu's house, Winnie Mandela's house. Then we stopped back in Kliptown at the house of a man named Porto, whose family housed Nelson Mandela when he had to hide from government officials. Porto had lots of stories to tell about growing up "coloured" (white mom, black dad) and being a top-notch boxer.

We headed on to downtown Joburg to meet up with Cedric de la France, who took us walking around downtown. You have to understand that white South Africans are generally terrified to walk around downtown. It has this dangerous, awful, deadly reputation. We really liked it though...at least during the day. People were out and about. We got a few looks, but it might have been because Cedric was walking barefoot. I mean, I held onto my purse, but it was kind of like coming to NYC for the first time. And it was fascinating to see the architecture and the taxi (minibus) system and the view of Joburg from the tallest building in the city. The weirdest thing about downtown Joburg is how little traffic there is. It's eerie. I interviewed Cedric about his philosophy on Soweto and the importance of bringing tourists to really get a sense of the place.

On Tuesday morning at 5 a.m. (!) we headed off to Kruger National Park, a 6-hour drive away. We traveled with Giulietta, an Aussie/Italian woman, and Steven, our Zimbabwean driver. Most of the time we were flying at 140 kph. On the windy roads it was pretty interesting. Only one close call. The landscape looked very midwestern -- corn, corn and more corn -- for a few hours, until we got midway through Mpumalanga Province. All of a sudden the roads got windy and we crossed over a pass and down into these valleys full of shacks and punctuated with these beautiful rectangular cliffs. It was stunning.

Kruger Park is in the low veld area. It's kind of a thorny version of California scrublands. We dropped our stuff off at the campground (yes, behind a fence...but inside the park) and went out for a drive as soon as we got there. Safaris are strange beasts. At first we oohed and aahed over every zebra and impala (antelope) and wildebeest that we saw. Then they became standard once we started looking for the "Big Five." That's buffalo, lion, elephant, rhino and leopard, in case you were wondering. We saw them all, by the way. We drove pretty much all day yesterday -- 11 of us (including Douglas the guide and David the driver) in this extended Land Rover with open sides. We'd turn these corners and come right up against these elephants munching away at the grass and giraffes sitting there 20 feet away. They're huge and beautiful to see in the wild.

But the highlight of my time was this morning, when four of us -- plus Rodney and Dingen, the guides -- left at 4:30 for a two-hour bushwalk. We got onto the main tarred road in the park and pretty much immediately came upon 3 hyenas, just hanging out there. Two of us took photos, but I just watched their goofy movements and listened to the sound of their paws padding along the asphalt. We went ahead a mile or so and came upon a giant leopard just sitting in the middle of the road. Oh man. It sat there in our lights for maybe five minutes, then slunk away into the dewy grass it had been trying to avoid. We turned off onto a dirt road, twisted and turned a bit, and suddenly came upon five rhinos! They ran off...and actually, rhinos can run quickly! Then we got out and started walking. Both Rodney and Dingen had rifles...just in case. I spent the first third of the hike scanning the horizon for lions. Didn't see any. In fact, we only saw an impala. But we got to see the thorny bushes and how high the grasses were and the fact that the dry riverbeds have water only a few feet down that elephants will dig for. It was awesome. Once we got back into the vehicle, we started back toward our campsite. All of a sudden, this black snake twisted and launched itself up at the side of the car. Um, it was a black mamba...one of the most poisonous in the world! Then once we got back on the tar road, we pulled up next to three wild dogs. They are ugly as hell but really fascinating and not seen too frequently in the park.

After breakfast we started the long drive home. We were the last two dropped off, so we got a bit of a tour of the Joburg suburbs and rush hour and all that. So here I am, smelly and exhausted but also exhilirated from a really interesting couple of days.

We fly out to Cape Town tomorrow. I'd like to try to upload some pictures when I can, but you'll have to be patient for now. The next week should be a little less dramatic but still pretty interesting. I'll keep you posted.

S.