Blog 6

Sunday, September 28

Traveling on tour, the guide brings the traveler to sites of interest, perhaps telling a bit about the monuments and historical sites.  Perhaps one makes a friend with a fellow traveler.  This type of trip is wonderful, in fact, I’ll be doing a guided tour Tuesday and Wednesday before my return to the states.  However, when possible, I prefer to stay with locals, and, if they have time, go to the places they know and love.

My introduction to Marilyn Bassin came through my investment advisor, Lewis Krinsky from Houston.  Marilyn is an astonishing woman, driven to help the poor and underprivileged with a compassion almost as strong for abused animals as for neglected children.  Her ever-present smile only disappears when someone says, “You can’t do that.”  We awoke early today to take a morning walk.  Her neighborhood lies in a hilly area of two lane roads and sprawling homes.  Her particular house, a lovely two story peach granite 4000 sq. ft. eloquence, has three levels of security, beginning with a doubly manned guarded gate entry to the 80 homes in the complex, to her personally walled home and yard, to sliding bars on each patio window.   As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, she told me to leave my camera behind on our morning walk.  We strode up the hills, perhaps a mile walk in all, glancing through gates at ever larger mansions, more elegant yards, and more spacious views of the city below.  Few pedestrians crossed our path, though a group of white bicyclists and two trucks of black security guards rushed by.

Accompanied by her children, college freshman Gina (occupational therapy, determined to help cerebral palsy sufferers as inspired by her mother) and 15 year-old tenor sax player Shane, Marilyn took us out to a scrumptious breakfast at J.B. Rivers, a classy popular outdoor bistro in an open air mall of restaurants.  I wanted French toast, but Marilyn vetoed that and I ordered the vegetarian scramble, a delectable mound of scrambled eggs blended with spinach, mushrooms, cucumbers, avocado (called avos here) to make a sweet taste of green eggs without ham.  Gina and Marilyn enjoyed hard boiled eggs with hollandaise served on salmon, spread across a large thick rye toast, and vegetarian Shane had plain scrambled.  One can judge the psychology of a family by the happiness of the children, and this one glows.

 

Lions and rhinos and deer, oh my!  Wild animals exist only in game preserves, and even in those, their mortality depends on the degree of protection.  Privately owned lands, well fenced, with gun toting guards, offers unique opportunities to witness these animals in a nearly natural habitat.  Across South Africa landowners have created perhaps a hundred of these private preserves, many only a few dozen acres, but most large enough to allow for tourists to enjoy a wide variety of wild animals.  We toured the “Lion and Rhino Park,” a multi-hectares landscape with special areas for wild dogs, brown lions, white lions, and cheetahs, each with separate fenced enclosures and fed a carcass or two at one o’clock each day.  A river area contained hippos and tigers.  In the main range, rhinos with huge horns rambled at leisure, with a plethora of ostriches, gazelles, elands, wild pigs, and the occasional zebra and giraffe.  A lovely day seeing the wilds.

Following that, we headed to the “Cradle of Humanity,” an archeological site where explorers discovered two of the “missing links” in the evolution of homo sapiens.  The tour includes a six-aisle museum, complete with artifacts and interactive video, followed by a forty-five minute climb through the cavern.  At each end markers note where the skeleton of one, and the skull of the other “link” lay, uncovered by archeologists, and from a platform one can see the current excavations continuing in the search for more fossils (so far plenty of animal and fish fossils, no more apes).  The cavern itself has little to offer in the way of beauty as, unlike most caverns I’ve seen in America, Europe, and China, South Africa didn’t prohibit the breaking off and collection of formations, so, consequently, tourists have broken of and collected all the stalactites and stalagmites, leaving a toothless mouth of stone scars.  Still, being in a chilly cavern brings, well, chills, and a fun hour of over-worldliness.

Home again and a bit later we drove out for dinner at a local deli, Shwarma Co, which specializes in pita sandwiches.  For ten dollars one gets a huge platter of chopped steak (or chicken), and a choice of five “salads” from an offering of forty.  I chose the eggplant, red and green peppers, Chinese miniature corn with cucumbers, tomato and onion, and sauerkraut.  I cut an entrance into the large round pita provided, and stuffed in as much as I could, adding a layer of that delicious white sauce every centimeter or two.  Yummy in the tummy!

Tomorrow Marilyn and friends take me on adventures in shanti town, Soweto and accompanied locations.

Philip