Arrival in Johannesburg
I get into South Africa with little issue. I can stay here until June. I talk to a bunch of cab drivers Shoestrings Airport Lodge. I get in a small cab with a guy. Unfortunately, he doesn't know where it is. Since I don't have the address, I give him the address of a backpackers lodge in the township Soweto. I get totally rinsed on the trip AND the lodge is full. So the receptionist has someone pick me up to take me to a bed and breakfast that is four times the price. The lady who picks me up is a novice driver. She takes me to an cash point so I can keep handing out money. The first one eats the card of the women in front of me. Another one next to a KFC is out of order. Finally, I get some cash from an ATM in a grocery store.
It is not late when I settle into my room. I walk up a hill to some fancy restaurants. Now, the houses in this neighborhood are small. The plots are, by my estimation, between a quarter and a half acre. They all have tall barriers around their perimeters. None of them are two story buildings. The restaurants are fancy and packed. There are some guards in the street. I decide not to eat I am any of these restaurants. The reasons for this are that I am depressed about the amount of money I already spent today, I am not dressed well, and there are fast food joints up the street. On the other hand, to get to the fast food by the ATMs, I do have to walk alone in the dark in a neighborhood new to me.
Fortunately, there are some nice sights: I pass a house in which Mandela lived that has since been converted to a museum. Also, I get a good look at a 458 Italia. I eat in an English style fish and chips place that is out of rolls. I drink grape Fanta with my meal. On the way back, I inspect a memorial for the student uprising of 1976. In my room, I watch a debate on poverty in which Tony Blair argues that government is the key to decreasing poverty.
With two Norwegian girls, I enjoy my own full English breakfast in the morning. I accompany them to Park Station downtown in a taxi bus for one eightieth of the price I paid the taxi last night. I use the Internet cafe to find a place to stay for tonight. I finds four fast food restaurants in the station. None of them have meat other than chicken, which is a shame because I had eggs the morning. So I go to Nanny's and there I order a bunch of side dishes, the best of which is flame grilled corn on the cob with a spicy sauce. I get a peanut butter smoothie for desert and eat while talking to a guy, Brill who works in the station. He takes me to a Vodafone store where I get a $25 data plan for my tablet. This is liberating since I can now use the internet where ever I have phone signal.
My next step is to get a cab to the hotel. It is mid afternoon and the hotel is nearby. A guy in the taxi rank says that it isn't safe for me to walk to the hotel with all my stuff. The cab costs me $10 despite its being 1.5km from the station. Also, this trip is the third time in a row my taxi has been stopped by the police.
The hotel is under construction, but there are dorms available. Alone the a small room with two bunks beds, I am enjoying the WiFi access when Simon enters. He is a hairstylist that is looking for a location to open a cosmetics store. He has a girlfriend in Botswana who studies business. Simon and I go out to eat. I tell him about my plan to live in the bush. He gives me some advice about girls. We talk a bit about meditation before going to sleep. I get ripped up by mosquitoes in the night because my skin is not tough, no one turns off the light, and there is a broken Window.
In the morning I get breakfast at a posh cafe across from the hotel. I read about John McAfee in the January 2013 issue of Wired magazine. I walk by many nice spots around lunchtime in order to eat KFC... It was worth it. I see the movie, Django, at the Rosebank at night. Where are those guys from that are taking Fox and others to the mine at the end? Fox makes a slick cowboy. Really everyone was good. The scene where the dentist tells of Hilde was wild as they danced around the personal space of the other. Hilde really seemed to understand the style of Tarantula.
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| View from Joberg Hostel |
So I got a room in Melville International Backpackers lodge to see a different part of town. I meet a German dude, Chris, who finished his bachelors, worked for a year, then started traveling. The place has WiFi with unlimited data between 8am and 10am. Chris and I talk about energy use because his background is in the economics of oil and natural gas. We go to a bar with some Dutch chicks from from he hostel. They are here to study the relationship between parents and students for a bachelor thesis. Everyone is really polite at dinner. I have a mushroom risotto that is pretty good. The gin and tonic is way to strong. I switch a two hundred rand bill for two one hundreds.
In the morning I laze around eating some bread another lodger left. Eventually I get on a mini bus to go to town. I saw the cab driver that took me to Melville. He shouted out to me. I scurry around trying to get on the right bus. I buy a button down shirt to keep warm. It is packaged and I don't bother to try on this fine blue piece of apparel. The package says it contains a large long sleeve shirt with a sixteen point five inch collar. The lady at the counter does not accept the hundred rand bill that I got from one of the Baltic peoples I went to dinner with last night. She says that it is smudged. I pay with some other bill and I resume my quest for the Apartheid Museum. No one seems to know what it is. I get on a bus. While waiting for it to fill, I see the host of the hostel I which I am staying doing some shopping. I forget his name so I don't say anything. We depart. After a short distance, the driver stops and asks whether I am going beyond the museum. I say no, he points to a museum. I get out. I go into the Museum of Africa because it is free and here I am. I see a nice exhibit on political cartoons. Yalo is a prominent figure.
After an hour, I go get some food at a corner store. I get fried fish, a spicy bean and onion salad, and a peach Tropika juice with that smudged one hundred rand bill. The juice gets a ten out of ten. Get more, world. Anyway, I go to a wild taxi rank under a building. I pay a guy who direct me to a taxi under the advice of its driver. Then we talk the driver takes me to the Apartheid Museum, I pay him. Luckily, I spent only a buck fifty on the trip, redundant pay included.
The museum is cool. I receive a non white ticket, so I have to go through a certain door. The story starts with the discovery of gold in a land where natives have ancestors from easy back. There's a rugby group parading around, but they hardly get in the way of the exhibits. The temporary exhibit on Mandela features a 37 painting portrait of him throughout his career. I get a coffee half way through. On my way back to the spot I left off I see Chris. I finish looking through the museum. Chris is still there when I get to the end of the account of the oppression of the non white people. We wait for his guide.
I go to the Spar grocery store. The prices are good: a bunch of snacks for traveling tomorrow run me eleven bucks. When I return, no one is around to go out to eat, so I go to a Mexican place a block away. I get a fat portion of nachos. Oh, but, before dinner, I had a delicious mint Magnum.
I sort out my Nexus in the morning of the fifth so I can enjoy it on the train. I take a cab to the train station. In Park Station, I get a chicken samosa, some Chicken Licken wings, and more snacks for the ride. When I am in the snack shop I see an old lady following a boy around my age. She asks me whether I am coming or going. I start to say I am leaving. Before I finish, she tells me the boy got robbed right outside the station in broad daylight. I don't think to ask the boy whether he is alright. The lady and a store clerk start a rant about safety and such.
I am in economy class, with two seats for the first six hours. There are lots of kids in the car. This is good because I feel safe enough to take out my tablet. Never was crying a problem. I was really impressed with the mother sitting in front of me. As soon as her girl made a peep, the mom was up wrapping the baby to her back with a towel. She started a little jig and the baby was placid in seconds. Another thing of note about the ride: there were a lot of vendors walking the aisles selling things like beer, cigarettes, chips, ice cream, and candy. The scenery of the last few hours, from about eleven to four on the sixth, was really beautiful. It started out like Arizona with small mountains in the distance. Eventually, the tracks seemed to be the only thing at the bottom of a valley.
CAPETOWN
I stop at a top notch KFC to relieve my hunger before heading to a hostel. I had a wrap with fried chicken, a hash brown, and mayo. It reminds me of the Chrunchwrap Supreme by Taco Bell. The cab is not expensive.
Capetown Backpackers is a really nice place. I talk to family until like ten o'clock in the evening. I haven't had a conversation with Sam for too long. Anna looks healthy. My parents are really taking care of me even though they are so far away. I get some Thai food at a place around the corner. I meet a drummer named Claude. He takes me around Long Street. We look for a spot to play pool but we have no luck. I agree to meet Claude in the morning to smoke pot, but I don't get out of bed in time. Am I now, too lazy to smoke?
Ugh ok on Sunday I laze around. You know I walk down long street looking for a long sleeve shirt. I get an ice coffee in a market. There I sit next to a group of about eight, one of which is a girl. I stop in the store that I had the shirt I like most. It is made in Nepal. None of them fit right so I dip back into the cold. I go to a service on sex at the Common Ground Church with Shirley and Sam. I start to think that Christians have to give up on either marriage or abortion to maintain position of on one of the two. I liked the bit in which the speaker quotes Jesus saying if one arm does bad, chop it off the body. That is why I switched hands: my right arm did wrong.
Dinner at Shirley was with the aforementioned Tobias' and two other girls: Nike and Sipokazi. The former is a houseguest of Shirley. She is starting an orphanage. She studied philosophy at Leeds. She went into finance in Dubai where she met the latter, the who works for the UAE airline. We talked about the church service. We mostly talked about the cause of the recession. Sipokazi told us that a man she was serving died while flying. Sam gave me a synopsis of her job at an Internet marketing company. Shirley is a wonderful woman who teaches art from her home. The women were really a pleasure for me.
The following morning, that of the seventh, I studied both philosophy and math. In the afternoon I went to the waterfront. I walked around a really fancy mall looking for a shirt like the one Serif wears in the movie, Matrix Reloaded. A button down with no color will suffice. I ended up with a ten dollar button down shirt from Pick 'n Pay. It's got a collar. I enjoyed both space heaters and a White Russian at a bar outside the mall.
Dinner I ate on the Waterfront, at Moyo. The waiter brought me a bowl and a pitcher of aromatic water for me to wash my hands. The bread was like pita bread but softer, thicker, and more moist. It was very good. I got fish with very nice breading. It was beady. The cheese plate I got at the end was the best. It was local cheese served with a toasted bread, fruit, and jam. I enjoyed all this with a too tall stout.
I watched the first half of the Manchester United versus Manchester City fame in a bar, Raffiki, near Cape Town Backpackers. In the morning I got myself out of that hostel. I made my way about half a click to another hostel that has pool tables, Anzac.
After settling, I head towards Long Street. On the way I stop for some groceries. I eat a dough all that is as big as half of my head. I get some turkey food on the way to Lion's Head, a peak separating Camps Bay from Longstreet. It was such a climb. I was panting. But the views were breathtaking so I still think I am in shape...
The morning of the tenth was more busy for others than for me. I mixed sweet corn and rice for breakfast. Mateus was fooling around on his command station. I caught the last half of a service in a nearby church. I bought a small book by Karl Jaspers in the church used book store. I read for a bit in Company's Garden. Mateus met me in the street on his way to get peanuts for the squirrels. He suggested I go to Camp's Bay. I agreed, so he put me on a bus. It is a regular tourist attraction. In retrospect it was sort of like Laguna Beach. I read some of a book by Goethe while eating a grocery store sandwich. Since it is like a play I am reading it aloud.
Health notes: I have a rash on my left knee. My new nail is rotting.
I enjoyed a delicious chocolate shake in a restaurant, Primi, on the beach. There I finished watching the cartoon, Escaflowne. It features a guy trying to control fate like an ancient civilisation using human will as energy. Well, at the beginning, the guy represented the influence of consumers on television shows they watch.
Back in Cape Town, I got some dinner in a restaurant Claude recommended that serves Asian food. After spilling my Lassi, I met a guy who was peeling hard boiled eggs while he told me that Jaspers must be smart. I don't realize I need to hand my receipt to the chef. Reading the book, I learn that a component of psychotherapy is showing people they are worthy by discussing their organizing principles.
Bashir, a young guy who became homeless five months ago, and I eat dinner on a bench. He tells me that he liked to ride trains. Now the guards do not let him. His course is electrical engineering. In the evening I watched a crazy version of Spiderman that I never heard of before. It is better than the one with Kristen Dunst but it seems to be lower budget.
On the morning of the eleventh I buy a red shirt at a store Johan recommended. I visit and laundromat and I visit an Internet cafe to sort out my tax return. There were no upsets to this schedule. I lounge at Anzac for much of the afternoon. Kobus tells me he had a row with a colleague while he is preparing for a team building meeting. I head north on Longstreet until a bus guy offers a ride to Green Point. I visit Sea Point first. I eat a Hake fish cake that finally make me forget about the sweet, cloudy, giant dough ball I ate a few days ago. Then I walk through Greens Point until I get to the stadium. I get in a bus to Longstreet. I can't commit to any spots on Longstreet so I try to walk back to the lodge. There I smoke with Johan. I try to meditate but I fall asleep. I awake from my own farting. Unhappy, I continue meditating until I feel like I tried.
The morning of the twelfth was both wild and hectic. I finished the book by Jaspers at a Parisien patisserie, Cassis. There is no way for me to avoid the conclusion that I enjoyed the atmosphere despite spending five USD on tea and an apple treat.My next mission was Table Mountain. I decided to take the cable car. It had no polls to support the cables. Actually, I learned from Errol, an employee, a thick stationary cable supports two that move. The floor of the cable car rotates. I descended on foot. It was quite pleasant. I had snacks enough for me and a blackbird with orange on the bottom of the wingtips. Two ladies picked me up as I was walking back of the the road and they took me all the way to my hotel. How nice is that?
In the evening I talked with all the boys. The main thing we were talking about was whether it was good for the world that China is getting ahead of the United States. Some notion I had of politeness is just unsuitable for this environment.
In the morning I arise at 10. Oh and my appointment with a doctor is at 10:15. I make it there by twenty to eleven. The doctor has a look at the boils on my knee right away. He hopes the cause is Staphylococcus and he fears it is something from Madagascar. He pops the pustules for both cleaning and sampling. Eighty US bucks and one giant carrot cake later, I find myself in a park on all sorts of biotics.
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