Portals to Africa   I start what will be several Series on the Africa/Switzerland trip as I sit at the mirrored desk cubbyhole in my cabin on the Blue Train. But that’s way ahead of the story. So let’s resort to the literary device of the flashback.

I left New York on June 20, the day before the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. My first Portal to Africa was the Rector Street Station of the #1 subway line, to which I dragged my wheeled bag on a five-minute walk. I still often pack too much, as everyone does, but to some extent I’ve improved my packing abilities. Into this one, medium-sized wheelie, I had everything, including books and maps on both Africa and Switzerland, my new Dell laptop, a blue jacket that Eleanor Hardy and the Society of International Railway Travelers had just distributed for the Rovos Rail trip, and both a blazer-and-slacks and tuxedo for the formal nights on Rovos and the Queen Mary 2. What I’ve also learned to do is pack (or sometimes carry separately) a small bag for overflow en route, just in case. I chose the bright red QM2 bag I’d gotten as a freebie on the ship.

[At this point I’ll plunge right into my first digression. The next stop north on this line used to be the station that served the World Trade Center, which is now gone, which is why, after Nine Eleven, the southern tip of this line was closed. Given the big hole of Ground Zero, at its south and north ends, the subway tunnel just gaped from the excavated hillsides. I only recently became fully aware of how this was resolved, given that the hole is still there. A concrete, “square tube” was built on pylons connecting the two openings of the subway tunnel, and tracks laid through it. Now, subway passengers have the illusion of going directly from Rector Street up to Chambers Street in a seamless, dark subway tunnel.]

The #1 would reach the Penn Station subway station on its own in about a half-dozen stops, but New York is possibly the only city whose subway lines offer, in many cases, parallel express tracks. On pulling in to Chambers Street, a # 2 express train had just pulled in from Brooklyn, so I crossed the platform, and with only an intermittent stop at 14th Street, I was at 34th Street/Penn Station in no time.

At my second Portal to Africa, Penn Station, I got a ticket from a machine for the Long Island Rail Road, connected at the Jamaica hub in Queens to the automatic, driverless AirTrain on concrete, outdoor pylons to Kennedy (an extra $5 on one’s MetroCard), and I was at my final Portal to Africa, JFK, where I separated my red carry-on temporarily filled with essentials from the rest, just for the flight.

I indulged in what has become an airport ritual before flying. I stopped for a sandwich and beer at a bar, and met a guy who was going to Africa on the same flight to do documentary filming on the Aids problem. Our long conversation was quite informative. I regularly meet the most interesting people while traveling.

UTC   We’d be crossing six time zones, and for the upcoming Pacific trip I’ll need to go more deeply into the time zone topic, so let me lightly introduce some of it here. At one point somewhere, while I was not watching, someone pulled a switch. They stole GMT and replaced it with UTC.

As you know, degrees of longitude, on which time zones are based, are centered on the Greenwich Observatory SE of London (2001/6 “A Loin in the Pivement”). This is where 0° of longitude is located, which is the basis for the term “Greenwich Mean Time”, or GMT. However, the term “Greenwich Mean Time” has now been updated, perhaps to make it sound a bit less parochial, to “Coördinated Universal Time”. This seems reasonable. However, the astute reader will note a dissonance between that new term and its presumable acronym UTC. And, as ever, therein lies a (short) tale. It involves a language issue, and goes back to that traditional English-French griping.

For “Coördinated Universal Time”, English speakers wanted CUT, but for “Temps universel coördonné”, French speakers wanted the exact reverse, TUC. What to do?

A compromise was made between CUT and TUC: UTC. But essentially, UTC doesn’t really stand for anything, does it? Isn’t it just an anagram of one or the other? But actually, English speakers have an “out” here that French speakers do not. UTC could possibly be read in English as “Universal Time, Coördinated”. So there.

I also read that the change from the term GMT to UTC took effect as of 1 January 1972, which means I’ve been sleeping right through it here. Who knew? It would also mean that when we were so memorably visiting Greenwich in 2001 the change would already have taken place. But I suppose you couldn’t expect Greenwich to exactly advertise the fact that its name had been dropped in what has now become the historical designation.

So, back to business. As I said, especially in the Pacific with the International Date Line, I’ll be talking quite a bit about UTC. But for Africa, let me say this. Remembering that going westward is always an EARLIER time zone, Eastern Standard Time in New York is designated as UTC-5. But Eastern Daylight Time now at the summer solstice is only UTC -4. The one stop on this flight, Dakar, Senegal, in West Africa, lying south of London, happens to be exactly at UTC, so you see the four-hour difference. Also, realize that we would be flying into the oncoming night, meaning we’re “losing” those hours in the time zones that we’ve passed. All of southern Africa, though, is UTC+2 (eastward is always LATER), so the entire length of this flight is six time zones, combining -4 and +2.

To take this a bit further, Tanzania at the end of the train trip is UTC+3 and will involve an hour’s change from southern Africa. Switzerland and Germany normally are a simple UTC+1, but with daylight time will be UTC+2, an hour earlier than Tanzania. From there back to New York’s daylight UTC-4 is six hours, each hour deliciously added, one day at a time, resulting in a joyous series of 25-hour seagoing days.

South Africa: SAA Flight   I recently discussed the stand-up comic Lewis Black, and want to cite here a routine of his. His style is quite unique. He rarely smiles, and plays the neighborhood curmudgeon as he tries to demonstrate the frustrations of life. In a dispassionate, gentle voice, he will mention reasonable observations, and then, coming upon the unreasonableness of life’s situations, will often YELL his frustrations in a punch line. Viva curmudgeons!

I remember recently his routine about flying to New Zealand. He said it’s a long, long flight. You read your newspaper. You take a nap. You go for a short walk. You take a nap. You eat a sandwich. You take a nap. You read your book. You take a nap. You chat with your neighbor. You take a nap. You go to the bathroom. You take a nap. Then you look at your watch. AND THERE’S STILL FOURTEEN FRIGGIN’ HOURS LEFT!!!

Actually, it wasn’t all that bad at all. South African Airways had good service and served good food. Three meals in that time, plus beverage service, helped pass the time. The dinner out of New York included a wonderful risotto. The breakfast out of Dakar was built around a delicious broccoli frittata. Only the dinner before Johannesburg could have been a bit better.

This flight was one of three lengthy ones I’ve taken. When I flew from New York to Santiago de Chile on the way to Antarctica in 2006, the flight was 10h0. It did include a stop in Lima, Peru. That was relatively close to the Chile end, but you do have to include the hour’s ground time at a stop like that in the time of the total flight. At least there wasn’t more than a single time-zone change there, since it was southbound.

Longer than that flight was the one from Vancouver to Seoul on the way to Siberia in 2005. It was nonstop and came to 11h20.

But New York via Dakar to Johannesburg was the winner in total time. It was scheduled at 17h40, but because of time lost circling Dakar, it came in at total of 18h10. We left new York at 5:20 in the afternoon, and arrived in Johannesburg at 5:30 in the afternoon the next day. That 24-hour difference is the over 18 hours travel plus the six hours time change. Or look at it this way. We left New York at 5:20. On my watch we were in Dakar at about 1 or 2 in the morning, add the four-hour time change and locally it was 5 or 6 in the morning. On my watch, with the Dakar delay, we arrived in Johannesburg just after 11:30 in the morning, but add the total six-hour time change from New York and it was 5:30.

Frankly, it was not so bad at all, and with the frequent naps and meals, I didn’t really have any “fourteen friggin’ hours left” feeling. However it was good that the Dakar stop did fall just about halfway there, since it had the good effect of breaking up the trip.

The sun rose while we were on the ground in Dakar. This was very good in the attempt to adjust to the time change. You actually felt you’d been flying “into the night” and “skipping time zones” when you saw daylight appear on setting down in West Africa.

I’ve been several times in northern Africa, but this was my first time in “Sub-Saharan” Africa, and it was pleasing to have at least made this stop in West Africa, since I would be shortly in both South (southern) Africa and East Africa. This short time in Senegal allows me to count it as country #108 in my Travelers’ Century Club tally (2003/6).

Three things occurred to me while looking out the window (we were not permitted to leave the plane, as we had been in Lima). Senegal (as Sénégal) is part of the former French West Africa, and as such, announcements on the plane the whole way were also in French. I was aware that Sénégal is proud of Léopold Senghor, a poet, politician, its first president, the first black member of the Académie Française and one of the most important African intellectuals of the 20C. While pondering this, I noticed that we were at Léopold Senghor Airport, which helped tie all these facts together in my mind.

Secondly, looking at the map, one notices that Senegal wraps entirely around the tiny country of Gambia, which consists primarily of the land on both sides of the Gambia river as it flows into the Atlantic here on the huge western bulge of Africa. That reminded me of my recent quoting Alex Haley, author of Roots regarding “family” words he knew that indicated his family’s roots in Gambia.

Third, looking again at the map due east of Senegal is Mali, and off into Mali, slightly to the north, is the indication in French of Tombouctou, which in English is Timbuctu. It’s quite curious how Timbuctu has become the symbol of the farthest of the far, the remotest of the remote, since remote places are not in short supply. Yet I’m sure there are readers who ponder occasionally “Where’s he going next, Timbuctu?” No, that certainly isn’t the case, but I did have to smile, thinking that here in Dakar I was at least as close as I was to still distant Timbuctu.

The entire flight had been to the southeast, and continued in that direction. We overflew the rest of West Africa (no views through the clouds all the way to Johannesburg), then were over the Atlantic again, where we crossed the equator, with no mention made, as would have been on a ship, then over Angola and Namibia. Over Namibia we weren’t far to that long protuberance to the east, the Caprivi Strip, but I’ll discuss that when I’m at Victoria Falls. Over Botswana, we passed the capital, Gaborone, which we’d be in on the train later, and then promptly crossed into South Africa, and landed at Johannesburg. On landing, South Africa was for me country #109.

Johannesburg is the largest city in Sub-Saharan Africa, and its airport is the largest and busiest in that same region. Joburg, as it’s usually styled, is a child of the 20C, and developed from the gold rush that had overtaken the area. Large and important as Johannesburg may be, it has little of interest to me or other travelers. It also has a reputation as a crime hub, although I read conditions may be improving slightly. In any case it wasn’t my goal.

I never realized it before this trip, but Pretoria, the administrative and diplomatic hub of South Africa, is essentially a twin city of Johannesburg, and they both lie within the same metropolitan area, 50 kilometers / 31 miles apart. The Johannesburg airport lies to the north of that city, and Pretoria is still north of the airport, and is duly served by the airport as well.

As always, I had done all my own planning and made my own arrangements online, following the philosophy of “if you want it done right, do it yourself”. Generally speaking, what I had planned fell well into place; as to what others planned for me, it was a mixed bag; see below. I had booked the flight, then had arranged for a pickup service called “Magic Bus” to meet me and drive me to the hotel I’d booked in Pretoria. Exiting customs, I saw someone holding my name on a signboard written larger than I may have ever seen it before, and it was a welcome sight. We drove in darkness and cold promptly to Pretoria, pulled right up to the invitingly bright entrance of the Protea Hotel Capital that I’d found online months ago, and after checking in and settling in, I went for a recuperative jet-lag night’s rest.

South Africa: Background   I have no intention of offering a “South Africa 101”, both because I’m not qualified to do so and because that’s not the purpose of these essays. But a bit of background is helpful to review the Where and the When of matters, that is, a slight dash of geography and a soupçon of history.

As always, I recommend the reader have an atlas handy at all times, but let me give the barest-of-bones image of the layout of what we’re talking about. South Africa is at the rounded southern tip of Africa, at the Cape of Good Hope (to be distinguished from Ushuaia at the very pointed southern tip of South America, at Cape Horn). The shape of the country is an oval lying on its side, the right side higher. The Cape of Good Hope, and with it, Cape Town, is in the extreme southwest, and Johannesburg/Pretoria lie in the center of the northeast. The route between them (we’re back to routes!) lies roughly at a two-o’clock-to-eight-o’clock angle. While Cape Town and its harbour are obviously at sea level, Johannesburg is at 1700 meters / 5577 feet, with Pretoria a bit lower at 1330 meters / 4364 feet. This plateau is known as the high veld (pronounced FELT). Generally speaking, my two goals on this trip of Pretoria and Cape Town are diagonally at opposite ends of the country, proceeding from the high veld through the low veld to sea level, then back, and beyond. That’s sufficient geography for our needs here.

I recently referred to my abiding interest in James Michener’s novels, from whose fictionalized history based on fact I’ve learned a lot about numerous locations, all travel destinations. His chronological layering of historic events appeals to me especially. “The Covenant” is his novel on South Africa, and he covers the arrival of the Africans, the Dutch, the English, and gives a thorough insight into the apartheid era. However, I’ll just give a superficial account of selected events.

Starting about 8000 BC, various groups of Africans inhabited the southern tip of Africa. As for European arrivals, we once again reach the importance of routes. It was the route from Europe to Asia that drew Europeans here. In addition to the route crossing from Europe to Asia overland, a potential water route meant sailing around southern Africa. More than most places, multiethnic South Africa as we know it today is the result of its location at the point around which this “Eurasian” route passed. Europeans came from the (north)west, and eventually, Asians, particularly Indians, also Chinese, came from the east to settle the country. Nothing could be more illustrative than South Africa how location on a major travel route affects its development and history.

The first Europeans who dared sailing “off the edge of the earth” in this region were the Portuguese, Bartholomieu Dias in 1488 and Vasco da Gama about a decade later, in 1497. The Portuguese never did take full economic advantage of the region, however. It was the Dutch who opened the trading route to India via the Vereenigde Oost-indische Compagnie/United East India Company, known in English as the Dutch East India Company, and by 1652, they thought it wise to open a way station at the Cape, hence the birth in that year of Kaapstad / Cape Town. Although Cape Town today is not the biggest city in the country, it still is referred to as the Mother City, quite regularly, even in trivial everyday matters such as weather reports on the radio.

Jan van Riebeeck was sent by the Company to set up a supply station at Kaapstad, and not to establish a colony (but you know how that sort of thing goes). He remains a founding figure of the colony, perhaps in a similar way to Pieter Stuyvesant in Nieuw Amsterdam (New York). However, neither one of these two individuals was perfect. Stuyvesant was known for his temper and intolerance; van Riebeeck was sent to Cape Town as a form of exile, as penance for having been found cooking the Company’s books in Malaysia.

But it did become a colony. The Castle of Good Hope, really a fortress, was built in Cape Town between 1666 and 1679 and remains today as the oldest surviving building in South Africa. In 1668 a small group of French Huguenots arrived, and as elsewhere, such as New York’s Hudson Valley and in Berlin, became skilled, significant members of the local community. Near Cape Town they established the basis of the South African wine industry, notably in the wine town of Franschhoek (French Corner). Curiously, with intermarriage, French disappeared as a local language, and today, most of the Huguenot descendants speak—surprise!—Afrikaans. Afrikaans is the local descendant of Dutch, and remains very similar to it.

First in 1795, then again in 1806, the British occupied the colony, setting in motion a century and a half of three-way internal conflicts between them, the Dutch settlers (by now known as Afrikaaners), and the native Africans. Within the complicated history of the ensuing period falls both the Voortrekker movement of 1835-45, when the Afrikaaners tried to flee the British on the coast to establish an Afrikaaner state inland. The city of Pretoria is a result of this. Also within this period falls the Boer War (Boer is the Dutch/Afrikaans word for “farmer” [German: Bauer]). This is more accurately called the Anglo-Boer War. Actually, there were two; the Afrikaaners won the first, but the British won the second, which became definitive.

This summary is meant just to establish beginnings. It is otherwise the most superficial of the superficial, and leaves out gold, diamonds, multiple conflicts, apartheid, and Mandela and the current democratic government. Readers might want to delve further elsewhere for additional details. However, the diverse “rainbow nation” of South Africa today include the following within a population of some 38 million: 76% black, 12.8% white, 2.6% Asian, and 8.5% “coloured”, those of mixed race.

South Africa: Languages   While once only English and Afrikaans were official languages in South Africa, today there are a total of 11 official languages. Among those added to English and Afrikaans are such native African languages as Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana and Sotho. (For the last two, think in terms of neighbouring countries such as Botswana and Lesotho.)

I’ve always suspected that there is no huge difference between Dutch (Nederlands) and Afrikaans, even though they are considered two different languages, and I found it the case. Signs I’ve seen in Afrikaans are relatively recognizable from a knowledge of Dutch. I’ve spotted a few main differences, often involving the shortening of words in Afrikaans, but from my point of view, the differences remain slight. Afrikaans remains strong, and there is an Afrikaans university in Stellenbosch. Many signs are in both English and Afrikaans, and in Cape Town, I found even more that added a third language, which is probably Xhosa.

Since we’ve discussed Dutch in the past, and since Afrikaans is so similar, I won’t discuss it any more here. But we’re in Africa, and let me discuss the one thing I’ve known for a long time about Xhosa, and especially after reading up a bit more on it, I can make some additional comments. Xhosa is a click language, and discussing clicks is fun.

Let me say first that calling it a click language is essentially foolish, like calling Chinese a tonal language just because the same word can mean different things depending in different tones, say upward or downward (actually, I read that Xhosa is also a tonal language). Using terms such as “click language” or “tonal language” is as parochial as calling English a “nasal language” just because it has nasal consonants such as M, N, and NG. These terms are used by outsiders who don’t have those elements in their own language. But, let’s still retain the term “click” language.

Clicks are easy, and there are at least two that we use in English. The difference is, they’re used in English just as casual sounds, not as integral parts (phonemes) of the language.

Xhosa is now one of the official South African languages, spoken by 7.9 million people, or 18% of the population. It’s classified as a Bantu language. Xhosa is the most widely distributed language in South Africa, but Zulu is the most widely spoken. I read that Xhosa is rich in uncommon consonants, and has 15 clicks. We’ll simplify this in a moment, but there are 5 dental clicks (tongue on teeth), 5 lateral clicks (side of tongue), and 5 alveolar clicks (tongue on roof of mouth). Apparently, the five variations involve some being nasal, some being aspirated (breathed), and so on. Now, let’s simplify this, and every reader will be able to do his/her own clicks (be the first on your block!).

Picture encouraging a horse to get moving. In addition to saying “Giddyup”, you’d also probably give a double click off the side of your tongue. Everyone can do that, and that’s a lateral (side) click. But as I said earlier, in English it’s simply an odd sound to encourage animals, like “oo” is to show surprise. But in Xhosa, it’s one of the consonants of the language. It’s spelled “X”, and we’re starting with that one, since it’s obviously the first consonant in the name of the language. Try doing this click, and then adding “osa” to it, and you’ll have an easy example of how a click fits into a word.

As you look at the spelling “Xhosa”, note the difference between a simple X and XH. I assume that the click used in the name of the language is an aspirated (H-like) one instead of a simple one, but all that is beyond my ability or knowledge.

There is another easy click, not lateral (side of tongue) but dental (tongue-to-teeth). In English, when we disapprove of something, we can say what is usually spelled as “tsk-tsk”. This, as it turns out, is a dental click, spelled in Xhosa as “C”. We can all do it, but I don’t have a Xhosa word as an example that includes it. [I find it odd that both of these clicks when used in English are always double clicks, either for a horse, or to show disapproval.] I also read that the alveolar (roof of mouth) click, which is spelled in Xhosa “Q”, sounds like popping a cork from a bottle, but I’m now in way over my head, so we’ll all have to simply visualize that one together. Finally, chatting with South Africans, I find that non-Xhosa speakers will tend to simplify the name and pronounce it as though it were written Kosa.

South Africa: Four People   I want to mention four people’s names. Three are South Africans and involve the language discussion. The fourth is Indian, but memorably worked in South Africa.

I’ve always enjoyed the music of Miriam Makeba. She’s in her seventies now, but always typified South African music abroad. She memorably made a guest appearance on the Cosby show in 1991 where she discussed with the children the Xhosa language, of which she is a native speaker, and demonstrated some of the clicks. One of her songs is known in English as the Click Song, and is fun to hear. Its name in Xhosa is Qongqothwane, and the two Qs show the title contains two alveolar clicks.

A second noted speaker of Xhosa is Nelson Mandela.

Charlize Theron won the Best Actress Academy Award in 2004, and was the first South African to win an Oscar of any kind. Her French-looking surname indicates that her father was of Huguenot descent. Many people don’t realize she’s South African, since she’s adjusted her accent in English to be quite “mid-Atlantic”, although probably when she goes home her speech pattern in English changes. However, the surprise here is that her native language is not English at all, but Afrikaans. She also speaks some Xhosa. She reflects South Africa well, not only with the variety of languages, but also with her Huguenot background.

It may already strike some that the Indian I’m referring to is Mohandas K. Gandhi, usually referred to by the reverential title of the Mahatma. Some Westerners, when hearing him referred to as Mahatma Gandhi take that as his first name instead of as a title used with his surname. A good parallel is Mother Theresa, where Mother is clearly a title of respect, although used with her given name, not surname.

In any case, the South African reference here is this: Gandhi was born in India, studied law in London, and then, in the beginning of the 20C, worked in South Africa for an Indian law firm, presumably to legally represent his countrymen. This again reflects the routes that connected Britain, via the Cape of Good Hope, to India and elsewhere in Asia and the Pacific. Given the nature of South Africa of the time, he suffered discrimination. For instance, once he was forced to give up his seat on a train to a white rider, even though Gandhi held a first-class ticket as well. (This event is already a precursor of Rosa Parks on a Montgomery bus.) Therefore, it was in South Africa that Gandhi first quite actively employed his philosophy of non-violent civil disobedience. Nelson Mandela was inspired by Gandhi, and was also a prominent non-Indian recipient of India’s Mahatma Gandhi Peace Prize.

South Africa: Wariness Defused   I’ll now pick up the thread of my arrival in South Africa. In reference to my recent discussion of wariness about this trip, it’s now time to eat crow (as I knew I’d have to). Forget the wariness. It’s great here. Of the number of places I’ve visited since expanding my sights beyond what I’ve called the Euramerican area, this is now a place where I feel at home. You may think it’s because English is the principal language, but I don’t think so. Chile and Argentina are among my “new” locations, and I liked them very much. I speak Spanish, and so language is not really a factor there. On the other hand, beyond language itself, you might think it’s the English-speaking culture and mindset that I that appeals to me. I don’t wish to admit being that culturally parochial, and I’m sure I’m not, but that is a possibility perhaps. That, of course, would portend well for my visit to New Zealand next February and to Australia the following year.

I’m not sure what it was that I had in mind earlier to make me wary. But it’s so different from what I expected, I suppose. First of all, a gross error on my part. I said I left New York the day before the start of summer. I knew I was crossing the equator, and I knew that meant the seasons would be reversed, in other words, my flight would arrive on the first day of winter. This was clear. But I knew I wasn’t as far south as New Zealand or Australia, or Argentina or Chile. I thought South Africa was close enough to the equator so that winter wouldn’t mean so much, sort of like a pleasant winter in Florida. Was I ever wrong.

I said above that my 5:30 arrival at the airport was in darkness, and that’s because the sun had just set then, it being early winter here. With the sun down, it was already cold, and the arrival at the blazing hotel entrance was a welcome sight, similar to drawing up to a hearth. Clearly, whatever image I had had in my mind about Africa in general and South Africa in particular, this was not it.

Pretoria the next day looked like a European city, and the view of the countryside from the train later on looked like the American Southwest. But I’m getting ahead of myself, just to show how inaccurate a picture I had had in my mind.

Pretoria   That first evening and night were dedicated to catching up from the jet lag, and the general exertion of travel. Then, on a bright Sunday morning, I set out to see Pretoria. The entire center was quite walkable from the hotel. Although the lusher hotels are suburban, I had found the Protea Hotel Capital online and liked it because of its central location. I later saw in how many cities this local hotel chain has hotels, and also learned that the protea is South Africa’s national flower, a number of specimens of which I got to see.

Although there was a bit of a winter nip in the air, it was quite sunny and pleasant to walk around. Pretoria looked quite European in style, the result of having been built by Afrikaaners. It was quieter than usual because it was a Sunday, but the shops were all open on the pedestrian mall on Church Street, also marked as Kerkstraat. The traditional center of town is Church Square / Kerkplein, with a number of historic buildings around it. It’s been a very long time since the center of the square had a church. Instead there was an attractive grassy park space, but with a statue of Paul Kruger, the Afrikaaner leader, in the center. Swinging back to the hotel area, I found Bergers Park, a beautifully restored Victorian park covering a full block. It had a wrought-iron fence around it, a bandstand, gazebos, a conservatory, and was a pleasant area to rest in. Across from its entrance was Melrose House (1886), in a blend of Victorian and Cape Dutch styles. It’s the only one left of what had been rows of Victorian houses facing all four sides of the park. The documents ending the Anglo-Boer War in 1902 were signed in the dining room here. I just walked around its garden and sat for a while in a gazebo. I noticed an extensive lawn behind the house, but paid no attention to it. It became of more significance eight days later (see 2008/10).

Almost all the faces I saw in Pretoria were black, in the streets, running the hotel, or as hotel guests, whereas during the apartheid era there would have been hardly any. Apparently there’s been a degree of white flight to the suburbs here, yet little boys and guys relaxing on benches would keep on saying hi to me. From discussions with South Africans I see there still remains doubts of stability for the whites, with talk of emigration and concern for the future. An indication of evolving changes is that Pretoria has been officially renamed Tshwane, as many signs already indicate. Apparently that had been the African name for the city for many years, but the change has been hotly contested.

Leaving the next morning, I took the complimentary hotel van to the station to get the Blue Train. The driver had the radio on, and was laughing as he listened to a call-in show in one of the African languages (although highly peppered with English words and phrases). When I asked him what language it was, his reaction surprised me. Would I want him to change it to an English station? It was only a five-minute ride, so who would care, including dyed-in-the-wool tourist-types, which he was apparently used to. I had to explain to him that I was sincerely interesting in listening to the sounds of the language.

Blue Train   It was the very famous Blue Train that initially drew my interest to South Africa, and everything else I’m doing now grew out of that. The Blue Train, which, yes, is really painted blue on the outside, is a most luxurious and satisfying luxury train. The train dates back to the Union Limited and Union Express of 1923, which would bring passengers from Pretoria and Johannesburg down to Cape Town, many of whom then would connect to ships sailing far afield, but frequently to England, so once again we see the importance of routes in general, and of this rail connection to the Cape of Good Hope sea route in particular. The rail route is about 1600 kilometers / 994 miles long, and the train averages 90 kph / 56 mph, with a maximum of 120 / 75.

The hotel van brought me to the special Blue Train VIP Lounge located in a part of Pretoria Station. The luggage check-in outside and regular check-in in the comfortable lounge were exemplary. There were beverages and warm hors-d’oeuvres until boarding time, when groups of passengers were escorted privately to their cabins.

The trip, with one stop, takes a complete day plus three hours, from nineish one morning until noonish the next day. The train runs only a few times a month, and I was glad to have found online this southbound trip that allowed me a few days in Cape Town before taking the Rovos Rail Pride of Africa trip. On the Blue Train (as well as on Rovos), not only all meals, but also all beverages are included, including an open bar. The dining car and lounges were comfortable, and I lucked out as to the observation car. The Blue Train has two trainsets, and only trainset #2 has the observation car. Most of it was a lounge, with tables and standard-size train windows, but the back section was a most magnificent viewing area. The rear wall was virtually all glass, almost from floor to ceiling and from side-to-side. It afforded the most marvelous view of where you had been, as you saw the track shooting out below you. In addition, this back area of the observation car had equally large windows on the sides. These three windows around the back area of this car gave a fine illusion of openness.

Moving about the long length of this train was particularly pleasant. Instead of awkward connections between cars, where one is often subjected to pulling open heavy doors, then being subjected to blasts of bad weather while balancing in between cars, the Blue Train had no doors at all, but had an articulated wrap-around connection between cars, with the carpeting in the corridors continuing over a slight ramp between cars. It was a pleasure to walk even long distances in this train. In the very few mid-car locations where there was a closed door, it was automatic and slid open half-left, half-right on your approach.

I had two choices as to cabin style, Deluxe and Luxury, on the Blue Train and on Rovos Rail. Luxury is larger, and the bathroom has a complete bathtub. I rarely use bathtubs, preferring showers, but I HAD to try taking a bath on a train. The Blue Train being only one overnight was the place I decided to splurge and get the Luxury room with a tub (only 8% more in price). Later, on Rovos, I took the smaller, but more satisfying, Deluxe room, with walk-in shower

The totally wood-paneled cabin (there was wood everywhere on the train) had a double bed that came down foot-first. Otherwise, there was a couch and desk area. The adjoining bath was comfortable, with the aforesaid tub lying perpendicular to the route of the train. To get adequate use of it, I took a bath both in the evening as well as the next morning. I must say, it’s very pleasant (although totally unnecessary), to sit in a bathtub looking out at the moving scenery as the train moves along.

The double-paned windows had venetian blinds BETWEEN the two panes. They operated electrically, and when you pressed the button they would open one way, then the other, and when you held it, would pull up out of sight entirely. The African attendant was very helpful, and he had the unusual first name of Choice. There was a TV with DVDs available, but all I used it for was to look at the channel that showed where the train was going, based on the camera on the front of the engine.

There was only one stop scheduled on the Blue Train, at 5:00 that first afternoon. However, we were a half-hour late, and the sun was already going down. The stop was at Kimberley, famous for its diamond mining, and we were brought to see the Big Hole, but it was lit by floodlights at night. We saw a video telling about how Cecil Rhodes consolidated the diamond-mining industry. The land had originally belonged to a farming family called de Beers, who sold out to others at what they had considered to be a very high price, but before the discovery of diamonds. The diamond consortium was named in their honor, although no one named de Beers (and there are still descendants around) ever sat on the de Beers Board of Directors. However, the diamond display was already closed when we got there, so this excursion was quite curtailed. However, I spoke to the guide on the bus, Dirk, and to the woman in charge of the museum attached to the Big Hole, Renee, and told them I’d be back in eight days, since the Rovos trip also stopped at Kimberley, and earlier in the afternoon at that (see 2008/10).

On arrival in Cape Town, I had planned to walk the relatively short distance to my hotel, but the people I had been sitting with at meals, who were from Cape Town, drove me over in their car, which was wonderful Capetonian hospitality and a nice start to my visit to that city.