Goodbye to Wonderful South Africa!

I was sad to leave St. Lucia last Friday because it was one of my favorite bits of South Africa. I had a great guide, named Seya, who is a 19 year old Zulu dude, and every day we did something different. We went snorkeling at Cape Vidal, went on lots of walks looking for birds in the forest around St. Lucia, visited Hluhluwe Imfolozi Park and visited Mkuze Game Reserve, which was huge and hot and full of birds, and as Seya noted, little else. "This park does not have the Big 5," he complained. "It only has the Big 2--birds and antelopes!" As you can tell, Seya thinks birds are for nerds. He loves hyenas, leopards and wild dogs. But the birds were, of course, magnificent and we even saw a water cobra (snake number 2).

I left St. Lucia one hot day, and drove to Eshowe, a little town in Zululand that has dense forests (where Shaka Zulu is reported to have hidden his wives during a war) with arial walkways where you can see lots of birds. I stayed at a dive hotel, which featured "Girls' Night" on the night that I arrived, complete with male strippers. Every 18-22 year old girl in all of Kwazulu-Natal must have been there. These girls looked like New Jersey girls on a Friday night, all dolled up for clubbing in New York--you can imagine the scene! Needless to say, I didn't buy a ticket to the event.

The birds in Eshowe were totally wonderful. I spotted lots of rare ones, including a scaly-throated honeyguide, spotted ground thrush, cuckoo hawk and a green barbet, which, due to its very specific diet of a certain type of fig, only lives in one little forest (the Ongoye Forest) in southern Africa. Wonderful!

Then, I drove like a seasoned minibus taxi driver (read: totally hardcore) down the N2 to the Durban airport to drop off my car rental and catch a ride into the city of Durban. Durban has a bad rep for being dirty and crime-ridden, but I love it. It's a gritty, colorful seaside city with lots of characters. On the shuttle to my hotel, an 18 years old surfer from Cape Town chatted me up; his name was Jordan and he was in town for a surfing competition. We talked about how his sponsors censor his Facebook postings and about favorite spots in South Africa. Predictably, his favorite city in South Africa outside of Cape Town is Jeffrey's Bay (the surfing mecca). He's a dude with one thing on his mind: catching the waves. Good luck on Friday, Jordan!

In Durban, I took the bus to the Victoria Street Market to look for crafts. Durban is utter chaos these days because they have changed all of the street names from boring names like "West" and "Grey" to freedom fighter names like Joe Slovo Ave. etc, and everyone is confused! Some original street signs remain, with black X's crossing them out. Wish I had a photograph of these censored street signs, but Durban's not the kind of city where you want to tote around a SLR, or anything at all, for that matter. I was at the market because someone (J.) wants a special kind of ostrich egg that I must hand carry on the plane back to New York. I bought a wonderful straw hat that will become my new look in New York this summer. And for dinner I had bunny chow, which is a poor man's dish of curry served in a hollowed-out loaf of bread. Delicious!

After a stroll on the beach and a goodbye to the Indian Ocean, I hopped on the night bus to Pretoria. J. gave me a very extensive shopping list, and I had to buy a huge duffel bag to fit everything. As a result, Intercape charged me R100 extra for my excess luggage, but it's all cool. J. must have his rooibos tea and peri-peri sauce! On the bus, I sat next to a young doctor in training from Botswana who is very, very homesick and is headed home to eat some mopane worms and pap prepared the right way (Zulu pap is too thick and stiff, he said). We chatted far into the night, and we had a very interesting conversations about various topics. The only big difference of opinion was about gay people. The good doctor cannot understand why people are gay, and he said it is against African culture. If he had a son who was gay, he would disown him! I said that in the US 50 years ago we thought the same, and gay people lived lives of quiet desperation, but now it is socially acceptable to be gay, and gay people can be free. I said I thought South Africa was changing too; in fact, equal rights for gay people are written into the Constitution. It was an interesting conversation, and I think the good doctor may change his mind one day.

Arriving in Pretoria, I had a near death experience in a taxi on the way to the backpackers. The driver was distracted and forgot that he was turning onto a two way road rather than a one way road. He turned directly into oncoming traffic and narrowly missing collision with two sedans. The driver turned white when he realized what he had done. "Do you want to kill us?" I asked him. Can you imagine who silly it would be if I braved everything in Africa--I even escaped the stomach bug that every single other person on my overland trip succumbed to--only to be in a taxi accident the day before I'm slated to return to New York?

Now, I'm in Hatfield, Pretoria. I had a great breakfast at my old favorite spot, the News Cafe, and now I've gotta go get a massage. Wish me a safe flight back to nyc tomorrow. I'm a weary traveler, and I'm ready to return!

And here's a goodbye to all of my new friends in South Africa. There's Stefan from Cape Town, Donna from Langebaan, Seya and Kholiwe from St. Lucia and so many more. And there's even a very, very old friend, Jenny H., who I got to see again in Cape Town after 12 years! As an added bonus, I got to meet her wonderful husband.