South Africa, Botswana and Zambia
Africa was fantastic, and in some ways exactly what we expected and in others
not at all what we expected.
The tour
people were lovely and extremely helpful. They were a couple in their mid to
late sixties who had been doing the tours for Intrepid for a year or so.
Heaps of
people told us that Joburg was a hole and yes it is. WE have since found out
that Capetown is definitely the place to visit, with great scenery, great food
and even shopping.
The best
thing about Joburg is the Soweto
tour. We were told that in Soweto
there are three levels, top level, middles class level and low class level. The
affluent black people live in the top class area and often have people from the
low class level working for them. The middle class area have 4 x room houses
with inside toilets etc and they call them match box houses. The low level
houses are basically the shanties which only have 2 rooms , no toilets and no
running water. The government have been promising housing for many years and
there are many people on the waiting list. Seeing how these people live is
incredible and you think to yourself how much luxury we currently live in.
I never
understood why overseas tourists went on about how clean Australia was until I had been to Bali, South Africa
and now even Egypt.
There is rubbish absolutely everywhere, piled up on the side of the road and
even in the water ways. Nobody seems to worry about the disposal of their
rubbish.
There is a
huge amount of violent crime in South
Africa. The houses in Joburg are all
surrounded with high wrought iron fences and strong gates. The houses which do
not have the wrought iron, have masses of barbed wire. I think that South Africa
has bought up all the barbed wire available. Even in the very poor areas where
they barely have a shack, there is barbed wire surrounding them.
There are
also lots of scams, you have to be so aware of where you are and looking after
your belongings.
There are
shopping malls everywhere now, even in Soweto.
There are
also many people selling things at the robots (traffic lights). People will
come to the car window selling clothes hangers, xmas lights and even large
balls to play with and bows and arrows.
The traffic
in Joburg is disgusting but now that I have been to Cairo, I don’t think there would be worse
traffic in the entire world or worse drivers.
The food
has been good but nothing exciting.
We met some
lifelong friends I am sure on the Africa trip
and we had a lot of fun. We were however expecting to get closer to the animals
in Kruger than we did. Kenya
definitely sounds like the best place to go for safaris for getting close to
animals.
The tour is
really good but the down fall can be that you don’t always get to stop when you
want to for food or photos. The good thing is that you have lots of company
when you want it and you are travelling with people who know the area etc.
I am sure
that you will all be pleased to know that Tony and I are still happily married
and have not even come close to killing each other yet.
By the way,
for the people who are wondering about how a menopausal woman is coping with
the heat, the weather has been quite mild, ( there is a God after all!!)
We are in Cairo now and I am even
coping with the weather here.
I will
leave this now because we are heading off for a walk before our next tour
meeting. I hope everyone is well and happy working or studying in Australia while
we are working hard at having a good time holidaying!!! (it’s a tough life but
someone has to do it!)
DAY 12
We have
arrived in Cairo
after a wonderfully boring alcohol free flight with 2 x set movies and equally
exciting food.
I usually
take the front seat in all forms of transpotrt due to travel sickness, however
in Cairo in the
taxi, I am rethinking this strategy. Traffic and drivers here are the craziest
I have ever seen. and the taxi driver seems to find it quite amusing seeing me
jump and quickly reach for the seat belt as he is about to mow down 5
pedestrians in one foul swoop.
Cairo is smelly, dirty, dusty and yet very
interesting all at the same time.
After a
quick snooze and more breakfast in our fairly dodgy hotel we head out with Jess
to see the sights.
Jess has
already been accosted, and it would seem almost adopted by what I am now calling
the ‘Egyptian mafia’. One guy meets you in the street while you are walking
along, then he takes you to a very small shop where other men (the drivers) sit
out side waiting for a job. We sit and chat to the first guy while waiting for
the ‘top dog’ Tommy who does the negotiating and sweet talking. Jess has
already been dealing with these people for the 2-3 days while she has been in Cairo on her own.
This Tommy
is an interesting character, he has extremely good English, and has all the
aussie slang and expressions down pat just for the tourists.
Once a
price has been agreed on, a driver is summoned. I take my heart in my mouth yet
again and brave the Cairo
traffic.. The driver is very good and we check out the citadel, the papyrus
factory, the jewellery factory and the Bazzaar, while the driver collects his
commission etc. along the way.
At the end
of the trip we are taken again to Tommy (top dog) who is at ‘the café’ by then smoking his water pipe and making more
contacts with other prospective clients. We are given a mango juice each and treated to some
more small talk in hopes of more business.
Tommy’s
question is always ‘Are you happy?’ This is so he can happily take your money.
WE make plans for the next day and off we go.
DAY 13
We go though the same slightly dodgy process
all over again wondering if you change your mind, whether you might end up with
a horses head in your bed.
We were
wanting to go to Giza
today to see the Pyramids and there is now another branch of the mafia introduced
to the equation.
Apparantly there is someone we need to deal
with at the pyramids who will give us an all inclusive price (the very best
deal around) and if we are not happy or treated well, we must let Tommy know
and he will take care of it (we think short for ‘get rid of him’).
A new
driver is summoned for today’s trip, who is also very good and we are taken to
the Giza branch
of Tommy’s mafia.. The ‘top dog’ at Giza
is very suspect and Tony and I really start to wonder what we have got
ourselves involved in.
There is
quite fierce negotiation at this juncture and it looks at times like we may
even not do the pyramids. We finally head off on our camels (YES I SAID CAMELS
for anyone who knows Bernadette’s camel story)
WE get to a
makeshift gate where we pay an extra 60 EGP each to some very dodgy unofficial
looking officials, who swipe our bags etc with a beeper thing just for effect.
The camel
ride was for an hour or more and it was good fun, but you couldn’t help feeling
that you were in the backyard of the pyramids without permission and that they
had to move you through at a particular pace and route so as not to attract the
wrong attention to themselves.
When back
to the office/shop to see the Giza bloke Tony re
negotiates an even cheaper price and we head back to Cairo with our driver.
We made no
further plans with Tommy and the gang even after much urging and questioning
regarding our movements and requirements for the next day.
DAY 14
I forgot to
say that our bright spot for day13, was coming across KFC for the deaf. The
perfect place for me!!! In the evening of the day 13. I found the lovely deaf
guy at KFC the easiest, and nicest person to communicate with in all of Cairo.
Ok, back to
day 14, which was a fairly quiet day. We caught a very dodgy looking taxi from
our hotel to the museum for 20 EGP. I am actually surprised that the taxi made
it, everything seemed to be falling off or apart, but at least we were not
beholden to the Mafia anymore which was comforting.
No major
incidents at the museum apart from Tony getting dragged back to the checkpoint
for bringing his camera in and some other young woman making a very rude sign
to the woman who was chasing people to hand over their cameras. She got away
but Tony did not.
Our first
meeting with the new Intrepid tour was 6pm at our hotel. We could see right
from the start that it was going to be very different to the previous trip. The
group dynamics were extremely different, the leader had not even done the trip
before and the whole vibe was different.
We did
however all go to dinner together just around the corner from ‘Tommy’s Café’ and
the food was really, really good. It cost us 25GP total for all three of us
which equals approx. $6.50 australian. You can’t complain about that but it did
unfortunately make all other Egypt
food seem really expensive after that.
DAY 15
Up and out
at 6am, with a take away breakfast box from the hotel (I thought they said this
was a holiday)
The
breakfast box consisted of a piece of cake, 2 bread rolls, a hard boiled egg
and some cheese in a huge cardboard cake box.
We had 6
hours in the mini van with a couple of short stops along the way just for the
driver and guide to get their commission from the food, drink and gift vendors.
Mt Sinai is
in the most remote and barren area I have ever experienced and the hotel had no
competition. Consequently they changed the prices for food etc. at whim and
were extremely ungracious about it to boot and the room was not much better.
The hike up
Mt Sinai was the most amazing scenery I had ever seen. We went up hill for
approx 3 hours and downhill in the dark for approx 2 hours. It was reasonably
tough especially for a woman who has not done any exercise since the pneumonia
in Feb/March, but I made it thanks to the ventolin and the tour leader who kept
me chatting.
I did
however (surprise surprise!!) manage to injure myself just after all the steep
steps. I missed a very shallow easy step and went face down in the dirt and
skinned my knew and hand. YES , there are pictures!!
Meanwhile
Tony and Jess did the “3,750 stairs of repentance” (2285m) because boy do they
need to repent!!! I climbed to the same height, I just took the long way around
because I of course have absolutely no need for repentance.
We slept
very well after this little expedition and some Baileys (for medicinal purposes
only) of course.
