South Africa
The flight left Atlanta at 10:30am on Monday morning headed towards Johannesburg, South Africa (map). After a nice long (17 hour) journey, I arrived around 10:30am on Tuesday (Johannesburg is 7 hours ahead). I didn’t get much sleep on the plane (I never do), so I decided to try to power through the day. I met my contact, Carel from CommerceQuest SA at the Arrivals gate, and we had 2 hours to kill before our flight to Durban. I drank two cappuccinos, and we chatted about South Africa and such — I even learned a little bit of Afrikaans (one of the many languages spoken in South Africa). The flight to Durban was only an hour, on a small commuter plane. While Pretoria is the capital of South Africa, Johannesburg is the largest city, and Durban is known as a tourist destination. It’s on the coast, and it does have a down-town area, but it also definitely has a laid-back feeling to the city.
Upon arriving in Durban, …
… we were met by Sean, another CommerceQuest SA guy who took us to our lodging in Umhlanga (pronounced, Uhm-schlonga). We are staying at the Gateway Country Lodge, a bed and breakfast lodge that is amazing. It’s a small ranch, on 2 acres, overlooking fields of sugarcane and just down the road from the beach. Each suite has it’s own patio, overlooking a beautifully manicured garden and pool. The owner Sandy, has lived there her entire life. She even has a small tortoise garden with some pretty big fellas, and several dogs, including a little Jack Russell named Tiger!
The plan was to let me rest, but I was too anxious to get out and do some exploring, and, quite honestly, a little thirsty for a beer. We decided to venture out, and after visiting a Durban mall (unfortunately, it was exactly like any other mall, just with different stores), we went down to the beach to meet the other consultants from Business Connexion. We met them at a small patio restaurant, right on the beach. After several good South African beers, and some good conversation (OK, so it was tech-talk), I was beginning to feel a little tired. This was probably around hour 32 for me, if you don’t count the half-nap/half-awake time on the plane. We then went to go grab a bite to eat, and I’ll be honest, I was beginning to feel very tired. I ordered a steak and some chips (they were Freedom Fries, eh), and I don’t know if it was the exhaustion or deliria, but it was a damn good steak. It had some spicy pepper sauce and mushrooms, and it was fantastic. I have realized that I am getting old when the highlight of my traveling is the food, but if that’s how it is, then yes, I will see a menu, thank you.
I made it back to our lodging, and crashed out by 9:00pm. It was a nice deep sleep. I woke up around 6:00am, and decided to walk around (with Tiger) and take some pictures of the garden and lodge. The lodging had breakfast served at 7:00, and it was incredibly good as well. I ended up eating a bit too much, wanting to try everything, including the fresh mangos, grapefruits, chicken-bacon, biscuits, muffins, eggs, fresh yogurt, orange-nectar juice, and coffee. Old geyser, I know.
We set off for the offices in downtown Durban, in a municipal building that, sadly could have used some work - much like most of the other buildings in the area. I quickly was brought up to speed, and shown the already pre-setup environment and network where we’d be doing our integration work. The only bad part is, the network was fast, the servers were decent, but there was no Internet connection! One guy had a dial-up that we took turns on, but I didn’t have much time, other than to let everyone know that, yes, I was still alive, and to confirm all the American stereotypes that there were, indeed, elephants, tigers, lions, and giraffes running around in the streets.
To be honest, the streets of Durban are quite different from other cities I’ve been to. Yes, they drive on the “wrong” side of the road (being a former British colony), and the “taxi” system consists of these vans, most blaring rap/pop music, complete with decals and flashy paint jobs, tearing around town holding out different symbols that indicate what route/where they are heading. They are constantly pulling over, and picking up more people. You can definitely tell that ramifications of Apartheid and racial differences will take a while to undo. It’s hard to explain, but there is tension among many of the different people/races/cultures. Alas, I suppose this is true of many nations where there are lots of different cultures living together. The downtown of Durban definitely was going through a phase of “abandonment” — I had heard that most of the businesses were moving to office parks out in the “suburbs” or countryside. You could tell some buildings were just left empty.
After work, we went to an Internet-cafe where I found out that my wireless card does not support the newer security called WPA-PSK or wireless pass-key technology - so I was out of luck. I sure hope these one minute calls from my roaming cell-phone, long-distance to the States don’t cost more than the AT&T credit card calls I tried to make from a local phone at 15 dollars for the first minute, and 3 dollars after that with a 15% fee (owch). Though, I have a sinking feeling they do.
Another early evening, and a good next day at work (without too much breakfast) brings us to going out for drinks with the business analyst on-site and a delightful chap named Charles who, when I met him, mentioned that he recognized me from seebq.com — he googled me before I came on-site! If you’re reading this Charles, then “cheers, oak!” We went to an awesome place on the harbor where I had ostrich and couscous. It was, again, fabulous. The conversation was good, the food was good, and unfortunately, the cocktails were quite good too.
Waking up a bit early with a bit of a headache on Friday, I went inside the house and quickly drank a large glass of juice, and a bottle of water. I then promptly headed back to bed, and woke up just before 7 to shower and go to breakfast. Friday at work turned out to be a good day — we completed lots of work, and resolved several issues. Carel left early to go back to Jo’burg for a bachelor’s party, and Shaun left at 4:30. Charles graciously took me back to the b-and-b, where I began to relax. Sandy mentioned a show, called Footprint of Africa - a musical-show with African roots (and Zulu dancers) at a nearby entertainment complex. She arranged to take me, drop me off, and help me buy one of the last tickets (literally, there were only two left at 100Rand = $60), and even arranged to come pick me up (she was going to next weekend). The show was quite good - definitely interesting, and had some amazing dancers.
We actually dropped off two of Sandy’s workers — maids and gardeners in their village on the way to the complex, and despite my coaxing them to teach me their native Zulu dialect (it had the clicking sound in it!), they simply giggled at the funny American. The area where they lived was quite sad, actually, tiny homes, but I learned they were built by government/volunteer/missionaries to provide free housing to combat the shantytowns that are famous in South Africa. I suppose it was better, but not by much.
The Entertainment and Casino complex itself deserves a little bit of explanation — being in the middle of nowhere, and suddenly rising out of the sugarcane fields it all it’s splendor and neon glory. It was quite absurd, actually, and I took lots of pictures. Even though I had time to kill before and after the show, I couldn’t bring myself to do any gambling. I didn’t want to figure out the silly slots games (before the payout line, bet your doubled up credits on a 3x multiplier payback?) nor could I find any real poker. Gosh I just realized those gambling sites who come by my blog and comment-spam the crap out of me are going to have a field day with this one - oh well.
That brings me to now, sitting in my room with the patio open, the rain falling, then pouring, then stopping, and then me getting scared, hearing way too many strange noises outside to keep these doors open while I type up this off-line blog entry. I did finally see some wild monkeys this morning, playing in the trees outside, and as cute as they were, I was told they like to come in to your room, steal your food, bite you if you mess with them, and they have rabies!
This weekend I am going to the beach, relaxing, and visiting the Sharks Board (where they dissect a Great White that gets caught in the shark nets they have on the beach). Surprisingly, I heard these nets are actually placed a short distance out from the beach, and have space on top and bottom and in between. Usually they are enough to deter sharks from coming close to the shore, but occasionally, they do get through, and quickly become “claustrophobic” being so close to the shore that they turn around and get caught in the nets on the way back out. These are the ones the Shark Board dissects as a show to teach kids about them. It is the field-trip/rainy-day activity of all school children in the Durban area.
I’m looking forward to a great weekend, and an even better next weekend - since I’m going on a full safari at a lodge on a reserve! You can be sure I’ll be taking some more pictures!
