Blast Off!

I am in South Africa! Good Lord. In typical Sarah Argue fashion, my departure did not go as smoothly as one might desire. Got all packed up to find that my suitcase had a big rip in it… might have just ignored it if it hadn’t been for the ocean and continent that it had to go over. So then I packed all of my stuff into a much sturdier (and thus heavier) bag of my mom’s. Yeah, when I got to the airport I had to take stuff out. Having a bag that won’t fall apart means that it also takes up more of the limited weight allotment. Fortunately, however, my shampoo, body soap, and face wash weighed a good ten pounds, so I didn’t lose too many additional vitals. Consequently, I am particularly dirty right now, but Ryan gave me a bar of soap and well, let’s just say it’s a good thing I brought a hat for my hair!

The flight across the Atlantic went well. There were lots of decent movies and I was up really late Monday night, so I slept well. I did go through the whole box of Dramamine though… turbulence and I don’t agree so much, so it also helped me sleep. When we landed in Dakar, the Segal security came on board and ripped up the plane. Seriously. They took the seats off and lifted all the head rests, but the best part was when they came through the aisles spraying pesticides. We didn’t have to fill out customs forms to enter South Africa, but we got sprayed with pesticides. Yipee! The flight from Dakar to Jo’berg seemed to take forever, but even then sleeping passes the time so well—and I also won’t be watching any movies for the next few days. I think my retinas are burned.

The most excitement of flying for twenty-four hours occurred when we landed in Jo’berg to find that the airline that was supposed to take us to Cape Town was out of business. SAY WHAT?! You would think Orbitz might have tipped us off about that in the 1300 emails they sent us about the five minute changes in our flight time, but no. So Mango Express got us on a flight five minutes before it took off and we landed in Cape Town earlier than originally scheduled. We then enjoyed our first South African meal: a burger at BJ’s in the airport. Yummy. I think I’ll make it the whole rest of the trip without eating there again!

Last night, we stayed in a dorm type room close to the offices of the rental folks. We played Settlers of Catan and Gin Rummy to keep us up late enough to sleep long enough to avoid jet lag. Strangely, we didn’t have much trouble sleeping in this morning. It feels really weird having lost a whole day of sunshine. The weather is beautiful today as we head out to explore the city. So we’ll make up for it!!

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Have just returned from first seeing the city I daylight. What has struck me the most is how *not* different it is than other big cities... we ended up at a mall to find those few last issues items (particularly ones addressing electricity and phones). We may have solved the electricity issues, but not the phones. David, the guy who set up our housing, gave Sanford and myself SIM cards, which fit nicely into our phones, but then it asked for some kind of password, which we didn’t have. We now have one password, but there may be an additional password that we need from the States. We’ll see. This post is also being written well before it will be posted as we also will not have internet access for a week. Not too big of a deal, although I wish that I could call home at least briefly. But I think since I had to buy a towel and a power converter and groceries and a charger for my camera this afternoon… it’ll just have to wait!

As I was saying, Cape Town doesn’t exactly feel African yet. In fact, the Harbor, where we were this afternoon looked very much like the harbor in Baltimore. Downtown bumps right up to it, there’s the big mall, and lots of restaurants. I know that I’m not in Baltimore though because my accent is getting even more looks than usual. The mall even had many of the same stores as a common mall in America. My favorite “American” store though was named Martha’s Vineyard and was full of arts and craft trinket type things. Who knew Cape Town would have such an excellent understanding of goods from Martha’s Vineyard?!

We also experienced on this excursion our first taste of South African Cream Soda. A girl on our flight told us we must try it, so we did. It’s green. I don’t mean pale, light green; I mean crazy, bright green. It’s more tangy than our cream soda, but just as delicious. We had with our dinner: pizza. So we haven’t branched out much with our food choices, but we’ll get there. We’re taking turns cooking dinner this week and we were pretty tame with those choices as well, but I think as we get to know the grocery store, then we’ll branch out a little more. Since we ate lunch so late, dinner tonight was peanut butter sandwiches around a couple of games of Settlers. I think that clearly we are pretty bright bulbs to have thought to bring a game other than cards as a source of entertainment. Tomorrow we will initiate the frisbee at the park down the street.

That covers the first 60 hours of this adventure. Considering everything that could happen on a trip half way around the world, it’s gone amazingly well. Much love to all!

Always,

Sarah