Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Our second flight out of Cape Town was also canceled

I have set up citizenship here. It is a lovely place and you can fall in love with most places if you stay long enough. Or, if you stay long enough, roots just fill in around you, somehow. So this has become a necessity at this point. And also an issue of practicality. I’ll send for my things next week. Please forward my mail to …

Keep the bills. Or let them lapse. Who cares? I don’t care. No one cares. Maybe it doesn’t matter. We’re not ever getting home, anyway.

Last night, Wednesday night, we tried again. My lovely bride, our former professor and I loaded into an Uber and trekked across Cape Town to the airport. I carried our friend’s luggage — she has so many bags — and that’s also how I know she isn’t feeling well, she didn’t even argue with me about it. We stood in an overly long check-in line. We were also there early. Before the check-in counter opened. Because we are ambitious. Also the line moved slowly. Delta has four people working in this airport. We got to know the people around us in the line because we were there for a while.

There were regular couples. Professional acquaintances who were here for the conference we’ve just left. One family hauling around a U-Haul worth of luggage and boxes. They looked exhausted, the chore of it all exhausting. There was also a woman who was too eager. Too loud. Too demonstrative. Too much overzealous oversharing. Too much.

Would you like to know who the stuffed animal she was carrying was for? I know who the stuffed animal is for. Ask my why I know who the stuffed animal was for. I know who the stuffed animal was for because she was telling every stranger she met.

Her niece.

Anyway, luggage checked. Boarding passes distributed. We stood and snaked our way through an incredibly long and slow-moving security line. Then the border control, which was somehow moving a bit more efficiently last night than the previous night. We did the long walk from all of that to where the actual terminal is. To the lounge, and then through a store or two. We did the boarding section queue, and then the secondary human security checkpoint. A young man looked through my bag last night, a bit more thoroughly than his colleague the time before. When he was done, I asked him why this layer of security exists. We did metal detectors and scanners, after all. It has something to do with whether you purchased anything in the terminal’s stores. If you do, the store has to escort it to your plane. I basically learned enough to learn I wasn’t particularly interested in it, but I was glad he told me.

We were called to the plane. We took a long walk down a byzantine jetway to get to the plane, the loud demonstrative woman with the stuffed animal was just in front of us. She was so excited she was high-fiving strangers and hugging airline employees. I looked at my friend and said, “We’ll get down here, and they’ll have to take her off the plane because of her imminent medical emergency.” That woman was due to crash at any moment.

We got on the plane. Got settled. Finished the movie I’d been watching the night before. Started and finished another movie. I have sat on the tarmac and watched two-plus movies while not leaving Cape Town.

Over several hours of delays and messages the themes this evening were, “Ladies and gentlemen, from the flight deck. Welcome back. The fog is still here. Our co-pilot is still sick. We’re going to taxi out to the runway and if this fog clears we’ll be ready to be the first one out. Because our co-pilot is still sick we can’t make it all the way to Atlanta, so we’re trying to land in Puerto Rico.”

Why we aimed for San Juan, which is to say what the rest of the plan might be, was never explained. It didn’t matter because San Juan was not interested in receiving a plane in the early hours of the morning. Something about ground crews and customs. Ahh, the American government.

So we had some hope, but it was a fatalist sort of thing. We pushed back from the airport. We taxied. We got periodic updates about the fog. Still not clearing.

And then, “We have to turn back to the airport because we have a medical emergency on the plane.” And then one of the other members of the crew called for a medical doctor to come forward.

At which point the pilot told us, he had 17 minutes before he timed out. He timed out. So we went back. The ill passenger was escorted off by the local EMTs. We were asked to leave the plane. So, get your things. Again. Then get your luggage. Once more. Then officially enter South Africa through their customs and passport control stations. For a third time.

I have nothing to declare.

Walk the full length of the airport, again with everyone’s luggage. See this sign, for the third time.

That’s the problem. This place has been wonderful, and now it has become a little too welcoming. The Hotel California is actually a Hilton property in Cape Town.

But, hey, the good news is the cats are in good hands and we haven’t had to postpone any plans. If you must be inconvenienced by weather and a passenger feeling unwell and a pilot making the rookie mistake of eating bad oysters, this is the right amount of inconvenience.

I had a lot of time for that sort of perspective while we waited for our Uber having, once again, declined to wait for a Delta bus, the arrival of which no one could predict after 1 a.m. I felt confident that I could have driven the route across town back to the hotel this time. I knew all the signs and buildings as we sailed by.

Which brought us to the first part of the next problem. It was technically June 11th by then, after midnight, local time. You can’t reserve a hotel room for the 10th when it is the 11th. My lifetime of living with time as a construct suggests that makes sense. We called the hotel and explained our issue. They said to rent the room for the 11th, and they can change it at the hotel. We did. We arrived at the hotel. The bell hops and doormen were surprised and disappointed to see us, but happy, too. We went to the desk which is when we arrived at the second part of the next problem. While the website recognizes we’re on June 11th, the front desk in the lobby of the giant, modern, upscale Westin Hotel, still thinks it is June 10th.

This took … a long time to resolve. While that was taking place our plane’s flight crew came in and sat down in the lobby to wait their turn. I talked to them. Learned a lot. This is an Atlanta crew and they make this run regularly and most of them have been on the route for years and they all swore up and down and emphatically, that this was an unreal and new experience for them. I learned that the co-pilot will be ready for our next flight. I learned that one of the flight attendants is trying to get home to be present for the birth of her grandchild. I learned that the person that had a medical event was not the woman that we saw, but it was a gentleman with some sort of serious heart concern. (But they had no further updates.) I learned that, for reasons that were never explained, Delta doesn’t fly out of here on Thursdays. So we’ll try again on Friday night. I learned there are two flights Friday night. I learned that Delta is almost as bad at communicating with their employees as they are their passengers when it’s not going right.

Here I’d like to make a brief aside. At one point, today, The Yankee was talking to Delta and they offered the following solution: You can fly out of Cape Town, to Johannesburg, and then fly to Cape Town, and then fly to Amsterdam, and then to the U.S. Listen, chatbot, getting out of Cape Town is the problem. Why would I try that twice?

So now we’re listed on our flight for Friday, and we’re on standby for the other flight on Friday. Our standby flight is before our flight. Also, why are these flights already listed as delayed? We’re not even on the day of the flight yet.

Also, Delta, being a global logistics leader, is not very good at dealing with things going wrong. You’d assume they’d have experience and contingencies and a correct amount of staff for everything by now. They do not.

But enough about that, for now. It’s funny, and mildly frustrating, but also hilarious. Or it would be if the hours hadn’t become weird. Not only are we getting canceled flights we’re getting canceled flights after midnight.

Let us look at the positives, which do exist. How often do you get extra days in a lovely place, anyway? And because we seldom get to see our colleague — we are always ships passing in the night at conferences — it’s been a treat to spend time catching up with her. She is one of the best people in the business, after all. And now a mentor and friend. And because I am now in league with not one, but two busybodies — neither my wife nor our former professor can sit still very long long — someone will find something to do.

So today we took a tour. As evidence of our friend’s need to always do stuff … she’s now a dean. \When she isn’t deaning, she’s studying to be a sommelier. Why wouldn’t you do that? We visited a famous winery. And we also made two new friends, brothers from Australia who we spent the afternoon with. Nice guys. One is in finance. The other is a pilot. He is bemused by our troubles. We ended up having dinner and watching the opening game of the World Cup with them.

We could be home right now, but instead we watched South Africa play on the global stage with a huge room full of South Africans, and a few Mexicans, who were their opponents. That was a lot of fun. South Africa sadly lost, which was to be expected, but the game is meant to be watched in a group, and there’s nothing like watching with a group cheering on their countrymen. This isn’t even South Africa’s most popular, successful sport (rugby and cricket usually stand out here) but most everyone I’ve talked to is excited for the World Cup. It was fun to see a little bit of that in person.

And while there’s no point in writing about today’s weather, since we aren’t flying tonight anyway, this was the daytime visibility.

We will try once more, tomorrow, Friday evening, to return to the U.S. If we don’t, my forwarding address is above. (Seriously, keep the bills.)

adventures / photo / South Africa / Wednesday — Comments Off
10
Jun 26

Our flight out of Cape Town was canceled

We should be in the United States. We are not. Here is what happened. Remember how, on Monday, I said it was an indoor, rainy kind of day? And remember how there was a haze and a fog and a low cloud cover yesterday? That’s going to come up.

One of our former professors and colleagues was at the next hotel over, also for the conference. We picked her up in our Uber and went across town to the airport. I carried most of her things because she is in a knee brace and on a cane. I also carried my things, which I’ve gotten down to an overstuffed backpack. We checked our checked bags at the check-in counter. Check. We passed through security. This moved quickly. We passed through the border control point. This took more time. But that’s OK, we were at the airport hilariously early, it turns out, for our overnight flight. We went to the lounge, but airport lounges, no matter where you go in the world it seems, are one of the few places that concern themselves with the number of people inside. We were turned away. We found another lounge. We waited until it was time to go to the gate.

We went to the gate. Or toward it. We waited for the sectional boarding process, which was, in truth, a sectional-just-come-this-way process. In between, though, was another security checkpoint. This was a manual process. And it could take a long time. Or it could take no time. This was not thorough or consistent. Also, my backpack has 10 pockets (that I’m aware of) and I had stuff everywhere. I mentally steeled myself for a woman to pull everything out, one-by-one, and explaining what this charger does, or why I have so many Band-Aids and the like. She glanced into two pockets and decided I was harmless.

Remember those views from Table Mountain yesterday? This was one of them. We’re looking down on the clouds and the city below.

Last night I was watching something like that roll into the airport. Never mind, though, because eventually our section of the plane was called to board. I could not convince our friend to go on early, despite her many pieces of carry-on luggage, her cane, and her limp. But the number was called and we took the long walk to Namibia, or our plane, whichever one came to first. Boarded, got settled. Waited. Waited.

Waited.

Over the course of a few hours we heard from various members of the flight crew and the messages could be distilled to this.

“You need 500 meters of visibility to take off. We don’t have that right now. Hopefully it’ll clear up.”

“One of our co-pilots has fallen ill. So we’re down a man. We’re still ready to fly. Waiting on this fog to clear.”

“We’re trying to find alternate routes. Maybe Puerto Rico. Doesn’t look good. And we’re almost out of time.”

Pilots, by law, can only work for so many hours a day. This is a long flight. When one pilot can’t work, the math changes and their flight window narrows. And this is a long flight.

By long flight, I mean retreat from the airport. Our flight was scheduled to depart Cape Town last night at 8:05 p.m. I think we arrived there at about 5 p.m. After waiting on the plane, leaving the plane, collecting our luggage, officially entering South Africa again, walking through the whole of the airport, finding an Uber — which is never not frustrating — and then driving back across town, we arrived here at 2:38 a.m.

My travel companions are take charge people and we most assuredly got out of the airport faster than the other passengers, some of whom waited for airline busses bound for who knows.

So we’re at the Westin. And this was our view from the lounge this morning. This is the Foreshore Freeway Bridge. This is downtown, in the central business district. Designed in the 1960s, built in the 70s, and ground to a halt in 1977 because of budget problems. There is talk of getting back to finishing the thing. But I’d bet a lot of people have grown used to the look of it. These days it is a tourist attraction.

We didn’t do anything today. Slept in because of the late night. Sat around a bit stunned at the events and trying to make sense of being rescheduled. Our friend, who we are now traveling with, is probably having the slowest day of her life. To be fair, she’s recovering from knee surgery and fighting off pneumonia.

The good news is we’re flying tonight. Our original plane has a similar itinerary and this is the atmosphere just before we head back to the airport, and home.

We must now grab our things, get downstairs, pile into another Uber and do it all again, for the first time.

adventures / history / photo / South Africa / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
09
Jun 26

The Table Mountain Experience

We woke up on our last day in Cape Town full of energy. We had one more stop to make before we head to the airport. But, first, the few from our room these last several days, with a little bit of cloud rolling in.

We were going up to the top of Table Mountain (because it is there) and we were a little worried about the views, but there’s a weather station up there and they reported clear skies with nice visibility all morning and, as you can see for yourself, the weather instruments are telling the truth.

You can walk or hike your way up the mountain, and it’s said to be something that’s challenging, but easy enough to do. You can also ride a cable car up to the top. And there’s a few things to consider here. I can walk anywhere. I can’t always take a ride up a gondola. And we couldn’t imagine a time where we thought “I sure do regret not walking up Table Mountain.” Also, this one has a rotating feature. You spin 360 degrees during the ascent and descent. Here are a few of the views, with more tidbits, trivia, notes and photos to follow.

The sign says Table Mountain is one of the new seven wonders of nature, an honor bestowed upon it by popular voting from 2007 through 2011. But new, of course, is a relative term. This formation is something like 500 million years old.

Here’s a small panoramic view from near that sign. Click to embiggen.

We are about 3,558 feet above sea level. And, up here, there are more than 2,000 plant species, most of them shrubs. (South Africa has its own floral kingdom, the Cape Floral Kingdom, one of just six for the entire planet.) More than 4 million people come up here a year, and the stubby plants, the fynbos, are an unexpected pleasure. Every single person up there today was loud, and talking about the most inane things possible.

Table Mountain is flanked by Devil’s Peak and Lion’s Head, all about three miles apart. The plateau we are on is about two miles, side to side.

The most common mammal on the mountain is the dassie, a rock hyrax. Just a few years ago, their population dropped off for still unknown reasons. Their lower numbers might explain the decline in the Verreaux’s eagle population in the region.

Table Mountain also has porcupines, mongooses, snakes, lizards, tortoises, and the Table Mountain ghost frog, and this is its only home. We were up there for a couple of hours, and for most of the time the clouds sat like this on the city below.

People have living here for at least 2,000 years, first by nomadists and then sheperds. The first European, a Portugese explorer named António de Saldanha sailed into the bay, climbed the mountain and named it Taboa do Cabo. They carved a cross into some of the rocks.

If you could see more of the sights below, you’d see Robben Island, which we visited this weekend. You might be able to see the cemetery at Signal Hill, if you knew where to look. People from all over the world have lived here, many not of their own accord, and people from all of the world have died here — perhaps not of their own accord.

All of the stone was transported here by rivers and mud moving down from the north. It all hardened over 100 million years, and the pressure and the heat gave us sandstone, and that’s why we can enjoy the rugged topography. But enjoy it while you can. In another 10 million years, give or take, this will all be worn down to sand.

The peninsula divides two bodies of water, different temperatures, different character and different species. The waters are also the resting place of more than 600 shipwrecks that have happened in the last four centuries. Shipwrecks and life in the water, flora and fauna on the land, it is a place of multitudes, as we’ve come to realize. And while we took the cable car up, there’s an old sign here that says there are some 300 walking and hiking routes up here.

It also has a lot of names. The indigenous Khoekhoe called it Hoerikwagoo, meaning mountain of the sea. The original Portugese name was Taboa do Cabo, Table of the cape. If you were here at night you might see the constellation Mons Mensa, which was given its name by an 18th century astronomer, who used the latin version of the mountain’s name. The peninsula and the mountain that rises from it has been a national park since 1998. That day it was called “a Gift to the Earth.”

It was a real treat to take it all in. This was my second of the new wonders of the world. (There are more of these lists than I realized.) Both of those visits, and indeed this whole trip, is because of my lovely photobombing bride.

But now we’re headed to the airport, and home.

adventures / food / Monday / South Africa — Comments Off
08
Jun 26

Eating all the fishes

Slow day today, here in Cape Town. The weather wasn’t the most cooperative, but that’s OK. Winter is trying to roll in here, and the weather has been charming throughout the trip. Seldom do we take a trip, in fact, where the weather doesn’t accommodate the day’s plans. We got rained on one day in Switzerland a few years ago. Two years ago we had some weather happen some diving in Mexico. It’s just going to happen that you get a day that invites you to stay inside.

This is what we did.

We attended a bit more conference. My lovely bride had a meeting at the conference. I sat and read, which was delightful. The rains came in. We went to the spa and got massages. They were quite nice. Not as good as my last one, but also I didn’t feel beaten up after this one, either. There are always trade offs in the muscle moving game. Also, I think I’m getting a bit better at learning to relax somewhere closer to the beginning of a massage than the end. Progress!

We went to dinner at a place everyone who has been to Cape Town told us about, Codfather, in Camps Bay. They say they have an extravagant menu. They do. Their website asks, “Why eat when you can feast?” and, friends, this is the sort of gastronomical rhetoric to which we can all abide.

This is how it works. You make a reservation. You rent an Uber. The Uber drives us over a small mountain pass and into the appropriate place. He tells you to enjoy your dinner. You go inside and upstairs. It’s crowded and every space is filled with tables and chairs and people. It is loud. The few places that aren’t filled with guests are packed full of employees. There is a great hustle to the place, which we haven’t seen a lot of lately and it’s really quite off-putting.

We were stuffed into a little corner besides some guys all pretending for one another that they’d been in special forces. (One of them might have been in the artillery. He yelled loud enough.) The staff comes to tell you what dinner is like. Every table gets the same sides. You can order your drinks at the table, but you must go up to the counter to order your fish. There are a handful of guys standing there, waiting for you. They’re going to guide you through the selection. They tell you about everything they have available.

They tell you about the waters were the fish were caught, local and farther away. They tell you how the waters were there this afternoon, when your dinner was hoisted from the sea. They tell you about the personality of the mother of the man who brought the fish to the shore.

You go through all of the cases like this. It takes several minutes, because they have an extravagant menu. And if you aren’t perfectly attuned to the guy, or if you are somehow distracted by the din of the place, you’ll miss something important, like what was playing on the radio in the truck that brought this food to the store. Once you’ve gone through all of the cases you tell the guy what you want. He repeats this to a man behind the counters. And he’s smiling in an overly friendly way. It’s loud enough that some things need to be repeated, and this new guy is smiling all the way. And then you get to pick the particular pieces you want, and that man is now smiling like a maniac.

We ordered what seemed like enough food, and then got what seemed like a little bit more. Something about the entire process makes you forget yourself, your inhibitions, your idea about what’s right for two people, and the entire notion of what anything costs, because you have no idea.

But food here is either reasonable or entirely inexpensive. And tonight’s meal, which turned out to be both a lot of food and precisely the right amount, somehow, was inexpensive. Also, it was delicious. Go to the Codfather. I’d go again.

After dinner we walked down the hill and around the corner because it was time for …

Caught an Uber back to the hotel to address our things. Tomorrow is our last day here, but we still have a lot to do.

adventures / history / photo / site / South Africa / video / weekend — Comments Off
07
Jun 26

Robben Island

The human spirit sometimes offers us two rare gifts. One of those offerings is a simple recognition of its largest capability, something which is difficult to understand. The rare willingness of the spirit to be overruled by the heart is the ultimate gift of self-possession. The capacity to look at what has been visited upon oneself, and to see beyond it, is a remarkable thing. It is selfless and it is with great intention, a promise to oneself. I will free myself from that which would imprison my nature, if not my body.

You see it from time to time. You see it in wonder. Often at its core is a willingness to offer forgiveness or understanding. Religion, insight, the bigger picture, they all have something to say about this. So does Modise.

He was a political prisoner at the notorious Robben Island. Now he is a guide on the island. He lives there, at the place where the state once held him, and he tells his story, and the story of the other prisoners, and the centuries old place. He bears the scars of his torture. He shows some of the physical ones, and talks of some of the mental ones, and that is only a part of his conversation with his guests, but certainly not all of it.

I realized, too late, that I should be taking notes of all of the things that he said, and so I don’t have a complete recitation to offer you. To try to share parts of it seems, somehow, insufficient and not to say inappropriate for what it would lack.

For years, Modise had a view of walls and barbed wire and the quarry where he was worked. He was incarcerated because, as a student, he stood for for racial equality. As an elder, he talks about forgiveness. Reconciliation. Understanding. To Modise, hating the people who held him here, to foster the bitterness of youth and nurture the anger of his jailtime would keep him a victim. He’s come to see that everyone he encountered, even the warders, the people that ran Robben Island, were all victims of apartheid.

The human spirit is full of wonder.

Modise rode with us on a bus around the island. We saw a lot of the buildings from the road, the quarry where the prisoners worked, the inmate cemetery, and the parts of the island that the prisoners knew nothing about. He dropped us off with another guide for a walking tour.

Have you ever been on a tour where guests hugged the guide at the end of the tour? I have. Today.

We had heard, of course, that Robben Island was a trip to take. You go out by ferry and follow the group along on a guided afternoon. We had heard that, at one time, there were a lot of the former prisoners giving the tours. That’s hard to contemplate. Wouldn’t you want to get as far away as possible? But people told us that this was the way to have taken in the experience, but that there were fewer and fewer of them giving tours today. The personal first-hand experience was becoming more rare. I asked Modise how many still gave tours. He said about a dozen. Then, he sent us inside to see the facility itself, as guided by another former inmate.

One of the mass cells.

There are holes cut into the walls, for light, but there were no windows, so the weather was unavoidable, no matter the weather. We were there on a pleasant, if gray, day. This was not, we are told, a comfortable place.

Our second guide had a great big booming voice. Rattled in your chest, bounced off the cement walls, came back to rattle your teeth. He talked with his hands, forever dancing, no matter if it was a moment of seriousness, or one of his well-trod jokes. The sleeves on his jacket, rubbing against his chest and stomach as he moved from the elbows, were his accompaniment, and all of it in this same, steady rhythm.

There’s a spare courtyard and along the back wall sits this tree. And our guide said that Nelson Mandela, who was a political prisoner here for 18 years, buried his autobiography behind it while he was writing it. It was smuggled out out of prison, and on to London. And I’m staring at this tree when, a week ago, I was at another prison that held Mandela, and at his home, staring at a tree that he planted and trying to remember the bit I have learned about trees in the local cultures, the epicenter of food, shelter, law, memory, trade, medicine, art, identity, the place to anchor your home, the place to hide your story.

While Mandela was here for 18 years, our first guide was here for five, but their time did not overlap. Our second guide was here for a bit longer, and he was here during some of Mandela’s later time. They slept on straw mats. They did hard labor. They were physically and verbally abused. Over time, some conditions marginally. How a prisoner was classified dictated what few privileges they might receive, even down to the number of guests or correspondence. In the late 1960s prisoners were given pants, an upgrade from the shorts they’d previously worn year-round. In 1973, somehow, Mandela managed a bed in his single-occupant cell. It was behind this lock.

Through these bars. And if you’re wondering if that paint was chipped by fingers and nails, you aren’t alone.

I lingered behind the group, staring at those bars, and it took a bit for it to register that this was Mandela’s cell. He lived in this 8-foot-by-7-foot space.

This was the end of the tour. You walked down the last of the corridor, away from those individual cells, and out into another hard, gravel courtyard. Our guide was standing at the gap in the wall, trying to count his guests. I told him I was not the last person out, there was one more guy behind me. I stopped and talked with him for a moment. Shook his hand. Thanked him for telling his story, for keeping this story alive. He smiled and pointed, “And now you can take your short walk to freedom.”

I stood and watched him walk across the front of the place, back to where he picked us up. A lone elderly gentleman, head down, strong shouldered, doing this thing he’s done for who knows how long. I wondered how much longer he would do it. I wondered if he was one of the men he talks about in that clip above. I wondered if I was right, when he told that part of the story, when I thought Simply another kind of political prisoner. I wondered what that meant. I wondered how many more people would get to hear these stories from people who had lived it themselves. I wondered about the rare moment of history that we are sometimes afforded like that and what is lost when that moment passes as the eye-witnesses and participants and survivors pass from us. I wonder about that tree.

Almost by chance, as I walked back toward the ferry, I saw these statues in the distance. We were being urged to hurry, and they were too far away to see. But I have since learned that they were in stalled last September. They are likenesses of six of the former political prisoners here. They are, Khotso Seatholo, Andimba Toivo ja Toivo, Robert Sobukwe,
Nelson Mandela, Krotoa, and Autshumato.

All but the last statue were produced by Cristina Salvoldi.

We took the ferry back to the mainland. The ride was just long enough for darkness to fall along the waterfront. (This shot will join the banners on the site one of these days.)

You come off the ferry, down the ramp, up some stairs, down some stairs, up some more stairs …

And into the night. We had dinner near the waterfront, smelling of dead fish and whatever the sailors next to us were smoking. It was one of those where you try to finish before you lose your patience, and before the rain returns. Also, there was a shuttle to catch back to our hotel. We got the last one back, for a late night in.