Change In Plans

I am on my way from Cape Town to Cairo, to spend a week doing some work.

The phrase “Cape to Cairo” was once widely used to describe the ease that the old South African army would have in fighting other African countries. As in, “Cape to Cairo in a month.” It is also a classic dream road trip. India is probably brave enough to try it, but I wouldn’t be.

At any rate, it should be interesting. I’ve never been to Egypt before. The economy is booming, Cairo is meant to be sensorily overwhelming, and it will be good to be doin substantive work.

No one is happy about me being away from home for a week. All of us feel, finally, as though we are getting into a rhythm in Cape Town. Zola is getting the hang of his 13 subjects and lots of homework and activities. Tallulah has been to the horse-riding center enough times that she has favorites among the horses. India is well known in her boxing gym.

I will be back soon enough, and we will continue settling in. We have a slew of activities and visitors in April, but fundamentally, it has started to feel as though we are living in South Africa. Life is good here.

Greetings from Cape Town!

Door to door, the trip took 34 hours. Our year of traveling sort of trained everyone, so it was fine. The individual TV screens in economy class make this feasible, even fun, for the kids.

We went to a wedding on our first evening in Cape Town. The bride was a South African woman who we have known since she was four (tempus fugit), and the groom was a South African who had grown up in the US. The wedding was held at Leeuwkop, the Western Cape premier’s official residence. It is the equivalent of the governor’s mansion, but built in the 1690s, and set into the side of Table Mountain, overlooking the city and the port.

The wedding, and the groom’s family, were Orthodox Jewish, which made for an interesting ceremony. There were official contracts in Hebrew, and the bride making circles around the groom, and lots of ancient formality. Tallulah was a flower girl, and spent the whole ceremony chasing flower petals that had been blown off the path by the teeth-rattling wind. Zola was a ring bearer (or ring barrier, as he called it), so he stood in the chupa with the wedding party, holding one of the four wooden poles to prevent the structure from blowing off the mountain. He looked a little shaggy and unkempt, but I don’t think anyone minded.

We saw many old friends at the wedding, which made us feel welcome and at home.

31 December was India’s birthday, so she set the agenda. She ran from our house in Llandudno to the base of Lion’s Head mountain. We met a group of friends there, and climbed up in the morning sunshine. Tallulah climbed the whole way by herself, spurred on by her friend, Sienna, who was climbing by herself for the second time. At the top, we sang Happy Birthday and ate carrot cake. For India, this was nearly perfect.

Although we have gotten a little color, and look healthier than we did in NY, we are all still feeling jet-lagged and out of sorts.

Tallulah has been collapsing at about 7pm each night (the wedding was tough), and getting up with the sun at 5am. She has been calling us “father” and “mother”, and asking us to call her “daughter.” Not sure what type of coping mechanism this is.

Zola got a huge sack of plastic army men, and has been setting up elaborate set-piece battles, with Byzantine rules about what each piece can do. Occasionally, he runs around yelling “Suppressing fire!” and diving for cover into a sofa or onto the floor. He makes a lot of machine-gun noises too.

India has been running long, long distances, soaking up sun and beautiful views. She is overjoyed to be here. I’m happy that everyone else is happy, but am feeling apprehensive about work, and separation from the rest of the world. I will get over it, and we will be fine.

In the meanwhile, we have a lot of logistical and practical stuff to do (cars, health insurance, school uniforms), and we want to go surfing. It is nice to not feel pressure to see people and do things on a rapid-fire schedule, since we are staying indefinitely. This feels like a very relaxing holiday at the moment.

Cape Town is pretty awesome.

We are midway through the long trip to Johannesburg. South African Airways flights stop in Dakar, Senegal, to refuel and switch out the crew in the middle of the night.

Our last night in New York was bittersweet. At Zola’s suggestion, he and Tallulah and I went to Bleecker Street Pizza for dinner. This was our regular stop on the walk home from school. India and I did not make it to Minetta Tavern for a last celebratory drink, but can go on our next trip together.

We were in the car (actually, and fortunately, a 12-passenger van) by 9:30 this morning. For complicated and uninteresting reasons, we had to fly from Dulles, rather than from JFK. Having the van was fortunate because we had about 800 pounds of luggage (literally), and needed a big vehicle to ferry it.

The drive was easy, security at Dulles was tedious and very slow, but we made it through in plenty of time.

Ignoring all conventional wisdom, I ate airport sushi while we waited for the flight, and it was terrible. Aside from that, no drama.

We should be in Johannesburg in another 10 hours, and finally on the ground in Cape Town a few hours after that. It really is kind of a long way.

Happy Halloween from Greenwich Village!

A year ago, we were wandering around in Tokyo, our kids lamenting that they were trick-or-treating far from home. Halloween is not a big holiday in Japan, but it is very well organized. Households register on the internet if they are accepting visits from trick or treaters. Our friends printed a color-coded map, which we followed to find candy.

This year, we are in the white-hot, freaky epicenter of the American Halloween celebration. The Greenwich Village parade passes 25 feet from our front door. There are tens of thousands of spectators and participants, and hundreds of police officers on the street.

It should be an interesting evening. Lu is a cat, Zola is a hobo. He has fake rotten teeth, and a great cardboard sign that reads “Will work for candy! God bless U”.

India is some kind of leather-clad Superheroine for Peace. Think Emma Peel from ‘The Avengers.’

‘m dressed as a grumpy old Halloween humbug. It’s a stretch role for me.

All around us are sexy French maids, sexy Mario Brothers, sexy skeletons, and sexy Pilgrims (???). Transvestism abounds. These are only the spectators. Because the marathon is tomorrow, there are many European and Latin American visitors standing on the parade route, wondering what to make of it all.

Start flying the freak flag, America. Magic is afoot, and the goddesses are wearing leather chaps on 6th Avenue.

PostScript- much later. We stood on 6th Avenue for over an hour, waiting for the parade to start. Zola sat on the curb with his sign, and an abject look on his face. A few people gave him money. Lu sat on my shoulders. More people packed in, until the spectators were at least ten deep behind the barricades on both sides of the street. I’m glad I’m tall.

Finally, the parade started. Unfortunately, the rain started at about the same time. It’s a very democratic parade: anyone can march, costumed or not. We saw some incredibly elaborate group costumes, some giant skeletons, many people in no costumes at all, and scores of ’sexy policewomen.’. There were several elaborate Michael Jackson group tributes (think Thriller video).

Despite what I had thought, the whole experience was surprisingly wholesome. Despite the masses, everyone was very polite and calm. It was a pleasant, only modestly chaotic environment. You get the sense that the NYPD has things under control.

After watching for over an hour, we walked to a party at the townhouse home of one Zola’s classmates. The nearly mile-long walk in the pouring rain and with the crowds took about 45 minutes. We were happy when we got there.

When it stopped raining, we walked back. The crowds had doubled at least, and at times we could not move at all, hemmed in by people. I’m glad Lu was on my shoulders. Still, everyone was polite and calm.

Lying in bed, I can hear the crowds roaring outside. The actual parade ended a few minutes ago, after three hours of continuous marchers. I’m not so sure it stays entirely wholesome as the night deepens.

We had fun, and are all exhausted. Lu fell asleep on my shoulders, and Zola asked me to stop reading after only two pages of ‘Red Badge of Courage.’ Happy Halloween!

HAPPY KID IN A JET BOAT

Greetings from Russell, New Zealand!

This is one of the most beautiful parts of an overall incredibly beautiful country.  We have had a very relaxing few days here.

On Tuesday morning we chartered a boat, called the Sea Eagle, and went sailing from Whangaroa.  The Maori place names here, like Whangaroa, are frequently fun to say.  “When you get to Kawakawa, take the State Highway north toward Pakaraka.  If you see signs for Urupukapuka, you have gone the wrong way.”

ABOARD THE SEA EAGLE

The Sea Eagle is a 15-meter steel-hulled sailboat.  It has been well loved, but seemed extremely seaworthy.  The skipper, Paul, once lived on it for five years.  He has sailed the Sea Eagle to Fiji several times, and to Tonga twice.  These places are impossibly far away from New Zealand.

Paul was an interesting character.  He is in his late 50s, and has been a professional bass guitarist (loves the Red Hot Chili Peppers), a restaurant chef, an aerobatics pilot, a competitive sky diver, and a marine-winch salesman.  He and his partner moved up to Whangaroa because Russell (population 500) got too crazy for them.  Mostly now he gardens, takes groups on his sail boat, and chills out.

Paul was an excellent sailor and good company, although India and I sensed we should steer clear of politics.  In passing, he mentioned that “we” should nuke Fiji and Somalia, and that New Zealand had to be prepared to fend off hordes of poor Indian immigrants when “the days of anarchy come.”  OK.

The sailing was almost perfect: sunny skies, gentle and steady breeze, flat waters.  We sailed out of Whangaroa Bay, around Stephenson Island, and back into port.  Zola and I got to steer most of the time.  The four-hour duration was perfect for India.

 On Wednesday, we indulged in an activity which was extremely rare in our year of travel: we hung out at the house and did basically nothing.  Zola completed a double dose of on-line math.  India and I each went for a run.  We sat by the pool and shivered (New Zealand is unambiguously colder thn we expected).  The kids watched cartoons.  We talked.  We admired the view of the bay and the islands.

Overall, it was like having a very relaxing day on vacation in a beautiful place.  Hmmmm.

Since I got back from Switzerland, and we have been in the last two weeks of the trip, our family dynamic has subtly shifted from “open-ended travelers” to “vacationers.”  I have not been as obsessive about keeping in touch, and not so worried about dwindling into irrelevance.  We have started making social plans back in New York.  Our peripatetic “new normal” of the last several months is coming to an end.

Today, our last day, we shifted back into high activity gear.  We toured the Russell Museum, and went for a short (but unbelievably scenic) hike to Tapeka Point.  We are going on a long jet-boat ride later, and Zola and I have reserved mountain bikes for the late afternoon.  This evening, Eagles Nest is sending a chef to our villa to cook us a final dinner.

Ultimately, we are still in denial about the trip coming to an end.  Maybe that is because we are not yet sure what the future holds for us.  We will continue to talk and plan on the 300-hundred hour trip back to New York.

Greetings from St. Kilda, a bohemian beach suburb of Melbourne. We arrived yesterday afternoon, after the long (very long) drive from Sydney.

As I noted in my breakfast blog post from Manly (Sydney), when the fires first became big news, it seemed strange to be driving into the heart of a Page 1 disaster area. This feeling grew as we drove southwest, and listened to the live ABC radio broadcasts on location from the command posts near various fires.

We did not see any actual fires burning, but we did see a lot of mid-distance smoke in a few sites east of Melbourne. We drove through several spots along the highway where all of the vegetation had burned off. We also saw many ash-covered cars and trucks, and emergency vehicles racing off into the hills.

Most of our experience of the fires, though, has been listening to the radio, and (especially) reading the newspapers. The headlines of the local and national papers read: “Apocalypse Now,” and “Our Darkest Hour,” and “Our Most Tragic Losses.”. The stories are a mix of truly tragic -young kids killed saving their horses, families wiped out when their cars wouldn’t start- and feel good miracle rescues. The color photos and transcripts of emergency calls make the stories more poignant and real. 200 deaths feels like quite a lot when you are reading about dinner-party conversations last week, and frantic efforts to get into crawl spaces.

We have become familiar with the acronym “CFA,” which is the Country Fire Authority. In every story, the CFA firefighters are cast in the role of heroes. Invariably they are absolved explicitly of blame for not saving more people.

In all of the news coverage, and in interviews with survivors and distraught relatives, there is a strange obsession with figuring out which fires were deliberately set. “Bringing the mass-murdering arsonists to justice,” is how this theme is usually worded.  The prime minister and the state premier and the special commissioner (a retired police chief) all pander to this ‘find the villains” sentiment. Fanning the flames, as it were.

My totally uninformed guess is that virtually all of the fires were natural or accidental. The combination of extreme dryness, extreme heat (~50 celsius, or ~125 Fahrenheit), strong winds, and too much underbrush. But we need villains, so the focus is on arsonists. Sad, but weird, but understandable.

In Melbourne itself, there is limited acknowledgment of the tragedy on the doorstep. Everyone is reading the same newspapers, and watching the same 24-hour news coverage, but life seems to be going along pretty much as normal.

Who am I to say what normal is, though? We just got here.

Each shop and restaurant suddenly has a can on the counter, collecting money for the relief effort. The waitstaff at the restaurant where we just had dinner is donating this week’s tips.

Adding to the strangeness, it is cold and cloudy in Melbourne. On Saturday, the temperature hit its highest level ever recorded, just under 50 degrees celsius (127 Fahrenheit). Today it was 16 celsius (61 Fahrenheit), and everyone was wearing jackets and boots. The wind was strong, as you might guess, and apparently this gave new life to many of the uncontrolled fires.

So, we are sitting amidst the aftermath of a tragic disaster, but it doesn’t feel that way. We have had a minor tragedy of our own, the early miscarriage of a surprise pregnancy, so we have been focused on India’s health, and on our emotions. We knew we were pregnant for exactly two days. More on that subject later. It has been a strange and sad week.

Greetings from Gochas, Namibia.! We are about 200 km northwest of the border post with South Africa at Mata Mata.

We have had a wild few days in the Kalahari Desert: tracking lions, finding snakes and scorpions, camping in the sand, and enjoying (en famille) the company of a mysterious French woman of a certain age, travelling alone. Details and pictures (and a map) will have to wait until we have Internet access.

This morning we spent an hour watching four male lions with a giraffe they had killed last night. The lions were so full that they mostly lay on their backs in the shade. Every so often they would get up, glare at us through blood-matted fur, and move deeper into the shade. They were maybe 3 meters away from our bakkie. The giraffe, in its magnificent length, lay dead and disemboweled in the middle of a dry riverbed. As Tallulah said, “He has a big hole in his belly.”

Eventually we had to leave the Kgalagadi park and get on the road. We drove to the South Africa-Namibia border. India charmed her way through some potentially very inconvenient passport issues (my passport), we paid a tax with the remainder of our cash, and we were across.

Three kilometers from the border, we found a beautiful (sadly, dead) Cape Cobra snake in the road. We got out and had a long look at the snake. Both kids were fascinated with it, which may be a little weird.

On the 200 km drive to Gochas, we passed only three motor vehicles, and, again, two donkey carts. Aside from fences, and the road, there is practically no evidence of human presence in the desert. It is about 110 degrees Fahrenheit, and the direct sunlight has bleached all of the color from the landscape .

Gochas has a tiny hotel, Stoney’s Country Inn, where we were very grateful to get lunch and a drink. If we had blinked, we might have missed Gochas altogether. I ordered a ‘Stoney Burger,’ which came with two fried eggs, cheese, a quarter-pound of bacon, and a salad on it. Now that’s good eating.

We are driving another few hours west, and staying at a cheetah-rescue lodge near Marienthal. Namibia is truly the wild west.

My debit card was just declined at the bar (as happens in the land of dial-up connections, I think). I should go try and figure that out. Maybe we will be home sooner than expected!

PostScript-
The machine at Stoney’s Country Hotel declined all of India’s and my cards: credit, debit, charge. We had literally no cash (SA Rand or Namibian $), because the last working ATM was several days and several hundred kilometers ago.

The Stoney Country Inn’s proprietress, a heavyset Afrikaans woman in her mid-30s, had been very friendly and attentive up until this point. We were the only lunchtime customers. As card after card got declined, we saw her disposition change, and I could practically hear her thinking, “You deadbeat uitlanders with your cellphones and loud voices and fancy ways. There is no way you are going to cheat me out of the $26 you owe me for lunch”

Eventually, she suggested that we try to get cash at the “mini-ATM” over at the OK Bazaar supermarket. Failing that, we could try to get money “from Dicky at the petrol station”. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the latter siggestion.

Regardless, I think she was planning to hold Zola and Tallulah hostage until we came up with the money. At that point, the gods of electronic funds transfer decided to smile on us, and India’s debit card got approved.

We went to the OK Bazaar, across the dusty main street, which had a little networked credit-card machine. In theory, you get a receipt for the withdrawal amount, take it to the cashier, and she gives you cash. Cool idea (saves the bank from servicing an ATM), but of course it rejected all of our cards as well.

The OK Bazaar’s manager called Dicky over at the gas station, and asked whether his credit-card machine accepted foreigners’ cards. Thankfully it did, and a few minutes later, the liquidity crisis had passed. Dicky hooked us up with N$ 1,000 (about US$ 100) with a quick electronic approval of my debit card, and we were back in business. Of course, we spent N$500 on Dicky’s diesel fuel and on cold drinks immediately after.

Getting the fuel was a huge relief, because running out in the Namibian desert would be unpleasant. Interestingly, all of the businesses in Gochas were white owned, in a country which is ~95% black.

We will get sufficient cash reserves, and sort out our credit cards tomorrow in the metropolis of Marienthal.

In the meantime, we are staying overnight at Bagatelle’s, the cheetah lodge. The sun just set, spectacularly, over the desert, and the stars are ablaze in the otherwise completely black sky.

Onward to the Namib desert and the high dunes of Sossusvlei tomorrow.

This very short post is an experiment, to see how our new web site works.  So far so good.  This should make it easier for readers to find us, and for us to publish text, videos, pictures, music.  As we get ready to leave for Japan, this should be helpful.

Thanks for your support.

This short post relates some of the funny things that have happened while we have been travelling. As noted before, I don’t know how funny they will be in the retelling (particularly in my retelling), but they made us laugh at the time.

1- We have been following the U.S. Presidential campaign reasonably closely, but only through the internet. We did see a replay of the Vice Presidential debate, with Turkish sub-titles, on the boat on our last night in Turkey. India also managed to play the Tina Fey Saturday Night Live impressions of Sarah Palin on YouTube for us (although not in Turkey, where access to YouTube has been blocked by the government).

Somehow, in all of this, the expression “I can see Russia from my house!” has crept into the family dialogue. For example: “Zola, why haven’t you done your schoolwork yet?” “Because I can see Russia from my house.” It is particularly funny when the three-year old says it.

One of our favorite Zola moments was when we were staying at the Ciragan Palace in Istanbul, looking out over the Bosphorus Straits. He woke up one morning and told us, apropos of nothing, “Sarah Palin says she can see Russia from her house. So what?. I can see Asia from my bed!”

2- Our dinner at Donna Rosa restaurant in Monteprusto, Italy was nearly perfect. The restaurant is run by a family, with Donna Rosa and her daughter in the open kitchen, the father and another daughter waiting tables. Three funny things happened during our dinner.

First, we struck up a conversation with a lovely couple on their honeymoon. The new wife, in her mid-thirties, was very interested in our children, and she and India really hit it off. 30 minutes after they left, the waitress answered a phone call, and then summoned India to the phone. We assumed the worst: parents sick, hotel burned down, who knows? The new bride actually had called the restaurant from her hotel, gave India her address and phone number, and invited us to stay with them in London.

Second, there was a large and vivacious American tour guide sitting with a small group of his high-end clients at the table next to us. It was clear that the guide brings all of his groups to Donna Rosa, and that he has a very friendly relationship with the family. Donna Rosa sent our table a small starter, and the tour guide made a humorous show of wanting the starters for himself. After Zola went to the kitchen and talked to Donna Rosa and her daughter, they sent us a small plate of meatballs, and the tour guide made a humorous show of trying to intercept the waitress and get the meatballs. The kids scarfed down the small plate, so she sent a big plate (this was all before we ordered), and the tour guide made a bigger show of chasing the waitress with his fork, asking for meatballs. Tallulah leaned over to me, and said in a triumphant voice: “That big fatman wants our food, but we are NOT giving it to him.”

Third, after his trip to the kitchen, Zola was emboldened to order a ravioli appetizer, even though it had spinach in it (breaking new culinary ground for a very picky eater). He told the waitress: “I would like to order he ravioli, but only half an order of ravioli. That way, if I like it, I can get you to bring me the other half of the order later on.”

3- We have never spanked either of our kids, but when we were in Positano, Zola found a box of matches and lit one by himself in the bedroom, while we were all in the sitting room. This required a reaction which was different in kind from anything he had seen before, and would be memorable, so I put him over my knee and actually spanked him (not very hard) for the first, and I hope only, time in his life.

This was not funny, and was sort of traumatic for all of us. Zola crying, Tallulah crying, India and me upset.

The next evening, Tallulah and I were cozy in bed, reading a story. She interrupted me and said in a soft voice:

“Dad? Remember when you spanked Zola?”

“Of course, sweetheart, it was yesterday.”

“Dad, when you spanked him it was … very … it was so … it was …”

“I know, Lu, it was very scary and awful for all of us. I just wanted him and you to know that…”

“No Dad. What I mean is that when you spanked him it was … so … it was so … nice!”

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