Saturday, Mar 4. Flight was loooong, but uneventful. The hotel is adjacent to the tallest building in South Africa. Sandton District is the country’s Ginza. Immense, beautiful mall, protected by many guards, some with rifles. Very safe. “You could fall asleep drunk and be at no risk”, one reviewer wrote. Definitely not your typical South Africa.
Things are so cheap I keep doubting my currency conversion math. Large ribeye steak, $12.50. A bucket of (7) prawns, $6.50. Fancy soap, $5. An F1 Racing specialty store returned me to reality. $60 shirts.
This is largely a single hero country. Nelson Mandela is everywhere. Not surprisingly, though sadly, most of the patrons at this upper class mall are white. A guard attempted to shake me down a little by saying I couldn’t take photos of Mandela’s large statue with my good camera without paying a fee. But phone cameras were okay. I got confirmation that it was BS.
Note the beePrawns.Cool train in the mall. A man preceded the train waving a flag for safety.Soap. Nice name.Beautiful and popular photo target. 20 feet tall.The restaurant doubles as a butcher shop. Very good beef.
Thursday, Mar 2. Today I begin another Adventure in Sub-Saharan Africa. Perhaps my last. Thankfully, this time I won’t have to go by way of Europe, courtesy of a 15+ hour flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg.
The entire trip is 26 days long. Except for a two night stay in the old/new country of Swaziland/Eswatini, the adventure is entirely in South Africa. Only about 8 days are focused on animal viewing. Most of the trip will involve learning about the country’s culture. Obviously, its present is very much a consequence of its past. We will spend a lot of time along the coastline and several days in Cape Town. It should be interesting.
Feb 19-22. Disembarkation was unremarkable. It was easy getting a taxi into Old San Juan, since almost everyone else was headed to the airport. The hotel (“El Colonial”) was superb. An open bar!! I was able to stash my bags there and begin a walkabout. But first I had to contact AT&T about my phone costs. I learned, much to my surprise, that AT&T had a “cellular” tower on the ship, so even though I didn’t want cellular service, I was getting it. “You should have set your phone to ‘Airplane Mode'”. The confusion cost me $100.
It didn’t take long to realize that Puerto Rico has a thing for statues. They were everywhere, memorializing everything and everyone. (There’s a row of statues displaying every president who has visited PR. The guide said there is some debate about a Trump statue, with satirists proposing that it show him throwing a roll of paper towels. Cute.)
As with the rest of the Caribbean, noise is popular. While looking for a lunchtime restaurant, the first criteria wasn’t food. It was noise. Using Google Maps as a guide, I found a 4.8 rated place with a fantastic view of the ocean. Later I learned that it was in a location with an unsafe reputation. I was congratulated for finding the place. Excellent food. A subsequent walk through the neighborhood did seem less than safe, but it was also decorated with very nice graffiti.
By the time I returned to the hotel my room was ready. The place has a beautiful rooftop balcony. After getting some advice, I walked to a nearby restaurant and had a fantastic meat paella and a shrimp taco. BTW, everything is nearby. It’s a small town.
The next day I did a serious tour of the city, visiting both forts and lots of places in between. Excellent experience. Being President’s Day, the town was very crowded. The approach to one fort has a very large lawn, and the non-stop wind provided an opportunity for lots of kite flying. Very pretty. Traffic in the small streets was insane. My walking easily outpaced the cars. There were several cruise ships in port adding to the crowds, though the town was in no way dominated by foreigners. I had a fine pizza for lunch. Found a bar that specialized in fancy cocktails and had two. For dinner I returned to the same restaurant as the night before, mostly because of the shrimp taco.
On Tuesday I enjoyed a Local’s Tour of Puerto Rico. It was okay. Had snacks at rural restaurant, drove along the shoreline, stopped at one of their many caves, and had a short visit in their rainforest. It was a cloudy day so the forest wasn’t as impressive as I’d hoped. But the guide was very talkative and informative. A good day. Had delicious lasagna at what had been a very crowded restaurant for the past two nights.
My flight in Wednesday was at 2:45 AM. The Uber driver seemed to consider a 12:30 pickup no big deal, so clearly it’s not an unusual flight time. Flew back on Spirit Airline. Never again. Seats like plywood.
$$ food, million dollar view. Photo doesn’t show the wind. Death with a viewRainforestBeehive in a cave.Roberto Clemente’s photo on their vehicle registration.
