Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Saturday, Oct. 10 (back-posting again)

This was supposed to be our easy day to recover from travel. So, of course I was wide awake at about 6am. But no matter what time you wake up, it seems like breakfast is already ready to go at Rainhill. Nothing fancy: bread, cereal, yogurt, fruit, and a variety of spreads, most notably Marmite and Beefy Bovril. Avoid.

Once everyone was up and about, we headed to an open-air market for some craft shopping. Picture this: you pull into a parking lot, where young men are frantically waving you into a parking place, and others are insisting that you buy belts and sunglasses from them. You get someone to watch your vehicle for you (this may seem obvious, but you pay them when you get back, not up front). Then you head into the market, where suddenly there is a cacaphony of people shouting at you to come into their stand and look at their goods. Oddly, these "artisans" all seem to be selling the same things - which might explain their need to shout, cajole, and even grab you as you pass by. My inner New Yorker did not respond well to these sales tactics, and I ended up telling several of them that I'd come into their stand only if they stopped talking to me entirely. When one finally listened, I made my only purchase of the trip. I suspect this makes me a bad tourist.

We had planned to go on an evening game tour through Pilanesburg National Park, and to get there, we went through Sun City, this massive casino and hotel complex. I was not fond of Las Vegas, and this wasn't really much better. One small observation: nearly all the visitors were white; nearly all the workers were black or colored. On a side note, the word "colored" doesn't sit well with me, but that is what they call one particular racial group here, which seems to be some conglomeration of Indians, Asians, and mixed-race people. Apartheid may have ended, but the racial divisions are still pretty distinct.

Anyway, then we got in the safari truck and took off on our game ride. I hadn't realized it would be entirely in the dark, and it was pretty weird riding around with lights flashing into the bushes to find the animals. We saw elephants, rhinos, a giraffe, coyotes, and a ton of impala and wildebeests. They were cool to see and I guess that's a part of Africa no one wants to miss, but driving around spotlighting animals was a bit odd.

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