Already we are losing track of the beds we’ve slept in, but last night we slept aboard a train between Cape Town and Johannesburg—Nat in one sleeper cabin and Sara and me together in another.
Porters made our beds while we ate a luxurious dinner, making for a relaxing, 26-hour trip that took us through vineyard upon vineyard to scrub desert and mining country. Our Premier Classe train is a somewhere below a Blue Train but at least a grade above regular passenger service. Everywhere we’ve been the Africans have treated us to exceptional hospitality: Our guesthouse hosts and these porters have made dinner reservations for us, called cabs, driven us places themselves, made food to order, dusted while chatting, taken our trash, etc.
We are winding up our time in South Africa but not without enjoying wildlife, the water, and good food.
African penguins! Here a colony of them at Betty’s Bay, where we stopped Sunday afternoon on our way from Hermanus back to Cape Town.
Seals out in Table Bay, where we took a sail on Monday. And a lone shark that wandered into the harbor.
We had perfect sailing weather—light winds, sunny and cool—and our regret was that Jim Goffin wasn’t aboard to show the crew what’s what.
We did meet onboard several Sudanese who also attended the Lausanne conference, including an Anglican bishop from Nuba Mountains who told me of their delegations’ meetings with African regional leaders to press for peace as the January referendum moves forward. Everyone expects the South of Sudan to vote for succession, and that will leave areas like Nuba and Blue Nile (where I travelled 10 years ago) in a very precarious state. He was strong too in his belief that the north will quickly move to becoming a radical Islamic state after the referendum. All this, pulling into the dock in Cape Town harbor—keeping us grounded to the realities of life in this beautiful place.
Our trip is reaching its midpoint, but we have miles to go…
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