Last night's dinner at Mama Africa was very good, even though they lost our order and we had to wait over an hour for our food. The 'garden salad' was a combination plate of cucumbers, tomatoes, pineapple, carrot-raisin salad, corn salad and I'm sure something else I've forgotten, so it wasn't like we were starving. The waiter came by several time to say our food would be out "in just a few minutes". He also made a point of telling us there was no gratuity included in the check, although there was a R10 cover charge per person for the live music which started about 5 minutes before we left. We picked up a cab from outside the restaurant and gave the driver the name of our hotel, which is "Southern Sun Waterfront" to distinguish it from "Southern Sun Cullonen" (almost adjacent). We got within sight of the hotel and he turned the other way taking us to the entrance to the waterfront. We said, no, it's a HOTEL, the Southern Sun and pointed to the big sign on the top of the building. He still couldn't find it, trying three other hotels. Finally, we told him to drop us at the Cullonen, and we walked the rest of the way. Needless to say, we paid him what the fare should have been, not what he ran up on the meter.

Now, back to the journal:

At 1:45 am, the smoke detector in our room started chirping that its battery was low. It didn’t take long to decide that we wouldn’t sleep with it beeping, so Dan climbed up and disabled it. However, by now, I was awake enough and didn’t get back to sleep well, so when I woke up at 4:50, I got up and decided to shower before the drive. From listening to others, the early morning hours seem to be the best time to get hot water. There was coffee and tea and rusk in the courtyard under a tree filled with bright yellow and black weaver birds and their intricate nests.

We drove the short distance (everyone’s figured out their seating in the new bus, and someone actually managed to convince Allenby that she’d switched seats with the consent of the previous occupant) to the Hwuhwule Game Preserve. We switched to the 10 passenger open vehicles, met Roy, our driver and headed out at a little after 6. It was well past ‘first light—I think that’s around 4 am—but I don’t think anyone minded. The sun was out, and it was glorious. Our first glimpse of wildlife was a small group of impala, followed by zebra and white rhino. Over the course of the drive, we also saw giraffe, brindle wildebeest, Cape buffalo, wart hogs, Nyala, and numerous birds, including the widow bird, stone chat, purple crested lurie, and kite.

And there was a working dung beetle, forming a sphere twice as tall as it was. By 8 am, the weather had grown overcast and colder, and the wind chill subtracted a few more degrees from the temperature. The sweatshirt moved from being a cushion for Dan’s camera to a needed article of clothing.

Dan’s camera seemed to be working, and his lens afforded much better wildlife pictures than my little point and shoot, although I still snapped away. This morning was the first time it really “felt” like Africa, although that’s an unfair generalization, since the country is far more than wild animals and scenic vistas.

We drove back to the hotel in the open vehicles this time, having to stop occasionally for cows crossing the highway. Highway speed in those vehicles is a windy affair indeed.

Back to another sumptuous buffet breakfast (ox liver was one option), a bit of a break, and then off to Zululand for a tourist’s view of their culture. The tour begins with a greeting from a Zulu warrior in his language, after which our tour guide explains in something closer to English that we cannot enter without asking permission from the inhabitants and the spirits, and she tells us what to shout. The response to enter is given, and we file in: men first, then the ‘mamas’ followed by the maidens (there were a few on the tour). We moved from craft area to craft area, each time requesting permission to enter. I wonder if the artisans ever get fed up with all the tourists and their cameras and say “no.”

We saw spear making, shield making, pottery making, basket making, a beehive shaped home, bead making (where we learned that if a young man wants a bride, he sends beads to her, and if she accepts, she makes a necklace which her sister returns for her. The bead colors are significant: white for purity, red for ‘my heart bleeds for you’ and black for ‘give my father 11 cows so we can set the date’) a healer, a fortune teller. We also learned that married women wear read hats and cover their bodies, while unmarried women go topless. We sampled Zulu home brew (pretty awful). A dance demonstration followed, with yet another buffet meal after that. These included Zulu offerings as well as more familiar dishes. I don’t think ice cream is a traditional native food, but it was good. The guides loved my “Will Sell Husband for Chocolate” t-shirt, and I would have given it to our guide had I anything else to wear with me.

Back to the hotel for the rest of the day ‘at leisure’. Since we were stuffed from two buffets, and the choices around here are the hotel’s dinner buffet, a KFC and a Wimpy, we walked down to the supermarket and found the fixings for a light meal of scones and cheese.

And some more from Cape Town - Days 3 and 4

Since my journal is three weeks old, and I'm now working, not touring, these posts are kind of in dual time -- today is actually December 1st, and I just got an email from my agent saying her contact in Japan has requested the full manuscript of When Danger Calls, so that's an update to the following post.

First, some photos from previous days:

Penguins at Boulders

Cape Point -- southernmost point in Africa

View from halfway up to the lighthouse

Saturday


We found the bus stop, waited around and a bus appeared. Old, noisy, and a very jerky transmission, but we got to the waterfront, roamed a bit and boarded the Maharini for a sail around Table Bay. Perfect sailing weather – clear, blue skies and wind. High swells, but we saw Cape fur seals, penguins, and common dolphins.

View of Table Mountain from the sailboat.

Sunday:

A travel day. A long travel day, beginning with Allenby insisting that everyone take their correctly rotated seats. Cape Town airport is as affected by World Cup 2010 construction as Johannesburg was. Allenby did get us all checked in, and boarding passes distributed. Since he had allowed time for glitches, we had nearly an hour to wait for our flight. I wandered down to the bookstore and was surprised to see Karen Rose’s Die for Me prominently displayed. I wonder if my agent is having any success with marketing When Danger Calls in Japan. No internet access to this point, so I’m in total vacation mode. Collecting luggage in Durban wasn’t any different from anywhere else, and we were all glad our bags arrived—the plane had been overbooked according to our seat partner, a tour guide for another company.

The new bus was ready, but it was smaller than the Cape Town bus. Plus, we’d picked up two other group members who’d been stranded by snow in Minnesota, and then spent nearly 2 days at the Dakar airport due to equipment problems. So, fewer seats and not enough space for all the luggage. Some of it had to come inside, filling the toilet compartment, as much overhead space as possible, plus any empty seats. Given the different seat configuration, more adjusting had to be done to comply with our guide’s rules.

We headed out for a city tour of Durban, but between it being Sunday and rerouted roads due to construction, it turned out to be little more than a view of a downtrodden city center, and given the length of the drive, an hour that probably could have been eliminated from the itinerary. We headed along the coast to the small town (more like a real estate development) of Ballito for a rest stop and brief shopping break, since lunch on the plane wasn’t more than a snack. From there it was more than two hours to our hotel in Hwuhwule. We finally realized that the destination Allenby kept calling Schluschluwe was the way to pronounce Hwuhwule. When we entered the province, signs began appearing in three languages: English, Africaans, and the more local Zulu. Trying to understand the “natives” even though they’re speaking English, is a challenge because they pronounce things so differently, and the inflection isn’t the same as what we’re used to.

At the hotel, we were greeted by singing chambermaids in mob-capped uniforms, and a welcome fruit drink and pineapple. They grow the pineapple in the area, and it’s as good as any of the Hawaiian fruit we had in the islands. The maids also served as porters and carried our luggage to our rooms. (Women’s work here). Dinner was lavish and very African. Game stews, chicken, lots of salads, vegetables, and a delicious butternut squash soup, and we tried a Pinotage wine which I’d never heard of until my brother alerted me to it before our trip. Buffet style, as is just about everything we’ve had here.

We had a 5:00 wake-up call scheduled for tomorrow’s drive through Hwuhwule Game Reserve (second National Park in the world after Yellowstone), so after a delightful demonstration of Zulu dance by local students, we called it a night.

More from Cape Town - Day 2

Greetings: Here's another installment. Photos are added, although they won't always match the text; keep checking as I'm adding them as I find time to format them, which has to be done after work back in the hotel room. These are my "girlie camera" shots -- Dan won't be working on his manly-man camera pictures until we get home.

Cape Town, Day 2
We were instructed to be ready to leave at 8:30, which we were, although we didn’t depart until 8:42. Seems Allenby's not as strict about time as he is about where you sit on the bus.

We drove to Cape Point, through areas that reminded me of Beverly Hills, and the canyons where I grew up. A touch of Malibu and a little Northern California coast. When we got to the National Park, we found zebra resting under a bush, saw some ostrich and Bontebok and were warned not to feed the baboons. Dan and I opted to walk to the lighthouse at the top. The inclines were fairly steep in places, there were also areas of stairs to climb, but the views were spectacular (and stopping for photographs lets you catch your breath). Only downside—at the top, everyone was smoking. I think most of the rest of our tour took the rail car to the top. Round trip was about 45 minutes, but 30 minutes a day on a recumbent bike isn’t the kind of workout that conditions you for hiking. We knew we’d feel it the next day.

From there, we drove around to the actual “Cape of Good Hope” where you could see all the tourists taking pictures of each other at the sign that said where they were. On the way, we saw a baboon that someone had fed an orange, and a Cape fur seal (not together). We also learned that unless Allenby sees them, they don’t count. While I’m sure there are numerous rocks that look like seals, I know what we saw.

We drove to Simon Town, a naval base, and had lunch at a seafood restaurant. Not bad, but the fish (parrotfish, we were told) was overcooked for my taste. From there, we walked to the Boulder penguin grounds and saw the colony of African penguins who seem to tolerate humans hovering above them on a boardwalk taking their pictures.

The drive home was slow due to traffic, but we did see some Southern right whales off the coast. Still jet-lagged, and tired from the hiking, we opted to sample the local beer at the hotel bar. We sampled the Castle lager and the Birkenhead. Halfway through the second, we decided bar food was good enough for dinner. From there, it was upstairs, a test of the large bathtub (yes, the water circles the drain in the other direction), and bed.



View of Cape Town from Table Mountain (yesterday's tour)

Lighthouse at Cape Point (we hiked up)

Signs in South Africa are very "proper". This one from the beach at Cape Point.

Trip Diary - Day 1 in Cape Town

Nothing about this journal is 'literary' -- you're getting off-the-cuff notes, with no eloquent language. For now, the pictures will have to wait; I hope to find time to get some formatted to accompany the text tonight while my husband has a dinner meeting (unless I find someone myself!)

As writers, we're told that "only trouble is interesting" so if there seems to be emphasis on some of the glitches, that's just fodder for future stories. I wouldn't have missed the trip for the world.
********************

This morning, we had our first real glimpse of the environs. Breakfast is included in the room, and the buffet was a magnificent spread catering to all nationalities. Meats, fish, breads, fruits, eggs, sausage, etc., etc., etc. The hotel overlooks the ocean and had I not known where we were, I would have accepted southern California without question. Or the Mediterranean.

The hotel was one of the Protea chains, and they have a delightful sense of humor. Coasters under glasses have clever sayings rather than blatant ads: “Diplomacy is the art of saying, “Nice doggie” until you can find a rock,” for example. And there’s an emergency candle and matches in the drawer. The matchbox says, “Pyromaniac’s Help Line” and gives a phone number. We didn’t try to call it. No clock in the room, though. Seems the norm here.

On the bus, we met our guide, Allenby. He certainly didn’t match the mental image his name conjured, which brings to mind naming characters. Just a name can evoke an image. I'll let you think about what an "Allenby" looks like and post a picture of him next time.

His South African accent and cadence of his speech seemed to conflict with his pedantic lecturing style. I can already tell I’ll be glad if I never hear, “folks” again, as he prefaces every third sentence with it. And I don’t think anyone on the bus really needed two 10 minute lectures on how he was going to rotate the seating and why. However, he certainly knows South Africa and turned out to be an expert at logistics, which in the long run, is probably more important.

We began the day with a cable car ride to the top of Table Mountain while the cable cars were running. If the winds get too high they don’t run the cars. The cars were round, and the floor rotated, giving everyone a 360 degree view as we ascended to the mountain top. From there, the view was intermittent as the clouds enveloped the area. Unfortunately, we were only given about an hour total, so when you take off the time riding up and down, there was only about half an hour to walk the trails and see the views when the clouds parted or the mist lifted.

Once down from the mountain, we went through the city and listened to endless bits of history and a lot of pointing out of buildings. How much is the truth remains to be seen. When he said the Southern right whales spawn in the area, I began to wonder. However, he did show us the Maylay quarter with its colorful buildings, school children in uniform and ethnic shops. We were told that “colored” is not an ethnic slur here, and it is used to differentiate them from the ‘blacks’ who must belong to one of the African tribes. They certainly can’t be called “African Americans.”

We were dropped off at the Waterfront District and told our options in getting back to the hotel. Following Allenby’s oft-repeated advice, we got some more Rand. From there, we walked to the Two Seas Aquarium which was very well done. Sharks, penguins, assorted reef fish, huge crabs & lobsters, a huge tank with kelp swaying to music. Also, lots of conservation messages. From there, we checked out the possibility of a sailboat cruise for Saturday, although we couldn’t decide between that or a wine country tour. Next, Mitchell’s, a waterfront Scottish Ale House for some South African dark beer. Excellent.

The Dutch heritage of the city is apparent in the names and architecture. Afrikaans, the language here, sounds very Dutch-German. The English is definitely British. Signage is in both languages.

We found the bus stop along with several other tour companions, got on the right bus, got off at the right stop (not too hard—end of the line), and found our way up the hill to the hotel where we had time to change for our group “welcome” dinner, which wasn’t much more than a specified seating area in the dining room. The traditional South African (or was it Cape Town?) chocolate dessert was to die for, though.

Here I am

Taken at the Victoria Falls Safari Lodge in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. Fantastic experience--our room overlooked a water hole and we could watch the game come down to drink.

My wimpy camera doesn't do the vistas justice, but I'll get some shots from my husbands fancy Nikon with its telephoto lens eventually.

Greetings from South Africa

A VERY quick hello -- believe it or not, this is the FIRST reliable Internet connection since we arrived, and they charge by the minute. I have an extensive journal of my trip and will be posting things as I find bits and snatches of time, preferably when I'm at the convention center using their Internet on breaks from work.

The trip has been Fabulous! Wish I had time to go into details now, but keep checking, please.

We're OFF!

I won't relax until I figure out what I've forgotten, and that can't happen until we're on the road. I did remember that after looking at all the 70's/50's temperatures, I added warmer stuff, but then my husband said it's been 100 degrees in Victoria Falls, so I went back and added another pair of shorts and some lighter weight tops. My checked bag slid in under the weight requirement according to our bathroom scale. Haven't weighed the big one that we're leaving in Cape Town.

I got a contract offer for Hidden Fire yesterday, but too late to sign and mail the paperwork until I get back. That'll be with Cerridwen Press.

Finished going over the major changes to When Danger Calls and turned that back to the editor. No time for a line-edit read, but I can do that later. Also, I think that's what the copy editors do.

So -- posts will be sporadic at best, but keep checking.

Down to the Wire

Today is it. If it's not done, it's not likely to happen. Far too many clothes are spread out over the house. By tonight, they'll have to be gleaned and culled. I'm now dealing with all the last minute things that you can't do ahead of time, and hoping there aren't TOO many I've forgotten about. Paper and mail canceled. (Can you imagine what it's going to be like to get a month's worth of holiday catalogs when we get back?) Neighbor's kids checking front porch and driveway for notices and those pesky throwaway papers, etc. Inevitable arguments about what's appropriate attire with my husband. We WILL be in public a great deal of the time, after all.


Got my second round manuscript from Five Star. Have to do a side-by-side to see what she changed, since she sent a clean copy. Don't think it will happen today, but I'll try as long as I have to be home until the DHL guy shows up. Too bad they didn't come yesterday; I actually had some time. But that's the way it is, it seems. When you have time for stuff, the stuff isn't there, and when you don't have time, you get the stuff.

Posts will be sporadic from here on, but check back.

Counting Down To South Africa T minus 1

Whew!
Had a FANTASTIC time at the book signing, even if there were a couple of glitches. In this case, things worked in my favor. The bookstore didn't have my books in stock, so I got my stash from my car and sold from those. Since these were leftovers from a previous signing at another store, I have already received royalties for the sales, since that bookstore bought them from the publisher. I purchased the excess at a substantial discount. I'll get paid by yesterday's bookstore for the cover price minus a percentage. I come out ahead on the bottom line, always a good thing. The people were great, got to chat with a bunch of authors, and even met some 'on line' folks who have seen me on various writing loops. And there was chocolate.

My own ditz moment: I splurged on a herbal neck wrap thingie you heat in themicrowave. The vendor was near our signing site, and offered a discount and extra eye mask to authors. I figured it was a nice treat and would help alleviate some of the neck strain from stress and hours at the keyboard. Of course, when I got home it was nowhere to be found. The receipt was in the bag, so I didn't have any way to contact the vendor to see if someone returned it to him. I posted a message to my fellow authors, and was VERY pleasantly surprised to find that the Barnes & Noble rep found the bag when she was clearing things out, and Roxanne St. Claire found my name on the receipt, and gave it to Catherine Kean to return to me. Thanks, fellow authors for being supportive in EVERY possible way. I won't be using it for the plane trip--far too heavy to deal with, but I'll have it waiting when I get home.

And...the good news! I found two reviews in my Google Alerts this morning.

http://www.fmam.biz/reviews/nov07.shtml#startingover

http://www.fmam.biz/reviews/nov07.shtml#whatsinaname

Have to turn in my galleys for Hurricane Breeze today. And laundry. And errands, since I'll have to be home tomorrow because my replacement keyboard is due to arrive and I have to sign for it. Was supposed to have happened two weeks ago, but ...

Counting Down To South Africa T minus 2

Book signing today. It's a fund-raiser for the Adult Literacy League, and there will be over 20 local authors signing at the Altamonte Mall.

Yesterday, the publisher and cover artist and Wild Rose Press bent the house rules a bit and created a new cover for Hurricane Breeze. So much better, don't you think? The dog is more obvious, and the heroine isn't a belly-dancer. Thanks, RJ and Nicola!



I bought another mid-size suitcase to handle conference supplies. However, when I look at the "packing room(s)" I can't imagine how everything will fit. One way or another, it'll have to, I guess. We'll have to be more organized, and pack for the various phases of the trip. We have our 17 day tour, then 5 nights on our own in Port Elizabeth, and then the conference in Cape Town. I've officially signed over my membership duties until I get to the conference. Since I won't have my Five Star edits until tomorrow, I've actually got about a day and a half with "free" time to deal with the trip. Maybe it's time for those lists.