Well, the first thing I can say about this place is it is not at all what I expected. I thought it would be a war torn shell of a city with few modern conveniences. Well, it´s true that the electricity goes, that the water isn´t safe to drink and that most of the time it stinks of raw sewage which sits still on the streets. But Angola is also a place of enormous wealth (primarily oil and diamonds, but other natural resources as well). Luanda is a boom town. There are buildings going up everywhere and many people are becoming VERY rich. All with the sewage and the street kids there are wealthy business people driving chauffeured Range Rovers and talking on $500 cell phones. Above all else, the people here are amazingly friendly...shockingly friendly.
On Friday night I got the biggest surprise because I went out dancing. Things donºt really get going here until midnight and they continue on well into dawn...as I quickly learned! We went to a new club called "Chill Out" and I tell you folks, I could have been in Miami. The place is lovely...and very well designed...all outside with thatched roofs to block out the sun during the day. We drank Caiparihniaºs and danced until 3am until heading to another club for the last hour of dancing, then to a restaurant on the ocean to watch the sun rise. What a night!
Itºs taken me days to recover from that one!
There is so much to say about this place that I really donºt know where to start, but Iºll have to end there because my time is almost out at the internet cafe. Until later!
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Angola here I come!
The saga continues...but I'm officially going to Angola, though whoever reads this must be tired of hearing about the back and forth!
Matt just left after spending two fab weeks here with me in SA. He's going to post our HUNDREDS of photos soon. As for SA, it's been great. It's an amazing country full of extremes--rich, poor; sea, mountains; urban, rural. It may sound similar to the US and to a degree it is, but for whatever reason the extremes seem particularly "extreme" here. I'm not being terribly coherent at the moment.
The stories are too many to recount here. But it's been amazing so far, and I'll be back for a little more SA at the end of May.
As for Angola, I'll write as I can though it's totally unclear to me how I'll access internet there. This and more will become clearer once I get there.
Until then...
Matt just left after spending two fab weeks here with me in SA. He's going to post our HUNDREDS of photos soon. As for SA, it's been great. It's an amazing country full of extremes--rich, poor; sea, mountains; urban, rural. It may sound similar to the US and to a degree it is, but for whatever reason the extremes seem particularly "extreme" here. I'm not being terribly coherent at the moment.
The stories are too many to recount here. But it's been amazing so far, and I'll be back for a little more SA at the end of May.
As for Angola, I'll write as I can though it's totally unclear to me how I'll access internet there. This and more will become clearer once I get there.
Until then...
Monday, April 03, 2006
Matt and Kate's Travel Blog
Hello World! A quick note. I'm sorry I've been so bad about writing in! Truth is that my days aren't that interesting...just back and forth from the archive. But they are about to get much better as Matt is arriving in 2 days!! We'll be going on safari and a game reserve near the boarder of Botswana called Madikwe then we'll take a drive through the center of the country and end up in Cape Town to do some touring around and taste some wines!
The official word at this moment is that I wont be going to Angola at the end of April...it's a long story but the short of it is that it's too damn expensive and it doesn't have to be. So I'll wait to go again some time next year...but there is still a chance that I may go in May-June with a woman I met who lives in Pretoria and needs to take a trip there. So, as usual, everything is up in the air. As it stands now, I'll stay in SA and tool around to some of the other archives I haven't been able to hit.
Besides that life has been good here. I spend the weekends with friends in Jo'burg which is great. My friend runs a program for girls in one of the worst townships (called El Dorado Park, ironically). Unemployment rate is around 86 percent! And most of the girl's parents either have AIDS or have recently died from it. It's a great support group for them...a time to be children if only for a few hours. We went into El Dorado Park last week to drop off a girl and see her new baby brother. She was lucky, because she lives in a solid structure that has running water and electricity--if you can afford the pay the bill. For 5 children and a mother they had a little bit of corn and some cabbage to get them through the week. It's a real wake-up call...and a reminder to be thankful.
That's it for now...writing this from the archive and I should be doing work!!
The official word at this moment is that I wont be going to Angola at the end of April...it's a long story but the short of it is that it's too damn expensive and it doesn't have to be. So I'll wait to go again some time next year...but there is still a chance that I may go in May-June with a woman I met who lives in Pretoria and needs to take a trip there. So, as usual, everything is up in the air. As it stands now, I'll stay in SA and tool around to some of the other archives I haven't been able to hit.
Besides that life has been good here. I spend the weekends with friends in Jo'burg which is great. My friend runs a program for girls in one of the worst townships (called El Dorado Park, ironically). Unemployment rate is around 86 percent! And most of the girl's parents either have AIDS or have recently died from it. It's a great support group for them...a time to be children if only for a few hours. We went into El Dorado Park last week to drop off a girl and see her new baby brother. She was lucky, because she lives in a solid structure that has running water and electricity--if you can afford the pay the bill. For 5 children and a mother they had a little bit of corn and some cabbage to get them through the week. It's a real wake-up call...and a reminder to be thankful.
That's it for now...writing this from the archive and I should be doing work!!
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