Dentists and Dry Land
(Marie-Mail entry #42)
CAPE TOWN
JULY 31
Land ho. I was stuck on board the DAL Kalahari. The lights of Cape Town taunted me. I had read the same page eight times.
I put down "Crime and Punishment" and headed downstairs. I was bored.
Chief Mate Vladimir and First Engineer Andrey were finishing up their supper.
"I'm stuck," I told them. "I can never leave the ship."
This didn't sound so bad to them. It was practically how they lived.
"Do you think women could work in Engineering?" I asked Andrey. I was remembering my ongoing "engineering is no place for a woman" with Oleg of the 'Direct Kiwi.'
"No."
"And you?" I asked Vladimir.
He agreed.
"Why? Why couldn't a woman be an engineer?"
Andrey reeled off a list of reasons.
"One," he said, pointing up a finger. "It is not healthy."
"Two: it's dirty. Three: you must be strong. Four: Sometimes you must make split-second decisions and act on instinct."
container terminal
He added that there were some jobs a woman just shouldn't do. A woman, he said, shouldn't be in the army because if she had to shoot someone it would be bad for her psyche.
"There are also jobs a man shouldn't do. For example, a man could never be a kindergarten teacher."
By this time I was laughing too hard to pummel him. I guess that Russia has had too many problems to have time for enlightenment. I told Andrey that I hoped his daughter would grow up to be strong. At 13, she already likes kung fu and cars, so I suspect that he is in for an attitude change.
Finally, the Customs man returned with my passport. It was 8:30 p.m., but I was free to go to Cape Town.
A shuttle bus took me out of the dock to the main gatehouse.
"How do I get a taxi?" I asked the security guard.
He motioned to a payphone. It required coins.
"I have no coins," I said.
"No problem," he replied. He produced a pocketful of coins and called a taxi.
"How much do I owe you for the call?" I asked.
Table Mountain overlooks Cape Town
"Nothing. But I do like to collect currencies from other countries. So if you have some bills from your own a country -- such as a U.S. dollar, I wouldn't mind having that to put on my wall."
I made a non-committal sound, while trying not to laugh.
Later, I learned that it is common courtesy to give the gate attendant a few cigarettes, but certainly not a dollar.
Not a lot was happening in Cape Town on a Tuesday night. I went to the Waterfront, a charming, overpriced, touristy development of malls and restaurants. It closed early, so a few hours later I caught a taxi back to the container terminal.
The driver told me it was usually dangerous to drive there.
"Sometimes, you have a group of drunk sailors, and they refuse to pay what's on the meter. They can get violent, and you must take what they feel like paying. I have a wife and kid. I'm not going to argue over sixty rand."
I wouldn't either. That was about $7.50.
"Where's my dollar?" asked the gatekeeper.
Fortunately, the shuttle bus arrived and I was able to dodge the question.
AUGUST 1
The Chief Mate knocked on my door at eight. He and Andrey were going into town with me, as they had to go to the German Embassy for visas.
"Oh!" His eyes widened at the size of my backpack. "You are carrying all that?"
"It's mostly camping gear," I muttered defensively.
We took the elevator to the upper deck, and walked down the gangway to the waiting minivan. As we drove through Cape Town, Andrey got excited.
"I could get a haircut," he said. "Or we could have good coffee!"
I was glad to see that I wasn't the only one who got excited about the pedestrian.
We left my bag on Long Street at the Travellers Inn, the guys at the German Embassy, and me at the dentist's office.
My tooth had started to hurt at mealtimes. It didn't like cold or heat or crunchy things. Dr Van Der Merwe was dentist to all the cargo shipping lines and fit me into his schedule without question.
He took x-rays and studied the filling in question.
"Normally, we'd just wait and see, because there's nothing visibly wrong," he said, pointing at the x-ray. "The problem is where you're going. You'll be days -- or weeks -- away from good dental care."
"Replace it," I said. I wasn't going to be cheated out of enjoying the Serengetti by an aching tooth.
The question then was, with what? I have mostly silver mercury fillings, because (as my dentist at home puts it), I'm a "clencher," and the white composite fillings degrade too quickly.
"What's the most durable filling?" I asked.
"Gold," said Dr. Van Der Merwe with great certainty.
That explained a lot about Uzbekistan.
He then told me about porcelain inlays.
South African shore
"But they're expensive," he warned. "800 rand."
I did some calculations. The rand was at 8 to $1 US.
"Porcelain it is then," I said, resisting the impulse to have him change all my fillings.
The ship's Chief Engineer came in and took me to lunch. I ate soup, afraid of the damage I might inflict on myself with my numb jaw. We went to see seals in the harbor, and he left me at the waterfront in the late afternoon. The DAL Kalahari was off to Durban, and I was off to become a true blond again.
AUGUST 3
The next day was Dr. Van Der Merwe's birthday. He celebrated by poking around in my mouth some more, and then by giving me a list of must-dos in Namibia and Zimbabwe. He was an avid traveler, and enthusiastic about Africa.
He finished off his birthday fun by calling his suburban chiropractor to get an in-town referral for me. I paid the excellent Dr. Celia Burrows a visit and then moved on to the Travel Clinic for my final pre-safari vaccinations.
Later that evening, Thandi Lazarus, of Nomad Adventure Tours, took me out to the Nomad workshop. We stopped by the 7-11, and she asked me an innocent question.
"So, do you have 7-11's in the States?"
I told her that we had several, and then she asked if I liked Cape Town.
"I don't know!" I said. "So far I've spent all my time in doctor's offices."
sewing tents at the Nomad workshop
Nomad has been operating overland tours since late '97. That means that I have been overlanding longer than they have, but their workshop impressed me and filled me with confidence in my upcoming Nomad Botswana "Chobe and Okavango" trip.
Mind you, I am easily impressed by giant steel trucks and people who know how to weld. And the Nomad workshop was filled with both. The Mercedes trucks were big enough for 23, but the maximum Nomad group size is 10. The trucks had the usual overland camping equipment, kitchen equipment, and passenger space, but I was surprised to see that there was an entire pantry (with freezer) in the rear.
state of the art Nomad truck
Thandi let me gawk for a while at the mechanical process, and then took me back to town for a fantastic dinner at a place strangely named "Five Flies." She left me at the "Travellers Inn," where I pored over my Botswana itinerary and worried that my lightweight sleeping bag wouldn't be warm enough.
AUGUST 4
My passport wasn't in Cape Town.
Sure, I had a passport. It was the six-month limited passport the Berlin U.S. Embassy had given me when I had sent my real passport to Washington, D.C., where it had been given an Ethiopian visa.
My real passport, the one with the Tanzanian and Kenyan visas, the one that expired in a decade, was somewhere in Paris. FedEx apologized for the delay.
I changed my plans. The bus to Namibia left on Sunday and Tuesday. I would have to get the passport on Monday, leave Tuesday, arrive Wednesday, shower at the Cardboard Box hostel, and join the Crazy Kudu" safari three hours later.
I paid for another night at the Travellers Inn. I wasn't thrilled with it. The rooms were dark and small, and the shared bathrooms were a little too shared for my taste. But I was too lazy to move, and the staff was helpful.
Waterfront
I caught a taxi to the Table Mountain cable car.
"Do you like Cape Town?" asked the driver.
"Yeah," I said without enthusiasm. The downtown area had failed to impress me and I had spend most of my time in doctor's offices.
He looked at me like I was mad.
"Cape Town is one of the most beautiful cities in the world," he said sternly.
By now I was pretty sick of hearing this. Everyone in Cape Town is quick to mention this, and I couldn't help but wonder if they'd ever seen any other cities.
"Uh-huh," I said.
The cable car was closed, as it often is when there is too much wind. I joined a double-decker bus tour and got a look at the area around Cape Town, where I learned what all the fuss was about.
Cape Town - the city itself - is not spectacular. When people say that Cape Town is beautiful, they are not referring to the buildings or small walled estates with giant guard dogs. They are talking about the surrounding cliffs, the seaside, or the "Labat" sign that I saw on my friend Yancey's dad's local office. Nature is the star of the Cape Town show, and when everyone kept parroting to me "Cape Town is beautiful," that is what they were talking about.
busking on the waterfront
The other thing I kept hearing was "I'm not a racist but..." White people would drop their voices and tell me some horribly racist thing immediately after.
I was shocked by this and by the constant classification by skin color. I immediately e-mailed Yancey (who had been to Cape Town many times) and demanded an explanation.
He reminded me that apartheid had only been gone for a decade, and that people were still adjusting. He also pointed out that in South Africa, apologies and reparations were being made, while in the U.S., we tended to just ignore these things and hope they would go away. He was right, of course, and I tried hard to understand a culture I had never lived in and had no right to judge.
I got off the bus at the Waterfront, and stayed there until evening. I walked up to the taxi rank and said "Long Street."
"What, no container terminal tonight?" asked a driver. Apparently I had stood out the other night, as few women ever go to the container terminal.
AUGUST 5
The wind had stopped, but now the cable car up Table Mountain was having technical difficulties.
feeding time at aquarium kelp beds
I caught the local bus to the Cape Town Aquarium, to watch penguins and sharks eat. The penguins hopped around anxiously, grabbing fish from the keeper's hands.
hungry penguin
Finally, the cable car was working. I went up Table Mountain, to spectacular vistas of Cape Town, the mountains, and the surrounding plains. Funny little rodents scampered around, and Japanese tourists tried to get close enough to them to get good photos.
cable car up Table Mountain
"What are they?" wondered tourists. The rodents looked like big rats without tails, or maybe rabbits. And they hopped. I called them "penguin-rats," for lack of a better term.
penguin-rat trapped by Japanese tourists!
I walked back to the Travellers Inn, past grand walled estates, vicious guard dogs, and intricate security systems. People take their crime seriously in Cape Town.
AUGUST 6
I checked out of the Travellers Inn. The staff had been helpful, but the party atmosphere of Long Street was too loud and the rooms were shabby. I didn't have the heart to say that I was moving to another hotel.
Traveller's Inn on Long Street
"Where are you going?" asked the man at the front desk.
"Namibia," I said, fudging the truth a little. I'd be catching the bus to Namibia tomorrow.
"It's lovely there," he said. "Once you go there you must always go back. The sun is very bright there. It will shine right into your heart."
I walked a kilometer to the Metropole Hotel. For three more dollars than the Travellers Inn, I had a proper hotel room complete with en suite bathroom. It was also closer to the bus terminal.
Sadly, carrying my pack such a short distance wore me out. My weeks of slothful living were showing. It would be some time before my muscles didn't ache simply from hoisting a bag.
penguin-rat with a view
I went to the University of Cape Town and picked up my passport. My friend Marie alice in the States had sent it to her local office, and it now contained one brand-new Ethiopian visa. I could move on to Namibia in the morning.
NEXT: more penguin rats, one Crazy Kudu, and six wacky Italians! On safari in Etosha National Park.
