Johannesburg, South Africa

The word of the day today is: Trust

We’ve had a wonderful, fairly uneventful, and exhausting first day here in Africa. What an effort it takes to embark on a trip like this! As I am writing, it occurs to me what a tremendous amount of trust we have to put in humanity, engineering and each other to get to this point.

First thing we did was hire a stranger to get up in the wee hours of the morning, to drive a very large car (he drove very fast, and he was very tired) through the streets and highways of Connecticut and New York to deliver us to the airport.

Next, we boarded an extremely long, large, heavy marvel of intricate engineering, along with over 500 other people, (don’t think I’ve ever been on one that big) and settle into our seats for 14 ½ hours of flying through the air, piloted by people we’ve never met (I hope they are smart, well-trained, and not as tired as I am).

We finally arrived in Jo’ burg (that’s Johannesburg, South Africa for those of you who are not nearly as cool as I am) at around 8:30 am and settle in to our hotel. As a group, we make a pact to stay awake all day, have an early dinner and crash into bed at a normal hour. This is a perfectly sensible way to combat jet lag, right? Well, sort of… I am writing this blog post at 2:30 am because I can’t sleep, so things don’t always go as planned.

We hired a tour guide and his driver friend (strangers from Africa without any proven credentials, but a van large enough for all of us) to take us on an excursion through Jo’ burg as a fun, informative way to use our time here while we wait for the next leg of our adventure. (Driving around for 4 hours is NOT the best way to stay awake when you haven’t slept in 24 hours, so we all took our turns head-bobbing, and “resting our eyes” while the guide talked.) It’s a very interesting city, famous for Nelson Mandela, gold mines and hosting of the World Cup soccer. We made a new friend who joined us on the tour – a middle school social studies teacher from Maryland traveling through Africa on his own – and all shared a beer near Nelson Mandela’s house.

Dinner at the hotel before retiring was greatly enhanced by a glass of South African Pinotage, one of my favorite red wines, and great conversation. Next stop: Kruger National Park.