Around the World in 50 Years

by Albert Podell

  Two days later, I arrived by bus in Maseru on the happy occasion of the birthday of His Royal Highness of the Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho, a pleasant, land-locked, little, and little-known, country in the southeastern corner of Africa. It’s the only nation where every bit of land is above 4,500 feet, and 80 percent of it is above 6,000 feet.

  I’d purposely chosen to return to southern Africa in their winter because I find it far easier to travel with a bit of bracing coolness than the oppressive heat, rains, and humidity of African summers. I presumed Lesotho would be more than merely cool in view of its high elevation and far distance from the Equator, and so it was, with ice blocking the sidewalk gutters of Maseru as the temp fell below freezing by six p.m. and stayed down there till nine a.m.

  I had no space for heavy winter clothing, nor need for it after those first five days, so I’d opted for the “layered” approach to staying warm. And layered I went around Lesotho, often wearing, at the same time, two sets of ski underwear, two T-shirts, and two sweatshirts. This drew hilarious laughter from a sweet young thing who’d picked me up in the supermarket and accompanied me back to my guesthouse—where she uncovered my wardrobe redundancy.

  I quickly grew to appreciate why the national dress of Lesotho was a gigantic, thick, densely woven blanket made from the exceptionally warm wool of their high-altitude sheep and goats. The men wore one wrapped around their bodies; the women often wore two, one from the waist down as a skirt and the other around their shoulders, with much additional clothing underneath. And they all wore ski-style wool hats.

  On my first day out of Maseru, I miraculously managed to stay on a horse through God Help Me Pass in the Central Mountain Range and was able to survive the ride to happily celebrate both His Majesty’s continued good health—and mine. The horse whisperers had assured me they’d provide me with a “gentle little pony,” but the beast they produced was at least 14 hands high, seemed to have a vision problem, definitely had an attitude problem, and understood no English—or pretended not to.

  The only thing that saved my butt was the Lesotho pommel, an arch-shaped metal handle in the front of the saddle which the rider can, if necessary—and it was quite necessary—cling to with both hands. It offered the further benefit that, unlike the pommel on a Western saddle, it does not bump, bang, and batter your balls as you’re pushed forward when trotting downhill; they safely slide under it.

  Lesotho is totally unlike the rest of Africa. Its far-from-low Lowlands are reminiscent of the Big Sky Country of Montana, with wide flat plains and valleys surrounded by mountains. Its middling elevations are akin to Arizona, with multicolored eroded buttes and sheer escarpments. And its highest elevations are a touch of Tibet: a cold, gray, treeless topography surrounded by snow-covered peaks. It boasts the highest peak south of Kilimanjaro and the highest low point (4,593 feet) of any country on the planet.

  I loved camping out in the countryside on those clear, cloudless nights, surrounded by snow-covered mountains close by, their steep whitened slopes and icy summits shimmering in the starlight, hardly believing I was in Africa, a wondrous Africa few travelers experience. I lay on my back on the chilly ground beside my tent and looked up at brilliant Vega and Antares and unfamiliar constellations I’d seen only in astronomy texts: Hercules and Lyra, Sagittarius and Scorpius, Cygnus and Vulpecula and, off to the side, Alpha Centauri and Beta Centauri pointing the way across light-years of black sky to the Southern Cross. I was at peace with the universe and, as I crawled back into my toasty sleeping bag, felt myself a most fortunate fellow.

  Although spectacular, Lesotho is a pitifully poor land, populated by two million, 40 percent of whom earn less than $1.25 a day. More than half the populace is engaged in agriculture even though their country has little flat and fertile land suitable for farming. It has no commercial minerals save diamonds (including some real biggies, like the 601-carat Lesotho Brown and the 603-carat white Lesotho Promise); no big game to attract rich hunters; no forests, no ports, and no heavy industry, although it does have a big plant making Levi’s jeans and exports more garments to the U.S. than any state in sub-Saharan Africa.

  In a scene atypical of Africa, the treeless mountains of Lesotho are covered with snow and ice in winter. It is the only state in the world entirely above 1,000 meters (3,300 feet), and its lowest point of 4,593 feet is the highest low point of any country.

  For many years Lesotho earned foreign exchange from politically correct, socially concerned tourists who refused to visit South Africa during the period of apartheid and flocked instead to Lesotho’s gambling casinos. But when South Africa’s race laws were rescinded in 1991, and its black citizens were allowed to rule their land and elected Nelson Mandela president in 1994, most of the tourists reverted to its warmer weather, Western amenities, and varied amusements.

  Lesotho was left with few tourists and only two, mostly deserted, casinos. It survived on international aid, workers’ remittances, garment making, Chinese projects (which come with tight strings attached), and, lately, the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, a multibillion-dollar-engineering marvel I visited that is financed by South Africa to capture, store, and transfer water to the part of South Africa where most of its mining and industrial activity takes place. When completed it will comprise five large dams to also furnish drinking water for the thirsty denizens of Joburg, about 200 miles downhill, and emergency drought relief for the Free State, while earning Lesotho royalties and satisfying all its electric needs.

  Lesotho had proven to be such an ideal tourist destination, with spectacular scenery, good roads, virtually no crime, friendly people who mostly spoke some English; a salubrious climate, bright and cloudless winter days; and no malaria or other insect-borne diseases, that I was reluctant to leave.

  I returned to Joburg to pick up some supplies and clean clothes, celebrate Nelson Mandela Day, and prepare to rendezvous with Anna, who was flying in for our visit to Namibia and Botswana.

  I had a spare day and didn’t want to hang around crime-ridden Joburg, which had 40 percent unemployment, so I took a quick round-trip down to Durban, one of my favorite cities, flying on South Africa’s new, low-low-cost airline, Kulula, which was establishing a reputation as an offbeat company with a wicked South African sense of humor that tries to take the fear out of flying and replace it with fun. I got the message as soon as I walked onto the tarmac and saw the plane, painted bright chartreuse, with a vertical arrow in the middle next to the words THIS SIDE UP. Its companion aircraft, in the adjacent jetway, was designated as FLYING 101 and decorated with signs naming all the parts.

  To cut costs and time, Kulula did not reserve seats; you just boarded and selected whichever you wanted. When several passengers on my flight took too long to do this, the attendant grabbed her mike: “Come on people, we’re not picking out furniture here. Just find a seat and get in it!”

  Then came the seat-belt announcement: “To operate your seat belt, insert the metal tab into the buckle and pull tight. It works just like every other seat belt. And if you don’t know how to operate one, you probably shouldn’t be out in public unsupervised.” Which was immediately followed by: “In the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, masks will descend from the ceiling. Stop screaming, grab the mask, and pull it over your face. If you have a small child traveling with you, secure your mask before assisting with theirs. If you are traveling with more than one small child, pick your favorite.” When the laughter had faded, she added, “If you need to smoke, the smoking section is on the wing; if you can light ’em, you can smoke ’em.”

  At this point, the stern voice of the copilot cut in: “Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize for that rudeness. Our airline has some of the best, friendliest, and most diplomatic flight attendants in the business. Unfortunately, none of them are on this flight. Nevertheless, I want you to know our company appreciates your money and hopes the next time you get the insane urge to go blasting through the air in a pressurized metal tube, you will think of Kulula Ai
rways.”

  He then added: “The temperature in Durban is 20 degrees with some broken clouds. But do not worry; we will try to repair them before you arrive. I am now going to dim the cabin lights, both for your comfort and to improve the appearance of our flight attendants.”

  The flight attendant was able to get even once we reached our destination. After a bumpy landing, she announced: “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Durban. Please remain in your seats, with the seat belts fastened, while Captain Kangaroo taxis what’s left of the airplane to the gate. Please take care when opening the overhead compartments because that landing sure as hell shifted everything.”

  As we exited the plane, I asked the head attendant if they always behaved like this. “Oh, yes, we believe flying should be fun, and so do our regulars. They even join in, like the little old lady who, as she was exiting the plane after a hard touchdown, asked the captain, ‘Did we just land, or did we get shot down?’”

  CHAPTER 17

  A Poke in a Pig

  On this leg of my quest I was doing something I’d never done in sub-Saharan Africa: I’d invited a woman from the States to join me. I believed Anna would not be in danger, because we were going to Namibia and Botswana, which were the safest in mainland Africa, with no wars or instability, and virtually no serious crime or communicable diseases.

  The Namibians were so happy to have us visit that they gave us presents when we alighted at Windhoek’s airport—brand-new anti-infection masks to help us avoid their burgeoning swine flu epidemic. These proved quite useful for driving Namibia’s dusty gravel roads.

  Anna has a true love of adventure, so we’d agreed that our first stop, after a five-hour drive from Windhoek on the Trans-Kalahari Highway, was Swakopmund, the self-proclaimed “Extreme Adventure Sports Capital of Africa,” a sandy pilgrimage site for hundreds of international adrenaline junkies who thrive on sky diving, dune paragliding, dune parasailing, quad biking, sandboarding, and swimming with sharks—plus the really dangerous stuff. We were going to give them all a go, starting with a late afternoon of quad biking through the dunes.

  After a few hours of tentative quadding, I had progressed, at least in theory, to the point where I foolishly believed I could venture the tricky maneuver of making a tight circle on the sloping face of a dune. This must be done at high speed to generate enough centripetal force to keep the bike adhered to the dune. I lost my nerve on the side of one steep dune and slowed down, which is the worst thing you can do because it allows centrifugal force and gravity to take over. I was thrown from the bike and landed hard on my crash helmet. Luckily, the half-ton vehicle did not come tumbling down on top of me. Anna smirked and did perfect little show-off circles around me.

  The next day we tried sandboarding. We drove to a designated point in the desert where the board boys gave us each a helmet, a pair of gloves, elbow protectors, and a piece of polished, flexible Masonite board only one-eighth of an inch thick and just long enough for an average adult to lie down from shoulders to knees.

  We climbed to the top of a 400-foot dune through the shifting sands, a task that became progressively more difficult as the sun beat down on the desert and loosened the footing by expanding the air space between the grains of sand, making this one of the most tiring—but hardly tiresome—sports I’d ever tried. Once atop the crest, you lie on your board, point it downhill, lift up the front edge, hold your elbows high, have someone give you a push, and you zoom down the dune, reaching more than 30 miles an hour, before banging your belly on the inevitably bumpy bottom. It’s a real rush. If you forget to hold up the front of the board, the leading edge digs in immediately and you flip over—hard.

  Our last run was a radar-timed competition down a steep, scary dune. I went (almost) all out and was impressed with my 44 mph—until Anna zoomed by at 56. Some people just have no sense of moderation.

  Back on the road, Anna, an excellent, if lead-footed, turnpike driver, was unfamiliar with African conditions, and despite my constant warnings to go slower, repeatedly bottomed out our VW the first day, rattled some bolts when she hit a big pothole the next day, and skidded badly the next on soft sand filling a dip in the road. No major damage done. But a real disaster was in the offing.

  We camped in Etosha National Park in northwest Namibia, established in 1907 in what was then German Southwest Africa. For many decades it was the world’s largest game reserve. It’s basically a gigantic, flat salt pan—the natives call it the “Great White Place of Dry Water”—surrounded by woods and savannah grass and pocked with large water holes where multitudes of creatures, from giraffe to deer (and their predators) slurped up a sunset tipple.

  As the park is home to four of the Big Five—elephants, lions, leopards, and rhinos—its regulations require you to always stay in your car. But that’s not possible when nature makes an urgent call and the facilities are hours away; you just have to do your business where you are, quickly and cautiously, sacrificing the modesty of the bush for the less obstructed view offered by the road.

  The animals were so abundant, and the dusty gravel roads so rough, that, for two days, we never drove faster than the posted limit of 40 km/hr. When we exited Etosha and reached the tar road, Anna, frustrated by those seemingly interminable days of slow driving, cranked it way up, as she was wont to do, to over 120 km/hr (75 mph). We were heading southeast toward the mineral-rich region of Tsumeb, with the faint winter sun setting at our backs, and diminishing visibility.

  Suddenly—instantly—an immense wild pig emerged from the thick underbrush lining the road and ran directly across our path, about 50 feet in front of us, frantically followed by her five large piglets, with a big boar bringing up the rear. At our speed we needed at least 400 feet to stop our VW but, in the half second before impact, we had no time to do anything but scream.

  The sow shrieked and just missed getting hit by our right tire. Our left front end smashed into the first of the hundred-pound piglets with a sickening thud. The collision broke the headlight housing on the VW, pushed in the turn light, ripped down half the front bumper, crumpled the left fender, and even—as Avis skeptically pointed out to me when I turned the car in several days later and told them somebody must have backed into it in a parking lot—inflicted a large dent in the steel frame. If we’d hit the mother sow or the boar, I’d be writing this from a hospital bed, or ghostwriting it from a mortuary. Half a second made that difference.

  We had mortally injured the young pig, which was still alive and suffering in agony. I did not know what to do. Or, to be honest, I did know what to do, but lacked the courage to do it.

  I’d been in a similar situation decades before, when one of my Cornell classmates was driving us by the shore of Lake Cayuga and hit a dog that darted out of the trees. That dog, like our poor pig, was fatally injured but alive. We had no gun with which to put him out of his misery. So I picked up a large, smooth rock, covered the suffering canine’s eyes with my hand, and knocked him out. I then seized a jagged rock and administered a crushing coup de grâce through his skull to end his agony.

  I contemplated getting out of our VW and giving a similar ministration to the stricken pig, but I didn’t think his distraught and dangerous parents, who were hovering over his writhing body, would understand that I was acting as an angel of mercy in euthanizing their offspring. So we left the poor little guy to die a slow and painful death, and drove on to Tsumeb, in a sad and somber mood, with Anna weeping silently, and driving far slower than 120 clicks.

  A week after leaving Etosha, and two days after the Cape buffalo caper described in the first chapter, Anna and I reached Livingstone in Zambia, just across the river from the town of Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. I didn’t want to revisit Zim and help finance the brutal Mugabe regime, so I’d chosen Zambia, which was democratic, peacefully multicultural, and ardently hospitable.

  The next morning we stood in awe in the mist-soaked, rainbow-ringed park across from the brink of the falls, Mosi-oa-Tunya, “The Smoke That Thun
ders,” the largest sheet of falling water on earth, 5,604 feet wide and 354 feet high, lofting a spray visible for 30 miles.

  Later that day, with the Zambezi River raging through the gorge a thousand feet below, Anna, still depressed from killing the piglet, jumped off the Victoria Falls Bridge.

  It was a bungee jump, the world’s third highest. I took one look over the edge, almost lost my lunch, and decided not to follow her. I was also dissuaded by the concessionaire’s somewhat gruesome and intimidating practice of writing the jumper’s name and weight on his or her forearm in black indelible ink. They did this to ensure that every patron was affixed to the proper length and strength of cord, but from my pusillanimous perspective it looked too much like the numbers tattooed on the wrists of Holocaust prisoners in the Nazi extermination camps.

  Noticing my obvious reluctance to jump, the pitchman suggested I might prefer their newest, and increasingly popular, thriller, the Giant Swing, which, instead of plunging you directly down, where the G forces are so strong they can detach your retina, drops you halfway down the gorge from the center of the bridge while simultaneously swinging you out over the river in a frightening fast arc that almost, but not quite—unless you lied about your weight—smashes you into the sheer cliff face.

  I almost drowned while rafting the Zambezi River Gorge, which contains some of the most powerful and ferocious white water on Earth, including the notorious rapids named Stairway to Heaven, the Devil’s Toilet Bowl, Commercial Suicide, the Terminator, and Oblivion.

  I told him it looked interesting, but that the line of waiting swingers was much too long for me.

  The next day Anna went rafting through the tumultuous Zambezi Gorge. The first six rapids downstream from the bridge were not yet open to river runners because the water was too high and strong. These included the Devil’s Toilet Bowl and my old nemesis, Stairway to Heaven, a 20-foot-high standing wave with a deep hole underneath, where I had, ten years before, spent a terrifying eternity of downtime flipped over and pulled under my raft into the swirling hole. Fearless Anna was still able to catch some wicked white water in the Muncher, Gnashing Jaws, Commercial Suicide, the Washing Machine, and the Overland Truck Eater, which left her exhilarated and fulfilled.