[Pretoria]   [Swaziland]   [Cape Town]   [Johannesburg]   [Miami]

I recently spent two weeks back in one of my favorite countries in the world, South Africa, as well as the mountain kingdom of Swaziland, participating in crisis management exercises at the U.S. embassies and consulates in Pretoria, Johannesburg, Cape Town and Mbabane. Though I had been to all three South African cities in the past, it was my first trip to Swaziland.

I left Washington on a beautiful Sunday morning after a weekend of perfect weather. For all its destruction, Hurricane Floyd left in its wake the nicest weather we'd seen in the D.C. area for many months: cloudless blue skies with cool temperatures and a total lack of Washington's normally oppressive humidity.

After an uneventful flight to Miami, where I linked up with two traveling companions from the State Department's National Foreign Affairs Training Center (NFATC), we boarded our 17-hour flight to Johannesburg, via Cape Town. The surprising thing about a flight of this length is that I actually arrived feeling better rested than I normally do on shorter flights to Europe, since the longer flight allows plenty of time for meals, movies, plus a full eight hours of sleep. We arrived in Johannesburg around 3:30 p.m. the following day and were driven to Pretoria, where we checked into the quaint Villa Via hotel in Pretoria's trendy Hatfield district.

Pretoria
Our first full day in Pretoria was set aside as a rest day, which I made full use of. After a quick breakfast at the hotel, I hired a driver to take me to a nearby bird sanctuary (of course!) which features a number of resident Blue Cranes, a majestic bird which eluded us during our tour in Windhoek. The bird sanctuary ended up being much smaller than I expected -- a few acres of wooded park, with a small lake in the middle. The main attraction of the park is the Blue Crane Restaurant, which offers plenty of outdoor seating on its lake front deck. After walking around the park for an hour, I gave in to modern convenience and occupied a table on an upper deck overlooking the lake, where I took in the birdlife with a cup of coffee in hand. Although the experience was decidedly suburban in nature, it proved to be productive nonetheless. Among the 25+ species spotted that morning, I added three new birds to my life list: Blue Crane, Arrow-marked Babbler, and Crested Barbet. The sanctuary also yielded Hadeda Ibises, Wattled Plovers, and plenty of other goodies.

The following day we conducted a four-hour crisis management exercise with the American staff of Embassy Pretoria, followed by an afternoon training session for the South African employees. Although I had been to Pretoria briefly several years earlier, I had never seen the U.S. Embassy. Built in 1992, the triangle-shaped embassy is a modern glass and stone building surrounded by manicured lawns and Jacaranda trees, the round, purple-leafed trees for which Pretoria is famous. The interior is equally impressive, designed around a central atrium the spans the full five-story vertical height of the building and features an employee cafeteria on the ground floor. Modern art, sculpture, greenery, and office space all combine to form an incredibly attractive facility, which is without a doubt the nicest U.S. Government office building I've ever seen!

Swaziland
We arrived in Swaziland the following morning after a one-hour flight from Johannesburg on an authentic "puddle-jumper." Flying into Matsapha Airport near the industrial city of Manzini, the landscape was green and hilly, but not as mountainous as I had expected. As we drove up the Ezulwini Valley toward Mbabane, however, the terrain became noticeably more mountainous and wooded.

Swaziland -- independent since 1968 -- is a small, landlocked Kingdom nestled between South Africa and Mozambique. The smallest nation in the Southern Hemisphere (about the size of New Jersey), Swaziland is one of only three monarchies left in Swazi woman in traditional dressAfrica. Led by the young King Mswati III, the Swazi nation is proud of its cultural traditions, and it is not uncommon to see men and women clad in traditional red and black robes, called mahiyas, and ornate necklaces.

We stayed at the Royal Swazi Sun Hotel, apparently the swankiest digs in town, in the Ezulwini Valley a few miles outside of (and below) the capital city, Mbabane. The hotel is surrounded by a beautiful 18-hole golf course, acacia and evergreen forests, and mountain slopes -- a gorgeous setting, and a great locale for birding and hiking.

Driving from Ezulwini up to Mbabane, one gains what seems like at least a couple thousand feet in elevation. The steep, four-lane, divided "super" highway winds its way up to the capital city through terrain that reminds vaguely of Switzerland, or parts of coastal California.

After conducting our training session the following day at Embassy Mbabane, team leader Marshall Atkins and I ventured out to the Calabash Restaurant opposite the Ezulwini post office. We neglected to make a reservation at what turned out to be one of the country's most popular restaurants, and ended up waiting an hour for a table, which allowed me time to sample a pair of locally-brewed Sibebe beers at the bar. The Calabash, owned by a pair of Germans, one of whom had been the head chef at the Royal Swazi Sun Hotel, offers a mix of French, German, Austrian, and Swiss dishes in a very nice atmosphere. It was apparent from the number of guests that this is the only "fine dining" experience to be had in the Mbabane area, but the food was excellent and definitely worth the hour-long wait.

My early-morning and evening hikes proved moderately productive for local birds. During the two-day visit to Swaziland, I racked up a total of 27 species, including five new lifers: Yellow-throated Longclaw, Spectacled Weaver, Southern Black Flycatcher, Yellow-eyed Canary, and Neddicky (one of the dreaded LBJs -- "little brown jobbies"). One notable bird that eluded me was Swaziland's national bird, the Purple-crested Lourie.

From Mbabane, we again boarded a puddle-jumper back to Johannesburg where we caught our onward flight to Cape Town, one of my favorite cities in the world.

Cape Town
Karen and I have tried on many occasions to describe the awesome setting of Cape Town to friends and relatives, but have found that words are inadequate to describe the beauty of the place. Luckily, a few of our friends and relatives have had the chance to visit Cape Town in the recent past, so our frustration in trying to describe it has been somewhat diminished. The only setting in North America that approximates South Africa's Western Cape Province, of which Cape Town is the provincial Cape Town Waterfrontcapital, is northern California. The city of Cape Town is a diverse collection of people, cultures, and architecture surrounding the foot of the dramatic Table Mountain. Swanky Cape Town suburbs line the coastline south of the city along both sides of the narrow, mountainous Cape Peninsula, which terminates at the legendary Cape of Good Hope, the meeting place of the cold Atlantic and warmer Indian Oceans. In addition to the well-know black, "coloured" (mixed-race), and white populations found throughout South Africa, Cape Town is home to a large Muslim population, which traces its ancestry to the Indian sub-continent, Indonesia, and Malaysia, hence the common nickname "Cape Malay."

I arrived in Cape Town on a Saturday evening in time to see the sun setting behind Table Mountain on my ride in from the airport. Although our itinerary allowed us part of a weekend in Cape Town before our business obligations at the Consulate, the weather didn't cooperate, and we spent most of our free time indoors avoiding the drizzle for which Cape Town (like San Francisco and Sydney) is famous. I had dinner the first evening with two American friends (both resident in Cape Town) at an Italian-ish seafood restaurant near the beach in the Seapoint neighborhood, then spent Sunday at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, a colorful mix of shopping arcades, restaurants, bars, hotels, and an aquarium set in the middle of a working harbor.

Because we were staying at the Victoria & Alfred Hotel at the Alfred Wharf, I was able to easily stroll around the waterfront, spending the evenings trying new restaurants and taking in movies at nearby cinemas. Due to the poor weekend weather and our tight itinerary, however, I was unable to visit Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens on the eastern slope of Table Mountain, a great disappointment that I hope to correct on my next trip to Cape Town. Though I'm not a great lover of botanical gardens in general, Kirstenbosch is, at least in my mind, the single most beautiful place on earth.

Johannesburg
From Cape Town we flew back to Johannesburg (our third of four flights between the two cities!), where we checked into the posh Park Hyatt Hotel in the Rosebank section of JoBurg. The Park Hyatt is about as upscale as hotels come -- there were modem hookups for laptop computers in every room -- but the favorable exchange rate made all of our hotels ridiculously inexpensive. After unpacking and settling in, I made my first of several trips to the hotel's health club for a badly-needed workout and steam bath. Eating airplane and hotel meals for two weeks is hell on the figure.

Out of nostalgia, I ate my first dinner in Johannesburg at a Nando's fast food chicken restaurant. Karen and I used to bring home Nandos' hot peri peri (a Portuguese seasoning popular in southern Africa) chicken for dinner at least a couple times a month when we lived in Namibia. The meal didn't disappoint, and after a few bites my lips and tongue were on fire from the spicy sauce.

Our hotel in Johannesburg was conveniently located in the heart of the Rosebank shopping district. As in Cape Town, I was able to walk to a number of fancy shopping arcades, restaurants, cafés and movie theaters, all within a couple blocks of the Hyatt. By the time we arrived in Johannesburg, the novelty of the trip had worn off and I had grown weary of living out of suitcases. After conducting our last exercise, I spent my final day on the African continent resting for the long trip home. Our late afternoon departure allowed my to sleep in, finish a 900-page Tom Clancy novel I had started just two weeks earlier, and take a hot bath in my room. By the time we left the hotel, I was eager to get back to the U.S. and see my lovely wife (with whom I had kept in touch via e-mail at every stop).

Miami
On the trip home, I stopped over in Miami for two days to visit my good friends Tom and Wendy Crabb, and their daughters Logan and McKenna. Tom and I both studied at Thunderbird in 1992, but didn't actually meet until we ended up in the same Foreign Service orientation class in March 1994. Tom served in Rome, Manila, and briefly in Windhoek (where he was my immediate successor) before leaving the Foreign Service last year for greener pastures. He and Wendy now own a beautiful home in Coral Gables, where Tom works for Wendy's father's real estate development business and Wendy has her hands full taking care of Logan and McKenna.

The Crabbs were Tom and Logan Crabb at Gator Parkgenerous enough to indulge me in a trip to the Everglades the morning of my final day in Miami. Our first stop was Gator Park, where Logan found herself being chased by an aggressive flock of domestic geese. After a hearty diner-style breakfast on the Miccosukee Indian Reservation, we drove into the Everglades National Park, where Tom, Logan and I took a half-hour hike through the swamp. Logan enjoyed the baby alligator we found sunning itself on the side of the path, while Tom humored me by listening to my bird facts, and even identified a Tri-colored Heron using my field guide! The trip was productive for me, adding six new life birds to my list (including a few that Karen had seen but I hadn't): Little Blue Heron, Anhinga, Palm Warbler, American Purple Gallinule, Eurasian Collared Dove, and the endangered Snail Kite.

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