Hello from Africa.
Our Africa trip was spurred last fall based on three main motivators:

1. We had airlines miles to burn and wanted to do something super cool.
2. I’ve claimed that before having kids, I wanted to visit all six habitable continents
3. Paul Simon’s “Graceland” album. One of my all-time favorites.

Nine months and lots of grassroots Tiffy details planning later, we found ourselves on the way to Africa to take part in the World’s biggest sporting event, The World Cup, with planned stops in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and back to South Africa.

We arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa on Friday around lunchtime after about 40 hours straight of flying. We were a bit like angry zombies as we rode the train into town and then roamed the streets of J’burg looking for our hotel with a vague sense of bearing and a strong scent of BO. It’s pretty weird, at first, being the obvious ethnic minority, something we hadn’t experience except in Japan (where skinny me had six inches and 50 pounds on 99% of the country). After lots of sweating, we found our “hotel” and checked into a house in a neighborhood that has been turned into a “guesthouse”. We quickly ran right back to where we started to catch a bus to our first soccer match – USA vs. Slovenia. We figured out the mass transit after about 15 minutes of “ambassador” (official title) confusion of people telling us “you should take taxi” (I’m pretty sure that was the only words that guy knew because we accidentally asked him something later and he said the same thing), “you missed the bus, you should ride with us” for triple the price, and finally, “just go over there, I think the bus will come there”. Fortunately, the latter was right and after a crazy hour long bus ride where our driver’s daringness and tailgate-ability could compare well with Dale Earnhart (RIP Intimidator), we arrived to the stadium and started running to catch kick-off.

We got a little sidetracked and made it into the stadium about three minutes before Slovenia scored to go up 1-0. Long story short, the game was great, the American fans were mega-crazy, the local fans jumped and danced all game long, and I deleted a video of the blown call on the USA’s go-ahead goal on which I was going ape-poo until someone pointed out the goal didn’t count.

After the game, we headed back to our hotel in the suburb of Sandton. Everyone says that Johannesburg is dangerous and it’s not safe to walk around. For this reason, everyone we met took taxies everywhere and acted like wimps. We walked about 25 minutes each way from our hotel to the main transportation area each day with no problems (Mom, I was vigilant though and would puff up my chest if someone sketchy was walking by). Plus, we bought vuvuzelas (those annoying horns that sound like bees on TV) and nothing says tourist tough like a plastic horn.



Having seen the lily white side of town and toured enough of the local mall as I could stand (this is the place where everyone goes, to the mall), I decided we should do a tour of Soweto. Soweto stands for South West Township. A township is basically an African ghetto complete with some houses without electricity, plumbing, etc. The day before, we went to the Apartheid Museum and got to see the terrible and totally legal racial segregation history of South Africa. The country didn’t start legally respecting the rights of “non-whites” until the 1990s!!?! Seriously. Anyway, it certainly makes for a very strange racial dynamic (at least to me – I couldn’t stop thinking about that atrocity) when interacting with the locals. So we booked a tour of Soweto, something that would definitely be on ThingsWhiteTouristsLike.com (if that existed).

Our tour guide, Mandy was a gregarious life-long resident of Soweto who picked us up at a nearby hotel and told stories and jokes that entertained all 12 people on the tour. Soweto was originally an area of mining homes set up during the late 1800s during the African gold rush. We drove through row houses without power with people congregating around water wells. A part of the township (with sponsored signs by Coca-Cola) had houses made from discarded trash. We got out of the bus there and were guided around in groups of six by a local who explained who lived there, what they did for a living, and their sense of community (strong). Lots of people wanted to shake our hands and know where we were from. It was the craziest living situation I’ve ever seen. After the city tour, we were given a tour of a local church. We entered during a Catholic mass on Father’s Day and got to take part in a Catholic mass that was way more fun and joyous than anything I’ve ever seen. Ladies were dancing and singing, the band played the drums, and people encouraged us to come and sit by them. It was the most real Africa experience I’ve had on the trip and quite moving.

We ended with a museum visit (to commemorate the shooting of a Soweto child by police during rioting for equal rights), a trip by Nelson Mandela’s home, ate some Soweto food, and had the grossest beer I’ve ever tasted. I asked Mandy where I could get some local brew (I had read about it in our guidebook). She sent me down the street to a tin shack called, The Shack. Once there, I was led to the back by some locals and shown the ordering window. I asked for two beers in boxes (Mandy gave me the name but it was in Zulu and had a click in the title. I decided to go with the descriptive packaging route). The guy was confused at first. Then I asked for Soweto brewed beer. He went to the back and I ended up with two 1 liter milk carton boxes with grossness all over them. He cleaned them off for me and told me to shake them before drinking. I started walking back and shook them while walking, got about ten steps, and one erupted all over me. So some guy showed me how to properly shake them. Tiff and I toasted and tasted the sourest nastiest concoction I’ve had in some time. It was so bad, Tiff stopped after one drink. I had three or four more sips but decided to stop when I noticed the spilled beer on my shirt had turned my green shirt white. As of this writing, I have not gone blind.



Other random quickhits:

• The South African team is known here as Bafana Bafana, which has sparked my wife’s newest nickname – Tiffana Tiffana.
• Every building and business in J-Burg has razor wire, spikes, and/or electrified fence around the perimeter to keep out thieves. There are also a lot of random guys lying in lawns near the street. I’m not sure if they are sleeping or recovering from electrical shock.
• Soweto, which has many real homes in addition to camps, has no thief deterrents in place. I asked Mandy about that and the lack of police and she said that Soweto polices itself. If something is stolen, the city and people take care of the problem.
• I’m writing this from Zimbabwe, a country whose economy is so terrible that they:
  • Printed million, then billion, and then trillion Dollar notes
  • Decided this wasn’t enough and decided to drop seven zeros from the bills.
  • Finally decided to scrap their money all together and now only take US Dollars or the Euro.
  • On TV now is a “news segment” about how great the economy is and the measures being taken to improve the crime rate.
  • Now there is a show on about traditional Korean music. I might not go to bed just to see what’s on next.
• We took a jet lag reducer herbal supplement on the way over and neither Tiff nor I had any jetlag.

Until later, I leave you with my favorite song of the year and the World Cup theme.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4gwmwABMjU&playnext_from=TL&videos=4O2EibR09xE

Yassas from Greece.

(click to skip straight to the pics)

I’m finally taking a break from scurrying around islands and getting rocked on our cruise ship to scribble down some thoughts from the journey so far.  We arrived in Athens last Saturday after a long night of flying.  Because our rooms weren’t ready at  11am when we arrived, we decided to try trekking to a flea market, got mega lost, got rained on (note: white marble, which is everywhere in this city, is super slippery when it’s wet – Bon Jovi titled it correctly), and ended up at the new Acropolis Museum which just opened in June.  We strolled through the four floors but everyone was so tired that we’d all nod off when sat down.  So we headed back to the hotel and napped.  Afterwards we were out looking for dinner when we heard some live music.  We followed it over and found a Communist rally where everyone was wearing red and holding flags…and singing along to a Carpenters song.  Pussies.  That said, when I saw about 30 cops hanging around the periphery, we skedaddled.  That night we went to a nice traditional greek taverna and my dad, who is known for making bold clams, proclaimed that his lamb stew was “the best meal that I’ve ever had”.  The rest of the night I followed him around asking him, “serious, the best EVER?”.

On Day 2 we got up early and headed to the Acropolis to try to beat the crowds – who were drawn in by the ancient theater where Yianni performed his legendary concert “Live at the Acropolis” (aka Big Moustaches, Big Tunes).  When we got to the Parthenon at the top there were only about 10 other tourists on the far side.  That made for some really cool time on top, being able to see something that’s been standing for thousands of years.   What shocked me most about the top is that there seemed to be a lot of ancient ruins scattered around the grounds and anyone could basically climb on them.  Pretty shocking stuff to me that they weren’t preserving it better but I guess you can’t spit in Athens and not turn up some clay pot or naked Greek wrestling memorabilia.  Case in point, at the Acropolis metro station they had a picture of the result of the digging when they first drilled the new subway line.  The whole tunnel was filled with priceless relics, either that or gypsies had set up a fake souvenir shop on the new territory because they didn’t think there were enough bad tourist shops selling the same Athens shirts, fake pottery, statue replicas, or dirty playing cards.

On Monday, my 30^th birthday, we got up and headed to Pireaus (the port of Athens) and I boarded my first cruise ship for our Aegean cruise.  That night we docked in Mykonos and had some time to stroll the alleyways and shops.  Everything on the island (and the other islands that we’ve seen) is painted white.  It’s like every Greek got together at the local Sherman Williams and asked the cleric, “How much of a discount could we get if bought 10,000,000 gallons of white paint and 500,000 gallons of blue paint for our roofs?”

The next morning we woke up docked in Kusadasi, Turkey.  In Turkey we went the House where the Virgin Mary supposedly spent her last days.  In the 1800s a German nun who had never been out of her homeland had visions in her dreams of a place in Turkey.  A scribe took down here story and they searched the Turkey country side and came upon a place exactly as she had described it.  From there we moved on to the remains of ancient Ephesus.  Pretty cool ruins mostly still in tact and a 24,000 person amphitheater that’s hosted two extremely ugly things – Bob Dylan (musician) and alligators (beasts for beast fights).  We ended our trip at a rug maker shop where we were given free drinks and got to see the rug director yell out Turkish commands to two servants who ran around the room like mad men throwing out rugs of all colors.

That afternoon we cruised to Patmos, the location that St. John wrote the Book of Revelation after he was exiled from modern day Turkey.  The main selling points of that tour were a cave filled with some religious art, a hole in the wall where John would rest his head, another hole which he used to help himself get up (sleeping in a rock cave had to be painful), and the desk that his writing was done on.

Today we were in the ancient city of Rhodes, the original home of one of the Ancient Wonders of the World – The Colossus of Rhodes.  The Colossus fell down a long, long time ago but in its place now are two statues of deer.  How this is related, I don’t know.  From Rhodes we rented a car and drove to the southern tip of the island to see the acropolis of Lindos.  Not knowing where to park, we headed towards the ruins down a very steep road that was filled with hundreds of people walking.  When we got to the bottom we realized it was a dead end.  Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem, but considering there were so many people and the road could barely support two cars and considering the fact that I haven’t driven a stick shift much in the last 10 years, it was an interesting experience.  At one point with cars behind and in front of me and with just a little room, I tried easing on the gas and ended up peeling out so loudly and for about four or five consecutive seconds that it scared the crap out of the pedestrians and made them slide over.

We arrived in Santorini late Thursday, ready to get off the cruise ship.  Santorini is known as the Sunset island, it’s the one in all the pictures of Greece with the white churches with blue domes, and some people think it’s the lost city of Atlantis.  Because of this, I was hoping to see some merpeople (half man, have mermaid). Tiff had booked one of the coolest hotels I’ve ever stayed in.  We had the top floor of a converted windmill with one of the best views of the island.  Cool fun facts about the hotel include the fact that it came with a free rental car and free mini bar use.  Which meant that the second we arrived, we drowned all the beer in the fridge and considered bathing in Coca-Cola.  Sadly, we later learned that the mini bar didn’t get refilled so maybe we should have taken it easier on the soda.

Santorini is a volcanic island that, when it exploded, left the island with amazing cliffs, amazing beaches, and hundreds of tourist shops selling the same ten t-shirts and postcards.  Our first day we visited two of the local wineries because my Dad claimed he wanted to get “drunk enough to die.”  While he didn’t succeed in his quest, we did get to do some fun rating of wines and compared our scores with Wine Spectator.  I think Tiff has a second career in judging wine color if computing doesn’t work out.  Hopped up on booze, we made our way to a white beach, a black sand beach, and my first red beach (also known as a ginger beach). The red beach took a little hike to get to it and was probably one of the neatest beaches I’ve ever visited.

We tried to rent scooters but were denied because we didn’t have any international scooter license.  To prove our worth we offered to demonstrate our skills by emulating the riding style in old DMX music videos but our offers to “stop, drop, shut ‘em down, open up shop” were just received with confused looks.  We had to settle for the bus to ride around the island.

On our last day, my dad and I walked down 250 steps from our hotel to the beach at the bottom of the cliff.  I use the term beach lightly as it was more of a concert platform with rocks that could be considered steps.  It was cold and probably in the low 70s and the water was really cold.  After 10 minutes of “no you get in first” arguments, I jumped in.  I spent the next 10 minutes trying to convince my Dad to join me.

From Santorini, we flew back to Athens and then took a boat to the island of Hydra.  Hydra was a greek shipping center in the 1800s and is filled with big mansions and, the coolest part, no cars, scooters, or other electric transportation.  This means that the only way to maneuver the island is by walking or by donkey.  During the course of our day there we saw donkeys hauling bags of cement, tourist luggage, Greek men, food and beer, and (best of all) a dishwasher.  The dishwasher was an interesting problem and I enjoyed watching three people figure out how to strap it on.

On our last night we returned to Athens, checked into a dumpy hotel, did some last minute shopping, and went to see the changing of the guard.  It was a pretty cool ceremony but the guards, dressed in traditional garb, rivaled the Swiss guards at the Vatican for goofiest outfit of all time.  They had on a dress, tights, and shoes that looked like elf shoes and had balls on the toe.  Like in England, they have to stand completely still looking straight ahead.  Unlike in England, when changing, they did some sweet high leg kicks and foot tapping.

There was also a stray dog laying right in front of a guard stand obviously not intimidated by the fancy clothed guards.  In Greece it seemed like people didn’t have pets so much as cities had pets.  There were wild dogs and cats everywhere and they seemed to just hangout and try to get food whenever it was available.

The next morning we flew home.  All in all, it was a really nice trip.  Lots of great weather, company, and sunsets.

Direct link to Picasa album: http://picasaweb.google.com/tiffanydurham/Greece

The pictures are up! Feel free to watch the slideshow below, or browse on your own here: Australia & Japan

Konnichiwa amigo-san,

A special shout out to all my Mexican/Japanese homies. This email marks the end of our long journey bounding across hemispheres intent on seeing different stars and watching toilet water spin both ways.

When you last left your heroes, Southern Australia was at their forefront. From Kangaroo Island we decided to swing by the Barossa Valley, Australia’s biggest wine region. After a near barf enducing ferry ride, a rental car switch, and a few hours of driving we arrived at the first of three wineries. The Barossa Valley is known for its’ shiraz wines, but being equal opportunity drinkers we sampled all over the wine map. I’m happy to report that every time we moved to a new winery, it seemed better than the last one. Also, Tiffy’s nose got tingly-er. Not sure why.

The next two days were spent driving The Great Ocean Road to Melbourne. We took the Princess Highway and fortunately had no Bowser sighting (our princess was in another castle). We drove this road because of the cool rock formations to be seen – The 12 Apostles, London Bridge, Caveman’s Dong, and Admiral’s Arch (only 3 of those are real). The first day was like driving Wyoming, lots of nothing, very brown, snakes waiting for me to run them over. The second day we arrived at the ocean and the rocks were awesome. Back in the 1800s there were over 30 shipwrecks here. I’m pretty sure it’s because on all of those boats the captain allowed his wife to ride along and every time they’d make a hairpin cliff chasing turn the captain would look over and the wife would be holding on with white knuckles and would sigh in relief until the captain just wrecked the boat.

Melbourne was as good as this sentence.

From Melbourne we journeyed onto Tokyo, land of vending machines, three-packs of used school girl underwear, and robots. Two of three ain’t bad. To say that Tokyo was a sight explosion on the senses is like saying the WWF wrestler The Ultimate Warrior was a weakling when he got possessed in the wrestling ring by Indian spirits (hooray to the three people that got that reference). Our first train station featured thousands of short folks scrambling in all directions trying to avoid the mop headed white guy pushing a bag their same size and wielding a large backpack that clanked (note to self: it’s not wise to buy five bottles of wine and haul them on your back when you still have five travel days left). I may have maimed a few, this I cannot remember because I’ve used a good portion of my Japanese memories on word memorization (“Eggo…Hannah say, ‘mas que?” (do you speak English?), “HAI TIFFY-SAN” (Yes, Tiffany), “ego hanna mas cas see” (not sure what this means but it took me three days to get “do you speak English?” down), bee rue (beer), and “Domo Arrigato Mr. Roboto (The American band Styxx? They suck)) and figuring out fancy toilet functions. The first time I used the latrine the seat was heated. Tiffany used one that made flushing sounds if you pressed a button. I was shot in the butthole with a stream of hot water that was both pleasantly refreshing and warmly violating when I pressed a button that I later dechipered had a picture of a butt being sprayed by water. I also entered a museum toilet that opened the lid for me. Arrigato toilet-san. How do I import you to America? Maybe they have one that turns into a jetpack that I can fly home.

Tokyo itself was an explosion of electricity, aforementioned small people (I was taller than 99% of the population), ancient temples, strange foods and smells, and Suntory whiskey products. You can buy beer in street vending machines (which you see every two blocks). Everywhere you walk in a train station or popular place is real similar to walking in a mass of people after a football game, except the football game always just got out. We were on the lookout for Engrish (bad English translations) and did our best detective work in California themed shopping stores. Example-san – “”.

We ate at the craziest restaurant I’ve ever been to in my life. Recommended by our book, we entered a basement with a traditional Japanese restaurant with only six tables. We took off our shoes and sat on our mats. The owner, who I had called earlier in the day and referred to me as “Crow” (a Japanese attempt at Cross) was possibly insane. This was a good thing. He brought us hot towels on the head of a robot. He brought us a menu with a flower on it that he pretended to bring to orgasm. He brought us beer and sake in mugs that belched and shook when you tried to drink out of them. He let us a pick a country when we ordered our drinks. We picked France. Soon French music played and he came out with an easel and a beret on and proceeded to sketch a picture of Tiff for five minutes. He translated our four food options by using a hand puppet to act out four stories that he told in broken English. We played carnival games. We played games where the loser got shocked. We played games where the loser got shot in the face with water. His mom was the cook. We dined on pumpkin and chicken. When another table chose Spain for drinks they were delivered by the owner in a bull mask after he finished a Spanish flamenco dance with castanets. It was the best dining experience of my life (unless you count the time that I slapped Wayne Gretsky on the back and yelled, “what’s up Wayne?” 45 minutes after eating nachos at a Clippers game as a dining experience).

We saw the Imperial Palace from the outside (not that cool). We saw temples that had swastikas on them (who knew that Hitler was a demon and a copyright infringer too boot?). We breathed in smoke on our put it on our weary feet and legs and cleansed ourselves with water. We threw monetary donations and clapped twice. We ate things on sticks from strange stands in alleys. We ate strawberries in clear goo. We grabbed sushi from a rotating conveyer belt. We met a life goal of mine when we witnessed the most amazing subway display of my life. At morning rush hour people would line up to get in the subway cars. They’d get totally packed and the “it’s leaving bell” would ring, which signaled five more idiots to try to fit in. This brought guards in neat blue uniforms with white gloves over to try to force the doors closed while another guy would try smashing the person hanging out and their stuff into the subway car. We saw Mount Fuji from the window of a bullet train traveling over 200mph. We got lost all over in a city with minimal street names and guide book directions like “Take Exit 5, and go perpendicular to the train tracks on your right. Pass three alleys and turn on the crooked street.

Needless to say, I consider Tokyo to be one of the greatest cities I’ve ever visited in this whole wide world.