January 17 – February 5, Part 1 CPT to JNB to AMS to SEA to PDX to NRT to SIN to BKK – 4 Continents, 2 weeks

It’s been almost a month since our last post and we have covered some ground by almost every mode of transportation except being pulled by something with four legs. Here’s a brief summary.

The Premier Classe train from Capetown to Joburg was great. If you are ever in SA and want a great way to see the country in style at a really affordable cost this is it. We arrived at the Capetown train station early Saturday morning on January 17 and were welcomed into the Premier Classe lounge where we were offered tea and snacks. Our bags were whisked away to reappear in our little compartment when we boarded later. We’ll include a couple photos but basically we were waited on hand and foot for the next 26 hours as we chugged across the South African landscape. All meals were included, one course after another – we could have rolled off the train when we arrived the next morning after witnessing an amazing sunrise as only Africa can do. It was a great way to wrap up our time in a enigmatic country we have come to know a little better and love even more than when we landed two and a half months earlier. Unfortunately though the experience on the train was great, the powers that be are not doing a great job of promoting it, so there were only 19 passengers on a 20 carriage train that can hold 124 guests!



We flew to Amsterdam from Joburg on an 11 hour flight which turned out to be kind of fun as the Purser was retiring after 38 years flying for KLM. She had all her family on board and all the flight attendants and crew were helping her celebrate her last flight. Her daughter is also a purser for KLM and was also on the flight. We only had a couple hours in AMS and then on Northwest for another ten hours back to Seattle where we were picked up at the airport with a warm welcome by Andrea’s parents (which was good given that it was a little colder than we have grown accustomed to) as well as shortly thereafter by Duncan’s parents where we stayed except for two nights down in Tacoma with friends. We were really thankful for this time with our parents and all they had done for us during our travels so far.



We are also so thankful for our renters who have made our house into a lovely home for themselves AND have looked after the chickens and kept all the plants alive. No small feat! This was really encouraging and reassuring to us and a continued sign of God looking after us. Each of us were able to connect with a few of our friends and catch up on a little of what has been happening in our old stomping grounds over the past few months. Much of our time was spent taking care of business – doctor appointments, getting our taxes done and organizing and repacking for our next leg of the trip. Time flew and it got a little hectic at the end but by Feb 1 we were ready to go again.






Duncan

January 3-17, Mossel Bay, Montagu, Cape Town, Fish Hoek

We are very aware that our days here in SA are coming to an end. After a week in Capetown with our Swiss friends, Lilian and Thomas who we met up with, we are in a lovely little town called Fishhoek situated 30 minutes south of Capetown on False Bay, a wide sweeping bay that warms up sufficiently for good swimming. We have a wonderful room/suite in the home of a local artist with a great view of the mountains and sea. We are glad to be here for four days before heading back to Capetown for two nights before our final splurge – a 'luxury' 26 hour train trip all the way from Capetown to Johannesburg and a night there before flying out late on the 19^th and arriving in Seattle on the 20th. And no our train is not the famed Blue Train or Rovos which can cost upwards of $2000 US per person for a trip – but we're hopeful it will be a nice way to end and celebrate our two and a half month South African odyssey.

Capetown is Africa's most cosmopolitan city.

Coming from the stillness and peace of Amber Lagoon in the Karoo I was expecting some culture shock entering the city – a city – but I was startled at the adjustment. (Even with two nights in Mossel Bay and one in Montagu on a farm – both nice places but mainly memorable for being kept awake by other loud guests – it was still a rapid compression.) After two and a half months we are back in a large humming metropolis with a proper downtown, a waterfront that rivals any other tourist waterfront in the world and the energy and urbanness is palpable. We stayed in a backpackers in the heart of it, minutes from the waterfront, minutes from swanky expensive stores and the rising stadium that will host the World Cup semifinals here in 500 days or so.

We are back in trendy, consumer world.

It doesn't sit well.

We are also confronted with the issues of the city – the poor, the needy – the blind man stumbling toward us with hand outstretched, the two young drug addicted boys holding out their shaking hands, the angry young male shouting threats to female passersby.

The least, the last, the lost – whether poor and needy or the rich tourist or trendy local who is also lost and needy – all looking, trying to find something that will heal the ache and fill the loneliness.

Kathleen Norris writes in The Cloister Walk that “Cities remind us that the desire to escape from the problems of other people by FLEEING (emphasis mine) to a suburb, small town or a monastery for that matter, is an unholy thing, and ultimately self-defeating. We can no more escape from other people than we can escape from ourselves.” Wherever we are we are meant to “be a part of the city of the living God, and you're challenged to make something of it. Do you reflect Benedict's belief that “the divine presence is everywhere”? Do you work as Jeremiah reminds us to do, for the welfare of the city to which God has sent you? Can you say with Isaiah, “About Zion I will not be silent, about Jerusalem I will not rest, until her integrity shines out like the dawn, and her salvation flames like a torch?”

It is a good reminder of why we are on this journey.

Capetown has an amazing mountain. Without this instantly recognizable piece of sandstone

(I think) it would just be another beach town. Instead it is one of the most picturesque places in the world. We spent our days in Capetown exploring with Lilian and Thomas - the District Six museum which chronicles the desolation of the District Six area in the name of apartheid and now its resurrection, other downtown areas and then further afield venturing down to Cape Point – not the most southern point in Africa but where most people go who want to experience this. It is where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet and where the sea continues on for 5000 kilometers before reaching Antarctica. On the way, we stopped to see the Penguins – yes Penguins in the hot sun

on the beach in Simonstown! We found many good eats and spent hours talking together about life here and where we come from respectively. Lilian and Thomas have been a gift to us to end ourtrip with. They are generous, fun, sensitive and both have a wonderful sense of humor. We have thoroughly enjoyed hanging out with them, learning new words from each other, laughing much. We had both spent the past three plus months traveling although they had their first month in Namibia while we were in Europe. We took them to the airport yesterday for their flight back to Switzerland after enjoying one more good meal at Harrie's Pancakes.

Duncan