Julie, what a fantastic trip we had on Holland America Lines ms Prinsendam for 22 days, 12 countries, and some good friendships. From Lisbon to Capetown it was a wonderful experience. We returned home safely after two 11.5 hour flights: very long, but not as tiring as we had expected. We had excursions in each country, some lasting 9 hours, but for the most part there was only Namibia and South Africa where we would want to spend the night. The other countries were so poor and corrupt and the weather so hot and humid that we were very glad we had a marvelous cruise ship to return to.
In Senegal and The Gambia also, hot countries, the trash and garbage was atrocious. Old cars, tires, stoves and broken furniture, refuse from stores and shops, tons of paper, glass and plastic were scattered all over the sides of the roads and even in front of the small stores. It was really a sight. Luckily there was very little odor though and the other countries were not nearly so refuse ridden. In Benin as we were leaving the port at about 8:00 pm, and the ship was in the channel leading to the open sea, there was a sudden jolt and suddenly the ship listed to the port side about 10 degrees. We had struck the bottom of the channel. Why the tugs had not been more careful I don’t know, but they then had to pull us off the sandbar which took about 25 minutes. Our captain said the tug pilots were inexperienced; there was no damage to the hull, but it sure was a surprise to be nearly knocked over because of the impact.
Capetown, South Africa was by far the jewel of the whole cruise, with wonderful weather, a very modern and clean city, and lots of stores and shops for Susan to browse through. While there, we had an experience which made a very indelible impression on us- a walk through a ‘township’. These are shanty towns where the blacks migrate to the towns and cities from the ‘veldt’ to try and obtain work and to make a decent living and to get TV’s, I-Pods, and the latest sneaker shoes. Alas, it’s not to be- no jobs and even worse, they must live in plywood shacks with tin roofs, and very little space for the two or three families living in one very small room. Their toilets were communal and as far away as two or three hundred yards. The worst part of all this is that there are hundreds of these ‘townships’ all over South Africa.
We met several couples on board that made our trip so enjoyable: a pediatrician and his wife from Connecticut, a Canadian rancher from Edmonton, a couple from San Francisco, a New Zealand husband and wife, and of course, Susan’s cousin and his wife. It was so much fun. I thought that our traveling to77 countries was an accomplishment, but the New Zealanders had gone to 143 countries. Wow!
Phil, the ship cabin that we had reserved was a fairly small room, with a desk, a couch and a veranda outside where you could sit. But, surprise- when we first checked in they said we had been upgraded. We were placed in a huge suite, with a sitting room with 2 couches, a writing desk, 2 TV’s, a separate bedroom, a very large walk-in closet, and a pretty good sized bathroom. WOW! We were so embarrassed that we did not want to show it to our acquaintances that we had met on the pre-cruise in Lisbon. We finally did though, and took a lot of kidding and flack over our good fortune. I still don’t know how we came to get that kind of accommodation but it surely was nice.
Ron, the corruption in these nearly communist countries was incredible. As an example, when our ship docked in Cameroon,
and the Captain requested permission to offload some trash and garbage, the port officer said, ‘sure, as long as you pay me $27,000 American’. Well, our Captain, finally negotiated the “fee” down to $5,000 American. But this was still well above the going rate throughout the rest of the world.
Another time, in Gabon, 4 of the ship’s passengers took a taxi out to a plantation. But when they crossed over a certain bridge, into a different province, they were arrested because the taxi driver did not have a permit to drive in that province; so the traffic cop was paid off to the tune of $100.00 American. They suspected that the taxi driver was in on that bribe. It seems as though one has to have a very large backpack full of money to travel in these far-left countries.
Bill, in Africa, especially the Central West African countries, we found the people generally shy and distrustful of strangers, but if you smiled at them they usually smiled back. They are so poor that anything you give them is appreciated. A dollar for a photo; a banana for a hungry child; a cap (NY Yankees) for a young guide; another dollar for a plantation wood cutter in exchange for a picture.
We always had a police escort- either on the coach or a motorcycle cop with us, and in some cases it caused more problems than it was worth. In Cameroon, the motorcycle escort, went screaming with a very loud siren, and you could see the young men, who were standing on the side of the road, flipping us the big bone as we went by. But, occasionally, there would be a big laugh after that, as they knew that the cop was the bad guy, and not us ‘superior’ whites. Cameroon was the most ‘unsociable’ country of all we visited, but overall they were about the same: except for Namibia and South Africa.
Skip, the lack of human decency in these left-wing dictatorships is unbelievable. In Ghana, (and in a lot of other countries also), six year olds are sold by their parents for up to 4 years for about $20.00 per year. The little boys are then forced to work 7 days a week on a fishing boat, really a canoe: their job- keeping the water out of the boat by bailing all day long, easily a 12 hour task that goes on day after day. The parents don’t care whether their children live or die. Tragic!
Betty, you would really like South Africa, and particularly Cape Town, which is a very modern city of 5 million with lots of mountains and sightseeing & shopping in the ‘waterfront’ area. There were lots of tourists in the resort hotels and while we there for 3 days after our cruise we visited a game park, some great museums, the ‘Cape of Good Hope’ which is the most southern part of Africa, and the island prison where Nelson Mandela was held prisoner for 16 years before becoming the Prime Minister of South Africa. Cape Town is a very beautiful, clean and safe city- quite a bit different than the Central West African countries, where crime, corruption and filth are rampant.
Namibia, formerly a German colony before World War I and next to South Africa is also clean and safe, but a great part of it is desert- and it is very sparsely populated. The white people there speak both Afrikaans and English (like in So. Africa) and are very polite and friendly. Our guide through the desert, Joyce, was really sweet and talked freely about the conflicts between the blacks and the whites in her country.
Ben, several funny and unusual things kept cropping up on our journey- in Togo, which is just below the bulge of Africa, we had several buses which took our 800 cruise passengers out to the short excursions in the country. Then, when we went overnight to Benin, the next country –south, that is- we found that Benin had to ‘borrow’ Togo’s buses to transport us “white folk” on excursions there. So the Togo drivers had to drive overnight to Benin so we would have some transportation. Amazing!
Benin also had unique taxis: not autos but motorbikes. Each driver had a yellow jacket with a serial number on it and was transporting either a man or woman on the back. And sometimes there were 3 or 4 people on the motorbike- they were all over the place.
After we left Benin, the next country on our way south was Nigeria; a place that has had a civil war for about 6 years. We passed it at night, with all running lights turned off, and a squad of the ship’s crew patrolling the deck- armed- to make sure that no Nigerians tried to board the ship in the dark. Luckily most of the passengers were not aware of the potential danger that the ship’s Captain took special precautions to avoid.
Stan, I looked all over several countries- Senegal, The Gambia, and Gabon- for some postcards for you but there was nothing. Nada! Nohow! But finally I found a few in Capetown, South Africa. They are pretty good ones too.
The disease AIDS is rampant over there, and appears to be getting worse, primarily because of not enough medicines for the people and because of the fact that if a man has AIDS, he believes that if he sleeps with a virgin, he will be cured. And so it goes! In Namibia, the AIDS rate is at 20% of the population and in South Africa it is 19%. Conversely, in Senegal the rate is only 1%, and Ghana and Gambia are at 2.5%. Why the big difference, I don’t know.
If the far-left dictators would only consider their people instead of their pockets, Africa would be a far better place and maybe, just maybe there would be jobs, and education and health care and housing for those poor souls. We really felt sorry for the people and the hopeless situation they were in.
Cheers-
Rick and Susan
As they say in Africa, “some days you’re the pigeon and some days you’re the statue”.
For information on Africa Travel please visit www.all-travel.com/africa
