Hey!  I'm in South Africa and doing well.  You?

    I've just recovered from the time difference -- I'm writing you
at 5pm my time (10am yours) -- but not the last few years of sitting 
at a desk.  I've walked about 10km/day since leaving and my body is 
having a rougher time making that transition (chafing on the inner 
thigh, tightness in the lower back, and ease of fatigue).

    This place has a fairly interesting history.  Being the careful 
planner that I am I was sure to bring a guide book with me so that I 
could find a place to stay as soon as I arrived (book ahead? me?)  
After being fairly convinced that I would bunk at the Cat & Moose
backbackers lodge I fell into a section on the history of South Africa.
It's fascinating to me the things man will do to one another.  First 
the Dutch (Africaans, the perhaps most prevalent language here is a
modified version of Dutch), then the British, then Africaaners all had
turns raping, murdering, and pillaging each other and more often the 
indigenous peoples.

    The result is as follows:  a bunch of assholes set up a system 
called apartheid (actually comes from Apart Hate and has nazi roots) in
which there are three groups; white, coloured, and black/african.  
Each group had different rights, land, and social status.  It's still 
a bit touchy as Mandela's release and the end of apartheid didn't 
happen all that long ago.  It makes America racism seem much more 
benign but the apparent effects are about the same.  Cape Town is a
white town where it's nice, you might expect to find a coloured waiting
your table, but will almost exclusively find blacks washing the floors
and windows.  Apartheid is gone but the systematic segregation of 
people seems to simply have been replaced by economic segregation.
Hopefully my impression and the reality of this will change as I see 
more of the country.

    It is a friendly place on the flip side.  Having arrived without 
a place to stay I fortuned upon a friendly representative at a visitors
desk who pointed me to a place to stay (not the Cat & Moose).  55R/
night equals about $8/night.  Free airport pickup.  45 minutes later
two Brits in a crappy little white car tear through the airport pickup
lane shouting my name.  "Dropin' Kevin off at his girlfriends on the 
way back, don't mind do you?"  Kevin and Justin had traveled from
England to Morocco then overland to South African in the last 2 years.
They weren't the white collar rich fuckers you might expect (hey, watch
your thoughts) but were instead blue collar laborers in a paint 
factory.  We drove for a half an hour into a neighborhood far north of
the Cape Town city bowl.  Next door were the "Crazy Crackhead Kenyan's"
and at home were two extremely hospitable blacks, one of whom clearly
was Kevin's target.  I hadn't showered in two days, slept only about
6 hours, and desperately wanted to change clothes.  I asked to use the
shower before coffee.  One of them led me into her room where I 
showered while listening to the screeching Kenyan music lift over the
open screen.  After coffee Justin and I drove alone into the city and
my trip had begun.