Final Thoughts

Julie departed Saturday with some old friends and new friends for the 35 hour trip home.  I am lucky enough to be able to stay for another's week to enjoy the sites around Cape Town with Barb and Rich Hansen.

I will just highlight some my thoughts about this wonderful country and experience:

- The tour by UW Stevens Point was fabulous.  Great planning, leadership, fellowship and a wonderful experience (at a very good value).  However, it was not relaxing.  We had a lot of 15 hour days, which were necessary to achieve our planned itinerary.  It was great and I would recommend, but show up rested and plan on going home tired.

- South Africa is a wonderful country.  The sites are fabulous, the history is interesting, the food is great, people are friendly and at 13 Rands to the dollar, it is very reasonable.    We have not seen or experienced any crime and you don't see the guns and assault rifles that you see in even European countries.  However, the security guards, things like alarms, gates, razor wires on fences and constant warning and a few persistent beggars do make a person wonder. It is a little hard to relax in the city.

- South Africa is a fully developed country.  In many respects, it is much more like a European country than how I envision Africa.  English in the areas we visited was extremely common.  All of the signs around the city, unlike Canada for example which has signs in both French and English, were only in English.  It made it very easy to navigate.  We did hear other languages like Afrikaners and what I think was Xhosa (has words with a clicking sound) on the streets. 

- Despite the success of throwing off the old apartheid system only 20 years ago, South Africa has some severe systemic issues.  I will broadly over generalize by saying they seem to me to be economic rather than racial.  However, the economic divide has a severe bias against the blacks.  The vestiges of the apartheid system are very deep and severe as we experienced in the township last week.  The challenges for the government in "the new South Africa " are formidable.  I do hope for the best.

That is about it for the blog for this trip.  It was a fabulous adventure. I will post a few pictures and comments in the next couple of days if I have some worthy material, but as far as this blog is concerned, I am signing off from Cape Town, South Africa.