After three nights with most of my best friends at home, (after 5 months of travelling almost every single day in a way nobody has done before), my parents brought me from their place to the Amsterdam Schiphol Airport where I met Peter from IPtower Internet Solutions.
This Dutch company stood up to be my new sponsor of my mobile communication and also supplied a new digital camera, the new edition Sony Mavica.
During dinner at a restaurant at airport with my parents, I unpacked everything of these new supplies and enjoyed them very much. The camera is even better, it’s an more advanced edition of my old camera.
I a getting used to it, but my wonderful parents really glowed up as a light in the dark when the lady at the check-in desk recognized me as that famous world traveller.
My first plane towards Johannesburg left at 7.30pm and I was surprised with the long lines at customs as everything and everybody got thoroughly screened. Even books were checked for metal bookmarks and whatsoever. It was illegal to take any sharp object on a plane and I almost worried that I’d had to give away my pen.
The three hours flight took me toward Madrid, the capital of Spain, where 90 minutes later another plane took me to Johannesburg in an almost 10 hours flight.
On the plane the man sitting next to me already told me more than I knew about South Africa.
“It is a country that is a world on itself. It has everything the rest of the world has. There are deserts, but South Africa has it’s own Grand Canyons, a Mediterranean west coast and a tropical east coast, rainforests and the biggest variety of people.”
I already knew I would be walking with my mouth open, but did not expect that to happen in the plane already…
I think I slept some 3 hours, when the plane prepared for the landing in Johannesburg. Somewhere between being awake and sleeping I enjoyed fragments of an unknown movie starring Morgan Freeman as a doctor who had so solve the kidnapping of a senators daughter.
I prepared myself for sudden tropical humidity as I departed the plane, but it was very sunny and warm. It felt like the same weather I enjoyed in my hometown last weekend. Of course that was one of the rare warm days in autumn and the South African hotness is much dryer, there wasn’t much more of a difference.
10 am: Hello South Africa!
I never thought I would make it to any African country in the beginning of this project, so know that I will be taking pleasures in every single minute I am on this gigantic continent.
Garth is one of the man and big shareholders of E-Travel, who together with his business partner Bob had invited me over to South Africa and paid all my travel expenses.
He welcomed me in South Africa and we drove the few miles towards my hotel for the night as he introduced me with the successful E-Travel company and informed me about what I would have to expect this day. This wasn’t going to be a normal day – that was sure.
E-Travelhad arranged that I could stay for two nights in Ten Bompas, a luxurious hotel in Johannesburg. The hotel would let me stay for free.
According to their brochure the hotel is ‘unique in its concept and in size, designed to fulfil the restlessness of the soul as well as the obligations of the business day.’ The interesting thing about Ten Bompas is its artistic design. Its not a piled up high hotel as we know most can be. It is a piece of art itself.
Howard, the director of the hotel (and also of the Honeyguide Tented Safari Camp which I will visit later this week), welcomed me at the hotel.
The friendly receptionist man showed me my room, the most favourite room of the hotel, number 5. The word room is a pretty bad selection; I have to talk about a Suite from now on. It contains a separate lounge and bedroom, a fireplace, guest toilet, steam bath and plenty of natural light, with access to the outdoors via a ground floor patio or a balcony. A television, a stereo and don’t let me use the amount of alcohol in the cabinet, which just cannot be called a mini bar anymore…
I got lunch on the patio in the sun and cherished the Tagliatelli with Anchovies, Garlic, Olives and Braised Fennel. A waiter was taking care of all my needs all the time.
Lesley-Ann is the public relations consultant of Image Communication and the was put in charge of the press conference at the E-Travel headquarters in Johannesburg where I had to speak to reporters and columnists from over 10 different newspapers or magazines.
Until now I have done many meetings with members of the press, but this would be my first ever press conference!
And I know and fully understand why this day won’t be a usual ‘stay with the hosts who invited me through my website’-day, as this project absolutely relies on media attention. Any blurb in the media, online or in print, or on the radio, gets people to my website and perhaps score enough invitations to stay all over South Africa! It’s a necessity.
Before Lesley-Ann brought me from the hotel to the office where I had almost an hour of talking with these press people, she first let me have experience a photo shoot in the green garden of the hotel.
At the press meeting at E-Travel I started off saying ‘help me out, because I have never done a press conference before’, but said halfway ‘please tell me if I talk too much’…
It was somewhat an encounter to do this thing. After the talks Jennie from The Citizen newspaper had some pictures taken of me and I am looking forward to her Wednesday story, as she was the most active and present press officer at the spot.
After the conference I was worn out.
As the next thing to do to promote my project in South Africa and get some more invitations in this country, Lesley-Ann took me to the studio complex of Summit TV, South Africa’s Essential Business Channel, where Jeremy Maggs interviewed me about my project. In South Africa this man is pretty popular as he is also the host of the SA-version of ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?‘.
The interview was broadcast several times this day.
After all these events Lesley-Ann brought me back to the hotel. In the car I found out that South Africa isn’t that criminal as I was told at previous places and by people I met on the road.
It is just a country where you have to take extreme caution. I can’t just walk with my mobile phone to my ear in down town Johannesburg and take some photographs with my camera at the same time. There is a minor possibility that I get shot to dead and mugged the next moment. I was told…
But the stories that I should not sit in a car with my white arms hanging out of the open windows, because than I could get hold up pretty easy too, aren’t that truthful either.
However that is the impression that several persons on this first day in Johannesburg told me, maybe it is different in other parts of this immense country.
Lesley-Ann told me how she recently had electric fences put up around her residence. There is a slight chance that somebody could climb any fence, shoot you and then empty your house. Because that happens!
If now somebody would climb over Lesley-Ann’s fence, the whole street would be treated on a free barbeque party.
Prevention is the best security in a country that I easily can compare with the United Kingdom, but with enormous gaps between the rich and the poor.
My view on poorness can be relative again. People along the streets sells their little things; food, creations and whatsoever, but with the 10 South African Rand they earn in one day, they don’t see themselves poor at all. It’s a completely different mentality here and I have to get used to it.
Back at the hotel on 10 Bompas Road I had a nap before dinner at 8pm. I had ‘mille-feuille of Parmesan and Gorgonzola with honey and ginger dressing‘, followed by ‘Stuffed chicken leg with Spinach, Bresaola and Cashew Nut Risotto‘.
After dinner I spent some time in the hotel garden, where I heard and saw birds that I have never seen before in my life and sat down under a tree full of flowers and I reflected on my first day in South Africa.
South Africa will amaze me the coming weeks and I hope to enrich my mind thanks to its people and all the experiences they offer me by just offering me to stay, no matter if it’s good for publicity reasons by commercial companies or if it is done by normal private persons. I will enjoy it all.
I will be shown the very tourists point of views of South Africa this week as I will be staying in hotels and tented camps and go on safaris. Don’t worry, I won’t get spoiled, the rest of South Africa follows next.
Next to the hotels where I am invited to stay, I also hope to stay more in the homes of private people too; to hear their stories, taste their culture and to try to have my soul meet the South African soul.
I hope you will excuse me now as I am going to take a night swim in the pool before I will rest my head.
Good night Johannesburg!
Ramon.
