Travel to South Africa: Martha Steger

Feeding time at Shambala Game Reserve near Pretoria

Just back from South Africa, Martha Steger sent a favorite memory (above) and these notes on her trip:

The distance between my first experience with Africa — via a hand-me-down copy of National Geographic on the farm where I grew up — and the real-life experience of this January is incalculable; but I saw my expectations exceeded by at least as many miles — even in a tiny, seven-day sampling of that huge continent (seven-hour flight Dulles to Dakar, Senegal, at the northern tip of the continent — refueling stop — and the continuing, nine-hour flight to Johannesburg, South Africa).  Within a two-hour drive of the bustling, inner city of "Johburg," my husband, Tom, and I enjoyed a private game reserve that's recently become open to public safaris (www.shambalagamereserve.com), as well as visits to a Johburg orphanage supported by some Richmonders, and to Soweto —South Africa's largest township, undergoing massive transition from its apartheid days when blacks were forbidden to live anywhere except townships.

We took flight again after four days for Cape Town — two-hours' flying time from Johburg (which included a full, hot meal and two beverage services!) to that provincial capital of the Western Cape, photographically represented by the iconic image of Table Mountain. The two-day mix there of lush gardens, multiple dialects,  remnants of the British Empire (on menus as well as in architecture, accents) and the dramatic views of the Atlantic and Indian oceans' meeting point was the perfect South African ending before we returned to Johburg for the flight home. We brought back a liter of Amarula cream, the South African liqueur made from one of the country's exotic fruits, to remind us of our taste of the cradle of civilization.

Community cell-phone chat room in Soweto sponsored by the Sowetan News

 Agrienette Ntwane (left) with her son's girlfriend (Gloria), standing beside their new concrete home in Soweto, with the shanty in which they lived for six years behind it. "Agrienette was using her regular fuel, paraffin, to cook on the portable stove in her old shanty when I was there," Martha emailed.