Wandering thru Southern Africa, 1986-87

Friday evening, April 4, 1986 JFK International Airport, New York   My bags are checked and I’m holding a boarding pass for South African Airways flight 202 for Johannesburg.   So I guess it’s finally happening. Today was relatively uneventful although I did meet Eduard DuPlessis, the New York manager of the South African Tourism Board.   He presented me with a “to whom it may concern letter” requesting that I be provided with “practical assistance.”   Hopefully, that request will translate into some discounts and freebees as I don’t have a limitless supply of cash available for a long stay in South Africa.   DuPlessis was eager for me to get some positive South African travel stories published noting that tourism in South Africa was down 17% last year.   He attributed this decline to news reports of violence in the country rather than to any moral revulsion by travelers regarding apartheid. Mr. DuPlessis assured me that I would encounter no trouble in South Africa as long as

Thursday, April 3, 1986 Pickwick Hotel, 230 E. 51 st St.   I arrived at the Newark Airport yesterday afternoon following an uneventful flight with a plane change in Chicago.  Nanci Cohen, an old friend from Boulder, met me at the airport and drove us to her home some 30 miles northwest in Randolph, NJ.  Nanci works in Newark temporarily but was not used to driving home from the airport.  She was lost about half the time.  With our eyes on the setting sun, we proceeded in a west-northwesterly direction over narrow roads that wound past country estates, subdivisions, and suburban towns until she found familiar territory.  The roads in New Jersey are every bit as crooked and confusing as those in New England – and crowded too, I might add.    Svelte, brunette Nanci and her red haired, bearded husband, Peter Copeland, have a large four bedroom, two-story home in an upper middle-class neighborhood with a nice view across a wooded hillside.  Peter took a promotion from Ma Bell a cou

Wednesday, April 2, 1986, 8:15 AM Denver Stapleton Airport   Today is D- (as in departure) day.   After more than 6 months of preparation I’m finally off to South Africa.   I feel really out of it.   All this time, I’ve wanted so badly to leave Denver and have an international adventure.   Now, I’m scared – well, maybe not scared, but weird anyway.   Am I doing the right thing?   Am I crazy to leave Colorado?   I suppose all this anxiety is normal, but I’m telling myself that it’s inappropriate to feel this way.   Guess I’ll just “be” with these feelings for a while.   And in the meantime, I’ll do some writing about my plans for the coming year. Am I crazy to leave Colorado?  Left:  October 1985.  Slogging through a foot of snow toward the summit of Snowmass Mountain (14,099 ft.)  Photo by Randy Murphy.  Right:  New York-bound on April 2 with all my stuff at Denver Stapleton Airport.  Photo by Mary Ann Tavery. First of all, some basic ground rules for survival and sanity maintena

During my travels through South Africa during the twilight of Apartheid, I wrote almost daily using a portable, battery-operated Brother typewriter which my friend, Jim Bachman, loaned me.  It was about the size of today’s laptop computers.  My writings were in the form of letters to friends back in the U.S. in which I described my experiences, interactions with South Africans, and my thoughts on South African society.  Being paranoid that my writings could be lost, confiscated by the police, or disappear with a theft of my luggage, I dutifully photocopied each letter, mailed the copy to a friend, and kept the original for myself.  With the exception of the newspaper story which appeared in a previous post on this blog, the letters have never been published.  In the 36 years since these letters were written, South Africa has undergone monumental changes, mostly, but not totally, for the better.  Thus, my letters are window back into those times as seen through the eyes of a wondering