Hallo,

Just a quick note to let you know that all's well in South Africa. I'm nursing a slight hangover (was up until 4 last night, playing drums and drinking South African lager) but so far nothing too large and carnivorous has attempted to eat me, and the tan's coming on a treat.

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I've been working my way from the Kruger Park in the Northeast (on the Mozambique border) down the Indian Ocean coast to the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Town. Staying in backpacker hostels and hippy beach communities, meeting lots of people, getting back into my drumming, balancing rocks. It's all very agreeable.

If ever you find yourself with a month or so to spare, come rent an old 1980s Mercedes for just $200 a month and cruise up and down the South African coast. It's not exactly gritty "real" Africa, I suppose, but you can certainly get away from it all and find yourself in some strange little spots.

What a hyena was doing in my pajamas I'll never know

I spend my first four days in the Kruger National Park. We camp out - under African skies! - by night (I had to scare off a Hyena in my pajamas one morning) and cruise the park for wildlife by day.

Kruger Park

There are 12 of us in our party, and as we trundle along the park's back roads in our minibus we're bombarded with animal facts by Jonny, our tour guide. Did you know young Zebras recognize their mothers by their unique pattern of stripes? Or that their stripes are black and white because lions only see in black and white? Or that Marabou Storks pee on their own legs to keep cool?

We learn all manner of animal facts, and it's great to be out in the wilds. But there's no getting round the fact that "on safari" you spend 12 hours of every day rattling down bumpy dirt tracks in a sweltering minibus, eyes glued to the horizon for a glimpse of "the big five" (elephant, rhino, lion, leopard, cheetah). For the first two days we see bugger all. Not even an elephant's arse. And it becomes hard to maintain the levels of wide-eyed enthusiasm with which we started.

"This is nutting me right off," announces Bernard - a quantity surveyor from Wimbledon. "I'm having a kip. Wake me up if we see anything."

Soon everyone is asleep, with Jonny the tour guide under strict instructions to wake us if we stumble across any wildlife. After a couple of "false alarms" these instructions are updated to preclude Impala ("ten a penny"), Zebra ("boring"), giraffe ("seen 'em"), and buffalo ("they don't do much"). In fact, Jonny risks heavy stares and much muttering under breath if he awakens us for anything less than a line of rhino dancing the can-can.

"Wild Coast" - Eastern Cape

Luckily for Jonny (and for us) he's patient and kind and his love for the animals overcomes our yobishness. A tall blonde lad from Penistone in Yorkshire, he came to South Africa on holiday five years ago and never went home. Nicest bloke you could want to meet, but a little vague and accident-prone. On a previous trip he spotted some exceedingly rare lizard basking on the road, quickly told everyone to check out the lizard on the left and slammed on the brakes of his truck - thus forcing the car behind him to swerve round his truck and straight over the lizard. "It was squashed like a pancake" he says.

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On our second day, and with much enthusiasm, he wakes all of us up at 3.45am for an early morning "game drive". Bleary eyed we all clamber into the truck, got 30 yards down the road, only to find the park gates locked. Turns out the park doesn't open until 5.30am. We sit there in the dark, staring at the gates, no one uttering a word. "Anyone fancy a cuppa back at camp?" Jonny offers, weakly.

Another time he was cooking spaghetti on the campfire and spent five minutes trying to find the tea towel he was using to lift the hot iron lid off of the pot. Couldn't find it anywhere. Eventually dinner was served and the missing tea towel came out with the first ladleful of bolognese sauce.

I liked him lots.

In the eyes of the whites

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After Kruger I stayed in many beautiful places, my favorite being the "Wild Coast" of the Eastern Cape (or "Transkei"), between Port Elizabeth and Durban. Here the main freeway moves inland for a couple of hundred miles, leaving the coast blissfully unspoiled. This is rural, poor, black Africa - and until the end of apartheid it was considered a very dangerous area for whites. Now there are three or four "backpacker" resorts catering to surfers, hikers, and assorted international tweakers (had lots of fun with a bunch of Israeli trance-heads). Land is cheap, the living is good, the local people are appreciative of the business tourists bring, if not overtly welcoming. But I think a trusting relationship is possible. I'm tempted to build Neil's Fantasy Island» right here.

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But who knows what is to become of South Africa? The country is changing quickly, and everything's up for grabs. There are millionaire blacks living in Soweto, homeless whites in Johannesburg. Crime is rife. Aids remains a huge problem. More people die in South Africa every week from Aids than died in the World Trade Center disaster. In the paper this morning ex-president Mandela is criticizing the government for talking about it but not doing enough about it. The country's running out of water, too, and the Rand continues to slip against world currencies.

The whites in Cape Town are making plans to leave, adopting an "enjoy it while it lasts" party spirit, or digging in for difficult times ahead. Property is unbelievably cheap (an up market two bedroom apartment in the center of Cape Town for $20,000 US), but this is for a reason - the whites don't know when the rug will be pulled from beneath their feet, but they're sure that it's going to happen. The South African government's endorsement of Robert Mugabe's recent "election victory" in Zimbabwe is not seen as a good sign.

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I don't know what to make of it all.

On a lighter note, I read a great story in the Johannesburg Times about a bus driver at a mental hospital, up near the Zimbabwe border. He was transporting 15 patients from one hospital to another, pulled over at a cafe for a spot of lunch, and while he was inside all the patients escaped. Upon coming back to an empty bus, with no sign of his 15 charges, here's what he did: He got back in his bus and drove up and down the high street stopping at bus stops until he'd picked up 15 random people. Then he drove to the mental hospital, handed over his 15 confused and protesting passengers, then ran home. Evidently it took three days to get it all sorted out.

Fantastic.

Anyway. That's all for now. I hope you're all well. Next stop, Sydney.

- Neil