Hello from Cape Town!

With the boat safely parked in Zululand, we set out to explore the bush. Well—not really. The surrounding landscape is a rolling, green and lush, and completley tame. Every square inch is covered in eucalyptus timber farms, cow paddocks, and villages—but we were heading for the famous Hluhluwe and uMflozi game reserves. These reserves, along with Kruger, are Zululand's main tourist attractions; essentually large areas partolled by anti-poaching squads where the natural ecosystem is allowed to function free of human influence. The rangers don't give non-poaching visitors much thought—a small sign at the entrance depicts an elephant overturning a car, but this warning leaves you totally unprepared for the reality of the self-service, self-drive, unfenced, and unsupervised park.

As we rumbled over ten feet of electrical fencing laid across the road—to keep the lions from raiding livestock outside the park—a marvelous transformation took place. Instead of a biological landscape entirely composed of cattle and people, we found ourselves in an area of incredible density and diversity. In the first kilometer we saw a flock of playful yellow weaver birds, a herd of nervous impalas, a troupe of mischevious baboons, a hungry warthog, two grumpy white rhinos, a herd of watchful buffalo, and an arrogant elephant. Life was really happening here and the environment man had created for himself outside the park suddenly seemed sterile, depleted, and monochromatic.

The limited size of the game reserve can support only a handful of apex predators—the lions. We didn't spot any in the big park, so we decided to cheat a little. A lion breeding program nearby keeps a dozen lions in a smaller paddock, enclosed by what seems like a ludicrisly high electrified fence. The ranch makes limited money selling cubs to zoos, so, to suppliment the beer fund, the rangers let tourists drive into the lion cage. Again, a small sign warned "No soft-top vehicles. Close all windows, lock all doors. Keep moving." The implication that the lions might rip the top off the car, or that they knew how to open unlocked doors to reach the tasty morsels within, was not lost on us. Once inside, the restive lions came to investigate the car and we realized the 30-foot high electric fence and warning signs were not ridiculious at all. Their paws were the size of dinner plates and they could go from a lazy sprawl to a light-footed 30 mile-an-hour lope instantly.
After two days in the game parks, we drove back to the boat. South Africa is the only place we've been where one can watch hundreds of white people drive Mercedes, BMWs, Porsches, and Maseratiis past millions of black people living in self-built mud huts. After we sailed from Richard's Bay, we entered a stretch of coast torn by poverty and racism. The only 'white-safe' places to stop were the yacht clubs, the last bastions of apartheid. The first club we stopped at huddled behind fencing installed by their friendly neighbors—a Mercedes Benz factory—and the last club had three sequential security gates with 24 hour gaurds walking the dock. The occasional white-affluent neighborhoods are embroiled in a have-to-keep-up-with-the-Joneses arms race of towering walls, rows of barbed wire, coils of razor wire, electric fencing, steel spikes, cameras, and motion sensors. The safest neighborhoods are protected by a communal system of 20-foot electrified steel fences, high-tech motion detectors, and special-forces army vetrans. "Its so safe, kids can even play on the street here," one South African boasted to us. The fact is, the tiny white minority feels like it's in hostile territory and with the huge economic disparity, the advent of democratic elections, and their past abuses of the native Africans, they probably are. South Africa is a raw place, but its not all bad. With the new black government still finding its footing among the huge socioeconomic and racial issues, there hasn't been time for the lawmakers and court systems to litligiously excise the ideas of common sense and personal responsibility. Its only in a country like S.A. that one is allowed to drive their Avis rental into a lion cage.

We arrived in Simon's Town for Chirstmas. This little port huddles in a tide pool just twelve miles from the Cape of Good Hope in some of the most consistently blustery condions we've seen. The docks, which drift around alarmingly, are losely chained to granite bolders which seem able to hold the hundreds of sailboats in the consistent 45 knot winds. Miraculously, it was calm on Christmas morning. Santa brought a big sack of dried raw antelope meat--billtong—and an anti-baboon slingshot, which you definitely need. There are bands of maurauding monkeys living in caves on the cliffs behind town. Originally, they only harassed hikers and picknickers, but recently they've started breaking into the mansions to raid for candy bars. In response, homeowners hired guards with paintball guns to patroll the streets and drive the monkeys back into the hills. The smart—and now very angry—baboons now retaliate by throwing rocks, and the resulting pitched battles are a common hazard along the hiking trails.

Kara, of course, was dead set to go for her family's traditional Christmas hike—which was why she'd sprung for the slingshot. We set off, up a trail into the towering cliffs above town and soon wandered deep into a box canyon terminated by a waterfall. It was a lovely spot, with not a baboon in sight. We were feeling pretty comfortable after an undisturbed hour when the snap of a twig echoed down the cliffs. Kara's head snapped upward, quickly followed by her drawn weapon. A half-dozen surprisingly large baboons were creeping down the cliffs around us. It was a coordinated ambush, designed to drive us from our picnic. The chief monkey's yellow eyes flashed agressivly and he let out a powerful rumbling bellow, displaying yellowed fangs. Kara loosed her rock and tossed the slingshot to me, asking for covering fire while she gathered our things. The baboons returned fire and we beat a hasty retreat under a withering hail of rocks, with the monkeys following along the canyon's rim just out of slingshot range. Our cowardly run back to the the boat was only slightly delayed by a five-foot cobra crossing our path, at which point we briefly considered a retreat back to the baboons. Safely back at the boat, we decided to put the traditional hike on hold until next year.

Orca is sitting low in the water. We're looking at 55 days to the Caribbean, with little or no opportunity to ressuply en-route. Among other things, 60 cans of tomatoes, 50 packages of noodles, 12 bottles of rum, 10 pounds of cheese, 30 pounds of potatoes, and 60 gallons of water will sustain us over the next 5,500 miles of sailing. Leaving now, we expect to arrive sometime in March.