Joburg Layover

Sixteen hours.  That's the longest flight either of us has ever taken.  It was brutally long.  Now, in

fairness, it might have felt longer than it actually was because of the annoying old people surrounding us.  At least nobody thought it was a good idea to bring their baby on the flight!

We landed in Joburg around 4:45 p.m. without issue, though the fact that we had to submit to an ebola screening in customs was a little unsettling.  The Intercontinental Hotel, where we're staying, upgraded us to an executive suite, which is pretty great.  We didn't have too much time to explore, so we decided to take the train into Sandton and grab dinner in Nelson Mandela Square.  

Joburg is not a particularly safe city.  We met a number of South Africans while traveling in Eastern Europe back in 2011 and heard a number of horror stories about this place.  For example, two well-to-do twentysomethings we met told us that everyone has iron gates that separate the bedrooms in their houses from everything else, because burglaries are so common.  Or, a doctor from Joburg told us that: (1) nobody stops at red lights for fear of being car-jacked; and (2) the best-selling invention several years ago was an attachment that would shoot flames up the windows of your car if someone touched them while the ignition was on.  I've had no issue walking through the unlit back streets in Istanbul, and I didn't bat an eye traveling through the Eastern Bloc, but something about South Africa scares me.  Yet, despite my concerns, we had a great evening.  I never felt unsafe on our trip, and the South Africans are an incredibly entertaining population of people.  Perhaps the funniest thing that we noticed about them is their obsession with selfies.  

There really isn't any "local" cuisine in South Africa, but the closest they come is Cape Malay, which is very Indian-inspired and curry-based.  We didn't find a Cape Malay restaurant, but we did stumble across a pretty great Indian place.  After a great pinotage and some ostrich tikka, we grabbed some beers from a pop-up bar in the square, and went to catch the train back to the hotel.  However, unbeknownst to us, the trains here shut down around 9:00 p.m., so we had to grab a cab home.  The cabbie was a little sketchy, and definitely wasn't the best at driving a manual transmission, but he got us back to the hotel nevertheless.

Tomorrow we catch a flight to Antananarivo at 9:20 a.m. and we'll spend the afternoon relaxing in the Malagasy countryside.  Almost there!

Up, Up, and Away

It's finally here.  Even as I sit here in airport, waiting for the first of our many flights, it doesn't seem real.  Just two hours ago I was frantically trying to finalize appellate briefs and sparring with government attorneys over deadlines.  Now, I literally have nothing to do, and it's amazing!

The Eighth Continent.  Land of the Man-Eating Plant.  Madagascar.  No matter what you call it, it sounds exotic.  Over the last few years I've started to realize that I take my broad knowledge of the world for granted.  People seemed skeptical when we went to Eastern Europe and Turkey, but most everyone at least had some vague idea of where we were going.  When I've told people that we're going to Madagascar, I've gotten one of two responses: (1) "Woah, I didn't know people actually went there," or, more frequently, (2) "Where is that?"  Madagascar is the fourth-largest island in the world and its a cradle of biodiversity, so it's hard for me to understand how so many people don't know where it is, much less anything about it.  (The third-most-frequent question I get asked is if we're going to see the penguins while we're there...thank you Disney).

This is going to be, at the very least, an interesting trip.  While reading about the demographics of Madagascar, I was struck by one unbelievable fact.  Ninety-three percent of people living in Madagascar live on less than $2/day.  In fact, even those in the well-to-do professions (e.g., attorneys, doctors, and accountants) live on less than $5/day!

We're going to get a taste of many of Madagascar's highlights over the next two weeks.  We land in Johannesburg tomorrow and spend a day there before catching a flight to Antananarivo ("Tana"), the capital of Madagascar.  After spending a night there, it will be time to get on another flight to Morondova - a city on the western coast.  There we'll do some day and night walks through the forests before taking an 8-hour excursion up a dirt road to Bekopaka.  Along the way we're going to ford two rivers.  No joke.  I haven't been playing too much Oregon Trail.  We are literally fording rivers.  They have makeshift rafts made from chopped down trees that locals paddle or walk across the river with the cars on them!  I am unnecessarily excited about this aspect of the trip.  Once in Bekopaka, we're going to spend two days exploring the Tsingy de Bemaraha...a national park of giant limestone spikes in which 80% of the species that live there are found nowhere else in the world and nowhere else in Madagascar!

On October 8 (my birthday!) we'll be making the 8-hour return trip to Morondova, stopping along the way to watch the sunset at the picturesque Allee de Baobabs.  Next, we'll spend a day back in Tana exploring the markets and cultural sights before flying up to Nosy Be and catching a ferry to Constance Tsarabanjina - the five-star private island resort that we're spending our second week at.  With any luck, while we're there we'll be able to see some humpback whales, hissing cockroaches, and dozens of lemurs!

It's going to be quite an adventure, so stay tuned.  I'll update as we go to the extent we have internet, but I make no promises.  Your best bet is to subscribe to our feed so you get notices when we post.