Travellin' sea urchins

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Snorkelling in the South China Sea, anyone? I never would have thought it could rival Australia’s Great Barrier Reef for colour and sheer gorgeousness, but it does. In fact, it was the best underwater experience I've ever had. And while I’d like to say we stayed in these glorious chalets on stilts (top pic) I can't fib because for a cool grand a night, it somehow didn’t fit the budget.

Poor me, no?

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At the risk of sounding all poor-me and everything, I can't help but be a little fixated on this nightmare Kuala Lumpur-to-Penang train thing (even though it looks not half bad in this picture) because not only did all four of us puke within 24 hours of leaving this train, but I had to puke over the back deck of an overcrowded ferry, surrounded by dozens of burkha-clad Saudi women peeking out at me in amusement from behind their jet-black veils. (There’s not much I hate more than puking but I must really add public puking to my litany of things to strenuously avoid.)

Holiday, holiday, are you almost over?!!

I'm too old for this shit

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Whose dumb idea was this train anyway? OK, mine, mine, mine. Next time I should listen to those in the know...
We are en route from Kuala Lumpur to Penang, known as the Jewel of the Orient, but believe me, this ain’t no luxurious Orient Express judging by the smell of the shitty hole-in-the-bottom-of-the-train toilet just a few feet from where the girls are standing. And yeah, it may look like they're are having fun but I AM NOT!! Because travelling long distances by train in the third world? It’s all coming back to me now! The endless bag carrying in the absence of trollies (and we have about a dozen bags to lug back to Canada), the to-ing and fro-ing, the waiting and the sweating, the standing in line, the Asian squat toilet where instead of a flush there is a nasty HOSE which you must try to use while also trying not to lurch your way INTO the toilet on a moving train. This is hard to do when you are plugging your nose with one hand and trying not to actually TOUCH the hose with our other.

And yeah, having our own little sleeper car seems fun and adventurous but in reality it’s a stinking, clanging, crashing, screeching, overnight stop-and-go nightmare from which I may never recover. Plus the smell of hundreds of people's poop is all mixed in with the gross herb-smelling cigarettes that everyone smokes.

Is it possible that the holiday that never ends is trying to tell me something?

Paranoia at the customs desk

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OK, do I look like the type to smuggle a condom full of smack and a coupla firearms up my butt into this country? DAMN!! Welcome to Singapore, my ass! Oh sure, everyone’s playing all nicey-nicey but how does one not get riled by all these “death for drug traffickers” signs when maybe, just maybe, some asshole dealer in Jo’burg sized me up as his ideal middle-aged absentminded drug mule and the unhappy result of all that is it’s gonna be me and a couple dozen me-so-horny ladies in a single-cell nightmare until I die of lethal injection a few months from now. Midnight Express anyone? OMG!

Clearly I am unmellowed by age and experience in these matters and I still approach customs agents in a cold sweat, praying I won’t look guilty for crimes I haven’t even committed. I think it stems back to that time I got hauled into isolation at an Israeli airport for a whole bunch of weird questions ... but that was then, and this is now, and Molly wants to know: “Mom, if they catch me picking my nose, will they shoot me?”

Sunrise safari and one long, last look

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So here it is, our final few hours in rural South Africa, and by every measure this trip has been absolutely brilliant. Whether it takes a few years or a few decades to return here, the memories will most certainly sustain us while we try to process all that we've seen and learned, to unravel the different points of view, to keep the politics straight, to make sense of the contradictions and to recount the sheer volume of experiences we’ve had.

Along the way I’ve been reading Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, which has helped make sense of it all, and to see all this through his eyes and understand things from the perspective of the most widely admired politician of our time has made the land and the people here come alive.

The best part, though, has been the family togetherness and the confidence our girls have gained with every step. We might not know for years how South Africa affects how they see the world but already it has affected their play. Now when they’re playing “vets”, for example, one of their teddies has AIDS - and he needs a whole lot of TLC.

One thing I know for sure now is that families like ours can indeed travel safely and happily in South Africa and have an amazing time, as long as they find the right balance – because there’s no point coming here if you’re going to be paranoid about crime but on the other hand, if you’re not going to take a few basic precautions, you’ll almost certainly be robbed blind or much, much worse.

There’s never been another family trip like it, and although Malaysia can’t help but be a bit anti-climactic, I still say bring it on!

Sundown, moonrise from the back of a Land Rover

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Molly gets the binoculars out for our last sunset safari in South Africa, this one at a private game reserve in Madikwe, in the Limpopo province, where the lovely, intelligent, knowledgeable and enthusiastic David guided us for hours and treated us to a couple of cold ones out on the veld.

Did I mention I'm going to miss this?!!!

Images of Africa

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Immersing ourselves in African culture has proved a total eye-opener for all of us; Annie and Molly had a go at carrying water on their heads, Doog and I tried our hand at dancing with this amazingly cool and smiley guy (fortunately no one captured us on film), the beaded lady shook and shimmied, the housewife made Zulu beer and these gorgeous kids (top two pics) sold their wares ... we’ll need to buy another suitcase to fit in all the trinkets and gifties.

Sad lives, happy faces

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Stunningly beautiful in parts, Lesotho is also one of the very poorest countries in the world and has what is said to be the world’s worst HIV/AIDS infection rates, all of which means there’s not all that much to smile about. Still, as this young Lesotho fellow showed us, a brilliant smile is enough to warm even the most bone-chilling of days.

(The blanketed man followed us around constantly but he was less a menace than a sad, albeit smiley, figure.)

Thank you, mother Mary

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There’s no point going to Africa without teaching our girls how people actually live, so today’s lesson in life was huge, thanks to Mary who graciously received the gifts we gave her children and who generously posed for these pictures at her home in one of Lesotho's desperately poor townships.

Black, strong, proud ... and female

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Rarely in our lives do we get the chance to meet a person whose wisdom, grace and intelligence are so profound that our thought patterns are literally changed forever. This lovely, proud Zulu woman – Christian mother of six, speaker of six languages, manager of a community-owned Zulu lodge - was just such a person for me.

After weeks of engaging in political conversations with white South Africans and having little more than the most surface encounters with blacks, I finally have a bit of a grasp on what it’s like to be black and female in post-apartheid South Africa - and how women here can look to the future with hope and optimism despite the massive social and economic problems this country faces.

Nomusa and I chatted for hours about everything from Nelson Mandela and Bill Clinton to AIDS, apartheid, crime, poverty, children, travel and what it’s like to be a successful female in a completely male-dominated African culture.

I asked her what she thought of those ageing Afrikaaners who clearly wish apartheid was still alive and well, and in particular about a 60-ish white woman who’d recently said to me: “Why would I watch South African soccer? There are no white players. The rugby is for us; the blacks can have their soccer.”

Nomusa’s wise reply? “I don’t have resentment. We are moving forward. The white people who want to move forward with us can come along. Those who don’t, well that’s their problem.”

Intelligent words, indeed, and I’m grateful for the hours we spent talking around the fire under a starry KwaZulu Natal sky. Hers is a perspective I will cherish and whose proud history I respect. (Annie and Molly also fell for her big time.)

The world game

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Never am I more proud of my very cool husband than when he does the unexpected and goes where no one else dares, like on these two occasions when he simply walked into the middle of a soccer game between local kids and joined in, thrilling them with his big smile and big heart.

The kids in the top picture, who belong to the local witch doctor, play with neither shoes nor a real ball; their “ball” is a wad of plastic bags wrapped up in sticky tape. The other kids, whom we visited in Lesotho (a separate mountain kingdom contained within the borders of South Africa) were probably good enough to play on representative teams, if only the talent scouts would come this far into the townships to give them a chance.

Both groups of kids received gifts from our girls – new balls, chocolate, crayons and colouring books – and it was a lesson of the highest order for Annie and Molly, who may not remember these encounters specifically, but will hopefully go forward in life with what it takes to understand those who are disadvantaged, to feel empathy for them and to bring themselves to do something about that disadvantage.

Zulu wisdom rocks

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A recent visit to the local sangoma, or witch doctor, in Zululand was eye-opening in the extreme. Apparently Doog won't die of a heart attack, despite his ever-expanding waistline; Molly and Annie will marry non-New Zealanders; and yes, my book will be published but, in the witch doctor's male-centric world, "ONLY IF A MAN DOES IT FOR ME!"

Sucks to be female, don't it?

These kids, by the way, are among his brood of 17 from his two wives. When we came upon them, they were playing soccer with a "ball" made of plastic bags and wrapped up in sticky tape. Doog gave them new tennis balls and the girls handed out chockies and we were friends for life. Totally cool.

Herd mentality

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Just after I took the top pic, this cheeky baby elephant walked up to Molly’s window, waved his trunk around a few times and batted some seriously long eyelashes in our direction.

Next came the big fellow, who had clearly had a run-in with a poacher, and then the whole herd passed by en route to one of several watering holes in Addo Elephant National Park. It was a magnificent spectacle and I feel certain it’ll be among the girls’ most enduring memories of this entire year-long adventure.

Smells like Kurt's still alive ...

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Exposing our kids to different types of people is pretty much always going to be a good thing, so staying at backpacker hostels makes a whole lot of sense ... and not just because it’s cheap.

On this particular night we were at a backpackers’ overlooking the Indian Ocean in a town called Wilderness - honest, that’s its name - with a surfer-dude host called Toby (pictured) who is the nicest possible guy and who bears more than a passing resemblance to the late, great Kurt Cobain. My Molly is an insatiable flirt with fellows like these, by the way, and since cute kids are pretty scarce on the travellers’ circuit, Doog and I got to lounge around the bonfire with a bunch of 20-something Afrikaaners, talk politics and drink far too much while she and her sister charmed the hell out of the locals.

A brilliant night indeed.

Beauty and the beast

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They say Africa is all about contrasts, and nowhere is that more true than right here in the animal kingdom. The zebras at Addo Elephant National Park are incredibly gorgeous and the warthogs, well, fugly comes to mind.

Great southern man

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After posing at what is officially the southernmost tip of Africa, my Doogie (sentimental guy that he is) stripped to his undies for a quick dip (one leg in the Indian, one in the Atlantic) and then presented me with a 10th anniversary ring of African tanzanite and a diamonds. Gotta love it.

Long walk to freedom

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These pictures were taken on Robben Island, home for many years to Nelson Mandela, who is both a living hero to his people and undeniably the most famous political prisoner of all time.

Looking back at Table Mountain, Robben Island is now preserved as a living museum and it exists as a symbol of freedom and of the triumph of human dignity over ignorance and oppression, the twin hallmarks of apartheid. Our guide (bottom pic), himself a political prisoner here for eight years, spoke without malice or a desire for revenge as he described what it was to be black and in the service of apartheid’s white prison guards throughout their mammoth struggle for equality. His was a powerful perspective indeed.

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NOTE TO SELF: Don’t try too hard, however, to explain such things to the kids. (I really thought Molly was listening to my rant about how this place came to be and how awful it was. She politely waited for me to finish but as soon as I did, she inquired (with a totally straight face): “OK Mom, can I have my PushPop now?”

Where oceans collide

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We’ve flown to the other end of the country to the modern, vibrant, funky city of Cape Town, the cradle of white settlement in South Africa and also, so it’s said, the least “African” of all African cities. Unlike Johannesburg, there are white faces everywhere on the streets, and there seems to be no end to the good life in some of the richer beachside suburbs, like this one called Clifton, where Annie and Molly hammed it up (top pic) for the camera before pouring a bit of Atlantic sand into a bottle for safekeeping.

Close as we are to the Cape of Good Hope, it’s hard not to daydream about what it must have looked like hundreds of years ago when the first white folks set foot here, and about the ships that have sunk in these treacherous waters and about the magic and mystery of two great oceans (Indian and Atlantic) colliding.

The other pictures here were taken at sunset from the top of Table Mountain, the most famous landmark in Cape Town. (One day the heat of the lowveld, and the next it’s 5C up here. Gotta love it.)

Sundown in the lowveld

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Could there be a more surreal spot to down a few cocktails than this Ngwenya Lodge balcony at sunset, overlooking a watering hole full of hippos and buffalo? This particular African night – and actually the entire sensory-overload holiday so far – is as one could only hope: wild, perfect and beautiful in the extreme.

Blessed is the land of Oz

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Just a few days to go now and it'll be time to leave Australia to begin the last few chapters of this most excellent adventure. Everybody asks me if this time it's for good, but how could I say goodbye for good to a place that's been so good to me, and where I can gallop a horse through the surf on an ocean beach near our house (like I did last weekend with my friend Fiona)?

If anyone can truly have a second spiritual home, this is it. It'll be sad to leave my friends and this heavenly way of life but South Africa will be a most excellent compensation. See you there....