South Africa, the food kingdom

Dear readers,

We’re back on the road, after traveling the length of Brazil to Argentina, and settling back in Bocas for 8 months. We are ready to start a fresh adventure as we hop around South Africa. Yes, my home country. We’ll be seeing Dad’s old war buddies, and allowing me to experience what South Africa is all about. Bear in mind that last time I was there I was only 6 months old, so nothing really registered 😅.

Trying to Get There

Huzzaah! Anyone else feel like getting up at 5:48? Not me! But that’s where our story begins anyways.
5:48 01/09/26
We dress and stuff last minute items in backpacks all the while gulping coffee (coffee, not breakfast!) before heading down our public driveway to Skully’s taxi bench to wait for our pre organized taxi… Moments later, there he is, our taxi, with uncanny timing… We get in and thankfully* our driver does not use air freshener. (*air freshener, air conditioner and fast driving make me car sick). The taxi did have a really cool gear stick. It was decorated to look like a samurai sword hilt, which I loved!! Anyway, back on topic, we get speedily delivered to our destination, Valencia, the water taxi place to take the lancha (water taxi) to Almirante, and got booked for the next one out of there. As we are waiting for our water taxi to leave, dad gets a call from our pre organized taxi driver??? Low and behold, the guy who dropped us off was not the guy we organized for!?! No, our guy was currently very confused and waiting for us at Skully’s taxi bench!

Hours later…… We’re at Changuinola in search of shoes because my feet refuse to stop growing. So I need new shoes. Dad waits for us at the McDonalds, of course, and me and mom go looking. First shop, bingo! Amazing shoes, great color, okay price! Then we went to look for empanadas because no one had fed me yet… I was starving 😢! Then hop on the local bus to the border. Another bumpy, curvy, fast bus ride through banana country later, we’re at the Panama-Costa Rica border doing the migration stuff.

Then lots of walking later to the bus stop, we try to do our online check-in for the plane, only to see we have to buy our seats, and that the scanner refuses to read one or two numbers in our passports. So, (more money spent) later we have seats, and will have to confirm our passports at the airport. Multiple hours later we arrive in San Jose and head to our Air BnB. Next morning getting up at 6, leave at 6:30 to the airport.

Airport San Jose

We get our passports checked and get 2 tickets each?? (remember that for later). We knew our flight has a stop-over in Panama so we thought maybe everyone has to get off and then reboard. Unfortunately we had to check in our backpacks (for free) because our seats were in the very back of plane. That also meant we were the last to board and we were right in front of the toilet. Anyway, a 55 minute flight later, we arrive in Panama. During the flight we realized the extra ticket with another flight number and different seats does mean we need to change to a different flight to São Paulo. How is that going to work?

After being the last off the plane, we’re running to our gate, but as we get there the gate is closed! So we run back to ask questions. We get directed to the copa airlines office thing, and explain our situation. Luckily the lady manages to get us booked for the next flight, at 14:00 (3 hours later). Phew! That also means we only arrive at 12 that night, yay!

We decided to go to the waiting area for our gate, which of course is on the other side of the airport. Argh! More walking… Then finally we find our gate and pick seats only for dad to say “why don’t we go walk around some more, we’ve got 3 hours in this place”. By that time my inner soles were flattened and I had a bad case of in-grown toe nail, so I got to stay behind as mom and dad searched for something to eat. They return ‘hours’ later with a 10 dollars (very expensive for a very flat) burger. Anyways, I’m forever grateful, as I was starving!

On the plane there were movies, so that was nice. We also got fed on the plane. Mom & dad had meat and rice. I had “chicken pasta” which turned out to be 2 pieces of chicken that were the equivalent of soggy chicken nuggets, with a tea spoon of tomato sauce over it and on the other half of the container/plate thingy was a fork full of spaghetti with all the cheese in the corner.

Sao Paulo

7 hours of movie marathoning later, we’re off the plane and waiting for our bags. Those got deposited somewhere else, not on the luggage round about. Eventually we got to catch an Uber to get to our hotel where we finally got to sleep.

The next day consisted of catching up on school and work, walking around a bit in this part of Sao Paulo close to the airport, pondering on how different it was compared to our previous visit. This time it wasn’t cold at all so we enjoyed the nice temperatures.

Later that night we got on our flight to South Africa. This was a ginormous plane almost 3 buses long, and it had 3 rows of 3 seats. Parked behind it, there was a double decker plane!! I didn’t even know that existed!! We had to take buses to the plane but the plane wasn’t ready for us to board so everyone’s waiting, being squashed in this bus!! We eventually got to board, and then wait some more for more busloads to board. The flight is also 7 hours. We had TVs again to watch movies. We felt movied out so mom and me watched the movie “Bohemian Rhapsody”. This is the movie about Freddie Mercury’s music career, and was nice to sing along to (quietly). We also got served some food during our movie. Afterwards we tried to get some sleep though none of us were very successful.

Arrival in SA🇿🇦

Some time the next morning we land in Johannesburg, South Africa. And wow, most signs are in English! Nice to be able to understand properly! We got picked up by dad’s best friend, basically my uncle in all but blood, to take us to his house where we’re staying for the next week with him and his wife Marna and their visiting son, Steyn (wrestling champ & Olympian of 2019), and Lydia (who’s an engineer & AI wiz). Also, today is Friday. Mom and dad stayed up late chatting and drinking. Mom only got to bed at 12:30 and dad even later. I, the reasonable person, went to bed around 9:50, because tomorrow we’re getting up at 5:30 to go to the Boeremarkt!

PRETORIA

We spent lots of time braai-ing (BBQ) and hanging out with Louis and his family, chatting, playing darts.

Along with our normal routine, nothing super special happened, except for:

Boeremarkt

Somehow mom & dad have more energy than me this morning, and they barely slept! Steyn and Louis took us to the boeremarkt, which is like a farmer’s market x arts and crafts. It was windy and cold, so I felt like an ice cube afterwards! It was a huge market, it reminded me of the one in Curitiba, Brazil.

There were lots of stalls, some selling flowers and bouquets of Proteas (national flower of SA), lots selling South Africa delicacies like droe wors (dried sausage), biltong (kinda like beef jerky but 100x better), koeksisters, rusks and samoosas.

Other stalls sold beautiful beaded or just plain wire statues (varying from big enough for decorating your porch or yard, to small enough to fit in your hand) and keychains. Some stalls sold beautiful leather work, bags and things.

And then there was one stall that was my absolute favorite, it was named “the Trashy Fae”. Not only did I love the name. Any fantasy lover, especially a D&D fan would love the name. But I especially loved it’s contents. They sold this entire hand crafted mini library type thing, and then gnomes and mushroom house and other mushroom related things.✨️🪄🔮

Voortrekker Monument

We went to this huge monument dedicated to the “Voortrekkers”. These are the South Africans that refused to stay under British rule so they left the the Cape Colony to move further into South Africa. Around 1836 they were separately led by Piet Retief, Andries Potgieter, and Gert Maritz, across mountains and rivers and battles against natives.

But anyway back on topic… The imposing monument is located on a hill and has different display areas around it.

It is private property so the government can’t touch it (some of you may know that the government has sent the country into shambles with their greed).

Around the monument were different areas built in the style of that era, so wood buildings, wagons and caravans.

They had a pen full of goats with babies who were adorable… They also had two donkeys that kept trying to eat my clothes!🫏

Inside the monument were two floors dedicated to a museum.

There were lots of artifacts from that era, and some beautiful paintings and a mini model of a caravan and a couple working around it with biltong drying on a wire outside.

Clay Cafe

One day Lydia took me and mom to the clay cafe. It’s basically a cafe with lots of unbaked unpainted pottery. You pick an item and can paint it however you like. When you are finished they’ll bake it and you pick it up next time you come by. Lydia was finishing a bowl she had started previously with minute details. Mom painted a leaf plate. And I painted this funky plate. We sadly didn’t manage to pick up the end products before we left the following weekend. Luckily, we’ll be back, but we’ll all have to wait to see the end product. It was a really nice experience! I loved just painting and hanging out with mom and friends. And you don’t even have to clean up your own paint mess!🍹🖌

Die Skim & Takoeza🐶

Louis & Marna have 2 dogs that stay inside. They are adorable furballs. The one is white with a black patch across his eyes. They named him Skim, after a batman-like super hero in a South Africa comic book.🦸🐶