We just finished a really short run through Sumatra (really just Bukittinggi and Lake Tobah) and arrived in Jakarta last night. Tomorrow we fly on to Yogyakarta and get into the heart of the island of Java. We’re having a surprisingly good time so far. Here’s Indonesia’s report card so far:

A Sumatran coffee is great. Motor oil without the edge. I’m lovin’ it.
A+ The agrarian countryside is the most beautiful I think I’ve ever seen. Bright terraced rice paddies wedged between volcanic hills and deep lakes. In some spots, it’s a postcard in every direction.
B People are reserved, but friendly. They’ve suffered from a huge drop in tourism in the last few years, but haven’t hassled us or tried to compensate unduly for their economic troubles.
A Travel here is nearly free. Flying is cheaper than taking a bus. Hotel rooms in the resorts hit hardest by the drop in tourism can go for $2 a night. A hotel dinner at same resorts is a whopping $7 for the two of us. Of course, here in Jakarta, we just spent $35 to pig out at Tony Romas. But that doesn’t count.
B+ The local food is great. We haven’t gone too deep into the cuisine, but like what we’ve tried so far. And since the country is split between Moslem and Christian, we get bacon and pork. Pork rendang with coconut shavings is my favorite so far. Well, that and the A&W rootbeer float I had today…
A There are no other tourists here. At all. Got the hole country to ourselves.

Not everything passes, though:
F- Road quality is the worst I’ve ever been on. The Trans-Sumatran Highway is a muddy, windy, bombed out back alley. We made the mistake of doing an overnight ride on it and feel fortunate to have survived.
C- Reliable tourist information is tough to come by. Prices, times, routes, all the stuff you like to know as a tourist gets a different answer from everyone you ask and yet another reality when you get to the truth. Not unheard of, but annoying.

Internet has been hard to come by. Hope to get some photos up soon, but who knows

Well, our time is up in Singapore. We’re doing our last packing tonight and we head for an early morning ferry to Indonesia tomorrow. Gone will be the comforts we’ve come to expect here: warm showers, toilets, Mrs. Fields and Ben&Jerry and the internet. We expect to be roughing it more often than not for the next couple months, but hope to spend some time on tropical beaches or under the sea. We’ve even started anti-malarial drugs again. The basic plan is to start at the westernmost tip of Sumatra working our way southeast towards Papau New Guinea until we turn and head north to Borneo.

In the last couple days of internet access, we have managed to get a few things up for you. There are now photo albums posted for the Seychelles and Singapore. I even managed to get a few video clips up from early on in our travels. Hopefully more to come. Take a look for the link at right.

Coming into Singapore, we planned only to stay long enough to get our bearings and visas for Indonesia. Nothing specific we had heard or read was terribly inspiring. Not bad, just not interesting. But it turns out that Singapore is just the right place for us right now. After not seeing a true world-class city since Istanbul 8 months ago, Singapore hits the spot. San Francisco style shopping for Mary, wireless internet for me and an endless supply and variety of good Asian food for both of us. There’s actually a ton of odd American food here too. McD, BK and Carls are represented, but so are some real small timers like Swensons and Ben&Jerries icecream, Mrs. Fields and Famous Amos cookies and even Long John Silvers.
Back home I remember hearing about the cruel caning of an American kid caught chewing gum here. Sounds pretty tyrannical. But this is the cleaning city I’ve ever seen. Their laws might be a bit annoying if you’re not paying attention, but that kid deserved a whack for trying to mess this town up. Even Mary is not afraid to touch the railings in the subway. It’s just spotless. And here’s why: no smelly durian fruit allowed in the subway.
After a week of comfort, we picked up the visas we wanted for Indonesia and now we must contemplate going back on the road. But before we do, there’s time to have fun at the aquarium.

This island was once an exile for lepers but it is infamous in recent history for Nelson Mandela’s 18yr imprisonment, among many other political prisoners. For 12yrs they were forced to work at the limestone quarry, pointless menial labor, as a form of punishment. All those years not only blinded their vision from the painful reflection but caused respiratory problems like pneumonia, asthma, and cancer. Mandela can no longer take flash photos nor shed tears as a result. There was a small cave dug into the exposed rock that the prisoners used as a toilet and shade from the sun. In secret they would write on the walls with their fingers to educate the less schooled. This area was the only place the inmates had to socialize as they were kept in separate cells in seclusion for most of the day. It was within these limestone walls that the ideas for an apartheid free South Africa were crafted; the country’s first democratic parliament.

In the prison we met our guide, a prisoner from 1977-1982 accused of being a student activist. He was 16 when he was arrested and told the wretched story of his capture at night in his home while his shocked family pleaded with the police. He shared in gruesome detail life behind within those walls including the beatings, brutality, and torture he endured and witnessed during his detention and life on Robben Island. No one can hear his story and not be moved by his tragedy and eventual acceptance. His scars are a tragic souvenir from his life there. We saw the cell that Nelson Mandela spent his 18 years on the island, smaller than the pens the guard dogs each lived in. It is astounding that apartheid was alive and strong up to 1994 and shadows of it still linger all over Africa. For proof one only needs to look at the shanty townships hidden in the outskirts of each city.

We tried to resist the tempation of the Capetown tourist trap of diving with great white sharks, but how could we say no to danger, fear, questionable animal tourism practices or freezing ocean waters?

Capetown is perhaps the most reliable location in the world for seeing great white sharks. There’s a large cape fur seal colony 40,000 strong sitting in shallow water just off the coast and the unique combination of their presence and the underwater topography creates an irresistible chum line known as Shark Alley. It is estimated that about 1,000 white sharks a year pass through the area, each staying for just a few days.

But all that really matters is that we decided to brave 54F waters, claustrophobia and fear of animals that eat people to jump into a little cage and get closer to some sharkies.

The cage is a little small and you have to stick your toes and fingers outside to hang on. After a while you realize that the water is really murky partly thanks to the chum you’re swimming in.

The boat chums the water and throws big fishheads in to give the sharks something to focus on, but tries not to let the sharks eat any of the bait so they don’t learn to associate the boats with feeding. So for a while we just watched the sharks swim up to the bait and then turn away as it was pulled from them.

But these guys are pretty quick and a couple were a bit fiesty and did manage to get teeth into the bait – and that made for some good times as the skipper and the shark fought over the bait.

We had two exciting close encounters while in the cage. The first one was a smaller shark that caught the bait and held on. He was right next to us thrashing around for a minute or so before he finally ran off with the fishhead:

The next fun one was a real excited shark lunging at the bait right next to us and gave the cage a hard enough whack with his tail to knock us down. The video is great – it shows nothing but the camera bouncing around in a sea of bubbles and foam.

At the end of the day, we saw around 6 different sharks ranging from little 8′ juveniles to a couple 12′ers and one 13′ male (all sizes according to our skipper). Swimming around us, they looked pretty big, but these were all still small compared to the 18 feet they can grow to.

And we still have all our fingers and toes.

Yes, yes, we don’t condone this. Don’t do this at home. Kiddies look away. Leave it to the professionals…and all that. Now read on.

Our first stop in South Africa was Stellenbosch, their answer to wine country. Armed in a rental car we weaved through the scenic hills covered with rolling vineyards, grand estates, and looming rock mastifs. Imagine Napa valley with the Rocky mountains as the backdrop. Really a gorgeous drive on a sunny day. The wines were largely uninteresting and for my uber sensitive taste buds hardly drinkable. With descriptions like ‘asparagus’ and ‘mint’ we didn’t get our hopes up. But essence of ‘Karoo bush shrub’, reminiscence of ‘a cigar box’ and a taste of ‘lead pencil’ was over our threshold and we did all we could to not gag too noticeably. We did find some lovely stuff, specifically a Spice Route flagship syrah and a Simonsig white wine infused with lychee. We stopped at a brandy distillery and tasted one of their 15yr old bottles. I think they tried to poison us with Drano. Seriously, people actual like this stuff?!?

Yes, that would be Steve in a right hand drive car on the left side of the road with a sloshing glass of white wine in his hand (Gewurztraminer in case you’re curious). Talk about bad things coming in 3s. Oh wait, making a u-turn onto the curb on the wrong side of the road in front of a police car with said drink in hand would make 4.

*editors note to mom and dad, kids and law enforcement types: notice that we are in the parking lot of a winery. This is a staged and posed photo. The keys probably aren’t even in the ignition.

It’s been a crazy last few weeks as you can see from the posts below. It seems like we rushed through Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia. We’re now just a day away from Capetown and the end of our African adventure. We’ll get a week to relax in Capetown on our own and then we’re off to the Seychelles for a couple week vacation before moving on to Asia.
There’s way too many photos from all the animal encounters and death defying feats. Hopefully I’ll get some time and a good net connection in Capetown to post them.

Swakopmund has more to offer than just skydiving. They’ve found that crazy tourists like us will do just about anything if it’s on sand. In one action packed day, we went sandboarding, jumped out of the plane and then jumped on quad bikes for a wild ride on the dunes. And then sat down for one of the massive German-style meals that abound here in Swakop.

Sandboarding is just like snowboarding. In fact, they use snowboards with a layer of formica on bottom that you need to wax on every run. It’s not as fast as snow, but hurts a lot less when you fall. The only real downside is that you have to hike back up the dune for each run. No lifts here! Mary had a great time with a few nice runs. I wasn’t making any fancy turns with my ankle all banged up, but I still had a good time. Then they send you down some seriously steep bowls on flat boards clocking up to 50mph. Good times.

Off to the skydive and then straight to QuadbikingRiding the quad bikes was a blast. We ended up in a group of just 3 of us with a guide who took us up and over dunes, through “rainbow” runs where you go as high up the side of a dune as you can without tipping over – and then turn back down the same side. It’s fast, fun and pretty scary. Don’t worry mom and dad, we had plenty of reasons to take it pretty easy. We were tired after a long day, my ankle was pretty sore and there was an accident the previous day that kept our speeds down.
One of our truck mates was driving a little too aggressively and landed his bike too hard. He fractured a vertabrae and his pelvis. He’ll live, but his vacation is over. He should be able to fly home to the UK in a couple weeks.Mary: I went to visit our bed ridden friend at the hospital. At the nurses’ counter there was a box on the wall labelled “Specimens/Monsters”. That was enough to keep me away. This happened to be the same hospital that Brad & Angelina had their baby last year. The nurses were kind enough to show some people the room they stayed in, etc. Yippee.