Editor's Note: Katrina is one of my friends, and lives with her cats and stuffed donkey eeyore in the Pacific Northwest.

i started the vacation with a quick trip to target to grab a backup video tape for the camera and also some dramamine as i was low. imagine, the beginning of summer and target is out of the standard dramamine!! so i got the less drowsy formula and came to decide that it is not such a good thing to be less drowsy -- just makes you more aware of how wonky the stuff makes you feel. on the plane, i found myself completely spacing out and touching my face because it felt so weird. and i kept getting these strange phantom feelings like i was wearing my glasses and they needed to be pushed up even though i was wearing the contacts and like i needed to push up the sleeves of my shirt even though i was wearing a tanktop. and i was hypersensitive to sound -- i would have killed to be able to turn down the volume of the bloody plane. not to mention the two businessmen i was sitting with -- they just kept on and on and on. luckily, after dinner they decided to try and sleep -- one put in earplugs, one put on a sleepmask, so i dubbed them see no evil and hear no evil and hoped they would both wake as speak no evil. no such luck, but soon enough we had landed at gatwick airport and i was free of them.

i caught a bus to heathrow, checked in my bags and then had the day in front of me to spend in london. i wanted to try and find some cd's so i took the tube to piccidilly circus. luckily, found them both. but i was rather put off of the circus itself -- it has suffered what i have come to call "the generalization of cities". the main attractions seemed to be the hard rock café, planet hollywood, and the fashion café. and hordes of americans were lined up to get into them. in london!!! amazing. couple that with the mcdonald's and burger kings on every corner and if i hadn't heard the accents, i would never have thought i was in england. so i jumped back on the tube, a definite sign that i wasn't in seattle anymore, and headed to one of my favorite museums, the tate gallery. spent a wonderful couple of hours there, wandering through all the rooms, looking at one of my favorite paintings -- love locked out by anna lee merrill -- and at some of the exhibitions that had changed since i was there last in 1995. then off to the tube again to ride around, hop off at random stops to walk for a block or two, before hopping back on and then finally back to heathrow and the flight to south africa.

it was the first time i have flown virgin atlantic airlines and if anyone ever gets the chance, i would highly recommend it. first, they have great blankets!! not those skinny fleecy things that northwest has of late -- a nice pastel plaid. of course i felt the need to liberate one for robert knowing that i could liberate another on the way back for me. waiting for me on my seat was a little plastic drawstring bag filled will all manner of goodies -- a sleepmask, socks, toothpaste and brush, a shoehorn, notepad, pen, headphones and stickers!! and everyone had their own little video screen complete with a choice of six movies, three tv channels, and a nintendo game system. very entertaining. the food was quite nice also -- everyone got a menu so they could decide ahead of time what they wanted to eat -- i had a salmon fillet in white sauce with new potatoes and ratatouille for dinner and scrambled eggs with mushrooms and herbed potato cakes and baked beans for breakfast. those baked beans were left on the plate -- still can't deal with that particular aspect of english cuisine.

as usual, i was unable to sleep on the plane for more than five or ten minutes at a time so i was fairly out of it when arriving at johannesburg at 10 in the morning. thankfully, robert found me right away and led me out of the airport, to his car and the city.

first impression: it is a city, like many others. a central business district with skyscrapers and then a series of suburbs and industrial districts surrounding it. there were some differences however -- the government housing recently built for low income blacks and coloreds -- row after row of little tiny houses, all exactly the same, all bright white. and the security measures on each house and complex -- walls, often topped with barbed or razor wire, iron gates on the driveways, iron gates on the doors and bars on the windows. crime is a huge problem in south africa -- especially burglary and carjacking. most cars have at least two car security measures, some have four. it was amazing to me!! i always get by with simply locking the thing when i have a car!! and everyone locks the door when they are in the car -- another thing it took me a while to get used to, along with getting into the wrong side of the car to be a passenger; driving on the left side of the road is very disorienting. at just about every intersection, there are people selling things ranging from newspapers, to plastic hangers, to toys. in the outlying areas they also sell fruit, mostly oranges or nartjes (sort of like mandarins or tangerines), and amazingly enough, beer!!

robert lives in a suburb called randburg -- he has a mother-in-law cottage on the property of a much larger house. it is brick, as are most of the buildings i saw, with fabulously high beamed ceilings. we spent the rest of the day just talking, trying to keep me awake until a normal bedtime hour so that i could get into the proper time frame. success!! stayed up until about 9 and then slept like a baby. monday we went on a driving tour of the area, starting out at the country's biggest mall -- very upscale and full of some nice little shops, some funky boutiques (multi-colored platform shoes seemed to be the big thing) and some great restaurants surrounding an open square with fountain. the library is attached to the mall -- it is gorgeous -- very modern with a lot of glass and open shelving -- rather nice to be able to grab some books while running errands!! after lunch at an italian restaurant we headed out to pretoria to see the city and the capital building where nelson mandela hangs out; it sits on a hill and reminded me a lot of the governor's mansion on guam, only bigger. it was winter so the landscape tended to be brown but there were still enough green plants and trees to make it interesting. the highway system is very well maintained, one of the few things not suffering too many growing pangs in the country, and we skipped all over them as we hopscotched back to town.

tuesday morning we loaded up the car and headed to nelspruit in mpumalanga, one of the new provinces (formerly part of the eastern transvaal). robert's mother, christine, and his stepfather, gerhard, live there. it was a nice drive -- about 4 hours and we passed more of the rolling hills and then orange orchards, shanty towns full of corrugated tin shacks, jagged rocky cliffs and open plains. when we arrived at the house, we were greeted by two monkeys sitting on the limb of a tree in the front courtyard. fabulous!!! to me at least -- christine and gerhard refer to them as the "little horrors". twice a day they have to shut all the doors and windows as the monkeys pass by or else they run into the house and steal fruit from the kitchen or, lately, jewelry and toiletries from the bedrooms!! i don't know why a monkey would have an interest in beads and hand lotion but i guess maybe they have a more advanced society than we imagined!! it is a gorgeous house -- over 5000 square feet on two levels with a small pool and several decks and covered verandahs. part of the roof is traditional thatched grass so they have lightening rods to prevent them catching on fire -- entirely too cool. the most amazing part was that they paid less than $200,000 for it!! housing prices are lower and with the incredible exchange rate, i could buy quite a nice house on my salary. of course it would be in south africa so it is not too practical. we saw an ad in the sunday paper selling 2000 m2 lots of land adjacent to kruger national park for only $2200 so if i win the lottery any time soon, i'm buying land to build my own little bush chalet along the crocodile river. elephants in my backyard!! we all went out to a pub dinner at one of the local establishments -- had the requisite fish and chips and a nice local beer, castle. gerhard regaled us with tales of his trip to texas years ago and his adventures in swaziland, where he does business. last year he was carjacked at knifepoint -- they took everything, car, passport, golf clubs. the saying in south africa is "everyone knows someone who has been the victim of violent crime" and it is true, witness gerhard with his carjacking and robert with four serious burglaries -- luckily neither of them has been hurt, nor any of their family members. christine and gerhard then went on to tell me all about their recent vacations to lesotho and botswana. they have a big 4x4 truck with a camper -- fully loaded with a shower attachment, a refrigerator and pantry, an awning and a tent on the roof!!! to keep the animals away from your toes while you are sleeping!! so they just drive through the countryside, seeing what there is to see. on the botswana trek they saw a lot of animals and blood red sunsets and took the time to visit victoria falls, which sounded fabulous. gerhard is a photography buff and some of the pictures he took were amazing -- a hippo, jaws agape, standing in the river, black trees and a boat silhouetted against a red and orange sky, a giant lion resting under a tree, looking every bit as regal as advertised. it was a wonderful night and i was very glad to get to know them -- they are really fun people.

wednesday morning, after coffee, oranges and goodbyes, we left the geldenhuys' and hit the road. destination: kruger park. first off, it is huge!!! about 350 km north to south with an area encompassing 17000 square kilometers and 16 different ecozones. we were only able to explore a part of the very southern tip yet still saw enough to make me a very happy girl.

when we first arrived through the malelane gate, we decided to secure lodging at the berg-en-dal camp before getting too caught up in the animals. it is a lovely camp -- actually more a series of small cottages than a campsite, although there were places to put up a tent or camper if you so desired; as it was winter, we chose not. we had a lovely little cottage with three beds and a complete kitchenette, even a full shower with hot water, for about $60. it had a huge back deck complete with a braai or barbecue pit, just in case we felt like cooking for ourselves and backed up to a river although a tall electrified fence separated us from the water. the whole camp is fenced in, for obvious reasons, and everyone has to be inside the gates by 5:30 at night. after putting our food in the fridge and shutting all the doors and windows to keep the monkeys and baboons out, we set off to see what creatures we could see. first were impalas -- they are beautiful little gazelley things with curved horns and a black stripe. they are everywhere!!! i saw so may of them that i nicknamed them "our little friends". there are some major paved roads crisscrossing the park but for the most part the roads are dirt and bumpy, clear of vegetation and full of a variety of animal droppings. i suppose it might be some consolation to see that, just to know that animals are around somewhere when they are not in actual evidence, but it sometimes makes a very interesting noise when the car cannot avoid the little and not so little piles. we wound our way through some of the smaller roads near the camp, seeing a lot of impalas and also a herd of kudu -- much bigger gray gazelley things -- before heading east to make a loop in the hopes of seeing elephants. sadly, they must have all been at the elephants' picnic as they were no where to be found. but i did see a herd of zebras run across the road in front of us (including a little baby one), a giant white rhino taking a nap (i wanted to yell at him to lift his head so that i could better see his horn but realized this was not necessarily a good idea), an absolutely ugly as advertised warthog and, to my utter delight, a number of giraffes. we had been dawdling a little, stopping to listen to birds and watch impalas and we realized we had better hurry if we wanted to get back to the camp before they locked the gates. good thing we weren't driving too fast or we would have run over the lion!! a teenaged lioness, long lanky and arrogant as only a teenage beauty can be, was sitting quite regally in the middle of the road. as we came to a stop about 100 feet in front of her, she gave us a bored stare then casually stood up and sauntered toward the car, veering away at the last moment with a look of bored disdain -- she was no more than 10 feet from us!! it was most wondrous. and even with us stopping to watch her, we got back to the camp with five minutes to spare. it was a gorgeous night and as there were very few lights anywhere near us, the stars completely covered the sky. couple that with the sound of the river, frogs croaking, night birds singing, the occasional splashing of something getting a quick drink and you have the perfect african evening; we sat on the deck, drinking beer and drinking it all in.

the next morning we were up early to the sounds of the morning birds. knowing we had a lot of ground to cover to make it home at a decent hour, we hit the road intending to leave via the numbi gate on the west side of the park. recent news had reported disturbances in the area but the park staff assured us that the unrest had been far to the north, smaller than reported and was long over. they were correct on all counts. we did take the time to cruise some more roads before leaving the park and saw lots more of our little friends and more zebras as well -- their faces are so incredible when you can sit so close to them and study the markings. it is almost hypnotic. after finally leaving we took the scenic route home.

unfortunately it became very cloudy and i missed a lot of the beautiful outlooks that the area is famous for. our first stop was god's window -- on a good day you can see all the way to mozambique; we could see about two feet in front of us!! low lying clouds are not our friends. still, it was a nice hike to the top -- almost rainforest like with a lot of little flowers and hanging moss and exotic trees. and with the wind that was blowing the fog around, it felt like we were taking a bath or shower in the clouds. pretty cool actually, and almost made up for missing the view. back at the base of the hike, the souvenir sellers had decided that they weren't going to do much business with the weather as it was, so they were having a little party -- drumming, dancing, singing. it was beautiful to listen to and by putting the video camera on top of the car while pretending to rummage around for things in the back seat, i actually got it on tape. and was able to stay and listen for a bit without looking as though i were staring. after come down from the mountain, we started on the waterfall portion of the tour, taking in three of them -- lisbon falls, berlin falls and bridal veil falls. all three were beautiful and quite tall, but my favorite was bridal veil. the water is broken into a thick swirling mist as it flows over the cliff and it does indeed resemble a bride's veil. the rest of the drive that afternoon and evening was alternately beautiful and harrowing as we again fought thick clouds while driving through mountainous passes. we did manage to stay ahead of the big thunderstorms we could see in the distance and i got the chance to see even more terrains -- rolling grasslands, reforested pine plantations, green valleys and giant rock outcroppings. sometimes it looked very familiar, like new mexico, or eastern washington or even germany, but sometimes it was completely foreign and exotic and i was extremely aware i was in africa. after spending the whole day in the car, both robert and i were tired so we ate out at one of the local chain restaurants -- the spur. each one is named after a different part of the united states -- we were at the illinois spur and there was even a seattle spur near rob's house. anyhow, they made incredible hamburgers -- i had one drenched in monkeygland sauce, just because i could not resist the name once i was assured that no monkeys were sacrificed to make it.

friday was a lazy shopping kinda day -- neither of us wanted to be back in a car for a while so we walked down to the randburg waterfront. it is an artificial lake surrounded by boutiques and restaurants and pubs even has a grocery store at one end and a market full of little stalls at the other. i had a great time picking through all the booths, looking for little souvenirs. amazingly, i hardly bought anything!! i think i was looking for an excuse to go back. :) we had another lovely fish and chips meal for lunch -- served in it's own frying pan, the fish was so thick and white and mild -- no fishy flavor at all. most yummy!! afterwards, i had so much fun at the grocery store. i think grocery stores in foreign countries are one of my very favorite things!! robert was laughing at me as i picked up things like peri-peri sauce (a portuguese chili marinade and condiment), and monkeygland sauce mix, and a little bottle of a sparkling red wine we had had earlier in the week. i assured him that there were in fact things to be had in south africa that were not to be had in seattle!! and even things we did have looked so much more exotic with labels in both english and afrikaans. of course i had to grab a nice sample of chocolate bars as well, just to see how different they were. honestly, i think the united states has the worst chocolate of any country i have ever been to!! amazing!! i picked up some postcards as well and we spent the afternoon lounging about, writing the postcards, reading magazines and just talking.

robert cooked dinner for us -- a great chicken and mushroom dish over rice with a white wine that tasted like gummi bears!! i know that sounds a little odd and probably not all that good but you will have to trust me, it was great!! not as sweet as you might imagine but still the flavor of white gummi bears. we spent the evening listening to old records from the 80's and reliving past teenage angsts and glories. good fun actually.

saturday and we were in the car again, going to sun city. it was a nice drive out there passing by platinum mines and a resort community on a lake before arriving. it is like a little slice of las vegas stuck in the middle of nowhere!! a giant casino and a huge luxury hotel that looks like some sort of fantasy palace. we spent about an hour playing the slot machines, hoping to hit it big but sadly left about 100 rand poorer. we spent the better part of the day wandering around looking at all the fake ruins they had built to make it look more exotic -- carvings of elephants and a giant fountain covered in stone monkeys and a giant cat temple complete with burning altar. it is completely over the top but a lot of fun. it is 45 rand for admission but they give you 30 rand worth of tokens for food and other entertainments and those were enough for us to eat lunch -- peri-peri chicken breasts in a pita -- and a late afternoon snack -- ice cream and waffles. all in all a bargain if you don't gamble too much. don't think i mentioned it before but the exchange rate is about 4.5 rand to the dollar so i definitely got a lot of bang for my buck while i was there. on the way back home, we stopped at rob's dad and stepmom's house, just to say hello. they are also nice, but much quieter and live much more conventional lives than do christine and gerhard. they both would like to move back to england one day, i think, not being as entranced with africa, although they have both been there for twenty years or so. after leaving them, we decided to eat out again and rob took me to a fabulous little restaurant where we had huge helpings of calamari sautéed in butter and garlic -- served again in little skillets. it seems to be a trend in jo'burg. it was so tender!! and there was so much of it that we had enough to bring home. i can still taste it when i think back on the visit -- i didn't eat any traditional south african foods, unless you count the peri-peri chicken, but nonetheless, the food was excellent!! i don't actually know what traditional south african cuisine consists of -- i'll have to ask robert. yet another excuse to go back!!

sadly, sunday was my last day. i spent it mostly trying to get myself organized and packed. and we went back to the waterfront to grab a few more little souvenirs. a week was much too short a time to visit but i wouldn't change it for the world -- i had a fabulous wonderful exciting time and was glad to get to spend time with robert in person. i don't remember much of the flight home -- again, it was very very very long. and on the jo'burg to london flight i sat next to a girl, flying to new york to be an au pair, who was deathly ill. she kept coughing and sneezing and popping all manner of medications; i was completely amazed that i didn't come down with some sort of cold flu infection after that!! the flight from detroit to seattle was delayed so by the time i got home, i was more than ready to just crash and sleep for days. of course simon and tessie had other ideas and had to tell me all their tales of woes and abandonment for the next four hours. a very typical ending to a very nice vacation.

brought to you by the letter k.