Here, There and Out of My Mind
I’ll start with the ending, it’s all come to a crashing halt. I feel like a child who has been taken to a day in the park, all the rides, all the sugary foods and now they say I have to come home?
Yes. I will tell you about the trip, with lots of photos, so you won’t think I am just being a bore, you can look at the photos and imagine yourself there with us. At the end of the trip, it all goes downhill, the lovely African adventure has ended.
Leaving our last camp, we fly in a very small airplane back from the lower Zambezi to Lusaka. We drive to the airstrip, the pilot checks our names against his list, we climb aboard and take off. That’s the airstrip. The last time we were there, we don’t think it was paved.
It is the best flight we have all day – two charming pilots, five passengers, it is a great flight. Lusaka isn’t so bad; we have a competent ticket agent who manages to book our bags all the way to Pensacola, so we don’t have to scurry around picking up bags, then coming back in to check them in, because we booked our travel to Johannesburg separately from out travel from JoBurg to Lusaka, it’s complicated but it all has to do with alliances. Not my alliances, airline alliances.
BTW, Lusaka International airport is sweet. Quiet. One tiny little restaurant in the departure area where we found good grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. Some shops, not greatly stocked.
Lusaka airport – you walk to the plane, walk up the stairs, the old fashioned way:
Johannesburg transit is horrible. It always is. We have flown in from Frankfurt several times, from Dubai several times, and from Windhoek and Gaborone and Lusaka – transiting Johannesburg is, for some reason, irrationally annoying. No matter how crowded the transit area is, or how isolated, the computers are always slow, or . . . the operators. No matter what airline we deal with, that transit area, the one downstairs where you have to check in for your next flight, it is horrible. It takes so much longer than it needs to.
Upstairs, we hit the shops, junky Out of Africa with it’s schlock, some of the others. I made a big mistake; I was buying little fun things for our son and his wife, little coffee things and such at Taste of Africa, and I bought them some biltong; what we call jerky. They had ostrich and eland and several exotic kinds, so I bought several.
Loading up for the 17 hour (yes, you read that right, it is Delta’s longest non-stop flight) flight from Johannesburg to Atlanta was an unusual experience. Think Amsterdam on steroids. We are all sitting, and are rousted out of the waiting room and told to line up in two lines, with men in one line and women in the other. They look at our bags and ask us questions. This is the third time today my bags have been checked; I don’t mind, but it is a little unusual. Then we line up again once we are back in the waiting room; it is nearly time to board.
There is one of those wild-eyed women going down the line asking loudly “Is this the line for PRIORITY boarding? Are you all PRIORITY passengers?” and clearly she thinks she has a pretty high priority. But when the airline boards the Diamonds and the Platinums, she is still waiting back with the golds and silvers, so I guess she didn’t have as much priority as she thought she had.
It’s one of those big, huge flights with every seat taken. It’s sort of like being in a high school cafeteria, tempers flare as overhead baggage bins fill up, parents with children beg people to change places so they can fly together, while the privileged politely decline; they paid extra for those aisle seats. It’s all pretty horrible, but we have books and somehow we even catch a couple hours sleep. The flight attendants are like harried waitresses, hauling those drink carts and meal carts up and down the aisles, trying to get people to stay in their seats (who can stay in their seat for SEVENTEEN hours??) I discovered that if you are reading books, iPad batteries keep their charge longer than if you are playing Sudoku. I’m reading a great book, Wolf Hall, and it holds my interest.
Arriving in Atlanta, it’s all my fault, AdventureMan and I are shuttled into the agricultural inspection area, where it is pretty much us and all the Africans bringing back turnips and sugar cane and rice and meats and special foods. I didn’t know that the dried meat was a problem, but evidently ostrich meat is some of the very most threatening, and other countries have serious diseases that we have so far managed to escape. They are actually very kind to me, although they do confiscate all my jerkies. The inspector tells us they get all kinds of stuff (there was a huge barrel of confiscated agricultural products) including rats, and monkey brains.
Sadly, many of the people in there with us don’t really understand, and I know many of them went to a lot of trouble to bring a home specialty for some family member, only to have it confiscated. Many didn’t understand enough English and the inspectors didn’t know their languages.
We got off easy enough; all they cared about was confiscating the illegal meat.
Found a place with decent coffee and croissants, found a place to wash our faces and brush our teeth, so we boarded the Pensacola flight fresher than we got off the flight from JoBurg.
Our son met us at the airport and got us all home; we grabbed a quick lunch at the nearby Marina Oyster Barn (our comfort-food restaurant of choice) and then showered and tumbled into bed. We woke up again as our son and his wife and the darling little happy toddler came by for dinner. After dinner, we said good night and good bye to our guests, knowing we were all going to bed but that we would be awake in the middle of the night and they would probably leave to go to their home. As it turned out, we were all awake around 3:30 in the oh-dark-hundred, so we were able to hear them off.
We’ve been up since, trying to take care of business and to stay awake. I started with trying to get through (get rid of) over a thousand e-mail – two weeks is a LONG time. AdventureMan fell asleep in my office around 7:30 so I woke him up and made him go to aqua-aerobics with me, we hit the grocery store, and poor AdventureMan, his computer has bit the dust so he had to buy a new computer today. He picked up the mail in the afternoon, I paid the outstanding bills. Anything, anything to stay awake, to try to get us back on schedule, Pensacola time.
We caught the last episode of Game of Thrones, Season two, which helped us make it an extra hour last night, and AdventureMan has some things we missed lined up for tonight – HBO’s Girls, VEEP, and the first episode from the new season of True Blood, also he thinks Southland is starting up again, and we really like that.
I think I’m going out of my mind. Jet lag makes me a little crazy. Normally, I am all unpacked by now, but I couldn’t even stand to look at my suitcase today. I bought salmon for tonight’s dinner, but I don’t think I can cook it. I haven’t felt energetic since . . . 3:30 this morning, LOL. When I get tired, I can get weepy, or irrational, or a little unbalanced. What I yearn for is to take a nap, a nice, long, snoozy nap . . .
Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz . . . . ………..
Prescribed or Proscribed?
We will be taking a trip soon, and, thanks be to God, our travel companions alerted us in time that there is a new requirement for Yellow Fever Shots, malarial precautions are now strongly recommended, AND medications we buy over the counter are prescription medications in Zambia, and you can be arrested for carrying them into country; they would be contraband.
Horrors! I’ve always taken Benedryl for my allergies, and because I am also a mosquito magnet, I use Benedryl gel to survive the mosquitos, and the tse-tse flies. Our doctor is a gem; he wrote prescriptions and today we got them filled so we can take our OTC medications into Zambia with us. The pharmacists didn’t bat an eye. They see it all the time.
“You heading out on a mission?” another customer asked.
“Not a religious mission,” I laughed. AdventureMan has a mission to get some spectacular photographs. Pensacola has several churches that sponsor major missions throughout the world, and missionaries are found in Pensacola pharmacies stocking up on a couple years worth of prescription medications – as well as the medications proscribed by host countries. I also suspect that having all these people that travel and live throughout the world contributes to the variety of cuisines available and sought after in Pensacola restaurants. I just wish we’d get some Ethiopians!
Brrrrr! That Can’t be Right!
When I travel, I check with Weather Underground so I will know what to pack. While I barely had time to unpack and do mammoth piles of laundry to repack for the next trip, I did have time to check the weather. Lovely weather, highs in the high 50’s and 60’s, going up to 80 on Mother’s Day this coming Sunday.
So when we landed, and the pilot said “Welcome to Seattle, it is 47° out, my only possible response was “That can’t be right.” But as soon as I stepped out of the plane, I knew it was. I was wearing a little sleeveless silk and linen weave, with a lightweight cotton jacket over it. Not enough!
Arriving in Seattle mid-day is perfectl; traffic going north is calm and – for Seattle – light. I’m in an SUV; when I got to the rental pick up it’s all he had – that, or a Tundra or Yukon, which are just WAAYY too big for me. The car is a Captiva, not a large SUV, but one drive from the airport to Edmonds and I am down about an eighth of a tank, a far cry from my modest little Rav4. On our tip across the US, that sweet little car averaged 30.3 miles per gallon. In Seattle, where the gas prices are substantially higher, I am driving a gas hog. Aargh.
I am staying with my best friend from college. I’ve stayed in this house before, but it has been entirely renovated since then, and it is like staying in a boutique hotel – entirely lovely.
Here is the view just before dark from her house:
My friend has always been an inspirational gardener, and plants these gorgeous big pots:
When I arrive, she is struggling with a connectivity problem, which gives me some time to gather myself from my early rising to my long flights. Every time, I still thank God it is only two timezones and half a day, as opposed to two long flights and about 24 hours travel time from Kuwait and Qatar.
We run out to buy a new wireless modem, and look for a spot for dinner. This is what I love about my old friend, she’s always up for something new. I spot a restaurant I read a review for a long time ago, and she is game to try it.
The prices were unbelievable. This is Seattle. How can you have a simple and serenely lovely interior, full of quietly and happily dining customers, and still charge these low prices? For dinner? I had the Tic Tac combo rice vermicelli dish, and my friend had a different combo. It was delicious! They are on Aurora / Highway 99, and have a steady stream of customers, families, couples, singles, take-out – there are a lot of people love this restaurant, including us. Sorry there are no photos of the meal, but old friends always have so much to talk about, and it never even crossed my mind. Sorry!
This is my lovely ‘hotel’ room, where I quickly fell into bed and was soon fast asleep 🙂
A Sucker Born Every Minute . . . Best Buy $1000 Win
While I was on vacation, I got a message on my iPhone from Best Buy telling me I had won their monthly drawing for $1000. Since I had made a purchase from Best Buy and filled out a survey, it was possible.
So, first thing on getting home, AdventureMan and I hit BestBuy to find out if I was indeed a winner. I will confess, I believed I was. I wanted to give the $1000 to AdventureMan to buy a new laptop.
“Oh! You got the message that you had won a thousand dollars?” the Customer Service representative laughed! “It’s a SCAM! If you go to the website, it looks like Best Buy, but it’s not. They ask you to enter all kinds of information so they can send you your gift card, but they use that information to establish a credit card for someone who is not you!”
I am glad I did not go to that website. I wish I had won a thousand dollars. 😦
It was also a good lesson. I really wanted to believe I was a winner, and that disposed me to believe that the message was true. It was only that inner cynic, deep within, that warned me to check it out with Best Buy first.
Snockered
“Think you can move on?” AdventureMan asks me, and no, no, I am not ready to move on. I am still mad. So I am going to tell you about it so it will not happen to YOU, and then I will move on.
Outside of Carlsbad, I used my handy-dandy iPhone to find out if there were any Marriott Hotels in Carlsbad, and there was a Fairfield Inn and Suites, one of the Marriott Brands. We like Marriotts. We like their culture of CLEAN and SERVICE.
So I googled “Fairfield Inn and Suites in Carlsbad, NM” and wow, there was a phone number! I called the number, but when the lady answered, it was all sort of scratchy, maybe we had bad reception . . . or something. Anyway, I told her I was a Marriott Rewards customer and we wanted a room at the Fairfield Inn and we would be there in about an hour. She said “Oh so sorry, there are no more rooms at the Fairfield Inn. We can find you a room somewhere else, in fact, it is the last room in town, everything else has been snapped up.”
This has happened to us before, when we were heading into Louisiana, and every Marriott we walked into was fully sold out because of “the convention” or some such, and once before when the area had been hit by a tornado and the hotels were full with people living there.
So we said “Oh! What is the room?” and she told us about a nice room at a hotel we had never heard of and it was the last room left, did we want it? So we said ‘yes’ and gave her our credit card number to reserve it. When we got to the hotel, the desk clerk gave us a receipt for forty dollars less than the person I had called had said it would cost, so I asked about it, and was told I had gone through a booking agent who charged $40. I was livid. I checked again on the iPhone, and sure enough, the small print was some website – NOT the Marriott, even though the header was Fairfield Inn – Carlsbad, NM. Oh arrgh.
Here is what makes me so mad. I think they deliberately deceived me. I kept telling them how we loved Marriotts, thinking I was talking with Marriott people, and assuming they were helping me out because they were full, finding me this other booking. OK, OK, my bad, yes, probably the reason I am partly angry is that I am angry at myself for being so easily taken, but I was. Totally taken.
The room was nice enough, but I am willing to bet there would have been a room at the Fairfield Inn. I think this booking lady lied to me about the Fairfield Inn being full, and I know she lied about this being the last room in town – we could have gotten a room just about anywhere, and a lot cheaper.
Yes. I am embarrassed. That’s why I am writing this, so it won’t happen to you. Check whether the web site is the chain you are calling or a booking agency.
I don’t have any problems with a booking agency when I know it is a booking agency – like in Fredericksburg, the agency that handled all the B&B’s. That’s all aboveboard. It’s when you think you are calling a certain hotel or chain and they let you keep thinking that, oh, it makes me so mad.
OK, now I am moving on.
Qwon Chi Sushi
I was on a mission. This wasn’t one of those leisurely trips through the supermarket, this was one of those four-things-on-the-list trips – grab, pay and go.
But I had to pass the sushi section en route to the chicken section, and they were offering free samples. I took one; it looked interesting.
“New sushi” he said with a grin.
“What kind is it?” I asked
“Qwon Chi Roll” he said confidently.
“”Qwon Chi?” I asked.
“No, Qwon Chi Roll” he said, but this time the accent was on the first syllable.
“Qwon’-Chi” I repeated, trying to figure out what it was.
He kept smiling but he was not happy; I wasn’t getting it. He reached behind him and pulled out a sign:
CRUNCHY ROLL
I thought of all my “Woh is der bahnhof” moments, when I have spoken to people in their own language and they couldn’t understand me, and I just had to laugh. What goes around truly comes around, doesn’t it?
The Travellers’ Dilemma
The restaurants were full this Saturday in Pensacola, all the nice restaurants; there is a Beth Moore conference in town and all the ladies are out to lunch. We were lucky, we walked in just before the crowd and snagged a table at one of our favorite Pensacola restaurants, The Fish House. Great meal, great service, great conversation, and we were out in under an hour. Wooo HOOO.
Have you noticed many of the good restaurants don’t take reservations these days, not unless you are a large group, like six or more? Maybe as the economy starts to lift again, that will change. It’s just odd.
Meanwhile, I have a couple flights tomorrow, and now that I am not flying overnight, or half the world, and now that we are retired, I am flying sardine class. And the airlines don’t serve food. If you buy food in the airport, your choices are limited, and expensive, and it can be messy.
So I’ve been thinking about what to take. I need something nutritious. I need something that tastes good. I need something that can be eaten sort of subtly; now that there is not a real meal time, you might be eating with people who don’t have anything. So you also need something you can share.
It can’t have an offensive smell. We love those Japanese crackers, but in a confined space, all of a sudden you notice how FISHY they smell. Ditto sushi, LOL. Can’t eat Wasabi peas, either, because they are also odor causing, in their own way. No garlic; some people cannot abide garlic or onions.
It can’t be something that might leak in my carry on. It can’t be something that needs a utensil. It can’t be too salty, or carry too many calories. It can’t be loudly crunchy, like carrots or celery.
Do you see the problem?
AdventureMan says “You worry about things like that?” He is genuinely puzzled. But yeh, I think about these things, and try to anticipate a problem so that there ISN’T a problem.
I finally decided on some Chex Mix, and some trail mix (nuts and fruits). You can eat a little at a time, you can share.
I figure I can pick up some coffee at the airport where I change flights. I love the seasonal Peppermint Mochas, Gingerbread Lattes, etc. It’s a most wonderful time of the year 🙂
What do you take on a long flight when you will not be provided a meal?
Cajun Specialty Meats / Cajun Express in Pensacola, FL
This is just such a sweet story, a moment of magic, so I am going to share it with you. A group of foreign visitors was taken to have lunch at this place, the Cajun Speciality Meats in Pensacola, and as they were trying to decide what to order, the waitress noticed they “weren’t from around here.” In short order, plates appeared at the foreign visitor’s tables with all kinds of samples of the Cajun specialities offered at this restaurant, and the visitors were totally wowed.
So was I, when I heard about it. It takes so little to make an impression, so little to make people glad they visited our country, and these little moments of magic just make me so proud of the generous spirit it demonstrates. I hope the people at Cajun Meat Specialities got as big a thrill from doing it as the guests did from receiving it.
So, back in Pensacola, we are hungering for some of that gumbo, and laughing, because actually Pensacola has a lot of Cajun influence, too. We didn’t really have to go to Louisiana, there is a lot of it right here in our own back yard. I told AdventureMan the story of Cajun Meat Specialities, and he said “Let’s go there!”
So we did.
It is such a cool place. I did not realize that in addition to serving hot meals (gumbos, etoufees, Po’boys, boudin) they also carry a grocery store full of prepared Cajun specialities, all frozen. You just take them home, thaw, heat and serve. I am thinking how easy it would be to do a dinner, and never really have to cook, LOL!
As their name would imply, they also have fresh made andouille sausage, and other meats:
We had the Cup and a Half: a cup of seafood gumbo and a half portion of Po’Boy – Yummm:
They are on Heinberg, the street behind McGuires’ Steak House:
Bon Creole in New Iberia
“OK, but I want to eat lunch at Clementine’s,” I replied, as AdventureMan is scheduling some Cajun Country Swamp Tours for the afternoon and the next day. We drive back into New Iberia, and make sure we are going in the right direction on the one-way Main Street, only to discover Clementine’s is closed on Monday. Oh, Aarrrgh.
But I love my iPhone. I love it because I can put in an address, and it shows me how to get there, when to turn, where we are . . . I love it. I love it because I can put in “great food in New Iberia” and up comes names – and ratings. The highest rating other than Clementine’s is a place called Bon Creole, and it is on the one way street, St. Peters, going in the opposite direction of Main Street, so we turn around and head back in the other direction.
We are HUNGRY. So when we miss it the first time, and have to go around the block, AdventureMan says “I think I saw it, but it looked closed.” I think I saw it, too, but it looked . . . like some dive. As we come around the second time, we see a button-down-shirt-and-chinos kind of guy coming out, so we know it must be open, and he looks like a working local, not some tourist like us. And did I mention we are hungry? We decide to give it a try.
You walk in and order at the counter. I can’t say we got a warm welcome. The woman behind the counter wasn’t rude, she was just working hard, and there really wasn’t a smile. I ordered the daily special, but it was already gone. “OK,” I say, “I’ll take the gumbo, and some potato salad.”
“Potato salad comes with it.” She doesn’t even look up from writing down the order. So far, we are not encouraged, but there are a goodly amount of customers inside, and as we wait for our food, we get to listen in on all the town gossip, which is not unlike town gossip in most towns, who drinks too much, who is going out on who, and can you imagine someone wearing that to church?
Our food arrives, a bowl of gumbo, a bowl of rice and a bowl of potato salad, plastic utensils.
And then, with the first bite, everything changes.
“Oh, WoW!” I say, and my eyes open wide. “Wow!”
AdventureMan is having the same experience. “This is REALLY good!” he says.
We are quiet now, eating this totally delicious seafood gumbo. We are both busy trying to figure out how they made it taste so seafood-y, lots of shrimp, maybe some crab, but the gumbo itself, essence of shellfish, it is SO good.
What if we had judged by the exterior and had ended up in some plastic and mediocre place? What if we had missed this totally awesome seafood gumbo? This gumbo was seriously GOOD.
If you find yourself in New Iberia, hungry and looking for some seriously good gumbo, here is where to find Bon Creole:
Bon Creole also has a lot of fried dishes; we were just looking for something not-fried, but if you like fried, you too will like Bon Creole.
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