By Bob Van Leer

  (JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA, June 3, 1986) - Today Betty and I arrived in South Africa after a 16 hour flight from New York on a Boeing 747. The name of the continent, Africa, has always conjured up images of a wild, primitive place, the last continent to be explored by civilized man. So what are our accommodations?

By Bob Van Leer

  (JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA, June 4, 1986) - Even with "jet lag" and being nine hours ahead of Gold Beach time we arose at a fairly respectable 9 a.m. and had time for a short tour of Sandton Centre which connects to our hotel, Sandton Sun (which is rated 5 star). A publicity blurb on the shopping center says, "Sandton Centre itself hosts about 250 merchants in shops which for sheer class and variety probably cannot be surpassed anywhere in the world." However, in spite of what the publicity releases say, prices in the Centre are definitely not cheap.

    After lunch at the hotel our entire group (14) went on a tour to Gold Reef City. This is a played out gold mine made over into a tourist attraction by a consortium of 41 Johannesburg businesses. It was a quite interesting tour going down into the old mine, through the tunnels and finally watching a red hot gold ingot being poured. Betty and I both posed with two gold bars worth $137,000 each. 

By Bob Van Leer

  (JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA, June 5, 1986) - In a whirlwind tour today lasting from 8 a.m. to midnight we did some sightseeing in the South African countryside and listened to five speakers in four sessions in Johannesburg and Pretoria. Pretoria is the administrative capital of South Africa, about 20 miles from Johannesburg.

    A theme came through from all the speakers; the political situation cannot go on in South Africa the way it is. And all hope for dramatic action by the government before the end of the year to forestall disaster. Economically, South Africa is getting to be a basket case. Factoring in the l8.5 percent inflation, there is negative economic growth.

  The South African money unit, the Rand, was worth $1.35 U. S. as little as five years ago. Two years ago it was $0.80. When we bought a small amount from First Interstate Bank before coming here we paid $0.44. Today the Rand fell to $0.39. At the rate it is falling now, the Rand will be worthless in a couple of months.

By Bob Van Leer

  (CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA, June 6, 1986) - Today was a day of relative rest after the tight scheduling of yesterday; not a single speaker, compared to the five of yesterday. In the morning we toured Johannesburg and shopped for African curios downtown. Then we returned to our hotel, the Sandton Sun, for lunch and to pack for the flight to Cape Town.

    We left the hotel with some regret. Betty and I have stayed in a lot of hotels in a lot of cities, but the Sandton Sun is the finest we have ever stayed in.

By Bob Van Leer

  (CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA, June 7, 1986) - We spent the day touring the Cape Town area and in the evening had dinner with the highest level representative of the South African government we have talked to yet.

    In the morning we awoke to a magnificent view of Table Mountain, a world-renowned sight. The weather was absolutely clear and sunny, not especially normal for this time of year. We took a cable car ride to the summit of the mountain, 3500 feet above sea level. The view from there on a clear day is incredible, somewhat akin to being in a stationary helicopter. A chart of distances from cities around the world on top of the mountain settled one question for us: how far are we from home? According to the chart, we are 10,239 miles from San Francisco.

  By bus we toured around Cape Town and visited the South African museum. Many of the exhibits were on Bushmen and other black native Africans. This is a beautiful city with a climate similar to San Diego. We are in a different world here and almost everything is strange. At home the sun is always somewhat in the south. But there it is in the north. Cold winter winds come in from Antarctica to the south.

By Bob Van Leer

  (PLETTENBURG BAY, SOUTH AFRICA, June 10, 1986) - Today a tour of South Africa's wine country around Stellenbosch was on the schedule but Betty and I decided to spend what time we had exploring more of downtown Cape Town. Betty found a whole store with nothing but beads and this kept her occupied for most of the time.

    In the afternoon we boarded a South African Airways plane for a short flight to George, still on the south coast. From there we were met by a bus and headed east, with our stopping spot for the evening to be the Beacon Island Hotel on Plettenburg Bay, one of South Africa's vacation spots.

By Bob Van Leer

  (DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA, June 12, 1986) - Today started with a quiet trip to Zululand but wound up with the major development of the day: a declaration of a State of Emergency by the government, roughly equivalent to declaring Martial Law in the United States. President P. W. Botha declared the State of Emergency effective at midnight last night and before dawn police swooped down and arrested activists. 

   With the declaration a number of normal civil liberties are suspended and the police are able to make arrests and detention without the normal warrants. According to the newspapers, there have not been a whole lot of arrests for a large country, but there appears to be no accurate account. According to one report, the entire staff of a radical opposition newspaper was "detained". For most of our activities the Emergency has no practical effect.

By Bob Van Leer

  (SUN CITY, BOPHUTHATSWANA, June 13, 1986) - This is one of the semi-independent black tribal states set up by South Africa as a part of its attempt to sort out racial problems. No nation besides South Africa recognizes these as independent states, considering them vassals to South Africa. But there are differences.

  This is the only place we have seen in southern Africa where there is a free mixing of the races. Sun City is a plush resort community set up by South African business interests with full casino gambling. South Africa does not allow gambling but Bophuthatswana does.

By Bob Van Leer

  (SUN CITY, BOPHUTHATSWANA, June 14, 1986) - Today was a day of relaxation. The only scheduled events were lunch and a tour of the facilities. In the morning I took a tour of a game reserve near here, in Bophuthatswana national park. This was different from Wildlife Safari in Winston. These are wild animals in a preserve that extends for many miles. I never did get a figure on the size of the park.

  The tour was similar to what we might find while hunting at home, only with more game. A gray hump almost hidden in the brush could be a rhinoceros or a large rock (it was a rhino). Look a thousand yards across a stream and there are two giraffe and a few zebra. This was a binocular trip, not for cameras unless you had a long, long lens. We saw 14 kinds of animals from monkeys to rhinos with a lot of different antelopes. But the cutest by far was a baby rhino with its mother.

By Bob Van Leer

  (VICTORIA FALLS, ZIMBABWE, June 15, 1986) - Another whirlwind day started at Sun City, Bophuthatswana, at 4:30 a.m. with a three hour bus ride back to Jan Smuts Airport at Johannesburg. Increased security was evident at the airport with more soldiers around carrying Uzi machine guns. We boarded a South African Airways flight to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.

  There we had to clear customs, which took a while, and then boarded an Air Zimbabwe flight for the final leg to Victoria Falls. We could see Victoria Falls in the distance coming in to the airport.

By Bob Van Leer

  (VICTORIA FALLS, ZIMBABWE, June 16, 1986) - This was a day of sightseeing beginning with a visit to a reproduction of native structures of a number of tribes, set up for tourist viewing. After that we went on a walking tour of the focus of the trip here, the Victoria Falls.

  It was impressive yesterday by air: if anything, the falls are more impressive viewed from ground level. Because of the geography of the falls, viewpoints are at the same level as the top of the falls rather than the bottom. The roar and thunder of the water pouring over the lip of the falls and dropping into the gorge below pales in the description, but it is truly awesome.

  From the hotel in the morning we noticed that the plume from the falls is at it highest then, before the sun hits. We're talking about a plume 1200 feet high. On the trail along the ledge opposite the falls, laid out for viewing, the falls creates, on part of the trail, a permanent rain. It is necessary to wear raincoats and there is a tropical rain forest caused by the falls in an area that has relatively sparse rainfall. One part of the area has a permanent drenching rain.

By Bob Van Leer

  (GOLD BEACH, OREGON, July 2, 1986) - Near the end of our stay in South Africa I asked our group of 15 traveling newspaper people, "Do any of you see a happy ending to this?" Nobody replied. And that about sums up South Africa today.