Dear Cha-Wel-Dor-Sue,

On Friday, March 13, 1981 Pat and I drove to Bayonne, New Jersey, where once again the supreme example of hospitality was shown to us. If ever any family manifests unadulterated and genuine joy at seeing other members of the clan, the Bayonne Jacobson's are it. Ken and Ruth out on our west coast are equal examples of such sincere family pride and sincerity. Pat and I are also hopeful that we are comparable examples.

After a delightful dining experience, Bill drove us to the Kennedy Airport and then returned our car to Bayonne where it was secured until our return from South Africa. In the interim he had it washed and filled with gasoline and was prepared to pick us up on our return. He truly deserves and merits the title of "brother".

The flight to South Africa took fifteen hours on a 747 with a mid-way fuel stop in the middle of the night at Ilha Do Sal, an island in the Cape Verde Islands. There is nothing to see there except the presence of a Russian Illyushian 62, a four engined jet aircraft, and a lot of apparent Cubans in the airport at the same time. Most of us assumed that they were either going to or coming from Angola.

We arrived in "Joburg" as the sun was setting, and we saw something of the central business district from the air. It is obvious that it is a new and modern city with tall and modern skyscrapers. On the following morning we were taken on a tour of the city and saw something of the central business district as well as the suburbs of the city. Unfortunately we were unable to see Soweto or the so called Southwest Township where some 1.2 million blacks are housed. It would have been nice to see this community but time simply did not permit a visit. However, many of our fellow tourists did have this opportunity and they described that it appeared to be a fairly nice city with nothing that resembled the slums of the north end of Hartford or Park Street, or other so called ghetto areas such as Harlem. In the afternoon we made a trip into the country for a series of tribal dances and an outdoor barbecue. In essence the whole day Sunday was rather dull and uninteresting.

On the following morning we took the "Blue train" to Capetown, some one-thousand miles in twenty-four hours and saw much of the variegated topography of the country. As we left Joburg we saw many gold mines with the huge heaps of tailings, and at sunset arrived for a fifteen minute stop at Kimberly, the diamond capitol of the world. Unfortunately, we could not leave the station in order to see the largest man made hole in the world, which is just outside the city limits. The night for us was more or less a total disaster, as I did not sleep a wink even with a hypnotic, and trains are certainly not for me anymore. The constant motion and the noise of the train was too much for my nervous system. When the sun came up we were in the mountains and soon saw some fields with cattle ranches and later some vineyards. South Africa is a vast country and one can only appreciate its size either by driving a car or seeing it from a train window. Flying over it gives one no idea at all of its immensity and diversity. Blacks outnumber the whites 4 to 1, and we certainly saw many of them from the window of the train as we passed the small communities. The ratio poses a problem not only today but for tomorrow as well. It is interesting that the people of South Africa are classed as white (Europeans), black (natives), and finally colored which does not mean a mixture of white and black but rather represents an entirely separate ethnic group such as the Nalasians who were brought in to serve as slaves by the Dutch during the early days of the settlement of South Africa. Perhaps included in this would be the Indians as well.

Capetown is the antithesis of Johannesburg. It has a renowned history (the oldest town in South Africa), tradition, color, and a magnificence all of its own. Capetonians are proud of their city, which for six months of each year serves as the capitol of South Africa, the so called Legislative Capitol. It alternates in this regard with Praetoria. In Capetown, legislation is formulated and later executed or administered in Praetoria. The city itself is nestled below their beloved "Table Mountain" and is both old and quaint and yet modern. Much of the new central business district is along the water front on land reclaimed from the sea. Our city tour of Capetown was most enjoyable, but served as merely a prelude for a full day tour of the Cape Peninsula which we took on the following morning, and which took us to the very end of the Cape of Good Hope. It is here that the Indian Ocean current or the so called Mozambique, meets the cold Atlantic current or the so called Benguela current. The point actually furthest south is Cape Agulhas, but the warm Indian waters pass beyond this point before meeting the current flowing up from Antarctica. On the cape is a natural reserve with a few animals and there are surprisingly some 2,600 variations of wild flowers. This is more than exists in all of Europe. It is said that in the spring it is ablaze with color, and Sir Francis Drake said it was the most beautiful of all the Capes he passed on his circumnavigation of the globe. On the following day we visited the Stellenbosh Wine Country and this was also a memorable visit. It is interesting to note that wine was produced here since 1659. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that at the last International Wine Festival held every year in London that South Africa won more gold medals than any other country in the world (36). Our visit to one of the fine wine houses was most enjoyable although we were only permitted to taste six of the twenty-six varieties produced on the estate. They use the varietal designation, such as Rieseling, Pinor, Chardonnay, and do not employ any generic appellations, such as, Bordeaux, Burgundy, etc. The quality is carefully controlled by a national board of wine examiners and nothing may be sold unless it meets the rigid standards and the qualifications of the board. Estate wines are pure and not blended. Some day, maybe, they may be available in the United States. They are available, incidentally, in the state of Canada as I have had some of them in Vancouver.

Stellenbosh is a beautiful city of 35,000, 12,000 of which are university students and the language used in this city is "Afrikans", as contrasted to the University of Capetown where they use the English language. Stellenbosh is essentially Dutch in character and most of the town is a "Historical District" and must remain as such and never altered. Our pictures, hopefully, will give you some appreciation of this unique and beautiful city. All of the cape provinces are cognizant of the fact that much of their original ecology has been altered, and laws have been passed preserving the remnants of yesterday and restoring the past, i.e certain trees cannot even be cut down for one hundred years and re-plantings are mandatory. Even the super highways are replanted with the original flora and fences are required along the entire length of the freeways in order to preserve the natural fauna.

The trip from Capetown to George was only thirty-five minutes by air and it was here that we started the so called "Garden Route Tour". It actually began in Mosel Bay. We drove by motor coach to Plattenberg Bay, a resort area, and were housed in the beautiful Deacon Island Hotel. It is a beautiful area and resembles comparable areas in both Florida and California.

The Beacon Island Hotel sits out on a spit of rock and is literally approached on a causeway. The setting is ideal for honeymooners and conventioneers, and while we were there the South African Society of Anesthetists were gathering for their annual meeting. They were expecting eighty visitors from foreign lands, one of whom was Eaman Flanagan from Manchester, Connecticut, an anesthetist at the Manchester Memorial Hospital. Alas, Eaman arrived on the day after we departed. We are feeling as we go along that the South Africans are as friendly, as open, and as gregarious as their counterparts that we met in Australia and New Zealand. Our English colleagues that we met in London two years ago were equally hospitable and gracious, but a bit more formal and a little less relaxed. Pat and I hope to revisit many of our British Colleagues in June in Montreal, Canada, when a combined meeting of the Canadian Urological Association and the British Association of Urological Surgeons are holding a joint meeting at the Bonaventure Hotel. God willing we shall be there!!

After leaving Plattenberg Bay we drove along the "Garden Route" to Port Elizabeth, a beautiful port city, immaculately clean, and beautifully adorned with flowers. We had lunch at the Port Elizabeth Hotel after which we saw beautiful ranches and farms and the rolling terrain with the mountains on our left and the Indian Ocean on our right. We then flew from Port Elizabeth to Durban on the Indian Ocean and this flight took approximately one hour. We arrived in mid-afternoon and were settled in the Maharani Hotel, surely one of the most beautiful hotels in South Africa and perhaps in all the world. In fact, it reminded Pat and me of the Taj Mahal in Bombay and the Oberei in New Delhi.

Durban is the largest port in South Africa and the tenth largest in the world, moving some 36,000,000 tons of shipping per year. Despite its industrial prominence it is truly a beautiful city and bears some likeness to Rio de Janeiro in that its major hotels are situated along the so called Marine Parade or along the beach front. Like Rio, the land rises fairly abruptly and the suburbs are built on the hill or mountainside, and afford magnificent vistas of the city and harbor. Its Botanical Gardens are unusually beautiful and one senses an inordinate pride in the city itself. One third of its population is Zulu, one third Indian, and one third European, and separate hospitals exist for each group. Segregation is seen in the "Johns" and in transportation and various other services. Downtown there is an Indian district with its temple and mosque and some 20% of the Indians in Durban are Moslems. We passed up an opportunity to visit a Zulu district in order to get better acquainted with the city of Durban itself. At night we dined in the Raffles Room on the thirty-second floor of the Maharani, and I can only describe it as elegant. In fact, in every hotel that we had stayed at, Pat and I had decided that the only way to go was the elegant way and I have actually enjoyed the experience, although my pocketbook certainly suffered as a consequence of it. Some of our friends were accustomed to this way of life and sort of dragged us along. Certainly we could not do this frequently, but it was enjoyable while we were at it. Tomorrow we will be off to Kruger National Park and from all I heard it will be a disappointing experience after having visited Kenya. We so thoroughly enjoyed Kenya that we are hopeful that Kruger will not be too disappointing. When we visited Kenya we were disappointed because the borders with Tanzania were closed just two weeks prior to our arrival, and therefore we were denied the opportunity to see the Serengeti Plain, the Ngorogoro crater and the Olduvai Gorge.

The flight from Durban to Shukusa in the Kruger National Park took two and one-half hours in a D.C. 3, again unfortunately there was a delay of one and one-half hours due to "operational difficulties". However, one must always be prepared for these situations and with a good book to amuse us we accepted the inevitable.

Kruger Park is interesting in that the animals are free and the people are caged. The animals are free to roam as they please and the land is theirs and the people are strictly confined to their buses or small vans. One does one's photography largely through the tinted glass windows of our bus or the partially opened window of a small van. Kruger park is ideal with a pair of binoculars but to a man with a camera it is frustrating. It is no match for the set up in Kenya and if you have only one choice by all means select Kenya.

This morning we saw Cheetah, Lionesses, Jackals, Hyenas, Warthogs, Kudu, Impalas, Hippos, Baboons, Water Bucks, Steenboks, Duikers, many Wildebeasts, Zebras, Elephants, and Giraffes galore! A good day for viewing. We had three trips that began at 5:30 a.m. to 7:30 a.m., a bite for breakfast, and then out again until 12:00 noon. A short siesta followed and then another game trip from 4:00 - 6:00 p.m. in the evening.

On our final day in Kruger National Park we were awakened at 4:30 a.m. and had another four hour game drive until we left the National Park, and then on to Johannesburg driving a total of some 350 miles that day. We passed through rolling terrain which was given over largely to cattle grazing, farming, and past vast areas planted with corn, sunflower seeds, and Sorghum. It is a beautiful country and seems to be self sufficient in all except oil. Their coal gasification plants are the finest in all the world and hopefully in ten years they may be entirely independent of the Middle East. Platinum and uranium are by-products of their gold mining and at this moment South Africa provides 65% of the free world's gold. Even their so called "heaps" or mountains of tailings are being reworked to extract the last traces of this precious metal.

On our last day in the Transvald we planned to visit a gold mine and museum, and made a tour of Praetoria, one of its capitols.

On our last day in South Africa we did indeed visit a gold mine museum, Crown Mine Fourteen, which really is an abandoned mine being restored as a museum. The original overhead shaft apparatus is still in tact and one is taken down to a depth of some six hundred feet in the vertical shaft and then escorted along one of the exhausted gold bearing veins or so called reefs. These are horizontal shafts that emanate from the vertical shaft. We were equipped with a hard hat, rubber coats, and boots as well as the head light and every step in the mining of the ore was described to us by a retired miner. In the veins one cannot see any gold and anything that does indeed resemble gold is iron pyrite or so called "fools gold". The shaft actually descends to almost 2,000 feet but we were only taken down to the first level. Incidentally, it takes almost five tons of crushed rock to yield a fraction of an ounce of gold and as I have said previously, the by-products of the refining process are silver, uranium, and a small amount of copper. It is interesting as one looks out the window of the Hotel Carlton in Johannesburg that one sees mountains of tailings or the residue piled high here and there and might actually be mistaken for small hills. In the original process for the extraction of the gold or the so called mercury process only 70% of the gold was recovered and so today they are reworking these heaps using a new cyanide process and this is apparently profitable in view of the high price of gold at this moment. On the surface we were shown the entire process for the refining of the gold. At this moment the museum is being enlarged so that it will represent the original gold mine as it existed in the middle of the last century. There is also a small steam engine that takes you for a small ride around the premises.

The last afternoon prior to our departure was spent in visiting Praetoria, the administrative capitol of the Republic of South Africa. It is like Joburg, situated on a plateau 5,000 feet above sea level and resembles Denver in some respects. Praetoria is indeed a beautiful city with magnificent gardens. The government city is largely occupied with bureaucrats, and in this regard it is interesting that 50% of the population is white and 50% is black. It was here that we saw the remarkable Vortrecker Monument which is situated high on a hill and which pays adequate testimony to the courage and perseverance of the pioneers who left the Capetown area seeking freedom from the encroaching British. They fought the blacks, especially the Zulus on their route northward, and their trials and tribulations were very much akin to our pioneers who went west homesteading and had to fight the Indians on route west. Many of the Vortreckers met with disastrous consequences (such as massacres).

Let me say in conclusion that South Africa is a beautiful land, diversified with rich mineral resources, adequate agricultural plains, a superb wine industry, and has a great future if the problem of apartheid or racial segregation can be resolved amicably by evolution rather than through a civil war or revolution. Being surrounded completely by black nations, it does pose a problem for the vastly outnumbered whites who developed this area originally.

South Africa has none of the exoticism of the Far East, nor the mystique of India, nor the mystery of Russia, or the historical antiquity of Egypt and Greece, but it is a beautiful land, and hopefully will remain forever so. Apparently all of the surrounding nations are 100% black and all are aligned against it, and many of whom are dominated by the Marxist-Leninist philosophy.

One of the joys of the trip, perhaps to a greater extent than some of our other trips, has been the new acquaintances that we have made. Many were physicians and one in particular was a retired doctor from the navy who was a personal and good friend for many years of Peggy's dad, his name is Dr. "Chick" Ede. Another doctor who I particularly enjoyed meeting was Dr. Charles Crow of Burmingham, Alabama, an internist with a special interest in computer technology and short wave radio communication. It seems birds of a feather do indeed drift together, and we spent many enjoyable hours in each others company.

The trip home required another sixteen hours of flight, but all in all it was more than worthwhile and we shall always recall our pleasant two weeks in this magnificent country called the Republic of South Africa.

With love,

DAD