We arrived early this morning in Johannesburg, just before 7 am. The flights were very long, and neither of us got much sleep. We did 
take the “No Jet Lag” pills (which many friends had recommended), so I think it did help a little. We arrived to a very busy JoBurg Int’l Airport (long line ups at Customs), and then walked directly to the InterContinental Hotel next door, where we were met by reps from the host company that is leading this site visit today and tomorrow. They took us into a lounge where there were wonderful, glorious showers and a full breakfast. So we cleaned up and ate, and mingled with the 20 or so other guests on this site tour. I feel like a bit of a hanger-on (since I am the only person in this group not here representing a investment or mine journalism publication), but everyone has been so gracious and generous, it’s wonderful.
It’s primarily a group of guys and a few women, about 6 or so connected with the company, as the hosts. I have so far been having some really interesting conversations with them about South African, Joburg, Cape Town and other places. You can tell that they are very proud of the country, as well they should be. And we discovered that JoBurg and Cape Town have a friendly rivalry about which is the better city – it reminded me of Vancouverites and Torontonians always competing for which city is best! I am learning a lot about Johannesburg and South Africa and how they view themselves, I feel like a big sponge, and will keep asking them questions for as long as they will put up with me. One of the major partners on the project here is a fellow from the Black Empowerment Group, I guess they are involved in many economic development initiatives designed to raise to overall social well being of the black community, since the transfer. I really want to find a chance to speak with him further, and if he’ll indulge me, to tell me more about what their Group is all about. Steve enlightened me little this evening about it – I had thought it was similar to ways in which mining projects in Canada would involve First Nations Bands as economic partners. But I gather that Black Empowerment instead identified a few individuals (in this case, 6 persons only) who become major shareholders in the mine project. I gather these are former ANC members (perhaps like Senate patronage appointments in Canada?). The project that this group is developing here will primarily benefit the local black community of about 2500 people, which currently has an 85% unemployment rate.
Back to the day’s activities…after breakfast, they loaded us up into a small charter plane, and 20 minutes later we touched down in an area called the Pilanesberg, the airport that serves this area, and Sun City. A lovely little airport, I took a few shots of the interior thatched roofs. The plane ride itself was designed to show the tour group some of the mine properties stretching across this area. Steve tells me that 80%+ of the world’s platinum is mined here, in a narrow strip of ore stretching for a few hundred kilometers. Our hosts were talking about how its impossible to mechanize the mining operations, as the ore strip is no more than 10 cm across in most areas, and nothing can replace the skill of a human is mining it exactly. A short plane ride, but they get a lot of late day storms and “thermals”, which makes for a bumpy plane ride. I almost embarrassed myself, if the plane had been up there another 10 minutes I think I would have lost my breakfast! Note to self: gravol for the return trip! Steve is an old hand at this of course, said that turbulence was nothing to other trips he has been on. The guys from the company said they had some investment managers out from RBC last week, and took them on a helicopter tour; their young pilot took them flying up and down the hills, and only 3 people puked, so that made me happy I wasn’t the only one!
A short bus ride from the airport brought us into Sun City. The gates reminded me of a Disneyland Theme Park. Sun City itself is not really a city, but more a manufactured resort community in a beautiful setting on the African bushveldt. The temperature in Joburg was warm and beautiful, about 29 degrees, but it is HOT here, at least 5-10 degrees higher. But dry, and about 5000 feet above sea level. The company has very generously put the group up in this unbelievable resort hotel called Palace of the Lost City. It truly defies description, I have been searching for adjectives all day, and haven’t come with them yet. Everyone keeps making the analogy with Las Vegas, and that is probably fairly accurate. Its gorgeous, really visually stunning, and completely manufactured, reminds me of the large resorts in Hawaii, just replace all the Hawaiian themes with African ones!
We had a beautiful catered lunch by the pool, a HUGE buffet, BBQ, a mountain of desserts, all very rich (but low cal I am sure). The staff are everywhere, 3 waiters/waitresses on you at all times. We have no level of service quite like it in Vancouver that I can see. I thoroughly enjoyed lunch, my new best friend is a South African fellow named Mike who works for our host company. Turns out he is a bit of a wine aficionado, so he ordered us a great wine for lunch, and we discussed wineries in the Cape Region. I will be getting his recommendations before we leave tomorrow. He was impressed that we already had a John Platter Wine Guide (the fellow is the wine god here in SA I guess), so his estimation of Canadians just went up a few notches he said. He taught me a few Afrikaner names for some of the food, including a type if wild boar sausage (BBQ’d), and he seemed pleased that I was lucky and got the pronunciation the first time. I find the thicker Afrikaner accent hard to follow at time, and I have to listen carefully to make out everything being said to me. But as I said, lots of excellent information and perspectives I was able to gather today.
Steve went off for his presentation this afternoon, and they also trouped them up to a nearby hill for a view of the property lines, and also some more food and beer. I took a bath in a tub as long as me, and decided to lay down for a few minutes. After 36+ hours of being awake, I passed out immediately and slept for a couple of hours.
Dinner was another lovely, but equally surreal event. Gorgeous dinner of baby lamb rack from an area they called the Little Karoo (Mike tells me that Karoo means a “prairie” area, and there are two in SA, the Big Karoo and Little Karoo. I think we will be driving through the Little Karoo when we head to/from Plettenburg Bay. The restaurant’s “theme” last night was Swiss, which meant Swiss flags etc. But the funniest part was the entertainment, three baritones, with very impressive voices that sand everything from “Edelweiss” to German war songs, to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”. When they sand “Irish Eyes” I think that went off the scale for the totally surreal experience that is this place! Thankfully it wasn’t only me who found it funny, we all had a great laugh trying to chat over their voices that REALLY carried. My (now) old friend Mike was with us, and his other colleague Willy, whose Afrikaner accent was even more difficult to decipher, I think I only caught about 40% of what he was saying. But he is also a great wine expert, part of his local SA wine club, so the boys were gracious enough to order up a few wonderful bottles for us to try. A successful evening! Again the staff are everywhere, you can barely take a sip of water without your glass being refilled.
All in all, for all its surreal nature, this place is truly gorgeous, and it’s certainly lovely to experience how the privileged live, if only for a day or two. Since it’s all the me free, I won’t be complaining anytime soon. I think we are off the auspicious start to out adventure in Africa, day one was none too shabby. Still hard to believe we are where we are. My experience so far is that Africa is everything you might imagine, and all that the movies and books make it out to be. There is something about the land, the smell in the air here, something quite intoxicating and seductive. I cannot wait to experience it all…
take the “No Jet Lag” pills (which many friends had recommended), so I think it did help a little. We arrived to a very busy JoBurg Int’l Airport (long line ups at Customs), and then walked directly to the InterContinental Hotel next door, where we were met by reps from the host company that is leading this site visit today and tomorrow. They took us into a lounge where there were wonderful, glorious showers and a full breakfast. So we cleaned up and ate, and mingled with the 20 or so other guests on this site tour. I feel like a bit of a hanger-on (since I am the only person in this group not here representing a investment or mine journalism publication), but everyone has been so gracious and generous, it’s wonderful.It’s primarily a group of guys and a few women, about 6 or so connected with the company, as the hosts. I have so far been having some really interesting conversations with them about South African, Joburg, Cape Town and other places. You can tell that they are very proud of the country, as well they should be. And we discovered that JoBurg and Cape Town have a friendly rivalry about which is the better city – it reminded me of Vancouverites and Torontonians always competing for which city is best! I am learning a lot about Johannesburg and South Africa and how they view themselves, I feel like a big sponge, and will keep asking them questions for as long as they will put up with me. One of the major partners on the project here is a fellow from the Black Empowerment Group, I guess they are involved in many economic development initiatives designed to raise to overall social well being of the black community, since the transfer. I really want to find a chance to speak with him further, and if he’ll indulge me, to tell me more about what their Group is all about. Steve enlightened me little this evening about it – I had thought it was similar to ways in which mining projects in Canada would involve First Nations Bands as economic partners. But I gather that Black Empowerment instead identified a few individuals (in this case, 6 persons only) who become major shareholders in the mine project. I gather these are former ANC members (perhaps like Senate patronage appointments in Canada?). The project that this group is developing here will primarily benefit the local black community of about 2500 people, which currently has an 85% unemployment rate.
Back to the day’s activities…after breakfast, they loaded us up into a small charter plane, and 20 minutes later we touched down in an area called the Pilanesberg, the airport that serves this area, and Sun City. A lovely little airport, I took a few shots of the interior thatched roofs. The plane ride itself was designed to show the tour group some of the mine properties stretching across this area. Steve tells me that 80%+ of the world’s platinum is mined here, in a narrow strip of ore stretching for a few hundred kilometers. Our hosts were talking about how its impossible to mechanize the mining operations, as the ore strip is no more than 10 cm across in most areas, and nothing can replace the skill of a human is mining it exactly. A short plane ride, but they get a lot of late day storms and “thermals”, which makes for a bumpy plane ride. I almost embarrassed myself, if the plane had been up there another 10 minutes I think I would have lost my breakfast! Note to self: gravol for the return trip! Steve is an old hand at this of course, said that turbulence was nothing to other trips he has been on. The guys from the company said they had some investment managers out from RBC last week, and took them on a helicopter tour; their young pilot took them flying up and down the hills, and only 3 people puked, so that made me happy I wasn’t the only one!
A short bus ride from the airport brought us into Sun City. The gates reminded me of a Disneyland Theme Park. Sun City itself is not really a city, but more a manufactured resort community in a beautiful setting on the African bushveldt. The temperature in Joburg was warm and beautiful, about 29 degrees, but it is HOT here, at least 5-10 degrees higher. But dry, and about 5000 feet above sea level. The company has very generously put the group up in this unbelievable resort hotel called Palace of the Lost City. It truly defies description, I have been searching for adjectives all day, and haven’t come with them yet. Everyone keeps making the analogy with Las Vegas, and that is probably fairly accurate. Its gorgeous, really visually stunning, and completely manufactured, reminds me of the large resorts in Hawaii, just replace all the Hawaiian themes with African ones!
We had a beautiful catered lunch by the pool, a HUGE buffet, BBQ, a mountain of desserts, all very rich (but low cal I am sure). The staff are everywhere, 3 waiters/waitresses on you at all times. We have no level of service quite like it in Vancouver that I can see. I thoroughly enjoyed lunch, my new best friend is a South African fellow named Mike who works for our host company. Turns out he is a bit of a wine aficionado, so he ordered us a great wine for lunch, and we discussed wineries in the Cape Region. I will be getting his recommendations before we leave tomorrow. He was impressed that we already had a John Platter Wine Guide (the fellow is the wine god here in SA I guess), so his estimation of Canadians just went up a few notches he said. He taught me a few Afrikaner names for some of the food, including a type if wild boar sausage (BBQ’d), and he seemed pleased that I was lucky and got the pronunciation the first time. I find the thicker Afrikaner accent hard to follow at time, and I have to listen carefully to make out everything being said to me. But as I said, lots of excellent information and perspectives I was able to gather today.
Steve went off for his presentation this afternoon, and they also trouped them up to a nearby hill for a view of the property lines, and also some more food and beer. I took a bath in a tub as long as me, and decided to lay down for a few minutes. After 36+ hours of being awake, I passed out immediately and slept for a couple of hours.
Dinner was another lovely, but equally surreal event. Gorgeous dinner of baby lamb rack from an area they called the Little Karoo (Mike tells me that Karoo means a “prairie” area, and there are two in SA, the Big Karoo and Little Karoo. I think we will be driving through the Little Karoo when we head to/from Plettenburg Bay. The restaurant’s “theme” last night was Swiss, which meant Swiss flags etc. But the funniest part was the entertainment, three baritones, with very impressive voices that sand everything from “Edelweiss” to German war songs, to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”. When they sand “Irish Eyes” I think that went off the scale for the totally surreal experience that is this place! Thankfully it wasn’t only me who found it funny, we all had a great laugh trying to chat over their voices that REALLY carried. My (now) old friend Mike was with us, and his other colleague Willy, whose Afrikaner accent was even more difficult to decipher, I think I only caught about 40% of what he was saying. But he is also a great wine expert, part of his local SA wine club, so the boys were gracious enough to order up a few wonderful bottles for us to try. A successful evening! Again the staff are everywhere, you can barely take a sip of water without your glass being refilled.
All in all, for all its surreal nature, this place is truly gorgeous, and it’s certainly lovely to experience how the privileged live, if only for a day or two. Since it’s all the me free, I won’t be complaining anytime soon. I think we are off the auspicious start to out adventure in Africa, day one was none too shabby. Still hard to believe we are where we are. My experience so far is that Africa is everything you might imagine, and all that the movies and books make it out to be. There is something about the land, the smell in the air here, something quite intoxicating and seductive. I cannot wait to experience it all…
No comments:
Post a Comment