Our Travelling Lives
Turns out Tannie Evita & Pieter-Dirk Uys don't always travel together
The stars of the new show '#HETwo' have had some seriously strange experiences on planes. They tell us more about their travel highs and lows
Image: Supplied
How often do you travel?
Evita Bezuidenhout (EB): It seems as if I am always travelling somewhere, especially now that President Ramaphosa sends me all over the world to try to encourage investments in SA. In the past too many other comrades raised the money to put in their pockets, so I am very transparent and so far, quite successful.
But the real world worries me: the United States is in a state, the United Kingdom is not united, the European Union found 27 ways to do nothing brilliantly. I'm not even referring to the so-called democracies of Russia, China, North Korea and some who will remain nameless. So when I get back to Tshwane, I know it's home sweet home.
Describe the first holiday you remember as a child.
EB: We were too poor to have holidays. Me and my mother and little sister lived in Myrre Weg Bethlehem and we had to just entertain ourselves at home. Sometimes my mother would take us to a local veld where she says a Boer War concentration camp used to be and we looked in the stones and dust for souvenirs, but that was no holiday.
And your first trip abroad?
EB: In 1956 my new friend Mimi Coertse asked me to go with her to Vienna in Austria where she was to sing at the State Opera. I always thought overseas was just past Bloemfontein, but imagine my surprise when it was 12 days on a Union Castle boat and two days on a train. I didn't like Vienna, because no one spoke Afrikaans and everything you ate made you fat.
What's the most adventurous destination you've ever been to?
EB: The white enclave of Orania in the Northern Cape. I left after tea.
PDU: I love adventures and going to places that are not on the beaten track: St Helena. Easter Island, the Ngogoro Crater in Tanzania ... the most spectacular was Antarctica. I spent a week in the icefields seeing whales, penguins and other wildlife that was totally unphased by us, the aliens in our rubber boots and layers of clothes. When I hear that the icecaps are melting, I want to cry.
What's your favourite international city?
EB: New York, New York! Every time I am there I think I'm going to meet a movie star round every corner. I spent some time in NY in the 1980s helping the SA Mission at the United Nations with their catering: koeksisters, melktert and bobotie. Feeding the enemy was the best way to fight sanctions against South Africa and it worked — some countries agreed to send embargoed things to us via Israel.
Image: 123RF/sborisov
What's the oddest experience you've ever had while travelling?
EB: I once sat next to singer Ge Korsten on a flight between Cape Town and Johannesburg and he sang the entire opera Turandot, which he was going to do in the State Theatre in Pretoria. It was like having a radio on which you couldn't switch off!
PDU: Many years ago, when it was still allowed, I was invited into the pilot's cabin on a flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg. The two pilots were fans of Evita; they had a movie camera and asked me to send messages to their wives — they weren't even looking where they were flying! One of them even asked if I wanted to sit in his chair and fly the plane. Please thank me, everyone who was on that flight, for saying 'no thank you'.
What do you hate about travelling?
EB: I hate travelling alone because a second opinion is always very welcome. And now that I've got used to holidays with my grandchildren, I realise how important young people are when you explore a new place. They make it all so fresh, because everything I now see at my age, I've seen before. Their first look at life is always glorious.
PDU: The words travelling and holidays make you think you will be able to just sit back and relax. On the contrary: travelling is a minefield of confusion and suspicion, where you have to prove who you are round every corner: undress, take off shoes, walk through x-rays that show the secrets of what's in your underwear.
What's your best piece of travel advice?
EB: A travel agent who knows what your likes and dislikes are. Yes, I know everyone does it online, but I prefer that I have someone to blame when something goes wrong.
PDU: Plan ahead, even for things that might go wrong so that you are not caught short — take copies of your passport, visas, that yellow-fever document.
What destination is on your bucket list?
EB: I would love to go to India, but I'm scared my tummy won't agree with me.
PDU: I want to see the wonderful colour flashes of the Northern Lights in the Arctic Circle.