Dave's Retirement Adventure

Link to photo Album Here We’ve been to many 2 nd and 3 rd world countries. We always struggle with understanding the history of how they ended so far behind the First World countries. Australia is a completely different experience. Here we arrive at a previously isolated, former British penal colony, at the other end of the world, that has created a first world country and has maintained it for many years. “How did dey do dat?” We always thought we’d get a chance to visit here one day, and indeed a good opportunity came along in the middle of our six month stay in South Africa. Here’s the 14 hr route the Qantas 747 took. I’m always interested in relative latitude when traveling and it was very interesting to me that Sydney, Atlanta, and Cape Town, at about 33 degrees, are all the same distance from the equator. One of the immediate differences we notice on this trip, compared to our Egypt OAT trip is the amount ...

Estelle and I knew being overseas for seven months in Egypt, South Africa, Australia, etc had risks. And we knew at our ages that unforeseen health issues can happen, but we’ve both been very healthy and I don’t think we gave that risk a lot of consideration. So, we land in Johannesburg Monday night after two weeks in Australia, back with family, Wednesday morning I feel some mild chest pain. It comes and goes, feels like some kind of indigestion to me. The next day, Thursday, it’s still there, doesn’t respond to normal indigestion medicine, and it feels somehow different than previous indigestion pain, and I did just turn 72. So I call our long time friend, Etienne, an MD in Pretoria, about 5pm on Thursday to get his opinion. After a few questions he says I should come immediately to the hospital he thinks is best, in Pretoria, with the best cardiologists, who he knows personally, just in case… Still believing this is just indigestion, Estelle and I drive about an hour ...