You can't have enough good friends (12/03/2008)

When a friend of a friend becomes your friend, it's a real stroke of luck.

But when that friend of a friend who becomes your friend happens to live on the other side of the world, it's just short of a miracle.

And when that happens in multiples, I'm not sure how to begin to calculate the good fortune.

Let's zip back in time more than 40 years ago. It's 1965, and the American Field Service has sent Portland High School an exchange student. One foreign student per year was the rule at the time, and AFS ran the most professional placement service available.

In 1965-66, the student in question was a kid from South Africa by the name of Gyles Webb, who was placed with the family of Dr. James Fitzpatrick.

1965 wasn't a particularly easy time to be an exchange student from South Africa. Apartheid, which had been in place since 1948, was drawing international approbation; it was easier for young white South Africans to claim to be from New Zealand than to acknowledge the persistent idiocies of their government.

But Gyles was more than up to the challenge. In short order, he became one of the best liked members of my high school graduating class. We became good friends, in part because the Fitzpatricks lived just down the block.

Now, fast forward a bit to 1982. Gyles had been back in the States for a short visit in the early 1970s, but in 1982 he appeared at our back door. He had switched careers from accounting to viticulture and was doing an apprenticeship at a California winery.

Zip forward again, and he's made it back to Jay County for a 40th high school class reunion, staying at our house.

That's when he issued his invitation: Come visit us in South Africa.

It was one of those ideas that seemed so far-fetched that it was easy to say yes, knowing in the back of our heads that it was unlikely we'd ever do such a thing.

And then we thought about it. And then we decided to take Gyles and his wife Barbara up on their invitation.

At first, the idea was to visit them during the World Cup soccer championships in 2010. But they quickly pointed out that prices would be higher then, and so would crime.

Searching for another rationale, we decided last winter that the best way to celebrate my 60th birthday would be to do it in South Africa. New country, new continent, and a mix of old friends and new.

Last month, that's just what happened. Thanks to an incredible deal for tickets from South African Airways that I read about in The Wall Street Journal, Connie and I were able to make our way to Cape Town for a fraction of what it would normally cost.

There, we were met at the airport by Gyles and enveloped in a cocoon of hospitality unlike anything I've ever encountered.

The first few nights were spent with Gyles and Barbara at Thelema, the winery they operate in the Stellenbosch region. Then it was down to the Keurboomsstrand/Plettenberg Bay area on the Indian Ocean, where Barbara and the Felicity Johnson, the wife of another winemaker, own a beach house.

And that's where, despite the hospitality, it could have gotten complicated.

After all, just because you were friends with a guy more than 40 years ago, there are no guarantees that you'll get along with his friends at all.

Except we did.

Dave and Felicity Johnson greeted us as if they'd known us for years. And before we'd even unpacked our bags, another couple - Graham and Felicity Young - had welcomed us as friends as well.

Graham and Felicity aren't winemakers; they operate a lovely bed and breakfast just down the road. I met Graham the day before my birthday; the next day, he had baked me a birthday cake. It doesn't get much better than that.

Over the next few days, traveling as American hitchhikers on a South African vacation, we joined the Webbs, Johnsons, and Youngs camping out in the bush at Addo Elephant National Park.

We were instantly part of the family.

Of the country, there is so much to say that it's difficult to know where to begin.

It's incredibly beautiful, with a landscape that seems to change dramatically ever 40 miles or so.

And it's incredibly complicated, with economic, political, racial, and social problems that sometimes seem daunting.

But we'll always think of it first and foremost as a country where friends of a friend become friends forever.[[In-content Ad]]