Johannesburg!

Smooth flight and transfer to my hotel in Johannesburg (City Lodge Katherine Street in Sandton, and I definitely recommend it). First thing I did was take a super hot, super long bubble bath and scrubbed my nails clean. Followed by a shower. I think I used more water on Monday than I have in the last three weeks combined. After unpacking everything in my bag and shaking it to make sure I was not carrying a scorpion with me (I don't know if I mentioned that we had found one in our tent on Sunday !!!) I headed to the restaurant attached to the hotel, the White Boy Sheeben. I believe a sheeben is a place where black people used to go to drink during the time when they weren't allowed to drink, and the restaurant celebrates the combining of cultures. It was great and I enjoyed catching up on the news with their free wifi (the NBA is going into a lockout!?!).

I booked a full day tour for Tuesday covering Johannesburg, Soweto, and the Apartheid Museum. I'm glad I did it, but as with the Nairobi city tour it was a bit disappointing. The highlight of Johannesburg was a traditional healer shop (the only place we really got out of the car) where there were dead animal parts hanging everywhere, furs, calabashes for drinking traditional beer, walking sticks, and tons of other cool and spooky stuff. We also saw Constitution Hill, Mandela's current house (we could actually drive past because he is living in the countryside at the moment), their huge soccer stadium, and the general streets of downtown.

Soweto was originally short for South Western Township and was an area where millions of blacks were forced to relocate during apartheid. It's still almost exclusively black, and poorer than Johannesburg, but does have some nice areas. It's also bigger than Johannesburg in terms of population and is the most densely populated city in South Africa. We saw everything from shacks stealing electricity from street lights to Winnie's current house, Bishop Desmond Tutu's house, and Mandela's previous house. It is the only road on which two Nobel Prize winners lived. We also spent an hour at the Hector Pieterson Museum which commemorates the 1976 student uprisings and deaths. Interesting but detailed and full of annoying school kids.

Finally we made it to the apartheid museum. Your ticket assigns you to either a white or non white group and you have to go through the corresponding entrance. After this exciting start the museum was a bit dull. Heavy on details and black and white photos and footage, light on any sort of differentiated exhibits. The special exhibit was on Mandela's life. All very interesting to me, but combined with his book a bit heavy.

After that I was lucky enough to meet Chad (the leader from Bush Camp) for dinner at a pub he liked right around the corner from my hotel. We had a great time; he introduced me to a bunch of shots popular in South Africa. This morning he took me for brunch (so much better than the city tour the day before!) and then we went bowling and played pool! Who would have thought I'd be doing such normal things in Africa? It was tons of fun to stop being a tourist at last and just hang out with someone interesting! We also walked through the botanical gardens (a good thing to do with a ranger I figured!) - funny story here. We stopped to sit on the grass and these cute dogs came over to see me....I leaned over to pet one and it started jumping on me and knocked me all the way over and was all tangled up in my hair...Chad was collapsed and laughing too hard to help me. My wonderfully clean plane clothes and hair got covered in grass....which made it so much funnier to him....it was pretty amusing.

He was so sweet to drop me at the airport and have dinner with me here. Am now settled in the lovely SA lounge and will be boarding in a few minutes. 17 or 19 hour flight...can't be bothered to figure it out. All I know is it is long and I will be home in 26 hours!

What a trip....definitely sad to say goodbye to Africa and all my new friends here, but lots to look forward to at home!!