All posts by Judy

Johannesburg

South Africa, ,

A few first impressions, probably pretty disjointed as I’m writing through the haze of jetlag …

We’ve been here for a day now and managed to stay up till 7pm last night by keeping busy most of the day. We stayed at the Mercure Hotel and Conference Centre at Bedfordview in an apartment with cooking facilities, but no cooking utensils. That’s okay, I wasn’t planning on cooking anyway. I just have to give a mention to the shower set-up. It’s so astonishingly poorly thought-out, I shake my head every time I walk into the bathroom. A hand-held shower mounted above the bath, but the hose from the tap to the shower-head is so short that the only way to get water on the upper half of your body is to kneel or sit in the bath.

There’s a large shopping centre right opposite the hotel, so after we checked in we went and found second ( or was it third?) breakfast at a Wimpy. Seems to be a popular chain here – there is also one at the shopping centre on the other side of the road. Food is cheap – using our trusty Big Mac Index, a medium Big Mac Meal is around AUD $5.00. We had dinner last night at a Spur Steak Ranch, which is a US Wild West themed steakhouse. 2 mains and 2 huge beers cost $26.  We wandered around a couple of supermarkets to get a feel for what’s available. We need to buy food and camping gear before we head ‘out bush’. Loads of familiar shops in the shopping centres – Gloria Jeans, Jay Jays Jeans, Typo and like most shopping centres around the world, the majority of it is clothes. So many clothes.

Intersections with traffic lights are a popular place for people to try and make a bit of money – washing windscreens, selling flowers, begging, advertising. Car wash services are set up in shopping centre carparks, fluoro vest-wearing men watch over cars in sections of car parks for a small fee. Lots of mini-buses which seem to be a popular form of transport for people who don’t own cars, although the main form of transport for a lot of people seems to be walking.

Weather here is mild. Jo-burg is at 1600 metres, and so far we’ve had cool mornings and pleasant sunny days. The hills around the city are still green, whereas at home by this time of the year they have been brown for several months. Lots of similar garden flowers and shrubs to the ones we grow at home.

We visited a fresh food market which seems to be a chain, can’t remember its name. Great fruit and vegetables, plus meat, fish, prepared take-home meals and a few shelves of groceries.  I noticed 5kg bags of beetroot for $2.50 sitting beside bags of potatoes and sweet potatoes. The butcher section sold various cuts of ostrich.

I sat next to a South African woman from Capetown who had been to Whyalla to visit her daughter and family. As we were disembarking, she reminded me that we need to be a lot more careful here than at home. I don’t feel unsafe here, but I am more watchful and careful of my belongings … no leaving my bag on the floor beside my seat like I do at home without even thinking about it.

Okay, that’s enough rambling. Time to go and do some modern-day hunter-gathering.

The shower for very very small people
The shower for very very small people
The electrified fence that runs on top of the wall that surrounds the hotel
The electrified fence that runs on top of the wall that surrounds the hotel
Looking over the compound wall

 

The Plan

South Africa, , ,

After our very successful camping trip in the USA and Canada in mid-2014, we started thinking about where we might like to go next. We keep thinking about South America, but feel that we might be better off waiting until after Brazil has hosted the 2016 Olympics. Neither of us has visited any part of the African continent, so that seemed as good a reason as any to plan a 6-week camping trip there. Greg read a great article on DIY Africa by Seth Kugel, who writes for the New York Times as The Frugal Traveller which got the cogs turning and so our travel plans got underway.

We got inexpensive return tickets to Johannesburg using as many Air Miles as we could then we paid the balance – the Singapore Airlines office in Adelaide were very helpful in explaining how to do it because information on their website was a bit … thin.

So … we’re sitting at Adelaide Airport, having checked in 40kg of camping gear. We’ll hire a car at Jo’burg Airport, stay in a nice hotel overnight, buy more camping gear and food and head north to Gaborone, the capital of Botswana. Fans of the Alexander McCall Smith No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series of books will know exactly what I mean when I say that I’m going to be keeping an eye out for the Tiny White Van. If I find it, there will be photos, I promise.

What we’re really like to do is drive through Botswana to Zambia to see the Victoria Falls, but we’re not sure if the rental car company will let us do that, or whether we’ll have to switch to Plan B … or even Plan C. We’re also planning on spending time in Kruger National Park, and also want to travel  south through Sth Africa to Capetown and Durban. As always what we think we’ll do and what we end up doing may not be the same things … but come along for the ride and we’ll try and keep you up to date as we go along.

The Sturt Desert Pea in the banner photo is from my mum’s garden. I found the photo of the King Protea online, but we’ll keep an eye out for some to photograph.