Craig, Ross and Bryan in South Africa

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Episode 1 (8.9.2011)
We made it - Africa, the dark continent.
We arrived safely in Johannesburg, South Africa, yesterday.
The Qantas flight over was great for two reasons.
1. Plane only half full and the three of us each got a row of seats to ourselves.
2. I mistakenly thought that we would fly West, over Australia, over Perth and across the Indian Ocean. No - we went south from Sydney , over Gippsland, over Tassie and across the Southern Ocean. This meant that we skirted Antarctica, and we saw icebergs ! Fantastic.
We arrived at Johannesburg and had a woman waiting to pick us up and deliver us to our accommodation in leafy Melville in the northern suburbs. We drove past some ramshackle, scary looking suburbs, and past some lovely upmarket suburbs too. The immediate thing that hit us was all the high level security - houses with high walls and/or barbed wire around their properties. We arrived at Melville Turret Guesthouse which is lovely. We were told it is safe to walk the streets, so we took ourselves up to trendy Seventh Street. By this time is was dusk. The street was great - full of groovy pubs,. bars, shops, ranging from a leather fetish shop to funky book and clothes shops. We of course descended upon a funky bar and had some food and drinks (2 cocktails, three beers and three burgers plus fries all for the equivalent of under $30 AUD. )There were exuberant young black guys in the bar, one of whom insisted on giving us all amorous hugs. (No we were not in a gay bar !) .We had a good time, even though our "body time " was 5am..
Due to jetlag, we awoke at 5am and watched the sunrise over town. Already I have seen lots of great birds and we have not even left the city yet. Forecast is for blue sunny skies and 27 degrees all week.
well.,.so far so good, that's all for now,. We are off on a tour of Soweto shortly.
Bye,
Craig, Ross and Bryan

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Comments

[Patricia Langfield]

Posted to Mum & Dad
Printed them out and Posted To Mum and Dad. Glad you are both having a good time. Love NanaWinton