Wrong Views ....

Day 26 - Jo'burg (South Africa) - 24/8/09

Woke up this morning in Damien's room knowing that it would be a very emotional day as everybody who I had been travelling with for the last 3 weeks would be heading off to Jo'burg or to Cape Town whilst I was flying down to Jo'burg to start my 5 weeks independent adventure. Everybody was waking up and I wondered over to the Anna's tent to find out what had happened to Juliette. It turns out that she had stayed out all night and still wasn’t back, I helped Anna take her tent down. Everybody was at breakfast and I managed to sneak my last breakfast on the truck (thanks Robin!), eggs on toast. When it was time for everybody to go, it was a time for tears to start flowing, the trucks pulled out and I waved them off.

My transfer to the airport was at 1200 and when it came, it turned out to be an old and battered ATC truck, exactly the same as the one which I had spent the last 3 weeks living in, the windscreen had a couple of big cracks in it and it had no seatbelts but apart from that I was told that it was completely safe. At Victoria Falls airport I checked in and was greeted with a wave of questions; like an integration by the check in staff - “What do you do for British Airways? Where do you work? Etc. Etc.”

Upon landed I remembered that my hostel in Jo'burg was in Yeoville, the taxi driver had to stop and ask directions and to be honest I wish that he didn’t have to as most of the houses had electric fences round them and the ones that didn’t had smashed windows. The hostel itself was lovely and the staffs were just so helpful. I didn’t do too much that evening except for getting a pizza to eat and was given some advice by the staff; just 2 pieces of wisdom; 1) Don’t go out at night and 2) Don’t take out anything you cant afford to lose! With those pieces of advice I went and got a very early night!!

Day 27 - Soweto - 25/8/09

Woke up and the first thing I did was use the internet; catching up on emails and Facebook. Was going to do a tour of Soweto at 1100, Patience, one of the staff at the hostel phoned up Ben to check that he was still coming at 1100 to pick me up and that it had been booked. When Patience spoke to Ben, he knew nothing about me. Luckily for me Ben wasn’t doing anything that day so he was able to take me a little later than planned.
I jumped into Ben's car and we were off. Ben was telling me how Jo'burg started off as a little village set up for the gold rush and as more and more people came the village turned into a town which in turn turned into the city it is today.

He asked me what my view of Soweto was as we drove into it and I kind of told him how I viewed it like the favellas of Rio; Ben said that whilst that might have been true years ago, Soweto is non full of houses that the South African government has built for the poorest of the poor; actually there is very little shanty type housing in Soweto now; in fact there's a whole area that is owned by South African footballers. We drove around Soweto until we got to the Hector Pieterson Museum. Hector Pieterson was a boy who got killed in the apartheid riots in Soweto. He has been turned into an icon; symbolising what the blacks had to go though to get to where they are now. In fact there is a very symbolic pictures of Hector's body being carried by another boy with Hector's sister by their side. It was a very sobering experience; walking around looking at the accounts and pictures of the events. The next stop was Nelson Mandela's house, to be honest it was very busy and a little on the expensive side so I decided not to go inside.

Ben was telling me how this very street is famous as it is the birthplace of not 1 but 2 noble peace prize winners; Mandela and Desmond Tutu. After the tour I got Ben to drop me off at Eastgate Mall as I wanted to get my hair cut but I didn’t find anywhere inside the mall to get it cut; what a waste of money and time! Again, was in bed early as I've been advised to go out in the evening

Day 28 - Jo'burg - 26/8/09

I'm really starting to hate Jo'burg; I mean if you want to get anywhere you have to take a taxi cab instead of the cheaper minibus taxi's. I mean you can take a minibus taxi but being white it falls into that “not recommended” category. The main thing I’m not like about Jo'burg is that every time I jump into a taxi cab it seems to cost me between £10 and £20 for what feels like a small journey.

Yeoville is a completely black area; well 98%, I’ve seen a few white people wondering around in small groups. I stand out like a sore thumb. Apparently was talking to Patience and she was telling how this area used to be a Jewish community until the blacks came and drove them out of this area. I had to go back down to Eastgate Mall as I needed to get my South African SIM card registered as until I get it registered I can’t use it, apparently the government are trying to crack down on fraud and crime, this give them the ability to tap phone lines and listen in somebody told me. Not sure how true that is though. I went in with one of the girls from the hostel; my guide taking me in a minibus taxi, which to be honest I felt completely safe; maybe that was down to being with a black person, who knows. I had with me a receipt from the hostel and a photocopy of my passport (cause there’s no way in hell I’m actually walking around with my passport in my pocket!). I got to the shop to be told that they actually did require seeing my passport proper and I was fuming; I couldn’t believe that they wouldn’t do it with a photocopy but wanted to see my passport. The rest of the day was spent chilling out do the few tourist sites that Jo'burg has to offer. I caught a taxi down to Gold Reef City and the Apartheid Museum. Gold Reef City gives you the ability to go down a disused gold mine and see what the working conditions were like during the days of the gold rush; it was already 1530 and I was aware that the mine shaft probably shut at around about 1630 or something so I had a quick peek around the Apartheid Museum and the Nelson Mandela exhibition. I made my way over to Gold Reef City and the mine shaft, only to be told that the last tour went at 1530, peed off I wondered back over to the Apartheid Museum and called the driver up and arranged for him to pick me up and take me back to the hostel. The driver was half an hour late blaming the rush hour traffic which I didn’t see on the way back; that kind of topped my day off!

Day 29 - Jo'burg - 27/8/09

Today, was rally a chilled out day trying to get stuff sorted for going to the Drakensburg Mountain Range. Stayed in until about the 1300 when we went down to the Eastgate Mall. Me and a couple of the other people in the hostel got the minibus taxi; which costs R6.50 instead of like R70 in a normal taxi. Everybody had stuff to do but my job was simply to go to the MTN store and get my phone sorted. I walked in armed with my accommodation receipt and my actual passport; I’ve got to say I didn’t feel overly comfortable carrying it around with me but if it meant my SIM card could get activiated it would just have to be something that got done. The guy in the shop said that the system to register the SIM cards was down and the earliest they could get it done was tomorrow at the earliest.

I wondered around the mall with everybody else who were doing some shopping; I was only wandering around so that I could share a taxi with everybody, I didn’t have R70. Stein and one of the girls arrived outside as we were waiting outside for the taxi to arrive; the driver had said 8 minutes on the phone, I was starting to get impatience as I had forgotten that I was now in Africa and that was 8 African minutes! We got into the taxi and Stein asked if we wouldn’t mind taking a detour so that he could go and speak to his new landlady. We made the detour and as Stein got out to chat to his landlady, we stayed in and chatted to the taxi driver; his name was Frank, he was quite cool actually, we talked about the Olympics, London, Jo'burg, the Olympics, Football, him and my self. The 15 minutes that Stein was out of the taxi seemed to fly by. I asked Frank if I could have his baseball cap and he said yes; it was pretty battered and ragged but it was still cool. The evening was another boring Jo'burg evening, the highlight being Stein cooking an awesome vegetable curry; it was soooo nice! As the evening grew to a close and packed my bags; I was glad to be leaving Jo'burg but not the hostel.

Day 30 - Underberg - 28/8/09

I arrived in Durban airport at about midday after my flight from Jo'burg was delayed. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a really small MTN shop and on the off chance that they could actually get my SIM card registered. I didn’t have any accommodation papers; only my passport but he was like don’t worry about, hits some buttons on a keyboard, looked at my passport and then bob your uncle and fanny's your aunt, the job was done. I waited outside for my transfer down to the Drakensburg Mountain, it finally turned up about some 45 minutes late and defiantly was not was I was thinking, instead of a big-ish minivan, I was greeted by a little clapped out banger of a car that was already carrying 3 people. I climbed in it and hoped for the best.

We drove for a couple of hours until we reached Pietermaritzburg; a small sleepy university town where we stopped; in a McDonalds car park. We were waiting for a minibus to take us onwards to a smaller town called Underberg. I was getting quite impatience and the driver, Rusty kept on telling me to chill out, this is African time. Fucking African time!!! We waited for 45 minutes until a girl came and told the driver that he needed to take her back to her B&B to pick up his bags. We all packed in, me on the basics that it was better than waiting in a McDonalds car park. We got hopeless lost, almost crashed a couple of time and the driver was confusing the girl giving direction by when she said “its left here”, the driver would go “Right” not in the sense of the direction but as in correct, this really seemed to confuse the poor girl so much. Eventually we found the B&B and made our way to the McDonalds car park. Rusty, the driver kept on telling me to chill out and it would be soon. I needed to go to the toilet and, according to the law of sod whilst I was in the toilet, the minivan actually turned up.

The minibus arrived and the actually journey down to Underberg was actually very uneventful until we reached the Drakensburg Mountain range; the scenery was absolutely breath taking! At about 1700 we reached Underberg, the main town for access to the Sani Pass and Lesotho. Here we stopped for supplies and waited for another car to take us up to the Sani Lodge backpackers, where I would be stopping. The car actually turned out to be the same car driven by the same driver. It had been so much of a random journey! Eventually I got to the lodge, found my bed and paid for my tour for tomorrow. I went to bed fairly early as otherwise I would have eaten far too much cheap homemade cake and drunk too much beer!!!

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Part of trip: African Adventures Of A Nobody

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