Jo'Burg

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Despite one South African bloke taking one look at the rather tired looking Nissan and stating "Don't worry lads no-one is going to carjack you in THAT", Raz and Uzi were in constant fear of being car jacked and mugged at every junction in South Africa. So an offer from Nan, Phil, and Haley we met at Kgaswane Park to lead us into Jo'burg to Backpackers Ritz was very welcome as it put the army boys at ease, and it meant we were sure not to get lost.

Not that we doubt your navigations skills lads! 8 )

The first thing that struck us about driving into the burg was how much money there seemed to be about. I have only ever seen as many Mercs, Beemers, Audis, and Porches around Frankfurt, and the main road into the city is flanked by more expensive car dealerships than is really necessary. City in this sense is a little redundant as Jo'burg is more of a sprawl, the city covers a total area of 635 square miles consisting of 6 districts, which themselves consist of smaller suburbs. Jo'burgs size is due mainly to the building boom that arose to house the society that came for the gold mining. Little planning went into the structure of the city then and seemingly since and its growth has surpassed even modern capabilities as the daily power cuts attest. Power Shedding causes daily "planned" power cuts randomly affecting any one of the suburbs for around two hours much to the annoyance of, well everybody really.

We were headed to Backpackers Ritz which is a fairly cool place to stay and seemed popular with the overlanders at the start/end of a trip. Marianne got chatting to one woman traveling with her partner who's ghast was well and truly flabbered when told her we had traveled down through Africa independently. Apparently we were the FIRST independent travelers she had met on an *overland* trip down from Kenya!!! She'd been traveling for months! What the hell did they do? Sleep in the damn truck?!?! Wear ear muffs and a blindfold the whole time?!?! If they didn't even meet other travelers who the hell did they meet!!!? ....Breathe...

Our plan for Jo'burg wasn't really to spend too much time there at all really. The plan was to get Adam's chipped tooth sorted, also get Adam a new pair of glasses after the last pair got flushed over the edge of Vic falls, then head down to the Drakensburg and Lesotho and do some hiking before our flight to Reunion. But an offer of accommodation at Haley and Deans place followed by another offer from Nan and Phil left us little choice but to change our plans and chill with them for a few days and see what we could of Jo'Burg. We managed to get our blog caught up to Botswana and backup all of our pictures, which we hadn't had a chance to do for a while. It was awesome to stop for a few days and have a home even if it was someone else's! There was even a local pub which was just like an English Pub!

Among other things we visited the Apartheid Museum which is one of the best museums we have been to. Brilliantly laid out, and very well set up in terms of multi-media it tells the whole story from the Boer wars, the background to Apartheid and the implementation and workings of Apartheid all the way through to the release of Nelson Mandela, and all the work on the new constitution and finally the elections. It gives a great overview, at the same time as providing loads of detailed background information and very personal accounts if you want it. This is a museum no one should miss if you're ever in the vicinity.

We should say a bit about Joburg which confounded all our expectations, mostly thanks to Phil, Nan, Hayley and Dean. Basically, we really liked it. Everyone knows the reputation it has, and the statistics make grim reading, but the area we stayed in (in the Northern Suburbs) was lovely. Lots of nice houses (some fab huge houses!) lining green suburban streets, loads of great pavement cafes and restaurants with lots of happy Josie residents sipping lots of wine... Huge super-smart shopping malls and nice little independant shops... Clearly these Northern suburbs are the upmarket and primarily white areas. And it's true that all of these nice houses have big walls topped with razor wire or electric fences around them, plus 24 hour armed response security. But it seemed like a great place to live. Also it's worth mentioning that it's the first place we've been so far where the usual rules of white = rich, black = poor are blurred. The general trend is still true and there are still huge discrepancies in living standards, access to education etc. But there are plenty of black people in sharp suits drinking the wine in the trendy cafes and shopping in the nice shops too. Which is a refreshing change after most of the other places we have been.

Obviously all is not rosy. Bad things do still happen, even in the nice suburbs with their security. Outside of these areas there are still huge townships, and other very poor areas. Most of the big businesses have moved out of the city centre and into business parks in the suburbs for security reasons. The city centre is still mostly a no-go area at night. But Marianne went for a (daytime) drive in Joburg city centre with Nan and actually quite liked it - because there are not many big businesses there, people actually live there. It feels much more alive than most city centres. There are some historic colonial buildings, and there are big old run down buildings - but always with little shops in front and music coming out. There is a lot of money being poured into urban regeneration and the results are starting to show - new museums and theatres, a pedestrianised area, some cool new architecture and art installations... It really felt like a city centre with a lot of soul and a lot of potential, and one that will realise its potential soon.

Our opinion is obviously based on a brief stay in a nice area with rose-tinted tourist glasses on. But honestly, we really liked Joburg. It's alive, it's a bit rough around the edges but there is so much cool stuff going on and so many fab places to go. It's got so much history, and lots of soul. It feels like it has huge potential for change and improvement (both for the city itself but also for its inhabitants). In short we think Joburg will be THE place to be very soon - well actually we would quite happily live there now!

So big thanks to Phil, Nan, Hayley and Dean for showing us a side of Joburg we would never have seen otherwise. And also for some other slightly unexpected experiences whilst there: eating elephant meat on the BBQ (!), going to a talk by a British Buddhist nun who lived in a Himalayan cave for 13 years, and attending a meeting for some kind of (not quite) pyramid selling scheme type thing with an awesome promotional speech by a mad Korean woman! All part of the Joburg Experience!!!

Anyway, we did manage to leave Joburg once. It was through Phil and Nan that we found out about Mapungubwe and Venetia parks. We decided to head out of town on a little excursion with them.

Mapungubwe is an Iron age settlement in the far North East of South Africa at the confluence of the Limpopo and Shasha rivers, which form the border between SA, Zimbabwe, and Botswana. Rediscovered in 1932 the site had lain untouched since being inexplicably abandoned in 1270 after being home to one of the largest known settlements in South Africa. The Main archeological site Mapungubwe hill was home to the cities royalty and the 23 graves found there have yielded numerous gold artifacts , Glass beads, ceramics, and shells indicating that trade routes to Egypt, India and China were already well established at its height (The Golden Rhino discovered in one of the graves has become the symbol for the park).

We stayed at a lodge inside the park that turned out to be one of the best places we have stayed so far. Air conditioning, funky outdoor showers and a great terrance for sundowners and brais (getting into the lingo now). A group of rondavels nestled in the bottom of a valley are surrounded by some spectacular sandstone formations, mopane scrub (we think) and a scattering of baobabs. You are free to wander around in the vicinity of the lodge if inclined but it is forbidden by the park authorities. Unguided walking is not permitted as large and dangerous game such as leopard and elephant, as well as pythons and black mambas are very common in the park. A comment left by a previous visitor to our lodge saw a leopard on the track right outside our building one morning, but we weren't so fortunate. Being the biggest, angriest, most poisonist snake we could come across we didn't mind missing an encounter with the black mamba though! We also found some very big baobab trees to hug.

The following afternoon we had an appointment with the wild dog trackers of the De Beers Venetia Limpopo Nature Reserve. The reserve itself has been set up on the land surrounding the Venetia Diamond Mine which is owned by De Beers. The intention is to provide a stable area for the monitoring and study of the introduced Wild Dog population. Wild dogs require large areas to survive in the wild and loss of habitat has led to only 450 remaining in the wild in South Africa, with some scattered groups throughout Tanzania, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The only naturally viable population of around 150 dogs exists in the Kruger national park, all other smaller populations on smaller reserves are being handled as a 'metapopulation', whereby the dogs are moved around and introduced to the other groups to provide the required genetic diversity to enable the species to survive, Venetia being one of those sub-populations. Whereas jackals, foxes, and wolves are related to dogs and will often interbreed, Wild Dogs split from that genetic line millions of years ago and so managing the genetic diversity of the various packs is essential to their survival.

We were met at one of the gates by the two trackers that we would be spending the afternoon with. We could have gone in the morning but the dogs are mainly resting then and don't do very much, becoming active in the afternoon and beginning to hunt around 3:30 - 4 PM. The trackers had already found where the dogs were that morning so it was a relatively simple task to follow the vehicle tracks to find them again as long as they hadn't moved far. We moved off in the open top Landy stopping occasionally to locate the direction and distance of the radio collar with the antenna, then moving off again gradually homing in on the dogs' position. After about 30 mins of crashing through very dense undergrowth, mowing down 'bushes' and trying in vain to avoid being flayed alive by the numerous and very spiky thorn trees we stopped in a small clearing with the guide stating "we're here". Looking around us we couldn't see anything resembling a pack of dogs, until we realised they were all around us in the undergrowth. 5 adults and 2 pups a few months old were lounging around in the dry grass, their dappled beige, brown, black and white coats providing a perfect camouflage in the mottled light coming through the trees.

The pack is monitored every day and has become completely habituated to human proximity, only idly lifting their heads to have a look at us for a few seconds before flopping back down unconcerned into the undergrowth. We sat watching them for about 45 mins, most of them sleeping and not really doing very much, some of them wandering over to a different spot then plonking themselves down for another sleep. Then suddenly without any kind of audible cue they all leapt up and began mewling loudly to one another (A very strange noise more like a cat than a dog), the sign that the hunt was about to begin. All but one of the adult dogs gathered in a semi-circle around the Alpha-Female, bowing down in submission in front of her and nuzzling her and eachothers mouths. One obviously wasn't nuzzling properly because they all suddenly turned on one particular individual who instantly submitted to the three dogs on top of it, all the time emitting the strange keening, mewling sound. Then silence. Suddenly again with no audible cue, the Alpha-female with 3 adults heads off purposefully into the bush leaving one adult as babysitter to the two young, who all head off in the direction of the hunting party albeit a little bit slower.

The pack had recently had a number of its members moved to another meta-population and seemed to be struggling with the loss of numbers when it came to making a kill. The pack had not been successful for a few days meaning the young pups hadn't eaten and needed to soon. We drove back out of the bush and along one of the many 4X4 trails criss-crossing the reserve and stopped to get a bearing on the pack, unable to follow them through the dense Mopane scrub we were forced to wait on the trail and hope their hunt took them in our direction. The dogs are highly efficient and intelligent pack hunters and have been known to harry their prey towards the fencing of the park, using it as a barrier for their quarry. They are coursing predators which unlike lions, cheetahs, or leopards which kill by brute force, wild dogs chase their prey until it becomes exhausted eventually finishing it off by disembowelling it. Not too popular at dinner parties I'm sure.

It would have been amazing to watch the hunting behaviour of the dogs which fan out in a line and communicate with eachother throughout the hunt, but they were hunting in scrub that was too dense even for our slightly deranged driver. While we waited under the increasingly ominous black clouds watching the lightening strikes coming ever closer, the pack stopped about 1KM away from the road where we were told by tracker Bob (can't remember his real name) that it looked like they had been successful and had managed to make a kill. Lightening was beginning to strike the hilltops around us with increased frequency and sitting in a big metal thing with a man holding a big metal antenna that depending on your opinion could also be described as a lightening conductor probably wasn't the ideal place to be. We decided to call it a day after having one of our most amazing encounters with Africa's wildlife yet.

The following morning Nan and Phil gave us a lift to Jo'burg airport for our flight to Madagascar then on to Reunion to visit Claire and Julian who we met on safari in Kenya. Our last country was nearly upon us!

Just wanted to say a quick thanks again to the Jo'burg posse, guys we can't thank you enough for your hospitality and generosity to us in the days we spent with you in Jo'Burg, we got to see and do far more than we would have been able to on our own. Also we got to eat some elephant! Thankyou very very much!

Here is our travel map: AdnMaz Travel Map

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Photos

Old balcony
Joburg city centre

Local Cuisine
Joburg city centre

Facade
Joburg city centre

Reflections
Joburg city centre

Old Balcony
Lots of the city centre is being regenerated, but these colonial buildings are not protected yet

Nelson Mandela bridge
Joburg city centre

Dragonfly
On a Stick!!

Fig on a rock
near our chalet in Mapungubwe park

Woodland Kingfisher
Mapungubwe

Post holes for the houses
Prehistoric settlement at Mapungubwe