Blogs from Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa, Africa - page 57

History doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes. (Mark Twain) Greetings from South Africa. We are still in Johannesburg, for a week as of yesterday, and it is beautiful. We have been busily looking for opportunities and trying to talk with people, even with the internet down for 3 days and the cell phone snafus. Our phone can apparently receive international calls but not make them until we switch from a prepaid service to a contract service, which requires an address. Also, the service is spotty in this country. We plan to use Skype for international calls (phone calls over the internet), and I have been told that if you are also on the Skype network, we may be able to make calls for free. We are occasionally having translation issues, which is to be expected, even in ... read more

After spending almost three wonderful days in Amsterdam we boarded the long flight to Johannesburg and arrived in the early hours of Friday morning. This time I gave up trying to sleep and watched several movies - but don’t ask me what they were! The Virgin Atlantic flight was so much better than US Airways in cleanliness, quality of food, and service, it was amazing. Watching the sun come up as we approached Johannesburg was really beautiful. The dust that sits in the African atmosphere was lit by the sun and created a bright orange belt and streaks of brilliant pink and gray-blue that stretched along the entire horizon. We caught a cab to the Bahá’í Center, which is in a community called Northriding in Johannesburg. The Bahá’í Center is a former school that the National ... read more

Apparently saying "I know what time it is" a cool way to say you know what's up. Or they just like to see us all look ridiculous. But in reality I have no clue what time it is. it seems like I've been gone for ages...when in reality I haven't even been gone a week. But I'm sure you all miss me so much that you think so too. Or at least I'll keep telling myself that. It's been a crazy whirlwind first several days. We had two birthdays in the first three days, have been to two different cities, several speeches and about 3 museums We got in Sunday evening after 18 hours flying...which I was happily surprised with. I didn't feel too tired, my luggage all showed up and even though my seat was ... read more

Friday morning we flew Air Mauritius from Mauritius to Johannesburg International. We arrived at our hotel around 1:30pm which was close to the airport. We then headed to a large shopping mall where we spent the afternoon after a meal at Nando's restaurantant. The mall had over 250 stores and was quite nice. We were quite impressed with the infrastructure in Johannesburg especially with their motorways. After a quick pizza dinnner we headed back to the hotel for a early night. Saturday morning we headed on a tour of Johannesburg. First we visited downtown which was interesting. Numerous times our tour guide told us to keep the cameras and video camera down as we were going through rough areas. He mentioned they will break the glass if they see valuables at a traffic light. There were ... read more

Sorry the late listing. I have had no access to the net and in fact I am not even sure if this listing will show as the net access I am using is some old-fashion thing called "dilup" apparently! Anyway, I flew rather uneventfully home with my recently injured (possibly broken metatarsal) foot and passed through Joburg in my shortest ever visit to South Africa. One thing worth of note is that Joburg International has, as well as the normal international duty-free and obligatory African curio shops, a small place (turn left after passport control) where you can get a 20 or 30-minute chair massage! I highly recommend this as a way to kill half an hour and prepare for your long haul flight back to London! (Just dont trust the women who work there to ... read more