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Published: March 8th 2012
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Sterkfontein Caves You might remember a couple of entries previously that I mentioned how my flight to Cape Town had been cancelled by the airline. It's funny how things work out. When I first found out about the flight suspensions, I was pretty annoyed. I think anyone would be. But the day that my plane should have taken off was the day that I was so ill that I needed to be rushed to hospital. If I had had to navigate my way through OR Tambo Airport and take a two hour flight that day...well, it just wouldn't have happened. No amount of money in the world could have made me do it. So I guess it's true what they say; things happen for a reason.
I'm now in Pretoria. Going to Cape Town is not an option. I start volunteering at the Lion Park tomorrow, and the day I finish there is the day I fly to New York. The only way I could get to Cape Town is by changing my New York flight, but paying £130 for the pleasure of doing so is just not in my budget. So I can add this as yet another reason to come
back to South Africa.
This morning I ventured out of my B&B (an absolutely gorgeous place called Elonda, run by a lovely couple who can't do enough for you) and I headed to the Cradle of Humankind for a history and geology lesson. The Cradle of Humankind is an area of land where some of the oldest hominid fossils ever found were excavated; in fact, excavation continues today, with a full skeleton set to be removed in the next four months after fourteen years of careful and meticulous excavation work using dentist drills. I've never really taken much of an interest in this sort of thing, but now that I've been here and seen the excavation site - it's underground, locked behind huge iron doors with floor to ceiling bars - I'll pay more attention than I would if I was at home.
At the Cradle of Humankind are the Sterkfontein Caves, limestone caves that go deep under the ground and are adorned with glittering crystals and strange rock formations. An eerie lake lies at the bottom of the caves, and nobody knows how deep it goes. Three divers were once instructed to find out, and the furthest
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Voortrekker Monument they recorded was forty metres before one of them went missing in the lake and turned up dead six days later. Since that, no further dives have been conducted.
The caves were narrow and claustrophobic, full of stairs and small crawl spaces, and I was surprised by how difficult I found it. At first I reluctantly supposed that maybe I just wasn't fit enough, but then I noticed that the large couple who had joined in the tour (kudos to them for getting through the narrow parts, by the way) didn't look as exhausted as I felt. I realised that being ill had left me feeling weak, and that maybe I had been pushing myself too much on my first morning back out in the real world. I felt tired enough that I could have just gone straight to sleep, but I had a whole afternoon of activities planned.
My first stop after leaving the Cradle of Humankind was the Voortrekker Monument, which commemorates the Pioneers of South Africa and the history of the Afrikaner people. It was a pretty impressive structure, with beautiful statuary and a quite spectacular frieze that tells the entire story of the Voortrekkers
from start to finish. And the story is, for those not familiar - I wasn't until today - is that in the 1830s and 1840s, pioneers left the Cape Colony and emigrated into what is now the interior of South Africa. The Voortrekkers negotiated a treaty with the Zulu king, but he doublecrossed them and killed their leader. Later, he sent an army of twelve thousand Zulu warriors against the Voortrekkers, and in the Battle of Blood River, the outnumbered Voortrekkers somehow defeated the Zulu army.
After this, I visited Church Square and Union Buildings, two spots that have made it onto every 'Things to See in Pretoria' list. I wasn't overly impressed with Church Square, but that's most likely just because I was desperate to get back to my accommodation and fall into bed. There are some lovely looking buildings around it though, including the Palace of Justice, where Nelson Mandela was charged with treason and sentenced to life in prison. Locals have picnics or do homework on the green areas, and pigeons flock around the statue of Paul Kruger that stands in the middle of the Square. Aside from the Palace of Justice, and the Old Government
Building (called the Ou Raadsaal) opposite, it could have been any Square in the world.
The Union Buildings were quite something else though, and I'm glad that I made the effort to go there. The President has his offices there, and it is where he receives visiting dignitaries and politicans. It wasn't this that interested me, but the grandeur of the building itself. The architecture is beautiful, and manicured gardens that are open to the public for picnics are spread out in tiered levels in front of the building. It was a good way to end a quick fire tour of Pretoria, a city that couldn't be more different to Johannesburg. I'm not sure which one I like best. Pretoria feels safer, and more upmarket, but Jo'burg has a special vibe about it that I didn't get here.
As of tomorrow, I'll have just two weeks left in South Africa. Although there's a part of me that's excited about the next part of my trip, the greater part of me doesn't want to leave this special continent. I fell in love with it the moment I stepped off the plane six weeks ago in Nairobi, and I'm not
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View of Pretoria quite ready to start winding up my travels here.
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Charlie Powell
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i want to go to south africa
wooooooow i want to go to africa sooo bad now such a shame we ccould do this continent together!!! xxxxxxx