What a relief it was to be back in Buenos Aires when I did – just in time for my flight to South Africa. What a mess it would have been if I were delayed in El Calafate just one additional day! There is only one airline in the world connecting South America with southern Africa and they only have three flights a week. In addition, for the first time in my life I have scheduled myself to take a prolonged Intrepid tour – around southern Africa. I could not find a flight that hooked up perfectly with the tour, so I booked the last available flight before the tour to ensure I made it in time. If I had not gotten back into Buenos Aires in time to catch my South African Airways flight to Johannesburg, I would have been late for my tour and I doubt they would have waited.
The flight into Johannesburg was a nine hour redeye flight that left me pretty exhausted by the time we arrived. I did manage to score an exit row seat as well as an empty seat next to me – making it a poor man’s business class seat? Nevertheless, I found it difficult to get to sleep. I arranged for my Johannesburg hotel to meet me at the airport and shuttle me in to where they are located in the center of town.
I was very please that the hotel checked me in on arrival (around 10am), even though most hotels I have stayed in have been fussy about letting me check in before their usual 2:30pm check-in time. It can be a real drag to be forced to run around town exhausted from an overnight flight waiting for them to finally let you lie down. The hotel is very nice and right downtown. The room they gave me is huge. More like an apartment, it includes a full kitchen, full bath, and big floor to ceiling windows that overlook my own big private patio.
The room includes free breakfast, which is something nice, but something I’ve grown a bit wary of over my South American travels. Most of those breakfasts consisted of nothing more than coffee and a croissant, so they were hardly worth it. It was downright unusual to find anyone in Argentina offering eggs for breakfast – something just unheard of in that part of the world, even though finding sandwiches or burgers with eggs on top of them was fairly common. But the breakfast I was offered in Johannesburg was an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord feast of all kinds of food, so it has been much appreciated and gotten me out of lunch requirements.
On the whole, most people I have encountered in Johannesburg have been very warm, very helpful, and very friendly. In some ways I don’t feel the place is all that exotic, perhaps due to my friendships and experience with South Africans in the past and the fact that South Africa is a Commonwealth country (as Australia is) where people speak and understand English (even though they often speak Zulu among themselves), they drive and walk on the left, and live in one of the more modern countries I have encountered on my worldwide journey. Like many countries that do a lot of mining, South Africa is booming economically and attracting its share of immigration problems from people in less fortunate parts of the world.
The city of Johannesburg seems much safer than I was expecting. There are security guards on almost every street corner around the center of town. The city also looks as though it is on the cusp of a renaissance with many old buildings that would have appeared dated ten years ago suddenly looking like they are about to become very trendy in the near future. Most seem to be in excellent shape and devoid of the graffiti that seemed to plague Buenos Aires. A South African guy I met back in Queensland in December mentioned that it was rapidly changing for the better and he was keen to return to his hometown from his life in London with his British fiancée once they married. I can see now what he was referring to.
Like many cities I have visited, including Seoul, Quito, Santiago, and Buenos Aires, Johannesburg has its own hop-on hop-off double decker bus tour available. It turns out that they’ve all related and offer discounts on each other’s tours. I thought taking the tour would probably be the easiest way to get around Johannesburg and to the Apartheid Museum. The tour is new here (only four months?) and there are not a whole lot of passengers, but the staff seemed very keen to be as helpful as possible. There were even staff members at each of the stops to escort you into many of the attractions.
Unfortunately, the problem with most of these tours is in not being able to see everything in such a short space of time – but I did manage to squeeze in a quick hop up to the top of Africa’s tallest building for a 360 degree view of the city as well as a visit to the Apartheid Museum. There were other places I wouldn’t have minded seeing as well, but ran out of time.
My biggest chunk of time went to seeing the Apartheid Museum. It was probably one of the more emotionally draining museums I’ve ever seen due to it being a topic of such recent and well publicised history. And the fact that contrasted so much with the friendly and warm people I was continually meeting on the street. The museum is very large and extensive and very well put together. So many of the displays contained news reports and items I remembered so clearly seeing on the news when they happened. There was even one of the big riot police trucks used to combat protesters on display. It certainly resonated much more that just about any other museum I have ever been to. There was also a big temporary exhibit on Nelson Mandela there that was also very interesting.
Another aspect of Johannesburg worth mentioning is that it served as Gandhi’s home for a full 21 years! I always knew he had lived here and the experience of dealing with Apartheid got him started on his life mission, but I wasn’t aware it was for so long – as I’ve lived in Australia (which is quite a while). There are a number of references to him including a Gandhi Square and a big statue of him nearby.