Category: Johannesburg

Johannesburg, Kruger National Park, South Africa

Kruger National Park

Joel

The Holiday Inn was a bit plush and included a free breakfast, but unfortunately there would be none of that for us! Instead we were instructed to rise at 4:15am so we could be downstairs with our stuff by 4:45am to pack the van and get on the road by 5am. Ugh!

I hardly slept anyway. In fact, I hardly slept since arriving in South Africa. Jet lag? Altitude? Johannesburg isn’t that high at about 1500 meters, but it is significant enough to possibly play a role. Not sure what was keeping me awake, but I ended up sleeping in the car much of our long day of driving on our way out to Kruger National Park.

Along the way there we stopped to see a few of the big sights. Blyde Canyon was pretty spectacular and purported to be the 3rd largest in the world. We also stopped to see some natural pot holes along a river with waterfalls as well as some overlooks including Heaven’s Window (?).

I sat next to one of the Germans on the drive. She had lived in Australia for about five years so she was familiar with the place. When I mentioned to her that in some ways South Africa was somewhat disappointing because it was so similar to Australia she agreed with me. Of all the countries I have been through on this trip, South Africa seemed to be the most developed and modern – sans the U.S. and South Korea. It has a dry landscape very similar to Australia but, of course, the wildlife is completely different.

Kruger National Park is very nice, huge, and quite impressively maintained. There is a huge fence around it to keep the wild animals from chomping on the neighbours. Overall there are about 50 campgrounds in the park, each protected by electric fencing, but only 5 or six of those include shops and other modern facilities. Each of the big camp grounds were surrounded by an electric fence and electric cattle grid at gate to keep vicious animals out. We ended up pitching our tents along one of the border fences and saw hyena prowling right along fence line right behind our tents just a few feet away.

The gear our tour company has provided is less than impressive. Obviously purchases for long-term use and bought on the cheap from South African companies, everything seems heavy and clumsily designed. The tents are all made of heavy canvas and steel poles held together awkwardly by rope and hooks that will create some hefty calluses on our fingers by the end of this trip. All of the cooking gear is make out of cast-iron metal and the plates and cups burn your skin because they are also make out of metal. Definitely old school camping.

Some meals are cooked for us by our tour guides (who are good at it) and others are cooked by us or purchases by us while we’re on the road. We all help in cleaning up and doing whatever other responsibilities need doing.

One of the Germans complained to me at one point about how expensive the trip was and I totally agreed, based on what we were getting. I’ve always shied away from these prepaid trips due to the costs because you know half your money (at least) is going into the pockets of corporate executives / offices in expensive Western countries.

I’ve always known that it is much cheaper to just rock up in a country and plan your tour with local tour companies from there, but I was always a bit concerned with security in Southern Africa and thought it would be safer to visit this part of the world with a group. Johannesburg is, as we know, birthplace of the carjacking – and there have been plenty of other gossip from other travellers and government warnings about the place over the years. I do think it is getting a lot safer than it use to be.

South Africa does seem a lot safer than I was expecting, but one of my fellow travellers did get done by a ATM con artist. He was an older house painter from New Zealand who obviously didn’t read all the government travel warnings about the place because they all seem to focus on the ATM scams as being the biggest thing to watch out for. He was even offered assistance by someone to help him with his transaction – part of one of the big scams.

It all happened on the first day on our way out to Kruger National Park when we stopped in a small town for a break. The scam works by having a criminal tamper with the ATM by inserting a plastic device into the card slot that traps your ATM card so you think the machine has eaten it. Instead, the criminal knows how to get your card out by pulling his camouflaged plastic device out to release the card after you give up and leave. The card won’t be of any value to the criminal without knowing your PIN number, so they have to hover around the area to watch you type it in before they step in to retrieve the card. Sometimes they will offer the victim ‘assistance’ when they’re really trying to get a better look.

In the end, our fellow traveller lost about $300 before he was able to call his bank and cancel the card. Unfortunately for him, now he has no access to his money without his ATM card and has been forced to make expensive credit card cash withdrawals. The safest ATMs are those inside banks and malls that heavily used and are guarded by uniformed guards, so that’s what I look for. So far for me, no problem.

Once we arrived in our camp site and pitched our tents, we had a short time to get ready for an night time safari. The night time safari’s happen when all the nocturnal animals are up and about, which are most of the big famous ones, but require viewing with spotlights which can make photography a bit tricky. We saw all kinds of great things on our safari, including elephants, zebras, giraffes, monkeys, zebus, and buffalo. Perhaps the most impressive, however, were the pride of lions we found lounging out on the road. They didn’t seem too phased by our safari bus and hung around quite a while for pictures before they were coaxed to move on out of our way. When they did they would walk around the back of the bus where I was sitting and give us a death stare from only about three meters away as they passed. It was really quite chilling!

Johannesburg, South Africa

The Other Side of the Tracks

Joel

Moved from my nice downtown hotel with huge room, full kitchen and bath, and free shuttle service anywhere in town to a more expensive colder Holiday Inn in a wealthy suburb with a smaller room and half bath – just in order to link up with my tour group. The Holiday Inn had a few advantages (namely fast wifi in the rooms), but was much more corporate and less personal than the center city hotel I was staying in earlier. Generally speaking, Holiday Inns overseas are more upscale than the ones in the U.S.

I had to get a few things done to get ready for the trip including finding a few safe ATM machines to withdraw the $630 cash we were supposed to hand in for our “kitty” that evening. The kitty is used to purchasing food and other incidental expenses along the way. There are lots of warnings about ATM scams in South Africa, so I have been trying to be extra vigilant about security.

I also wanted to get a local SIM card so I could use my phone and iPad for calls and Internet access while I was in the country. I tried getting a SIM card earlier with the assistance of my other hotel, but it never worked. They are required to be registered with a local address but even though my chauffeur offered hers it was never accepted as being registered properly.

The Holiday Inn was just around corner from Nelson Mandela Mall. Of course, that wasn’t the original name in this once white neighborhood, but it is now. I was advised by my hotel that was the place to go to get my errands done. Sure enough, I found the place to be pretty safe and full of very publicly guarded ATMs. I was also able to find a phone company that could get me fixed up with a working SIM card. I had to bring a letter from the Holiday Inn stating that I was staying there one night, and for some reason that satisfied the residency requirement.

By the end of the afternoon it was time to meet my fellow tour participants and trip leaders. The trip leaders were both black South Africans and they happened to be related. The main tour guide was about 24 and lived in Soweto and his uncle, obviously older, was the driver. Both seemed very friendly and social, although the younger spoke English a bit more clearly so he was easier to understand.

The rest of the group was smaller than their usual size and consisted of an odd collection of people in their 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s – with one in her twenties. 2 Germans, 2 Australians, 1 New Zealander, and one Canadian. They seemed to represent a mixed bag of professions and educational backgrounds, but all seemed nice and eager to make for a good trip and focus on being a good team and getting along for the duration.

Argentina, Buenos Aires, Johannesburg, South Africa

Joburg Central

Joel

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.