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Category: africa

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Thirty-nine – Stellenbosch wine route

    What the Stumble Inn did have and what backpackers all have is plenty of information in the form of a notice board and flyers. The flyers were mostly from other backpackers and other forms of budget accommodation plus the odd restaurant and attraction or tour from all parts of Southern and Eastern Africa.
    We even saw a flyer from a backpackers in England! This is really an excellent idea and a great way to pick up info whilst travelling. Some of the busiest places even have an ‘expert’ who can arrange almost everything for you, but most have people with enough knowledge to book tours and accommodation and guide visitors to local attractions.
    We took advantage of this when we saw an ad on the notice board for a six day camping tour of the Kalahari called the “6 day Kalahari experience”. Neil booked it for us but we still had to wait for confirmation.

    Of course for us the biggest attraction in Stellenbosch was the wine route. This is a route that you follow to 29 different wineries, if you’re up to it!
    We decided to hire push bikes and just visit a few. Selecting the flattest route we enjoyed ourselves riding through the vineyards and stopping off at three different wineries.
    Staff at all these places were friendly, informative and happy to give us some of their time. And even though I am unashamedly biased towards Australian wines, the wines were pretty good too, especially at a place called Jordon.
    Most of these wineries had character white washed buildings of the dominant Cape Dutch style with an excellent backdrop of mountains and vines. The fourth and last winery, Spiers, was more like a theme park. Two restaurants, a café, conference and banquet centre, Cheetah Park and a deli from which we bought picnic supplies, made us forget that it was actually a winery. We sat around the lake and ate without a care in the world as we watched families enjoying the park like atmosphere in the warm sunshine.

    All this tranquility and relaxation came to an abrupt end, when we discovered one of the bikes had a puncture. Somehow we had a feeling that a place like this wouldn’t have any facilities to repair punctures for tourists pleasantly warmed by the gentle sipping of wine.
    We rang the Stumble Inn and Neil said he would come and pick up us. He had actually warned us about these giant thorns that are found in the grass. Even though we had been especially careful to avoid riding over grass, one little prick had created another bigger prick in the tyre!

    Well every cloud has a silver lining. Whilst we were waiting we went on the Spiers cellar tour and tasting. Peter, our young host was very entertaining even though he had this annoying habit that’s crept into our society, of saying, “you’re welcome” after being thanked for answering a question.

    We ended up waiting around for a fair bit of time after the tour before Neil picked us up and then charged us for the privilege!

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    A small winery near Stellenbosch beneath the Stellenbosch Mountains
    A small winery near Stellenbosch beneath the Stellenbosch Mountains

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Thirty-eight – Stellenbosch

    It was time to leave Cape Town, not as we thought at the time forever, but for a few days. We were off to the winelands!

    Stellenbosch has two dominant influences, the wine industry and the local student population that studies at the Afrikaans-language University of Stellenbosch. Fortunately these two influences compliment each other and the result is a trendy, lively place that seems to have avoided the social problems that dogs the rest of South Africa. It’s also the second oldest town in South Africa and hence has many well preserved architectural gems. Gleaming white Dutch Gable buildings interspersed with the odd flat or thatched roof were everywhere.
    We attempted to follow a walk trail that passes the most notable buildings and landmarks. But gave up following it exactly. There were just too many to look at!

    We ended up at the Die Bergkelder a big cooperative winery that owns many labels and small vineyards in the area. They have an interesting but fairly pedestrian tour of the winery and we got to taste some wines from their biggest label Fleur Du Cap. Silly thing was that to taste some other wines, you were directed to the main tasting area, which by the time the tour finished at 4.30 pm, had closed. Obviously they don’t need the business that badly!

    The Stumble Inn is a name that conjures up visions of a quaint little guesthouse with period piece architecture and furniture. Not quite. It’s a converted house of no specific beauty that now serves as a Backpackers, our third! …….We were determined to get the hang of these places.

    Neil, the owner (we think) took one look at us and must have decided that at our age we needed to be in a quiet room away from the living areas. It was pretty much the same, soft beds, hand me down furniture, décor that varied in style, standard and colour. A big back yard was dotted with small tents whose occupants were all in a state of undress and trying hard to be the first to get a melanoma.

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    A small winery near Stellenbosch beneath the Stellenbosch Mountains
    A small winery near Stellenbosch beneath the Stellenbosch Mountains

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Thirty-seven – Rhodes Memorial Cape Town

    Just up the road from Observatory, we found the Rhodes Memorial. A little gem of a place!

    Cecil John Rhodes, founder of the famous De Beers Diamond Company and British Empire builder had a big influence on the way Southern Africa was carved up politically in the nineteenth century. He was Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1890-95 but by then he had already made his fortune through Kimberley Diamond Mines and a huge Gold strike near J’burg.
    He established British Colonial power in Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe), Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Bechuanaland (Botswana) to name but a few.
    Mind you he profited personally from these ventures as he established a few more gold mines on the way.

    Strangely enough he’s probably better known for the Rhodes scholarship. Something he established by way of his will devoting most of his wealth to this noble cause. The scholarship even today still sends winners from countries other than Great Britain to study at Oxford University.
    From an Australian point of view the most (in)famous winner was the then beer swilling Bob Hawke, arguably it’s most popular Prime Minister ever.

    Well they’ve built a memorial to this guy (Rhodes, not Hawke) on the slopes of Devil’s Peak. It’s a bit like a mini coliseum, all columns and bronze statues of Lions bordering impressive bluestone granite steps that lead to a bronze bust of Rhodes. Really over the top stuff!

    We found out about this place from a couple of white University students who we chatted to on one of our many minibus trips. We’re harden pro’s now. That same bus was also driven by, much to our surprise, a white guy, so times are definitely changing.

    Actually they said that the little café next to it was worth a visit. In fact it was almost more fascinating than old Rhodes. To coin a phrase “it was just so colonial”. Wicker chairs and small round tables were scattered around the garden.
    Nothing scattered about the young white waiters though, about six of them stood guard at the front of the garden, in their gleaming white shirts and black bow ties, waiting to pounce on unsuspecting prospects. It was the sort of place that had this been England or even Australia, would have made your wallet tremble. But this is South Africa and even our pitiful dollar made it real value for money. Mind you we only had coffee and cake!

    Table Mountain in Cape Town from Robben Island former prison of Nelson Mandela
    Table Mountain in Cape Town from Robben Island former prison of Nelson Mandela

     

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Thirty-six – Cape of Good Hope

    We got an even closer look at the Cape the next day after picking up a cheap hire car from the unknown (to us anyway) Atlantic Car Hire. The plan was to explore the peninsula for the day and drop off the car in Stellenbosch, centre of the South Africa’s wine industry and some 40 odd kilometres away and still be within the free 150 kilometre mileage. What we didn’t realise was that drop off and pick up mileage were also included so we ended up having to fork out more money at the end of it than we had budgeted for!

    Nonetheless the Cape Peninsula is a beautiful spot. This is white man country, large two storey houses, apartment blocks and trendy little village’s front onto the white sandy beaches on both sides of the peninsula.
    No black or coloured townships here, just Cappuccino’s, designer labels and more BMW’s and Merc’s.
    Along the western side the famous Chapman’s Peak Drive is up there with the rest of the world’s great scenic drives. Carved into solid rock, this winding 10 kilometres of bitumen has several lookout points to avoid accidents caused by sightseers slowing down to admire the panoramic scenery at every bend. I’m not sure that worked. Cars screech to snail pace as they suddenly realise that they want to stop at the lookout they are in the process of passing!

    Somehow that day we managed to visit the World of Birds and Groot Constania the Southern hemisphere’s oldest winery, follow Chapman’s Peak Drive, tour the windy Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve and explore the trendy the St. Tropez of South Africa, Clifton.

    We finished up having fish & chips from ‘Fish & Chips at the Rack’ in Hout Bay supposedly “the Capes best Fish and Chips” and then somehow finding our way back to the guesthouse in the dark with an extremely basic map.

    The Cape of Good Cape, a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula, South Africa.
    The Cape of Good Cape, a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula, South Africa.

     

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Thirty-five – Table Mountain Cape Town

    In our previous visit to Cape Town we had taken the cable car to the top of the 1000 metre Table Mountain (and back down again).
    This time, we promised ourselves, we would walk to the top and catch the cable car down. Today was a public holiday and even minibuses would be few and far between so we had to brave another of Andre’s lectures as he very kindly gave us a lift into the city.

    From there it was just a short walk to the main track that winds up the Platteklip gorge the easiest way up from the that side of the mountain.
    There are two very distinct features about Table Mountain, the fact that from a distance it appears to have as the name suggests a completely flat top and it’s “tablecloth”. The tablecloth is cloud that regularly rolls in and covers the top for anything like a few minutes to the rest of the week. This phenomenon usually happens around mid- morning so we wanted to ensure that we got up there early enough to see the 360° views.
    Last time we got to the top we had about 5 minutes before our vision was reduced to about 5 metres. This time we hadn’t even got up to the top before it rolled in, reducing visibility to a few metres and slowing our already slow progress.

    The track was a winding trail that zig zagged awkwardly and was strewn with large boulders and obviously designed for mountain goats. Worse still we had the challenge of having to clamber around hundreds of people all with the same idea. Now we had to pick our way through damp mist and poor visibility. Being as I said a public holiday, the last thing was I would have expected would to be find teenage school groups. But there hundreds of the little shits who, as well as some adults, seemed oblivious to the fact that there was actually a trail with lots of signs asking us to keep to it.

    But the gods did smile on us as we approached the top, the ‘tablecloth’ disappeared as quickly as it had appeared and we were able to spend a good hour and a bit admiring the great views. Table Mountain is at the end or the beginning of a small range called the twelve apostles that travel south and reduce in size at the beginning of the Cape Peninsula. It had cleared enough for us to see the famous Cape of Good Hope some 70 kilometres away at the end of the peninsula.

    Cape Town from Table Mountain
    Cape Town from Table Mountain

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Thirty-four – Cape Town

    Table Mountain was next on our agenda but that was tomorrow’s challenge in the meantime we had to get back and eat!

    Largely because of its multiculturalism Cape Town is considered the gastronomic capital of Southern Africa. There are lotss of restaurants and cafes of all descriptions and price tags.

    In Observatory there were several with lip licking menus in which we could have quite happily whiled away a couple of hours.
    Andre in one of his monologues had recommended “A moment of madness” a darkly lit tiny and intimate two storey restaurant with a unique sort of smokers lounge and a small skinny black skinned waiter we nicknamed ‘lurk’ after the Adams family character. He had this way of plodding up and down the creaky stairs and then pausing to catch his breath that just cracked us up.
    Sue’s first order had been a salad of some description and he plodded downstairs to the kitchen with our order. A few minutes later he plodded back up to tell us that she couldn’t have that as they didn’t have any. Sue reordered and off he went reappearing later with the dish that Sue had first ordered but minus our cutlery.
    With a sigh he trudged down stairs and back up, …….. pause for breath… with our cutlery but no napkins, another sigh, another plod down and then up, …. ..pause… and we were happy. In fact we were so happy we were almost in hysterics and waited till he disappeared back down stairs again before falling off our chairs laughing and then using the nicely pressed napkins to wipe our eyes.
    The food from what I remember was pretty good, (I think we had fish of some description) the atmosphere with Louis Armstrong in the background was great but Lurk stole the show.

    Fish at one of London's famous markets, Borough Markets which is devoted entirely to food.
    Fish

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Thirty-three – Robben Island Cape Town

    Another pretty interesting guy whom unfortunately we didn’t get around to meet was Nelson Mandela. We did however get to meet someone who served time with him on Robben island a small former prison island 11 kilometres north west of Cape Town.

    Eugene was his name and he served seven years on Robben Island for his part in a student anti-apartheid demonstration in 1983. He was still there but this time as a guide.

    Mandela spent twenty-six years as a political prisoner there and certainly in the earlier years had to overcome some pretty harsh treatment to survive.
    In the 1960’s they were only allowed one visit of 30 minutes and one heavily censored letter every six months.
    For around thirteen years Mandela and others were made to work with picks and shovels in a lime quarry where the heat and blinding glare in summer could eventually kill or blind.

    In the 1980’s the authorities eventually softened under international pressure and stopped hard labour, allowing education of selected subjects to university level.

    The prison itself however is not what you expect. The layout is pretty similar to any other high security prison found in the western world, you know, small cells, high walls, a cramped exercise yard and barbed wire everywhere. For effect life size cardboard cut outs of past prison guards are strategically placed around the prison corridor and yards. These guys are pretty lifelike, at first glance I wondered what this guy in the uniform with a gun was guarding! From what Eugene was saying I was glad that they were only cardboard, their reputation as cruel and harsh was apparently well justified. Beatings and other acts of violence were all in a day’s work. And yet the main gate to the prison gives no hint to these brutal facts. Written above it in Afrikaans is “ONS DIEN MET TROTS” that means “We serve with pride”.

    The known history of the island dates back some 400 years and has been used as a fishing base, a whaling station, a hospital, a mental asylum, a civilian prison, a military base, a political prison and now finally a museum.
    It’s as a museum that it seeks to be as Mandela puts it “a symbol of the victory of the human spirit over political oppression; and for reconciliation over enforced division.”

    The island itself has little natural beauty to mention although it does have the odd gemsbok and springbok around and the views of Cape Town and its spectacular Table mountain backdrop are worth the admission price alone.

    Table Mountain in Cape Town from Robben Island former prison of Nelson Mandela
    Table Mountain in Cape Town from Robben Island former prison of Nelson Mandela

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Thirty-two – Cape Town

    Back in the guest house we learned what we had suspected that morning, Andre was a ‘know it all’ who liked to give you the benefit of his wisdom and experience in as many words as possible regardless of whether you asked for it or not.
    In fact listening to him politely, trying hard to stifle an epidemic of yawns wasn’t a shared duty as Sue somehow seemed to have a good reason to go to our room and would leave me stranded and bombarded by all this trivia, opinions and ‘expertise’.
    What did make us both chuckle was Andre’s insistence on stating “and that’s all there is to it” after every statement or monologue. After hearing it so many bloody times I can’t believe that we actually took this up as a catch cry as for the rest of our travels through Africa. We must have been brainwashed! For the life of me I cannot remember anything else that Andre said; but I do remember the fact that 90% of Andre’s commentaries were about the New South Africa.

    Henry on the other hand was far more interesting!
    Henry was a twenty-one year old black Student from Zambia studying at Cape Town University, South Africa’s and probably Africa’s best university and he was lodging at the guest house. Tall, lanky with tight cropped hair like so many of his generation, he was articulate and extremely mature for his age and spoke with some knowledge of the world today.

    That’s what’s so good about travelling, you meant the most interesting people in sometimes the most unexpected surroundings.

    We chatted to this guy in the kitchen as we both prepared our evening meals. He told us of his home near Lusaka in Zambia and how when he drove there from Cape Town, a journey of over 2000 kilometres, he could almost smell it as he crossed the border and first spots the Zambezi escarpment with now only 150 kilometres to go.
    His father was, we gathered an important government official and they wanted for little, except a university of quality close by, hence the 4000 kilometre round trip every time he went home.

    Two cheetahs watch pensively in the Cheetah Outreach Project in South Africa
    Two cheetahs watch pensively in the Cheetah Outreach Project in South Africa

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Thirty-one – Cape Muslim quarter Cape Town

    You know Cape Town is really a very beautiful place. It’s up there with the likes of Sydney, Rio de Janeiro and San Francisco as places of natural beauty. With the Atlantic Ocean on its western and northern sides and the brooding presence of Cradle Mountain to the south, it’s in a great location.
    Of course location doesn’t mean that the city itself is necessarily a great place to be.
    I suppose on a scale of one to ten I would rate it around five or six. It’s much like any other New World city, lots of people going about their daily business, with the usual social problems like homelessness fairly evident in the form of beggars and glue sniffing street kids.
    It does have of course quite a history, being first settled in 1652 by the Dutch. And they have managed to retain a lot of the Architecture that sprung up in the first 200 years or so. Unfortunately most of it is quite boring!

    We did a walk tour to explore some of these ‘attractions’ and the only attractive buildings were the Dutch Cape SA museum and the president’s house.
    What was fascinating was the Cape Muslim Quarter. It’s mainly inhabited by descendants of slaves or political prisoners from the Dutch East Indies and you’ve guessed it, they are mostly Muslim. Here we found cobbled streets, mosques and flat roofed colourful houses. We also found that there was no one there, well at least no other tourists! This made us quite uncomfortable, after all, most guidebooks advise you not to go into deserted areas as this makes you a mugging potential. Personally I didn’t think we had anything to worry about but I was still grateful to enter the relative safety of the Bo-Kaap museum a building furnished as a nineteenth century Muslim home where we finally found two other tourists, looking equally as nervous.

    Needless to say we survived the rest of the Cape Muslim quarter and found our way to ‘the Company Gardens’ six hectares of botanical gardens that were originally Jan van Riebeecks vegetable garden planted soon after the first settlement. Jan van Riebeeck, for those of you who don’t know, lead the initial settlement back in 1652 and from all accounts was instrumental, in his time there, in establishing the Cape colony against all odds.

    Dutch Reformed Church, in Franschhoek, South Africa
    Dutch Reformed Church, in Franschhoek, South Africa

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Thirty – Cape Town

    What was in regular service were the minibus taxis. If you have being paying attention you’d remember that I’ve mentioned these before.
    These are generally run by black or more often or not in Cape Town, coloured South Africans and are mostly used by both these groups of people. They are of course found in almost any third world country in the world but they are particularly popular on the African continent.
    At one time a white South African wouldn’t be seen dead on a minibus largely because there were restrictions on where they could operate but also because they had the Merc or BMW and didn’t need to use such transportation. Realistically I suppose a lot of them probably felt unsafe especially in some areas like the suburbs of J’burg. Except for some areas, multicultural Cape Town is considered a lot safer than J’burg and it’s now not unusual to see white travelers on these minibuses.

    We didn’t know all this at the time, so when Andre told us that the best way to get into town was via minibus along the main street, it was with some apprehension that we waved down the first minibus that came along. We were the only whites in this crowded bus but none paid us any attention except the fare collector who grunted something at us that the guy sitting next to us interpreted as “that’ll be R2 each please”.

    In one of these travel guides that focus on daredevil activities, like visiting war zones and terrorist training camps for kicks, I once read a list of all the most dangerous activities in the world. Riding in a minibus was way up there with swimming with crocodiles, bounty hunting and demonstrating in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

    This little tidbit of information flooded back to me as this sardine packed minibus swerved at breakneck speed around slower vehicles travelling in both directions before coming to a screeching stop to pick up any new or potentially new passengers that could be crammed in horizontally into all that air space above us.

    We arrived safe and sound in the densely populated main minibus rank above the train station. People were everywhere, either being crammed in, waiting or like us shakily getting out. We had survived!

    A Mini Van 'depot' in South Africa. Mini Vans are the most popular form of public transport in the urban areas of South Africa.
    A Mini Van ‘depot’ in South Africa. Mini Vans are the most popular form of public transport in the urban areas of South Africa.

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Twenty-nine

    We left J’burg for Cape Town the next day via a domestic South African airways flight.

    We had been to Cape Town before but we had felt that hadn’t done it justice, so this visit was to ‘see’ the place properly. Last time we had stayed in a pleasant Bed & Breakfast near the city centre. This time we were going to stay in a backpackers of which like J’burg there were many. Expecting to be hassled by their touts at the airport, we hadn’t bothered to book ahead. Guess what? The only touts we saw were for taxis. After a three or four phone calls to different hostels we soon realised why. They were all full!

    It was a long weekend and Cape Town was almost booked. I say almost because eventually we found a backpackers that had a double room and they paid for the shuttle from the airport to take us there, saving us R30 each.
    Unfortunately that was not as much to our advantage as we initially thought, we were now obligated to stay at least one night. The Cat and Moose was we thought at the time about as bad as it gets. The landlady led us to a dingy little room with threadbare carpet, paper thin linen and the sort of musty damp and putrid smell that makes you want to vomit! Worse still we had to walk through a dorm for access and it was across an alleyway from the TV area where a little blonde haired prick full of bullshit (we had met him earlier) had the sound loud enough for people in the next suburb to hear.

    Needless to say we were out of there the next day!

    With the help of the tourist office we found the colourful Observatory guesthouse in a suburb called, you guessed it, Observatory, a trendy uni student area. I say colourful because the rooms all had loud colour schemes and the owner, Andre and his manager, Gregory, were both pretty camp. This sorted added a certain ambience to the place and was cheap, clean, quiet and comfortable. But here’s the rub…..we were no longer within walking distance from the city centre and apparently public transport as we know it, was virtually non existent.

    Cape Town from the Aerial Cableway lookout on Table Mountain .
    Cape Town from the Aerial Cableway lookout on Table Mountain .

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Twenty-eight

    Next stop was the first of two shebeens. A shebeen is basically a township bar that until recently were illegal and like the rest of the world there are shebeens and there are shebeens.
    This first one was a kiosk on a small patch of land that serves beer, for R1.30 a litre, made from Sorghum or maize and is meant to taste like porridge to the uninitiated. We bought a litre, tasted it. ……..Yuk! It was a lot worse than we had imagined so we gave it to the shebeen’s ‘customers’, who were sitting outside under a big tree, contemplating the world.

    We sat with them and talked for a while. These guys are all unemployed and were well into their 50’s and seemed to be just waiting for something to come along. Some were well qualified, one was an electrician, another was a fitter but as Nic said “they’ve just given up on life”. Nonetheless they were pretty jovial and we laughed and joked with them until it was time for us to go.

    The second shebeen was just a like a pub with a pool table and music which apart from the clientele and the location, could have been a bar in any other part of the world. No maize beer here, these drinkers were getting into cans of Castle at R4.00 or bourbon and coke and other spirits. Outside the shebeen was an open-air barbers surrounded by hundreds of white minibus’s. So here, you could get pissed, get a haircut and get a lift home. Too easy!!

    Nic also took us to a few famous and infamous landmarks like Willie Mandela’s house, Nelson Mandela’s former house before his imprisonment in 1963 and Archbishop Tutu’s house. None of these houses were anything less than comfortable middle class size homes and like all the accommodation everywhere seemed clean and tidy. Not so the streets and open spaces. Plastic bags were everywhere, caused, Nic told us, mainly through an inadequate rubbish collection service.

    Actually I’m not sure I believed him.
    Three years ago whilst travelling around South Africa, plastic bags seemed to be part of the landscape, a bit like multi coloured birds flocking to the ground and then spasmodically taking off.
    In one particular incident we had accidentally taken a wrong turn and ended up driving through a notorious black township near Port Elizabeth for what seemed like 3 days (actually it was 30 minutes). Apart from the sheer terror we experienced (“I’m not fucking stopping for anyone even if they’re bloody lying on the road” I had said at the time), my other memory is of these thousands of plastic bags that seemed to float aimlessly along the rather bleak landscape.

    A Shebeen (bar) in the heart of Soweto in Jburg, South Africa
    A Shebeen (bar) in the heart of Soweto in Jburg, South Africa

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Twenty-seven

    Our first stop was the “poor end of town” which in size is the smallest part of Soweto but also by far the most densely populated.
    We were taken into a small two room “house”.
    I say house loosely because it was no bigger than two decent size tin sheds found in any Australian suburb. This shack had two rooms, walls and a roof of corrugated iron and floors of metal panels on top of what was probably just mud. Looking around, every other ‘dwelling’ was the same with about two or three metres between them where vegetables were grown, washing was hung and occasionally a communal chemical toilet or a water tap was available.
    None of these places had running water, sewerage or indeed electricity. The only form of heat was a small wood burning stove also used for cooking.

    But the most remarkable thing about this shack were the tenants. Somehow a family of eleven lived here! Mum, Dad and nine kids aged between one and 20 years old.
    Mum told us that there’s no work for anyone much and because there’s no such thing as dole in South Africa, Dad picks up a little bit of money from “Piecework”, odd jobs here and there.
    She earns a little bit of money from telling fortunes and knitting and selling hats. Fortunately they don’t have to pay rent. Mum was surprisingly, articulate and intelligent. Why was I surprised? I don’t know, I had never met anyone in this position before.

    I was equally surprised that she was also cheerful, optimistic and quite accepting of her lot in life and happy to give us a first hand account. As we had in Lesotho we reflected on how much we have and how little these people have in comparison. In Lesotho it seemed different, they were poor but content. Here this was just a brave face and it’s so frustratingly close to not only white affluent suburbs but black ones too! This eventually got the better of us and we gave Nic some money later to pass on to this women who had been good enough to allow us into her home.

    Mother and child in Soweto in the shadows of Soweto's upmarket and large homes are residential tin shacks. Soweto, South Africa.
    Mother and child in Soweto in the shadows of Soweto’s upmarket and large homes are residential tin shacks. Soweto, South Africa.

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Twenty-six

    The main reason that we had elected to stay in J’burg the extra night was to see Soweto.

    Soweto you say! Why would anyone want to see such a notoriously dangerous place?

    Well, most tourists visiting South Africa regardless of budget have minimal contact with black South Africans. Very few get to visit black townships or satellite towns because of their reputation or lack of opportunity.
    Hotels and all levels of accommodation, tour companies and other tourist facilities are still in the main, owned and run by white South Africans and generally black South Africans tend to keep their distance particularly from white tourists.
    Not surprisingly Soweto has had the biggest media coverage and for most represents South Africa at its worse. It has in reality, been a war zone ever since that fateful day in June 1976 when many black students were killed by police in a march against the use of the Afrikaans language in black schools.
    So to see such an infamous place is to observe black South Africa.

    Of course we were not stupid enough to go in on our own. Soweto is now a tourist attraction, so there are a number of tours that are run chiefly by black South Africans.

    Like most people I expected to see squalor and poverty on a large scale and it stopped me in my tracks to see that parts of Soweto were just like any other middle class suburb in the world. Nic Mbewe, our guide and Padwana his driver lived all their lives in Soweto and as he explained “There are basically three types of housing in Soweto, upper for the educated with good jobs who are moving out because they can, middle for those with jobs and the poor end of town for those who have nothing”.
    To be contuined………

    A lioness underneath bush peers at it's potential prey in Namibia
    A lioness underneath bush peers at it’s potential prey in Namibia

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Twenty-five

    The hostel itself was an old large rambling single storey house with hand me down furniture spread haphazardly around the place,………… lounge chairs, torn dining chairs and card tables that had all seen better days and a large garden.
    Sounds all right doesn’t it? Well I did miss out one important fact. It backed onto the runway. It didn’t take too many jumbo jets to fly over to work out why it was called the Airport backpackers!
    Gerard was actually the owner and due to his Aussie manager being away, the manager as well.
    A white South African in his late 30’s or so, Gerard just likes to drink and talk and without doubt is a wealth of information on travel in Africa.
    Mind you, as Gerard’s bar was outside in the garden, conversations were often interrupted by the take off or landing of 747 or something similar. The noise was deafening initially until strangely enough you got used to it.
    What fascinated me more were the clientele; an Israeli couple who were not together, so they kept saying anyway, helping Gerard in slow motion; two Scottish girls who spent the day sun-baking and were never far from each others side; a Sri Lankan family, who never left the place and seemed to spend all their time cooking and washing and finally a Norwegian man in his late sixties with a much younger Thai wife, who just seemed to hover all the time in the background.
    The last couple had houses in both Norway and Thailand and he was a retired engineer, the last person you would be expecting to backpack around Africa.
    They were waiting to catch the ‘Baz’ bus to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. Now the Baz bus is one of those innovations born from the principle, necessity is the mother of invention. Clearly aimed at the backpacker market it’s a hop on hop off bus that runs between J’burg and Cape Town with several side routes and of course it’s relatively cheap. We toyed with the idea of using it ourselves except for one important detail, it didn’t go anywhere we were going!

    A leopard eats it's prey amongst the rocks in Central Namibia
    A leopard eats it’s prey amongst the rocks in Central Namibia