Travel bug hits again…

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I should be blogging about the 2nd day onwards of my South African adventure but as the days pass (although I keep getting reminded that I JUST GOT BACK!!!), the desire to want to write about my sojourn in the land of the gorgeous mountains and I-can-so-imagine-attending-a-wedding-here-vineyards is slowly disappearing. (I just started another excel sheet on my next travel adventure… ok yes my name is jo, i am a travel addict)

Yet I shall still try to recollect all the things that happened….

Day 2 in South Africa started bright and early, except that the weather was hardly promising. We had booked ourselves on a cycling tour in Soweto which was at that point the highlight of the trip (thus far…). A lady (of whose name I cannot for the life of me remember) came to pick us up and took us on a drive out of Joburg, all whilst trying to find out where we were from, explaining to us that she couldn’t possibly tell us what the weather would be like in the next 5 hours and singing to gospel music.

So on the cycling tour, our guide whose name I cannot remember too (I am terrible…..) gave us an extremely informative introduction before we had to crank our stiff legs and do a bit of cycling. Going into the township, the scent of poverty really hit home. Mothers were walking with their toddlers with babies tied to their backs and rummaging in the rubbish heaps for stuff to play with. The children were immensely cute, running after our bicycles and yelling ‘hello!’. Prior to that, we had been forewarned about how dangerous townships were, and it didn’t help with the news of the murder a couple of days before we reached SA. I honestly felt safe cycling there with our guide, and even in the hostel area where we shared beer from a pot (umqombothi, that is pronounced with a click) in a shebeen with the ‘elders’. It was an experience but it was in an aluminum shack.

The tour kinda gave us an idea of what it was like living there, we had to cycle around bulldozers, past heaps of rubbish, past schools lined with barbed wire, walk quickly past the communal washing area. I can still see the scenes in my head, the poverty startled me (it always does) but what I remember with greater clarity is the smiling faces of the kids.

Went back to joburg after the tour and went to the museum. Eclectic is the only possible adjective for the collection in the museum. I went a little bonkers over the camera exhibition, vintage cameras…. Then we decided that we wanted to go to the hippy/artsy area in joburg and asked around in Market Theatre for directions, stopping for a coffee first of course. We were given directions to take a taxi and for some strange reason (I would like to attribute it to a general lack of sleep and jetlag) I didn’t connect the dots that the taxi that was referred to was not the metered taxis that we were used to. So we stomped through the CBD area through to the taxi rank (taxi rank – a place where taxis park while awaiting customers) which was like a basement taxi depot with a LOT OF people, a LOT OF taxis and absolutely no signs or directions. Already sticking out like sore thumbs coupled with the ominous feeling that we were not getting anywhere nearer to where we wanted to go, after 5 more blocks from the taxi rank, I decided we should turn back.

On hindsight, actually right after we turned back and got back to our starting point, I wondered if I could have felt less fear, let my guard down a little, and soaked in more of the atmosphere. The streets were jam-packed with people, there were hawkers selling everything from fruit and vegetables to knock-off cds and clothes, people running after buses, taxis honking. It was like watching a movie really but no one seemed to notice we were there until we stopped at traffic junctions (I would like to think it’s cos we were walking really quickly) but it might also be cos no one really bothered. I wonder if India will be 10x what I saw that day….

Day 2 ended with a nice dinner and completely overpriced wine plus Fern berating us for putting ourselves in danger (walking around). I couldn’t help but wonder if I would have liked joburg a little more if my opinion of the place was not already tinted. Am still glad we had a walk around, even though it probably wasn’t the safest thing to do….