Monthly Archives: September 2009

Panoramic view of Johannesburg Suburb Sandton from my Hotel Room

It’s hard to believe I’ve been in Johannesburg for almost two weeks already.  The time’s flown by.  I’m sure a lot of it is to do with the fact that Chris is here now so it’s a bit less lonely, and there’s just more to do.  I had the unexpected surprise of 3 days off while I was here.  I’m not sure of the specifics, but there was a security threat that closed down all of the US Missions in South Africa, including the office where I’m working.  That gave me the opportunity to join Chris in a bit of sightseeing.  We visited SAB World of Beer, Museum Africa, Top of Africa (the tallest building in Africa), Soweto, and the Apartheid Museum. 

Johannesburg is a beautiful, diverse, and at times frustrating city.  It’s difficult to get around without your own car–I’ve spent more money on cabs this week than I care to think about.  Also, the central business district is really run down and crime-ridden.  It was especially sad to see that the Carleton Centre Hotel downtown had been closed down, as businesses moved to the less crime-ridden areas in the suburbs.

Visiting Soweto provided a stark contrast to the CBD and the suburbs like Sandton.  While there were certainly slums and run down areas, the majority of the neighborhoods we saw were well-kept.  You could really tell the people there had a pride in the property they owned, and were slowly making upgrades to their houses.  It was funny to see the additions that some had put on to their little matchbox houses.  The lots are small, so there’s really only one direction to build in–up.  Visiting Nelson Mandela’s house and the Hector Pieterson Memorial was pretty cool as well.

Of course a trip to Jo’burg wouldn’t be complete without a visit to the Apartheid Museum.  It didn’t strike me until about mid way through the exhibits that a lot of this stuff was happening during my lifetime.  Visiting the museum definitely made me appreciate how far this country has come in a relatively short period of time.

Me and Chris outside the Apartheid Museum

And that’s about it for Johannesburg.  All of the pictures I’ve taken are up on my Flickr account now. Tonight, we’re off to Cape Town!

It’s been awhile since I updated, eh?  We had quite a time on Kapama Private Game Reserve last weekend.  The lodge was pretty amazing; all of the staff were incredibly friendly (even when we showed up well past our supposed arrival time on Friday night), our tracker and ranger were incredibly knowledgeable about the animals we saw, the food was excellent, and the spa was great too!  We saw some amazing things–almost all of the big 5, aside from the Leopard; and we even got to witness a rare live kill one night, where we saw a lioness take down a wildebeest and feed it to her cubs.  I will let the pictures speak for themselves, but I have to warn you, some of them can be a bit graphic.

After the lodge, we made a quick stop at the Hoedspruit Endangered Species Centre.  There, we saw Cheetahs, several types of wild cat, and my favorite, wild dogs.  Here are some more pictures from there.

The only minor setback we had that weekend was that two of the tires on our rental car blew out at the same time.  There was a jagged piece of pavement that we didn’t see when we were driving, and it shredded the sidewall of both passenger-side tires on the car.  Oops.  It also happened pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Thrifty was great though, they sent us a replacement car from two hours away and we were on our way.

All in all, a great weekend at safari!

Not a whole lot to report so far in Johannesburg.  I’ve been feeling a little out of it, so I’ve been laying low in the hotel and just chilling out.  Feeling much better today, hopefully that trend will continue.

Chris is on his way now.  He’s taking quite a circuitous route to get here–DC to Boston to London, a quick 12 hour layover there, and then on to Johannesburg.  About 36 hours total travel time.  Pretty rough, but it was a frequent flier ticket.

Anyway, once he arrives, we’ll be headed for a 5 hour drive to Kapama River Lodge, which is inside a private game reserve.  Between the bush walks and game drives, hopefully we’ll get to see the Big 5 (Lion, Leopard, Elephant, Rhino and Buffalo) while we’re there.  Kapama is just on the edge of a malaria zone, so I’m being extra cautious and taking the preventative drug Malarone.  The side effects–dizziness and nightmares–are better than getting Malaria.

After Kapama, we’ll be back in Jo’burg for a week.  With the exception of one day, I’ll be working all week, but hopefully will get to see some of the city at night.

That’s about it, pretty boring so far this week…

Checked into my hotel in Johannesburg, which has unmetered internet access.  Here’s the video!

I. JUMPED. OUT. OF. AN. AIRPLANE. It was awesome.  I can’t explain how exhilarating it was to free-fall from 11,000 feet in the air, then slowly drift down from 5,000 feet.  The folks at the Pretoria Skydiving Club were good instructors, and it was overall a lot of fun.  I was supposed to jump at 11am, but they were running a bit behind so I hung out with other jumpers around the braai, chatted and watched as those queued up in front of me landed.  The view was spectacular; South Africa really is a gorgeous country.  There are more pictures on my Flickr, and a video as well, but I have to wait until I’m somewhere that I’m not paying by the megabyte to upload it.

Saturday was a day of firsts for me–I rented a car to get out to the airfield, so it was also my first time driving on the left hand side of the road.  Not too hard, actually, though it took me quite awhile to stop turning on the windshield wipers whenever I meant to use my turn signal.

Since I had the car, I decided to try to go out to a couple of bars on Saturday night, since I needed to get out of the hotel. (Don’t worry mom, I took it easy and waited a half hour after my last beer before I got back on the road…) First of all, the roads around here are dark at night.  Like…scary dark.  Also, it’s very nervewracking being lost, in the dark, with headlights coming at you from the “wrong” side.  It was BlackBerry to the rescue again; I GPS-ed my way from bar to bar, then back to the hotel.

Today, I wanted to go sightseeing.  I looked at the guide provided by the City of Tshwane, but after driving around for an hour looking for the first thing I wanted to go see–the Mariamman Temple in the township of Marabastad, I gave up.  The maps provided by the city were terrible; not to scale and did not indicate which roads were one-way.  Anyway, eventually I found the temple.  It was closed, so I didn’t go in, but it was impressive from the outside.

From there, I headed back to Menlyn Mall to do some shopping.  I spent quite a bit of time there, just enjoying the surroundings.  The mall was bustling with a very diverse crowd, and everyone was very friendly.  Very different from shopping in the States, especially at places like Tyson’s and Pentagon City.  I got good deals on some clothes, and enjoyed poking around the book, music and electronics stores.

That’s about it for this weekend–tomorrow we head to Johannesburg for two weeks.

The past two days have been kind of blah.  Monday was an Labor Day in America, so the office was closed but the rest of Pretoria was open.  I was awoken at 8:30 by my room phone ringing with a call for me from G-Connect, the dominant wireless Internet provider in these parts, letting me know that the connection to the hotel had been restored and I could surf from the comfort of my room again.  (More importantly, I could log my phone in again and make some phone calls.) I had planned to spend the day by the pool, but the deck was too windy.  Oh, and the pool was gross.  So I putzed around for awhile, took a quick walk, and was basically just a lazy bum for most of the day.

Around 4:30 PM I got motivated and went downstairs to have the concierge call a car to take me to Menlyn Park Mall.  I guess I’m a bit like Cher from “Clueless” in that whenever I’m feeling a little down or homesick, all I need is to surround myself with rampant consumerism to get back to my old self.  I didn’t buy much–a book, a latte, some biltong and a thingamabobber to convert the ridiculous looking South African electrical socket to the more reasonable European one so that I could plug in my alarm clock and laptop next to my bed.  I spent far less money at the mall than I did on transportation, which ended up costing 375 Rand round trip–about $50.  Cabs aren’t cheap here, and public transportation is pretty much nonexistent, so I feel a bit trapped in my hotel at times.

I didn’t sleep very well last night and definitely woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, so today wasn’t the most pleasant of days.  Work was fine–things seem to be going as planned and the folks here seem to like us, I was just tired and cranky.  I think I just need to power through the rest of this week, enjoy the weekend, and move on to Johannesburg on Monday.

As I opened the window to begin this post on the computer in the hotel lounge (wireless in the rooms is still down), a  began playing on the Muzak system–one that is so familiar, so catchy, so annoying that it’s sure to be stuck in my head for days to come.  The Manamanah song (I warned you, click on it only if you’re a masochist).  I think at least one of you will appreciate the bit of irony that ties this song to the rest of this post.

So my colleague from Washington–we’ll refer to him as “D” from now on–and I were going a bit stir crazy today and decided to do quite a bit of walking around Pretoria.  Few of the sights were new to me, having done most of my exploring yesterday, but I was glad to get out of the hotel.  D has a friend in the area who offered to take us out, and I jumped at the chance to see something outside of the Pretoria Central Business District.

She was a bit late due to car trouble, but eventually arrived.  The car trouble should have been my first clue that this was going to be a bit of an adventure, but I was really up for anything at that point.  D’s friend said she was going to take us to the “Paris of South Africa,” and before I knew it, we were headed East on the N4 highway.  After about 25 minutes of driving, it became apparent that we were headed in the wrong direction and she exclaimed “I need to get off this road!”  We pulled off at the next exit and she asked the toll booth attendant how to get on the N1.  Now, I’ve been here for a grand total of 4 days and I know that the N1 is a North-South road that has an entrance ramp fairly close to our hotel.  We turned around and drove another 25 minutes back to Pretoria and the junction with the N1.  I didn’t really mind the detour, it gave me a chance to snap some really great shots of the countryside and the sunset. 

We continued South on the N1 toward Johannesburg, fought through a bit of traffic, and got a really pretty view of the city at night.  We needed to stop for gas, so we hopped off the N1 and stopped at a Shell station, then got back on the N1 Northbound.  I spoke up, not wanting to have a repeat of the N4 incident, and she said “Oh yeah, I missed the turnoff about 10km back.”  Ooookay.  We finally reach the right turnoff and start driving through Sandton.  We had to stop at another gas station to get directions, at which point I found out that our final destination was to be Montecasino, an Italian-themed casino, shopping mall and hotel in the affluent suburb of Johannesburg.

The attendant gave us directions to pass through two “robots,” and make a right at the third “robot.” D and I were literally looking for robots on the side of the road.  We eventually made a right, but it was apparent that we were on the wrong track.  We stopped at another gas station where we got further directions to continue on the road we were on, then make a left at the fifth “robot” (he was holding up three fingers as he said this).  Finally, the right synapses fired in my brain and I was able to surmise that the “robots” we were looking for were actually traffic lights.  I piped up again with my observation, and our tour guide confirmed my thoughts.  I then told them that we’d actually made a right at the third robot after the initial gas station.  “Oh.”

Our guide started the car.  Or tried to, anyway.  Her clutch was all the way to the floor, and the engine wouldn’t turn.  “Damn,” she said, “it happened again.”  Awesome.  Between the three of us, we were able to determine that the clutch cable had slipped off of the clutch pedal.  She had seen the mechanic fix the issue earlier in the day, so she was able to identify the clutch cable under the hood and the clutch pedal.  Cool.  D and I have large hands, so while we were able to reach up under the dashboard and tug on the cable, neither of us could grasp it firmly enough to reattach it to the pedal.  We enlisted our guide’s petite hands and were able to get it reattached and on our way.  Three robots and a left turn later, we were still lost. 

Having had enough of driving around the dark streets of suburban Johannesburg, I finally pulled out my BlackBerry and fired up the mapping application.  At this point, I was willing to pay the exorbitant $15 per MB roaming rate to get us to our final destination.  I pulled up the map, typed in Montecasino, and hit “Get Directions.”

Perfect.  We were back on track.  Except the casino wasn’t where the map thought it was.  Conveniently enough though, another gas station was.  Seven robots and a left hand turn later, we arrived.  We walked around a bit, ate dinner, had some interesting and ahem rather colorful conversation, and headed back to Pretoria. 

Certainly an adventurous evening, but all’s well that ends well, and I learned a lot about the geography of the area and picked up a bit of the vernacular.

Bedtime for me.  Tomorrow’s a day off, and I plan to lounge around the pool for a good bit of it.

I’ve been in Pretoria for a few days now, and I think I’m finally synced up to the local time and used to the altutude. We’re about 7,000 feet above sea level here, which explains why I got winded so easily on the first two days.

It’s been fairly uneventful so far, work is work, but I do have to say that the staff here is very friendly and great to work with. The really hard stuff was all done on Friday, so the rest of the time here should be pretty easy.

Monday is a holiday in the States, and therefore an office holiday here as well. I wasn’t expecting that, but I don’t mind, as it gives me an extra day to get out and explore. We were given dire warnings not to go out alone, especially at night, in the area around our hotel. We’re staying at the Sheraton Pretoria, which really is on the edge of the city in an area called Arcadia. There are lots of really cool art-deco style apartment buildings in the neighborhood, but they are all surrounded by high fences and razor wire. Most have big signs that say “ADT Security — Armed Response,” on the gates. In talking to my colleagues, I learned that home invasions are fairly common in this part of the city.

During the day, it seems okay… really no different than walking around Columbia Heights or Petworth in DC, but a whole lot louder. There are people who make a living driving around in vans honking incessantly, hoping to pick folks up.

I did quite a bit of walking today, about 1km in the wrong direction at first, hoping to find a VodaShop that was open so that I could get a SIM card for the Nokia phone that I’m planning to use for voice service here, but it was closed. I bought a Coke Zero (glad they have it here), and turned around toward downtown Pretoria and Church Square.

I found a little shop that sells VodaCom prepaid starter kits, so I bought one and am now just waiting for them to activate it. They needed my particulars to register the card for RICA compliance, and once that’s done I should have a fully active South African cell phone. I’ll need it for a month long stay, as I’m not about to continue paying T-Mobile $1.49/minute roaming rate here. I am enjoying their Unlimited International BlackBerry plan though, and I’ve noticed that coverage here is way better than even in cities at home.

After that purchase, I made my way to Cafe Riche in Church Square. They had WiFi, so I fired up TruPhone on the Nokia and called home. I was amazed at how clear the connection was. It was good to talk to my parents and my grandfather for a bit. I took a gamble and ordered the Riche Salad, the description of which was in Afrikaans and the only word I recognized was Biltong, a sort of jerky. It was pretty good.

After the meal, I walked around Church Square for a bit, and then made my way to the Pretoria Zoo. I spent quite a bit of time walking around and taking pictures there, which I’m trying to upload to my Flickr account now.

The Internet in this hotel leaves a bit to be desired; the wireless in the room isn’t working at all now, and the computers in the lounge are terribly slow. But this is Africa, so I suppose it’s to be expected.

I guess that’s all for now. I’m not sure what’s up for the rest of the night, but I’m going to try to book a tour for tomorrow or Monday.