South Africa

Apologies everyone for not updating the blog. We’ve been pretty busy over the past two months or so. Laura (very kindly, if not without berrating me every minute of every day) has blogged about most of Africa. I’ll be adding her blog entries per country bi-weekly till we are up to date.

Cheers, Ahmad

Johannesburg:

Laura: We arrived in Jo’Burg on NYE. I had the worst cold known to man and was thrilled to discover that my backpack has taken a little journey of its own to Malaysia. After wearing Ahmad’s pants for two days, my estranged friend returned! We booked to stay in a hostel called ‘The Rosebank’ for 6 days which was the biggest error of our travels so far. As you can imagine we were very excited to rock up in South Africa for NYE and were eagerly expecting drunkenness and debauchery all round. In reality we arrived at a hostel filled to the rafters with American Christian missionaries. We were quite disturbed by this sudden development but decided to go with it. We soon discovered that they were lovely people indeed and didn’t attempt to convert us!

On our first day the owners of the hostel discouraged us from going into Jo’Burg city centre due to it being ‘very black’.  [Ahmad:  They may have needed to check the demography of South Africa here…] Hmmm. We went against this advice and took the bus to the Apartheid Museum which they were quite horrified to learn on our return! Don’t get me wrong, Jo’Burg is a dangerous place and we heard a few tales of quite violent muggings but after listening to the hostel owner’s talk about it, we expected to get shot as soon as we left the gate. For added drama they referred to Jo’Burg as ‘deepest darkest Africa’.

Jo’Burg is very large and difficult to travel around. Taxis are ridiculously expensive due to lack of public transport. Things are improving now; a few years ago minibus drivers thought that public transport was a threat to their business and proceeded to shoot public buses on sight, killing a few innocent passengers in the process.

During our stay we also visited ‘Lion Park’ where you can play with lion cubs. Two months later this is still Ahmad’s highlight! We also had a tour of Soweto, the largest township in SA and the birth place of the anti apartheid movement. For all Jo’Burgs faults, it is an incredibly interesting place to visit. I was very surprised to discover that SA still feels very segregated. Whites and blacks (saying that makes me feels very politically incorrect) rarely mix socially and if you talk to Afrikaans people, they will tell you that apartheid was a bad thing in one breath and then contradict themselves in the next. For example, we met a guy in Capetown who told me that in no uncertain terms was it acceptable for me to say that a black man was attractive. We also met a Canadian who went to church in Capetown and heard an hour long rant from a minister basically saying that blacks, coloureds and women have no rights. The most ridiculous statement I heard of was a guy saying that apartheid would have worked had there been no violence! So essentially black people should have just suffered with all the oppression and everything would have been fine and dandy.

The Christians gave us a farewell prayer when we left (in a huddle style) which was a teeny wee bit uncomfortable but still a nice gesture and we headed to Capetown with god looking down on us.

Cape Town

We had the best time in Capetown! It offers every tourist exactly what they are looking for. There are amazing beaches (the best I have ever seen), a swanky harbour, mountains and hiking, interesting history, great nightlife, good food and great places to stay for all budgets. We initially stayed at ‘Backpackers District Six’ due to it being 6 quid a night with a self catering kitchen and bar. In reality it was a dark, sweat box and the ‘self catering kitchen’ consisted of a toaster, microwave and kettle. We could have used our imagination had it not been for the supply of plates and cooking utensils which were dirty and kept in a dirtier box. The bar was actually a club for children [Ahmad: think BZR for those in Nottingham] who listened to diabolical music and vomited in the garden. By the way, if you don’t like Rhianna, Akon or Usher, Africa is not the place for you! After two days of this we looked around and found an awesome backpackers right near all the action on Long Street. We met some truly lovely people there and were very sad to leave : (

Anyhoo….so we did lots of great stuff in Capetown. We did a wine tour, visited the penguins at Boulders Beach in Simon’s Town (on the train back some guy punched me hard on the arm for no reason – Ahmad thinks that he was expressing his anger towards the whites for the oppression his family have encountered!), went to the planetarium (I have been looking for Orion in every country since!), went to the beach and last but not least hiked up Table Mountain. This hike was by far the hardest physical challenge I have EVER encountered. We started at 12 midday which was just ridiculous. After ten minutes I actually cried like a baby and I am ashamed to say that Ahmad had to listen to me moaning for the next 3 hours. Everyone I saw seemed to be climbing with the greatest ease, I saw a Swedish girl virtually sprinting up and I had this fantasy of launching her off the ledge. I was also wearing linen trousers, a long sleeved cotton shirt and a hat that I have now discarded because I saw a 40 year old woman wearing it AND STILL got sunburned on my hands. After 2 hours we could see a crack in the centre of the mountain and knew that the end was near! This was simply another trick. No matter how much we climbed we never got any nearer! I was ready to collapse when we finally made it to the top. The climb was horrific but it was a massive achievement for me; it was also a miracle that Ahmad didn’t throw me off the edge so I should be grateful for that.

I should say at this point that SA feels completely different from the rest of Africa. Buses are air conditioned, food is not too different from home (mainly brai (bbq) and there are loads of tourists everywhere. I was worrying that we wouldn’t get to see the Africa I expected due to travelling city to city but this worry soon faded when we got to Zambia! The theme TIA or ‘This is Africa’ used to justify the randomness, unreliability and exasperating experiences we had in Africa  was not uttered until we got to more rural areas.