"Starting point" a Johannesburg Travel Page by Rusket

As a part of our journey around the world, my son and I joined a safari arranged by Drifters, from Johannesburg to Nairobi. An older son of mine travelled with them a year earlier, thus we knew they were a professional company. This was the only time we participated in a group tour; I did not feel like hiking through Africa alone with an 11 year old ;-)

Prior to the start of the safari, we spent 5 days in the cozy Drifters Inn in the suburb Northcliff in the north-western part of Jo'burg. The suburb was very white, at least the part of it that we saw. Not that only white people lived there, but those living there lived in a white manner, if you see what I mean. Most houses were surrounded by electrical fences or brick walls with broken glass or barbed wire on top, and watched by private sequrity companies. Each and every one of them looked like a small prison to me, very similar to the ones you find in upper middleclass suburbs in USA.

I have always thought of Africa as a hot continent. To us it was freezing, only 17 C the day of our arrival! In Norway 17 is considered nice and warm, but we had spent two weeks in Malaysia and gotten used to the 37 C there. The time difference was no problem, though. During the past 14 lazy days, we had fallen into the habit of staying up late and sleeping in in the morning. The first night after our arrival in Jo'burg we barely managed to stay awake until 7 PM, whereafter we slept 12 hours, and the following morning we were fit for fight :-)

During our stay in Johannesburg we never went downtown, though we saw it through car windows a couple of times. We took a couple of guided tours, one of them to Gold Reef City. There is an old gold mine turned in to a museum and an amusement park.

The other trip was to Soweto, where we stopped at the fabulous restaurant Wandie's Place. See my Soweto page (and other VT members Soweto pages) for more info.