First week in Africa

Greetings from southern Africa. Something tells me we aren’t in China anymore, Toto. We are just getting our feet wet and learning a few ropes. Don’t expect any real insight soon. So far, here’s what we’ve done.
We got into Johannesburg after a 2 AM departure from Beijing and 18+ hourws of travel with a connection in Qatar. Even I got jet lagged. We picked a backpacker place off the net and rested up. the only thing we did was go to a nearby mall to buy a Southern Africa Lonely Planet. Resting up would have been a lot more pleasant if they had running water. THE main water line in “Jozi” broke and the whole city was without till just before we left for Soweto. We didn’t do much in Soweto. Actually, there isn’t much to do there. There is no downtown. There are only places of interest regarding the civil rights movement. We did go to Nelson Mandela’s and Desmond Tutu’s house nearby, and walk around some safe areas. My, it is huge. I didn’t know it had 4.5 million people. Obviously, we didn’t go everywhere. I took a little tour of there and Jozi. That’s about it for that area.
After that we went directly to Swaziland. We have stayed there for a few days and are about to leave for Nelspruit in South Africa. Wé’ll go to the famed Kruger National Park from there and look at the big cats, rhinos, giraffes, etc.. Things change rapidly for us sometimes. Getting around is proving to be a big hassle. We may buy a car. Or, I may. Myung is very cool to the idea. Stay tuned on that one.
There is not enough bandwidth here to upload photos, so that will have to wait. Hopefully, that can happen in SA, but I sort of doubt it where we’ll be. The pictures aren’t that great yet anyway. We went to a national park here is Swaziland yesterday and saw many antelope, a big crocodile, a couple of ostriches and some zebras. If I had a schmick camera, the animal shots would be good, maybe. You’ve all seen National Geographic shows anyway. This park, Mlilwane, east of Mbabane, the capital with 60,000 people, is one of the few that are easily accessible without a car or without buying an expensive safari. We got a ride to the gate and strolled for about 10 km looking at the scenery and critters. Then we hung out till it cooled off, then managed a ride back to where we could get a minibus to where we are staying. If we had more money, getting a car would be a no-brainer.
Other than that, we went around the area and looked at the towns. I went to a village and got a tour and cultural program. I’ll put up those pics if I ever can.
I wanted to blog something, so here it is, for now. I have to go get the minibus to Nelspruit, so I’ll talk to you later.
Be well, all of you