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Pretoria, doing, well, nothing…

Thursday, April 26th, 2007

So we land in Johannesburg, South Africa to tons of fanfare! Balloons! Whistles!

Okay, actually, the most lackadaisacal (sp.) customs I’ve ever been through. Stamp stamp. That’s it.

We were then met by a lovely shuttle that bopped us up to Pretoria straight to North South Backpackers. We, well, mostly I, decided to stay up here in the burbs because of all the horror stories about Joburg. Really nice place with really friendly managers. Met some really great travellers that gave us their impressions of other parts of Africa.

Had some nice, cheap wine. Even SA box wines are pretty good! Castle, the local lager, tastes, I know, such a shock, like Bud. But cheaper than Bud. So what more can you ask for?
And the food – pretty darn good, although we’re kind of cheap with food – the burgers and chicken are really good with great sauces (can you say HOT!)

So the only thing we did besides relax, eat, go to the internet for a couple of days is we went to the Voortrekker monument. Really, quite a cool place, but it’s kind of like building a monument in the states of how the settlers stole land from the Native Americans. Kind of the same thing – where the Boers stole land from the Zulu.

Anyway, wasn’t this an exciting post? I just felt I should say something about doing nothing!

Cin

South Africa, finally!

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

Just a quick note – we’re finally out of the US! And it’s finally warm! Not scalding hot, but like “San Diego warm” (hi Jean!)

It was so crazy, we get to Washington Dulles and SA Airways says, oh no, you have a one-way ticket, how are you leaving South Africa? We say, well, we were intending to buy a bus ticket to Namibia when we get to Cape Town…they say nope, we can’t let you get on the plane until you buy an outbound ticket since South Africa requires proof of onward travel out of their country – so we buy refundable tickets to Nairobi – after, of course, John completely melted down (which you can hardly blame him since we looked into this and as far as we could tell, this was not a requirement for US Citizens) – we go through security, hit an internet cafe, buy bus tickets from Capetown to Windhoek which is in Namibia and then head to the gate where our tickets were to be waiting – after seeing our proof of onward travel they say they would void the tickets and refund the money – hopefully that will happen – never can tell with these things…otherwise we have to do the whole dispute the credit card thing…fun times!

Anyway, the flight was great – non-stop – little tv sets at each seat – huge airplane – we had to be shuttled to the plane in a little bus thing – we watched Happy Feet and Stranger than Fiction – anyway we get to South Africa – they OF COURSE didn’t ask for any proof of onward travel – just totally typical…

We’re now at our hostel North South Backpackers in Hatfield which is near Pretoria – which is a suburb north of Johannesburg – doing nothing today…will update on DC and more later…just had to get our crazy airline experience out there! Geez Louise!