The long and pot-holed road

I wasn’t too impressed at three o’clock in the morning when someone suggested that this journey would be a great story for my grand kids. Sitting by the side of a dark road with cars whizzing by, waiting for the car in front to change a tire while listening to the constant click of [...]

Newtown!

Finally, I found the city! I was really beginning to think that it didn’t exist, that the skyscrapers you can see are only mirages in the endless trees and roads and walls and fences and security guards of the largest man-made forest in– wherever.

Newtown is just across the Nelson Mandela Bridge from [...]

Unconventional Tour of Soweto

They say the best way to see a place is with a local. They also say that to see Soweto, the former township that is at once part of Johannesburg and a whole other city, you should take a tour. In our usual muddled way, we managed to do both.

As you may have [...]

Now then… change of plan

Now then… for those that are out of the loop, which is probably most people, (since I have trouble keeping track of these things myself), I am now in Mexico!
However, not wanting to waste any perfectly good tales from South Africa that my terrible internet connection there wouldn’t allow me to post, and not having [...]

Moyo and Zoo Lake

After the Rosebank market it was definitely time for lunch so we went to Moyo, a famous restaurant nearby. On Sundays they have a buffet, and it proved to be really tasty. Barbeque is a big thing here and accordingly there were trays of barbequed chicken, sausage and fish, and a great [...]

African Kitsch

Another weekend, another excursion. Some tourism is necessary to remind yourself that Johannesburg is not only leafy green suburbs connected by winding highways leading inevitably to shopping malls. Or is it?
One Sunday we chose to go to the Rosebank rooftop market located on the roof of, well, a shopping mall. However, all [...]

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

Well, actually no tigers, and no bears (who needs bears anyway, if you’re from Canada) and frankly, only one lion. But still! Wild Animals! Safari!
We celebrated a first free weekend by going to Pilanesberg National Park, a couple of hours drive from Johannesburg (add an hour for sitting on a road, waiting for [...]

New Horizons

I moved to South Africa two months ago, and have been a very bad blogger since then (and before then too, but it’s hard to know what to write about indecision and not knowing where you’re going). It seems, when you start up in a new place that it’s difficult to jump straight into [...]

Giving in to Olympic Fever–Sometimes

So I spent years complaining about the Olympics, from the moment, or actually even before Vancouver won the bid. I also told everyone who would listen that I had every intention of spending the Olympics as far away from them as possible (such as their ancient birthplace Greece perhaps, or somewhere else summery and [...]

Buffff, Mexico

Well, it’s been a good few weeks of silence, not because nothing was happening here, but because too much was. The university marking wrapped up in a flurry of marking and distressed students; at the same time I found myself sinking in the very dark and murky waters of Mexican bureaucracy as my work [...]