Save the Best for Last

On my last day in South Africa, somewhere between suffering over two hours sleep, returning my (scratched, grrrrrr) rental car, and packing, I went on a game drive with my friend Mostafa and some friends of his.
The game drive was different from the safari in Pilansberg because the animals are not in such a wild [...]

Impressions of Cape Town

In two days, I didn’t see much of Cape Town at all, given the little trips to see penguins, the Cape of Good Hope, and Table Mountain. But what I did see, and what was obvious within about thirty seconds of arriving in the city, was that it’s a far nicer place than Johannesburg.
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At the End of the World

This is how it is at the end of the world. Two Transylvanians with an expensive camera, a Catalan Independentist, a Canadian and her penguin… all arriving in a blue convertible Mini-Cooper.
The Cape of Good Hope: the emotional and metaphorical, if not actually factual, tip of the continent.

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Magical Mozambique

After a 13 hour drive that included two flat tires, the night of the jackal, and finally parking in a field next to a helicoptor, we arrived in paradise.

By paradise I mean an enormous balcony looking out over nothing but the Indian Ocean. Weather that was overcast but deliciously warm. An almost deserted [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]