Southern Sun O.R. Tambo International Johannesburg

... Be prepared to hear from a very tired and aching me (with possible sore saddle bottom) on 4th Oct if not before when I'll be in Durban. Six other people are getting off at the same hostel as me in northern Drakensberg apparently so a few drinkies tomorrow night I think, am sure our routes will be pretty standard so bound to be loads of people to travel parts of the way with.

Hope all's well, let me know your news.

Lots of love
me xx

... social scene and the two owners Liesel and June really looked after us.
We had done a lot of research before we arrived in Jo'Burg and consensus was that its a very dangerous place. In fact its known as one of the most dangerous cities in the world with the highest rate of rapes and the second highest rate of murders. They have the Sun newspaper here and reading it gives you a idea of what its like, I counted 35 stories about either murder, rape or shootings! All that ...

... the clubhouse where we dined. The children ran on the lawns, played on the swings, and watched multi-colored butterflies emerge from their cocoons. The adults were served coffee and tea on the veranda by white-clad attendants. It was idyllic. Last night we dined with our friends at a wonderful African restaurant in Sandton Center, a modern multi-use office, retail and ...

... laughing at the whole roller coaster ride in the boat! What a laugh and it certainly woke me up! Got to the island and had a really good tour, the guides were ex inmates or guides which made it all the more real and I got a full history of the Island. Won't bore you with too much detail here but I have plenty of pictures which can probably tell more of the story than I can. Didn't get to go into Nelson Mandela's cell as it is currently being renovated ...

... Johannesburg traffic. We did enjoy talking to some of the other guests who stayed there: a young Belgian volunteer who is working to help fight HIV/AIDS and an American lady spending her retirement years volunteering around the world. She had spent some time working in an orphanage in Cape Town, had done volunteer work in Bosnia and had gone to Louisiana with a team after Hurricane Katrina. Although Gemini Backpackers does not seem ...

MHMF ACTIVITY COMPLETED: IDENTIFY 100 BIRD SPECIES What a stunning first week! We owe a huge debt of gratitude to Nicolette & Herman, our hosts in Centurion, without whom we would never have known to visit the places we did. Before I go on I'll tell you about our first Miriam Hyman Memorial Fund CHALLENGE: Herman lent us his bird identifying book. By the time we left the Panorama chalet park we had identified 17 species of bird, and we were enjoying that so much that I got the ...

... I am staying in now is very nice - we have an outdoor shower at the back of our room (pictures taken!) which is sooo cool and there's a lovely fire burning in a room full of people just learning about eachother. The garden is gorgeous and it was very warm when we arrived today. Apparently it's their winter at the moment but you'd never know - cold when the sun goes in but boiling otherwise! Off to the lion park tomorrow and ...

... blesbok and seen the Springbok running we pursued the Springbok and seen two rams fighting. I was lucky enough to be able to shoot first from the truck I was on and had my first African animal of the trip down. A very nice Black Springbok. Within a couple hours all three hunters had taken Black Springbok. After lunch we returned to the field to help cull some regular Springbok for the Billtong market. Bill ...