Long day(s) of travel, arriving in Johannesburg
Trip Start
Feb 10, 2008
1
16
35
Trip End
May 17, 2008
Johannesburg,
South Africa
Monday, March 10, 2008
Well, we finished up in South America on a great note. A fantastic trek up the Inca trail, and 1 last night out in Cusco. Make sure you ask Steph about how she cut some rug with a Peruvian guy at a Karoke Bar off the Cusco Main Square..................
I have video and photos................
After the night out, the next 40 hours or so were spent travelling. We had 3 flights, Cusco to Lima (2.5 hours), Lima to Sao Paulo, Brazil (5 hours) and 9.5 hours (Sao Paulo to Johannesburg, South Africa), with10 hour lay overs between the flights.
On the first lay over we headed into Lima, Peru. We were advised to check out the Miraflores area of the city, which was one of the safer parts of town (a lot of crime in Lima). After the high altitude of Cusco, the temperature really hit us in Lima. It was very very hot and humid.............with our bags checked and wearing long sleeved shirts and pants, and looking for a quick dose of home, we checked out an air conditioned movie. "The Hitman"...........wasn't that great, but it was cool.
Miraflores was a little too USofA for us. I suspect that some US mobsters setup the place as a home away from home. It was fully American-ized, looking like an outdoor mall you would find in any up scale city in California. Fully loaded with Starbucks (Steph had to have one!!), Pizzahut, McDonalds, NikeTown, and Tony Roma's steak house chain (which we went too.........exactly like the Tony Roma's I hit in Seattle every once in awhile).
Anyways, we got our "driver" (airport taxi dude from earlier in the day) to pick us up -safely, and drop us back at the airport.
After a red-eye flight to Sao Paulo, we crashed in the airport for 10 hours (we couldn't leave the airport because we were too cheap to get the $80 USD visas required to leave the "Terminal" - yes, we felt like Tom Hanks in that movie...........) then flew to Johannesburg..........or as I now know is referred to as Jo'burg (pronounced Joe-burg).
We were picked up at the airport by the Hostel owner, who is a pretty cool South African, and driven straight into his gated home.
Derek and Ryan(From UW and Stratford, ON) at Mbizi
Everything has a fence around it. I mean everything.Parents - please skip this section.............
Jo'burg is a city that is wrought with crime. All we hear about is the senseless violence that is going on in the city. Our Hostel owner gave us a long run down about Jo'burg and some of the recent (last 10 years) craziness. We had pretty much heard and read this before, so intentionally didn't plan on spending any time here. Although we are going to take a private tour of Nelson Mandella's house, the Apartheid Museum and hopefully a tour of the townships later this week. The tour guide is a 300 lb Black South African who does hundreds of tours a year and has never had a problem. Apparantly he knows everybody and will keep us very safe...........
Parents - please come back.............
Okay......
So, we stayed at this amazing Hostel, The Mbizi Backpackers lodge, with a pool, Tiki-bar, private room with bath.............(it reminded us of Mary&Eric&Geoff's place in Los Altos)..........and ended up staying up late chatting with a fellow Canadian (who knew alot of the same people as he went to the University of Waterloo - Engineering class of 2000), and downed a few bottles of South African wine.
Tomorrow we are off on our tour of Kruger National Park, bright and early...........
