Our First Days in South Africa

We landed in Johannesburg at 4 am, without any place to stay or any idea of where we wanted to go. We tried looking for flights to Zimbabwe to see Victoria Falls but decided after painfully searching the internet that we needed a shower and a place to take a rest. After we picked up our rental car we headed out into the world of chaos also known as driving on the wrong side of the car, wrong side of the road and using the left hand to shift gears. I (Jeremy) was lucky to sit back and relax while Katie struggled with staying on the correct side of the road and remembering that the other half of the car was not on her right but was pushing into the other lane on my side. From the South Africaners standpoint the ‘wrong side’ was what us America residents had gotten wrong because we followed the French. But what does he know because after some bad directions from him, we ended up lost for three hours in Joburg.

Our hostel is quite nice minus the fact that it doesn’t truly look all that tidy in the toilets and rooms. It appears to have been a miniature castle in the past and has a beautiful courtyard with a view from the top that overlooks Joburg. After arriving we had a small rest and then decided that if we want to fight the jet lag we better just get on with it. So our first day here we went to a nearby mall then headed to the Joburg Zoo. One thing to note is that when driving here beware of the locals who sit at every intersection and at red lights try to sell you everything from Newspapers to sunglasses to car chargers and they seem to take it better if you just wave them off rather than ignoring them with the exception of a few who give you this look like you just let them down.

After seeing Saskatoon’s modest Zoo and a few others we decided that this Zoo was humungous. A full loop is over 10km and houses a large variety of animals...our first lion and elephant sighting but unfortunately the polar bears were not out for Katie. From the zoo we headed back to the mall picked up our new 3G card and decided it was time for bed...well Katie slept and I just fooled around on my camera for a few more hours.

After waking up from our extended sleep (Katie 17 hours and Jeremy 13) we headed out to the Lion Park. We managed to only get lost once (well kind of twice) on the way. Our journey to the park took us through our first slums. We were wondering why there were hundreds of people walking on what seemed to be deserted highways (don’t get us wrong exercise is good) until we noticed two very large slums just off the highway into the trees. It was pretty hard to see. The lion park was amazing...to our standards at this point. We drove our tiny little Hyandui Atos (maybe three feet in length with tires the size of basketballs) through the range. We didn’t see much excitement in the range until we got to the Lion Park #1 (yes there were four!). When we first drove into the lion park we thought to ourselves that it looked a little barren but that was until a large female lion crossed the road walking right in front of our car. The camera was out immediately and didn’t stop snapping for the rest of the day. After coming around the bend we ran into the male lion and what seemed to be one of his thirty female partners just lounging under a tree. We had arrived just after feeding time so the pride was scattered around ripping away meat from carcasses of who knows what. There was lions wandering all about...it was heaven. There was cubs playing around together while the rest of the pride lounged, with the occosiional lion venturing through the park. This was the best because when they wandered they would pass two feet from your face with only a sheet of glass and some steel separating you from them. The park was circular with roads scattered throughout. We must have driven the loop about thirty or fourty times and were definitely there the longest of any vehicles we seen enter. It isn’t hard to see how people get killed there because despite all of the signs saying not to open your windows there was people halfway out of their car. When we finally managed to drag ourselves out of park 1 we headed onto lion park 2,3 and 4. It was neat because, although, we didn’t stay as long in each new park all of the lions were different in size and color.

Although, the lion park was great, what almost matched it was playing with the lion cubs. Playing with the lion cubs was so neat. We weren’t allowed to pick them up because there was so many people there to see them but we got to enter their den with about ten others and take pictures with them and just fool around. Trying to take pictures at first was a little difficult because it was hard to pet them without feeling a bit timid. Although, they are just large cats there is something strange about trying to pet it and it snapping its jaws around to meet your hand (got a couple of good scared pics). They just wanted to play but who knows how far the playing would go. One of the fellow Canadians we met in line received a nice little gash from one of the cute little cubs. Fortunately for us one of the cubs loved our water bottle and so we let him play with it and we just followed him from the rest of the crowd. He loved it so much that when we tried to leave it followed us to the exit. They were so adorable.

After the lion park we went to teach ourselves about the South African culture at the Lesedi Cultural Village. There they took us through five of the original SA tribes and showed us some of their cultural practices such as common phrases, price for a wife (11 to 26 cows-trust us it is a lot of money), dances and how they came to be. Then they put on a dance with all of the tribes and sang it was pretty neat to see. Neat part is that they live there in the village with each tribe staying with their own. So we got to see two of the children (maybe 3 years old) joining in the dancing. The entertainment was followed by customary food including ox tail, crocodile and ostrich which we both tried. I (Jeremy) was a little fuller than Katie from eating a worm at one of the villages...delicious and tasted like salty beef jerky.

We bought some nice souvenirs and realized we are having a bit of time trying to convert from Rans to Canadian dollars in our heads (although it is just dividing by seven...damn calculators). We almost took one of the villagers home with us...don’t worry he was one of three year olds in the show. I think he fell in love with Katie because his grandma had to drag him away and then he still managed to sneak away and run after her. We left him with one of our extra Canadian patches so that he would remember us and he gave us a pose for the camera...well he more like just forced me to take a picture of him and then wanted to take the camera. On the way home we got a little taste of SA road rage as we accidentally left our brights on but managed to make it back to the hostel without missing a turn. I would have to say (again) that I am so glad that Katie is driving because where she is doing awesome I would be stalling every light and getting all sorts of African gestures we know nothing about. So...that has been our first two days...we will keep you posted on the events to come.

Miss and love you all!!!