South Africa - Maboneng (Jo'burg) and Durban

So I've been travelling for six days post Christmas and it already feels like forever. A lot has happened. I've discovered my favourite part of Johannesburg, Maboneng and taken my first surf lesson in Durban amongst other things. 

JOHANNESBURG - MABONENG

This area is so far from my previous experiences of Jo'burg and is definitely my favourite part. With its many trendy cafés, bars and works of street art, it has an East London feel. There's also 24 hour security, so I felt safe to play with my new sexy camera, which was fun. 

The art here is spectacular and the've crammed a lot into the relatively small four or so blocks. On the other side of these blocks is the town centre (CBD) which I assume has all the shops you could need. I only went to the Pick n Pay for groceries, but it looked like a big town centre.

That brings me onto the accommodation. I'd heard of the Curiosity from other travellers and it definitely lived up to the hype. From the moment I got there the staff were helpful and really welcoming. There's a great kitchen where I cooked aforementioned  groceries, a spacious balcony, an outdoor jacuzzi and a bar with a stage for live music. They also give a discount to musicians which gives it a great vibe. It's the first place that I've walked by some guy playing the sax to a bunch of people and getting them to sing along. 

The Wifi is also great. You buy 1.5G for R60 and you can use it all around Maboneng - which proved really handy when the power went down for an evening in the hostel due to a local power cut.

DURBAN

Durban is a nice place. The weather on the whole was good during the day/stormy by night and there's lots to do along the coast.

I stayed in the On The Beach backpackers, which is served by Baz Bus, my transport of choice as it was the cheap option. 

Anyway back to Durban. The On The Beach backpackers does what is says on the tin. I could see the beach and hear the waves from my room. It's situated in Durban North near La Lucia, giving you a choice of shops at the La Lucia mall. 

All the activities are in South Durban, but you can easily get a taxi with Flying Tigers, which is basically a woman called Maureen in a car. She's really nice and will charge you R70 to get anywhere in town. 

When in town I used the people mover busses. Apparently not a lot of people use these. I don't know why, they are convenient and you can get a day ticket for R16 (under £1) and hop on and off as much as you like. 

I visited the Victoria Market, which to be honest didn't live up to the hype in the travel guides. In all I think I spent 10 minutes there. However, opposite the main entrance is the spice market. Now this is worth check out. They have all manner of things there including huge lizard skins, bones and a huge array of spices. Just be careful when taking photos. I innocently took some and another stall owner tried to get me to pay them, I had my earphones in, so just walked off 'oblivious' to what they were saying.

The next day I went for my first surfing lesson and did really well. I was standing on my second attempt!! We started with some practice on the beach to get the theory down and then hit the waves (on an Beginner board). By the end the instructor was questioning whether I hadn't surfed before and he even let me catch some waves on my own while he caught up with a friend - by this time we were past the hour lesson time. He then invited me to join him and his friends for a drink. Man that pint tasted good! His friends were a great group and I could have stayed all afternoon, but I needed to get onto my next activity.

I walked up the Durban south coast to the Moses Mabhida stadium and completed an adventure walk, which takes you over the top of the building, much like the one that they do at the O2 in London. It was only 500 steps, but it was really steep. The views of the city were great too and the weather was perfect for it. (I'm not going to be an English stereotype and complain that it was too hot...). We then headed back down and that's when you get an appreciation for how steep it is. At one point you can't even see the bottom of the stairs due to the curvature of the stadium. That's when I was glad I had a harness thy was attached to the wall.

There were a few things I would like to have done if I had the budget. You can bungee swing across the stadium, that would have be. Great. I also didn't get to do the Valley of a 1,000 hills, as on my own it was too expensive. 

Those are the main things about my trip. I'm back on the Baz Bus now on my way to Coffee Bay and hope to have more fun stuff to tell you a soon :).

Also as always, please like and comment on the vids on YT, follow me on Twitter and Instagram and Tumblr.

Also I've been keeping myself entertained with The Wicked + The Divine and Saga, both great comics. Plus I've been watching a lot of What Would You Do on YouTube. It's so addictive and makes you want to do more when you see unfair situations in your daily life. Currently at the top of my travel playlist is Crown by Diplo feat Michael Posner and Boaz Van Beats, which is becoming a bit of a personal anthem, so I'll sign off with a lyric from the track. 

"Don't worry about them angry faces, they just hate"

Durban town centre

Durban South Beach

Jewellery for sale in Victoria Market

Dresses for sale on the streets of Durban

Spices for sale in street market

Shells for sale in street market

Inside Durban stadium

Inside Durban stadium

Climb to the top of Durban stadium

View from the top of Durban stadium

Stairs back down from the top of Durban stadium

Advice and things to know about Johannesburg

Playing with the cubs in the Lion Park

Want to know a bit more about Jo'burg and it's people? Well here's some stuff I found out while I was there. The video is choc-full of info and tips if you plan to visit, so give it a watch.

Johannesburg facts:

• Population: 750,000 + 
• Currency: South African Rand (ZAR), which is equivelent to 0.056 GBP
• Official languages: 11 including English, Afrikaans and Zulu
• Johannesbug is named after two founding officials named Johann Friedrich Bernard and Christiaan Johannes Joubert. However this is widely contested as there were many officials involved with founding the city who had names including Johann/Johannes
• As with the rest of South Africa, Johannesburg was under apartheid until 1994. To put that in perspective, man landed on the moon in in 1969, 25 years prior!

Johannesburg tips: 

Go on a group safari, much better than going it alone

• Do a group safari in Kruger National Park, you'll meet some great people (I know I did) and having more sets of eyes will pay off - our guide spotted less than a third of the animals we did. 
• Group safaris also allow you to share pictures and photos if you create a shared DropBox, GDrive, etc
• You can book to go to a Lion Park with a day's notice, so if your safari is rainy (as mine was), you can still see the big cats and even play with them, which is worth it in itself
• Don't be afraid - although the homes are quite intimidating with their high walls, barbed wire, etc it's not too bad. That doesn't mean you should be wrekless though!
• Take public transport, I took the Gautrain and it was brilliant, plus they have special carriages for people going to the airport. The Gautrain busses are also great. For both you'll need to pick up a Gold Card at the station which works much like any other transport charge card
• When booking a lion park, do your research. I heard a lot of horror stories about places that raise lions for 'canned hunting, especially in other African countries

World trip: Johannesburg, Kruger National Park, Lion Park and Apartheid Museum

Cheetah at Lion Park

Johannesburg is a great destination and starting point for a trip across the country to Cape Town. Having arrived a day late from Cameroon, I had two weeks to enjoy the city and all it had to offer including Kruger National Park, the Lion Park and the Apartheid Museum. I split my time between Boksburg on the outskirts and Rosebank in the middle of things.

I'm going to try a different format with this blog to see if it's more helpful and easier to digest. I'm going to break it down into accomodation and different activities. Hopefully this will help me to marshall my thoughts a bit too.


So...

Accomodation

The Mbizi Lodge http://www.mbizi.com/home.html

Christmas mug poolside

I got to Johannesburg airport and imediately arranged for a pick up to get me to my first hostel the Mbizi backpackers. I have to say that I loved it here. It was cheap and Patrick the owner looks after you like you're family. It's out of town, but Patrick is more than happy to arrange activities for you and can suggest better alternatives, though he's not pushy if you want to do your own thing. I went to Kruger National Park from here and was the last pick up, so no driving from hostel to hotel for hours pick up and dropping off other people.

There's also a bar (I was offered a free beer on arrival) and a pool, which I used inbetween intense blogging sessions to catch up after Cameroon. I must admit hanging poolside was a new one for me and didn't feel as Christmassy as any other December I've had, but I did find a mug to remind me of the season.

I'd suggest that if you want a base to arrange activities such as safaris, visitin the Lion Park, etc, that this would be a good place to go.

Rosebank Lodge

It's cheap, not neccesarily cheerful, but cheap. Also the paid for internet was sketchy at best, but you can log onto another network that is unsecured if you like. The main thing with the Rosebank is that it's in a good location. It's by the Gautrain making it easy to get to Pretoria and the O.R. Tambo airport. It's also a few minutes walk from Rosebank mall which has a local market - perfect for picking up gifts, plus there are bars in walking distance/a short bus ride away.

Safari in Kruger National Park http://www.marcstreehouselodge.com/feedback.php
I did a four day (three night) safari, with one day in the park itself. The First day I was picked up and met the seven other people I would be doing the safari with. We were then taken to a lodge in the area surrounding the park. The accomodation was really nice and more importantly there were a ton of monkeys around the lodges which were very cheeky (who'd have guessed). Once we had settled in we went on a sunset drive which saw the landscape transform as the sun set before we had dinner in the wild. We saw a few animals, including a mongoose trying to break an egg, lots of Impala (they are EVERYWHERE), male and female kudu, some birds, etc, etc. What was really great was coming across a  breeding herd of elephants, including two tiny babies which were impossibly cute.

Sun setting on day 1 of our safari

The next day we took a daytime walk and learned more about tracking animals from our guides and got a
glimpse of hippos in the lakes, which we didn't go too near. It's easy to see why these animals are so dangerous they are HUGE! We also saw an active termite nest, not exactly what you go on safari for, but interesting non the less. The walk was followed by a drive around the park before we headed off to the camp where we were shown to our rooms/tents and had dinner. We also bumped into a group who had come back from Kruger National Park and told us that they had seen pretty much everything the park had to offer as it was such a sunny day. I assume that the animals are too hot and lazy to move from the plains.

So, this is where I got lucky. I had booked a tent (I think) and found myself in a tree house for four with a balcony and what's more it was all mine. I have to say that while the camping sounded fun, I really didn't mind having a private lodge (check out the video to see how awesome it was).

Cheeky monkey at lodge

The next day was the big one, our visit to Kruger National Park and that's when my luck changed. It POURED, which while it makes for cute videos of baboons looking sorry for themselves, also meant that a lot of animals has sought shelter in the trees and bushes. That being said, we saw some bull elephants, more giraffe, hippos, zebra, Impala, Kudu, etc. What really made it was seeing a croc eating a catfish which went on for a while, a hyena and three white rhino.This is where doing a group safari really came into its own. If I'd been on my own with a guide we wouldn't have spotted half the animals we did and more over I wouldn't have enjoyed it half as much, as it was the people I was with that made it a good trip, we all sort of kept each others' spirits up and after a few purchases at the shop (yes they have a shop and some restaurants, which shatters the illusion a little) we played a animal spotting drinking game.

On the way back from the safari we stopped off at Blood River Canyon on the Limpopo river to take photos. It's really breathtaking and I was able to buy a few souveniers from the local people selling items on the roadside.

Two young warthogs with their mother and father

Zebra in Kruger National Park

Giraffe in Kruger National Park

The Lion Park http://www.lion-park.com/

Playing with lion cub in Lion Park

Having not seen any big cats during the rather wet safari, I decided to go to the Lion Park. A couple from the safari had been and said it was good fun. I was picked up at 8am as I had decided to go as early as possible to avoid the crowds. I started off by playing with the lion cubs, it's only two minutes as they don't want to stress out the cubs, but it was still a fun experience. It would have been better if a certain girl and her daughter hadn't disregarded everyone else and kept running around the place. It was so agrivating, I hate these parents who think just because they've had kids they can go charging around ruining everyone else's time. It's bad manners and they should be teaching their children a bit of decorum (how English was that?!).

With a Cheetah in the Lion Park

I then went onto walk with a cheetah. I was with a French group of three people, so my plan of getting there early really worked. It was a fun experience and as with the lions, the cheetah was very domesticated so I didn't feel unsafe at all. I got to pet the cheetah too and again as with the lions, the hair was quite course and felt like it had sand in it, even though it didn't.

We finally went on a drive around the park proper and saw black buffalo, more impala, springbok, giraffe and other prey animals, before going onto the lion enlosures. There are four prides of lions, one regular and three white. We also got to see some cubs with their families. Seeing the white lions was quite strange as they aren't albino, they just have lighter fur, which in my ignorance I wasn't expecting. It was later explained that the white lions were much like ginger people in that they were perfectly normal they just had recessive pigmentation genes.

The Apartheid Museum and Mandella House

A young Nelson Mandella

These are a definite must see in the town, the museum in particular. Mandella House is also very much worth seeing to find out more about the man and his years before incarceration. However it was the museum that captured my heart and imagination, it was so eye opening to get a better understanding of the struggle and scale of the issue. I knew the theory of apartheid before, but the museum brings it into its terrible detail and tells the story of the two opposing factions. It's laid out in a chronological fashion so you get a sense of the story, the steps forward and back and the number of people who lived and died for equality. I must admit I felt quite emotional at the end, especially reading about individual stories of people who had been involved. However you end feeling amazingly in awe of what was achieved in the fight against prejudice and how they didn't just stop at race but secured freedom for all ending discrimination on the grounds of race, gender disability, sexual orientation, religious belief and so on. I can't say I can remember everything I learned and would suggest if you go that you leave yourself a good amount of time to see and absorb it all.

Tribute to the end of the Apartheid

So that's the main bits. I also went to the Magnum store to make my own ice cream, having missed out on the one in London. It was good fun, but the video covers all that.


Hope you enjoyed it all. I've put more videos of cute animals on the YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/TWINETraveller please do subscribe it will help boost my ego, plus you can follow me on Twitter and Instagram on @The_end_is_Ni or on tumblr on the-end-is-ni which will inflate my ego even further (though be warned you may be creating a monster haha/not joking)
Cheers,

Ni