Johannesburg

A day of 12 hours of flying, thank god for Business Class. We left at 11am and got into Johannesburg. A relatively uneventful flight, good food, a couple movies, and more Gorillas in the Mist. We arrived at Jo-burg and it was almost like a ghost town. Of course our driver who was supposed to meet us there was not there, so we called the hotel, the Shanguni Lodge so the owner Luiza came a driver to pick us up.

The hotel was nice enough, it was like a little compound with 7 foot walls around the hotel with electric wires on top of the fence, after all this is Johannesburg the carjack, rape, and murder capital of the world, or has Nairobi taken over that distinction? We didn’t see the reception area until the morning which was really nice, a pretty little courtyard with outside tables, nicely decorated and clean. The room reminded me of a Days Inn room, small, clean and it worked fine for us, after all we were only there about 12 hours.

Lou got scared during the night as she heard strange sounds and dogs barking. Of course that means Martin gets woken up to look for a phone in case we need to call someone for help. That was when we realized there was no phone in the room, the only thing I found was some used condom wrappers in one of the drawers. Of course I didn’t say anything to Lou about that I would have just caused more problems. I guess I can see how they missed them when cleaning the room, at least the last guest used protection.

We met Beauty, the housekeeper in the morning, after Lou woke her up by setting off the alarm by pulling on the front door. She was very pleasant and fixed us a very nice breakfast. We basically spent the rest of the morning relaxing, reading and catching up on our rest. Then back to the airport and on to Kagali Rwanda. The real adventure begins…