My first days in Africa
Hey guys!
After I arrived at the airport I took the Gautrain (the public transport in Johannesburg) and then walked to the hostel, which was really exhausting since I was still wearing long pants and it was really hot. I found out that I had actually booked the hostel for march and not february but luckily it wasn’t a problem to change it.
The hostel was really nice! When I got into my room I was asking myself if I had booked the right room. It looked like a private one and I usually stay in the dorm rooms. It turned out to be right. Around the corner was another bunk bed.
That day I only went on a walk with some of the people from the hostel showing us the area around the hostel. They also told us that there is certain areas where it was not safe to walk to and that you should try not to take a bag with you.
In the evening I got to see a beautiful sunset just from my room in the hostel.
The next day started with lots of rain so I decided to use the day for organising, doing some grocery shopping and getting my South African SIM card. In the evening we went out with a few people from the hostel to have pizza.. For the next day we decided to get out of the city and go to the Walter Sissulu botanical garden.
We got to see some cool birds and really weird and creepy insects. There was also a turtoise walking through the park. We then started the hike on the geological trail. It was a beautiful walk up the mountain range rewarding us with stunning views.
On my last day in Joburg we went to the WITS Art Museum, which turned out to be really awesome. One of the exhibition was about floods in different countries of the world. It was a really cool way of capturing those tragic moments.
In the evening the hostel organised a tour to the Ponte Tower. We did not even have to pay one Euro for the transport and got amazing views and free Sangria all evening. The bar we stayed at was at the 51st floor. From there you weren’t even able to see the ground in the middle of the tower.
The sunset up there was stunning overlooking the city of Joburg. I took lots of pictures, talked to quite a few cool people and enjoyed the evining. I didn’t end up staying too long because the next day I had to get up at 4.30am to get to the airport and from there on take the shuttle to Hoedspruit.
That was everything I did during my time in Joburg. I must say I did not like the city that much. After being in Reykjavik and Copenhagen where I could just walk everywhere, Jorburg was really different. Because it wasn’t as safe to walk everywhere you would always have to take a uber to get to places. That limited you a lot to the place where you were staying unless you did proper research on what you want to do (which I didn’t) beforehand.
I was looking forward to my first volunteering project in the Limpopo region (DAKTARI).
Lena xx
