Township Tourists

29^th September-1^st October – Days 364-366 – Soweto, South Africa

On a trip like this, it's inevitable that we're going to have a few surprises. They'll be negative, they'll be positive, and no matter how much you move around on a continent like this, your expectations will always be confounded one way or the other. That said, I don't think that anywhere has the gap between expectations and reality been so sharply contrasting. When you hear the word Soweto, you associate it with the worst excesses of the Apartheid system, with shanty towns, piles of garbage and so on. The picture, in short, is pretty bleak.

This is Soweto. Orlando West and the Orlando Stadium, home to one of South Africa's biggest football teams, the Orlando Pirates

I wasn't really expecting anything in particular from Soweto but I suppose that, if I was expecting anything at all, I was expecting something along the lines of what I just described. This seemed to be coming to bear as we trundled out of Bree St minibus station having gone through the usual walk between MTN and there, wondering where the hell the minibuses leave from and not being able to get any reliable information at all from anyone. The Southwestern suburbs of Jo'burg aren't particularly inspiring – tired-industrial looking with generous amounts of rubbish strewn all over the place, broken and boarded up windows and tired-looking people. The buildings soon gave way to « informal settlements » as they're called here, small shanty towns of small, home-made shacks. Then, we turned off the road onto the Soweto Highway and towards the self-proclaimed world's most famous township. And this is where things started to get interesting.

I'd read that Soweto actually has the highest concentration of millionaires in all of South Africa but, with my impressions of the place without having seen it, I'd always half-presumed that these millionaires were gangsters or criminals or whatever. As the minibus rolled in, though, we were greeted with sights that we certainly didn't expect. Tidy gardens, well kept parks with kids playing in them, and the small Sowetan houses mostly had garages with cars in them. A young guy from the minibus volunteered to escort us to Lebo's Soweto Backpackers – apparently the only backpackers in Soweto – and we set up the tent and tried to take it all in. I suppose that there are rougher parts of Soweto too, but this is true of any town of any size, and Soweto's population estimates range from 1.5 million to 4 million. Orlando West (the area we stayed in), though, looked as nice as any part of Johannesburg. The houses were smaller than in Sandton or wherever, but it was definitely a place that locals kept up and were proud of. We celebrated our arrival by teaming up with a few Frenchies who were staying there – a lone guy and a family with two young kids – and went to the shebeen down the road for a few beers and to watch Man Utd. Against Valencia, which was a mind-numbingly boring game. In contrast, the bar's owner seemed so delighted to see us that he gave us each a free bottle opener and kept up a lively chat through the evening.

He walked into an Orlando Pirates bar with a Kaizer Chiefs shirt on but got no trouble. If that ain't love...

WARNING : COMMERCIAL PLUG – If anyone ever considers going to Soweto (and they should), Lebo's is one of those places that you look at with wide eyes and just have to take your hat off to the guy who started it all up. According to the story, Lebo started his community work by cleaning up the park over the road from his hostel, which used to by a rubbish dump. He got the community involved, set up some swings and slides and football goals, and the park now swarms with local kids every day. He says that, as a former crafts salesman, he got sick of seeing tourists come into Soweto by bus, take their pictures, and then go back to Johannesburg. And so he started renting out beds in his parents spare room before opening his own place in the house his grandfather used to own. He's one of those guys who's never had any formal training in the tourism industry, but has succeeded in what he's done through determination and dedication, not only to the local community but also to showcase Soweto to the world. It worked well with us and, by the look of the guestbook, we weren't alone in feeling this. It's definitely a place we'd go back to. END OF PLUG.

In the garden at Lebo's

Vilakazi street - civil rights struggles have been won, other struggles are just beginning (with the help of Ryan Giggs)

Orlando West is home to Vilakazi Street, which is (or should be) known the world over for several reasons. During the apartheid era, this relatively small street was home to both Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, and Sowetans will tell you that it's the only street in the world that has been home to two different Nobel Peace Prize winners (and I haven't done enough research to either confirm or reject this assertion, but it's certainly possible). It's also the home of several high schools which were central to the organising of the Soweto Uprising in 1976. Hector Peterson, the 13-year-old boy who was killed during the uprising and whose picture spread shockwaves around the world, was shot in an adjoining street. Vilakazi Street has changed a lot since those days – Mandela's old house is now the Nelson Mandela Museum, over the road is the Nelson Mandela Family Restaurant and there's also a swanky restaurant close-by populated with well-to-do locals and tourists. The past is not forgotten, though, and signs take you through the history of the area, mostly the Soweto Uprising. The streets are freshly paved and occasionally see a busload of tourists coming in to see various museums. When we bought the Sowetan « Kota Burger », we walked to the Hector Peterson memorial and ate it over the road from a sign advertising the opening of Soweto's KFC. It seems that times have changed – and as one of the Vilakazi Street signs told us, what we were doing would not have even been possible 20 years ago – journalists were banned and non-Sowetans had to apply for a special permit to enter (which probably wouldn't be granted in any case). We left the Vilakazi Street area with a happy feeling – the township has come on leaps and bounds since the end of apartheid (aside from its imminent hosting of a KFC, which is arguably a big step backwards) and we were happy to see it now before it becomes just another part of Jo'burg. The history of the place will always remain but it's still one of the few places in South Africa where a tourist can walk the streets and get cheery waves from women doing laundry or have a bunch of kids walking alongside trying out their English.

M ponders her choice of Kota Burger

Beats KFC any day!!

It seemed suitable that it was in Soweto, one of the centrepieces of modern African history, that we spent the one year anniversary of this trip. Unfortunately, it seems that I got lost somewhere along the way and so it only appears as « Day 364 » in the title of this post. As the people of Soweto know well, things don't always go perfectly...

Downtown Orlando West

On the day we were planning to go back to Jo'burg, we had a little side trip to the Apartheid Museum, a collection of stories and exhibits from the shady days. While the things presented are generally what is already widely known, the way that it's all presented illustrates just how ridiculous the whole thing is. Entrances to stations, train station platforms, public toilets, park benches and so on – everything was segregated. Pictures from the street showed public toilets with four separate doors – white women, white men, non-white women, non-white men. The differences in spending on health an education for whites and non-whites were laid out as were quotes from leading politicians at the time explaining that the sole purpose of the South African black should be as a provider of manual work to advance the white cause, and so on. Reading these quotes just made you wander how the rest of the world tolerated such a system for nearly 50 years and indeed supported it, against the greater threat of communism. In return, South Africa set out some of the toughest anti-communist legislation in the world, although in practise this was used to suppress any criticism of the system. Nelson Mandela, for example, was thrown into jail under the Suppression of Communism Act. The pass system (which allowed blacks into white areas just for enough time to work, after which they had to return to their homelands) was also set out for us. In the end we didn't have enough time to see the whole museum, but it left us with another lasting impression of just how far the country has come in the 16 years since Mandela became president. South Africans, both black and white, call this the era of freedom. I've heard white South Africans describing the Apartheid era as the dark days, the days of the fascist dictatorship, and so on. Sure, South Africa still has a long way to go on the road to racial harmony and just from being on the street, it feels like there is a lot of tension between the races. An afternoon at the apartheid museum to see just how bad things used to be changes your views on this though. The grace with which most black South Africans have moved on from those days is amazing too and seeing how these people were treated for 50 years makes you smile and how Sowetans will see white faces walking through their streets and greet them with a wave and a smile. Some people we've talked to say that it's depressing (one otherwise tough white South African we met in Jo'burg claimed that he couldn't ever go to the museum without crying) and some say that seeing the past shows how inspiring the future is. I think we both came out this way, and I certainly returned to Johannesburg seeing the country through slightly different eyes after these few days.

Return to Snoozeville

25^th September-28^th September – Days 360-363 Pretoria, South Africa

We'd struggled to find anything to do the first time round in Pretoria and it looked like it would be similar this time round. Unfortunately, Christine's house was full but fortunately, this meant we'd be staying in a backpackers (even if, unfortunately, we'd have to pay for it). Fortunately, I had my legion of infections (the face had since been joined by 2 comrades, one on each leg) as an excuse to not do anything. M jumped on the bandwagon quite happily and we sat around, watched TV, chatted with the various characters around the place. Two Dutch student nurses who worked up in Botswana were nice company, and two women wandering around with Bibles (one of them was an American missionary, the other was South African) had such an innate fear of speaking, it appeared, that I became mystified at the spectacular advances made by Christianity in this part of the world. I can only assume that other missionaries were perhaps more forthcoming with their communicational skills. The American was from Kansas City though, so maybe that's some kind of an excuse.

No caption required

We were about half an hour's walk away from Christine's, yet the scenery was very similar. Roads went between large houses as far as the eye could see, the jacarandas were awaiting our departure before they'd start to bloom, and so on. One thing that I noticed last time and forget to write down was something which I can imagine was done just to make Pretoria slightly more interesting for passing motorists or residents. It seems like the city's land has been re-zoned (this according to signs which have been propped up here and there) and so land that used to be one of these long straight roads has now been packaged into something that can be sold off. That means that Soporific Avenue, for example, is now divided into two parts as there's now a large garden in the middle of it. This has two potential consequences – firstly, a drive who wants to get from one end of Soporific Avenue to the other has to take a detour via Snooze Street and Sweetdreams Drive. The other, far more hilarious yet unlikely consequence, is that someone driving down Snooze Street will take a left into Soporific Avenue as he did last time he was here, but then will rather unexpectedly collide with a brick wall a few metres down the road. I didn't manage to see this happen, though, so we called Christine and went ten-pin bowling with her and her guests for the week, which was nearly as fun.

Just before we fell asleep for all eternity but having done such things as laundry and disinfecting infections, we roused ourselves and got moving southwards. The final goal was Soweto although we'd stop at a backpackers for the night closer to the airport to drop off some bags.

T bravely attempts cooking in a Jo'burg blackout

A Ride with a Giant

22^nd September-25^rd September – Days 357-360 – Pietermaritzburg and Northern Drakensberg National Park, South Africa

The aim for a few days was the Amphitheatre Backpackers, somewhere in the middle of nowhere. After the cold of Lesotho didn't induce the more climatically frail of us to go wandering around the Sani Pass, the Drakensburg mountains looked like a better bet. Various pieces of advice let us conclude that we needed to take a minibus taxi to Ladysmith, change there get to Bergville, and then get another towards Harrismith, which would drop us at the Backpackers' turnoff about halfway down the road. Simple, right ? Once again, we managed to make a mountain out of a transportational molehill. Pietermaritzburg to Ladysmith went perfectly well, as did Ladysmith to Bergville. However, it seemed that the final minibus had left towards Harrismith and we were advised to "go to the main road and hike". Hiking is a rather vague concept in South Africa and means getting a lift with whatever passes - it could refer to hitchhiking just as much as it could refer to trying to get into a passing minibus which has any space. The act is the same though (stand by the road and try to flag down passing vehicles) and so we walked out of town towards the main road and tried our luck.

Our luck wasn't really in for a while and M eventually decided that the best course of action was to go to the nearest petrol station and pick up an icecream and some drinks and see if anyone could give us a lift from there. No such luck, but a few minutes later a large pickup containing an even larger man ground to a halt and asked us where we were going. "Sure, I'm heading that way, get in" he said, and we did. Our new friend was a friendly and talkative guy, eager to hear our opinions on South Africa as most people in this country are. He was from Bethlehem, further up the road, he told us, but worked in Durban. "Did you go to Durban ?" he asked. "We did !" M piped up from the back. "We saw a rugby game there a few weeks ago". This seemed to interest our new friend. "Sharks against Western Province eh ? I played in that game". This is when I started regretting not reading up about rugby very much and I had to admit to him that I knew very little about the game, although we promised that we'd cheer for him next time we saw him on the TV. "Haha ! OK, I'm number three for the Sharks". Noted. "And number 3 for the Springboks as well". Aha ! So we were getting a lift from an international rugby player. Great. I asked him name, warning him in advance that I'd probably never heard of him with my limited knowledge of rugby. So our new friend was called Bismarck du Plessis, and he seemed not to mind that he was helping out a pair of rugby ignoramuses. He dropped us off at the Amphitheatre, politely declined our offer of a beer to thank him for his help as he had some business to take care of back home, and took his leave. We instantly called all of our South African rugby-watching friends to brag about what had just happened, and wondered what the chances would be of David Beckham or Zinedine Zidane giving a pair of hitchers a lift in Europe. Probably rather slim.

George the tent gets another workout

The stay at the Amphitheatre itself was a bit of an anticlimax - the guided tours were too expensive for us and another lump was sprouting on my face, meaning that I wasn't feeling energetic enough to go and wander around. M did so for a short time but it seemed that the distant mountains were a lot further than they appeared, and she returned without having left flat ground. These few days, then, were used to relax again. It was a nice little place with a big grassy area for sticking up the tent, a cozy bar and a restaurant that did decent food. We read books, sat around and picked up our energy for the final leg of the trip. Less than a month was left before the flight home and we wanted to make the most of it.

M explores "The Berg"

and this is what she finds.

Another hour of attempted hitching finally got us back to Bergville from where we grabbed another minibus up towards Pretoria in a desperate attempt to find something interesting to do there. We had some things to pick up from Christine's place and aimed to be in big bad Johannesburg within a few days.

Bergville, anyone? I'm not fat, I've just got an abcess...

19^th September-22^nd September – Days 354-357 – Semonkong, Lesotho to Pietermaritzburg, South Africa

Semonkong had treated us well, but there was only a certain amount of times that you could walk past Pep to a Chinese supermarket and then back to the lodge before it starts getting repetitive. Hunter and Jana were going back to work in Jo'burg and offered us a lift to Maseru. In wonderful South African style, we set up camp in the back of the bakkie with all of their camping equipment, including two thick mattresses that they'd put at the back as some makeshift sofa. They left the hatch up so we took pictures, let our feet dangle over the edge and took advantage of various other simple pleasures that would be totally illegal in Europe until the dust got too thick and we closed up. It was the same road as we took down so I won't describe it all over again (even if it would be in the opposite direction) and the trip passed uneventfully save for the obligatory flat tyre not far from Maseru. As luck would have it, the car ground to a halt just outside a garage and a guy came, took off the wheel, fixed the puncture and replaced the tyre, all in approximately 6 seconds. Chris had given us vague directions to a place called “Darnlink Hostel” he had stayed at in Maseru and, after some quite intensive driving around in circles, we were dropped off outside the old airport as Hunter and Jana wanted to get back to Jo'burg before the sun went down too far. We exchanged numbers, promised to meet up when we got back to Gauteng, and walked off smiling again at just how selfless South Africans are when it comes to helping people like us out.

A couple of kilometres' walk later, we found the place wasn't called Darnlink at all, but Durham Link. We got in anyway, set up the tent, and wandered around Maseru for the evening. It's another one of those “nice enough to walk around but with nothing in particular to do” places. It's the capital of Lesotho so by Sotho standards it's a huge place with every amenity one could possibly hope for, although if you lifted the whole city up and plonked it across the border into the Free State, it wouldn't really be very remarkable at all. We ate some enormous sandwiches and decided to head off to Leribe the next day.

Ol' George gets another workout

Leribe isn't very far but it was a bit of a hassle to get to and took about 5 hours to cover the short distance between the two. There isn't a direct minibus between the two towns, it seems, so we sat on a minibus to Maputsoe for a small eternity waiting for it to fill up. There, we were subjected to the usual coming and going of sellers of various things – some were familiar from other countries (grilled sausages, fruit, cheap sunglasses, mini-mirrors, little plastic things like hairclips that seemed destined to break as soon as you used them, etc) although one curiosity that seems exclusive to Lesotho is the guy who walks up and announces “I am selling stickers”, all of which appear to be of God and Jesus and the Virgin Mary and various other biblical characters. Neither of us really thought they would look good on the backpacks (even if divine protection may have been a useful side effect of purchasing such stickers) so we didn't get any. M decided that money would be far better spent of getting a Cheese Twister from the nearby KFC and I volunteered to go and satisfy her stomach. As soon as I'd ordered, of course, the driver came in and declared that we were ready to go. There were no twisters and only a small selection of various burgers so I took further time to get some food and eventually we got going to Maputsoe. People piled out along the route, though, and at Teyateyaneng we were pretty much the only passengers left, so the driver shunted us onto another minibus, which we again waited in for a while before we got going. The change in Maputsoe was smooth and we got to Leribe quickly. A fellow passenger with the delightful name of Phineas pointed us towards a cheap guest house and took our number, and we parted ways.

After another trudge to go and find the “Naleli Guest House”, we had one of those experiences where you realise that Phineas' interpretation of the word “cheap” probably is diametrically opposed to your own. We tried anyway and got offered a room at a mere 75€. Panic. We politely enquired as to whether there were any slightly cheaper places to stay but it seemed that the only other place that the receptionist knew in town was the local hotel. A quick phone call revealed that the prices were pretty similar. With that curious look of disbelief that Africans seem to give white kids who declare that they don't really have that much money to spend, we were offered the room without breakfast for 20€ less. With heavy hearts and very much lighter wallets, we accepted it. Phineas called to ask if the price was satisfactory. I dodged the question slightly. One of the advantages of getting a room for this price, of course, is that you have such things as satellite TV in your room. It appeared, though, that in the Naleli Guest House, each room had to watch the same programme despite the fact that every room had its own remote control. This led to us having a comical channel-surfing battle with someone from some other room – it seemed that our wish to watch the al-Jazeera news and documentaries didn't agree with their desire to watch home-makeover programmes and the SpongeBob SquarePants movie. We turned in early anyway as we had plans to escape this money trap and get off to Mokhotlong in the far east of Lesotho.

"Cheap Guest House"

Leribe High Street, early morning

Mokhotlong has all the feeling of a frontier town and, much like Semonkong, has the charming feature of two parking areas for each restaurant and bar (one for cars, one for horses). It's a dusty town which probably wouldn't rank too highly on a museum-and-architecture fan's list of places to go, but it was like many of the mountain villages we'd been through – an experience just to be there, and the feeling that you'd stepped back several centuries in time (if you can ignore the few pick-ups rumbling through the streets). We followed a sign for a B&B, headed off down the indicated road and the trail promptly dried up. Another one we found was full, and the women running it took us to a totally unmarked house where we were offered a room for 25€. The Ritz it certainly wasn't, but it was fine. We sneaked off for a dinner of microwave reheated rice and “Russians” (a type of sausage which probably doesn't contain much meat but has so much colourant that if there's a power cut, it's the only thing in the room you can still see). We hit the sack early again, knowing that we'd have to drag ourselves up the hill to the minibus station as the minibus to Sani Top would leave at 6am, pronto.

Mokhotlong sunrise...

Travelling in Lesotho - a must for those looking for the "tough guy battered by nature" look

This, of course, is why we were still sat around at the minibus station at 10am, waiting for more passengers. I do love the relaxed African concept of time, but I also despise getting up at 5.30am for nothing. Especially when it's freezing cold and my lips are falling apart from the cool, dry Lesotho air. I balanced it out and decided I'd still rather be here than getting up at 8am to go to the office in Europe (no matter how warm it would be there). My mother cheered me up immensely at this point by thoughtfully sending a text message to inform us that we should psychologically prepare ourselves because autumn was fast arriving in Europe. Great. Things felt much better.

Mokhotlong minibus station

The climb up to Sani Top, when it eventually got started, was slow but spectacular. The Sani Pass itself, the only road between Lesotho and all of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, was originally a mule track which was widened to take cars but it's still the kind of road where you feel like tapping the driver on the shoulder and asking him when his minibus was last serviced. This was on the way up, which we discovered was the gentler part. As we got to the Lesotho border post, we saw the Sani Top Chalet to our left, where we had been planning to go, stay for a couple of nights and have a mountaintop hike or two. As we got out, though, the wind was strong and cold and M didn't fancy putting the clothes she had with her to the test against the meteorological conditions up here at nearly 3000m. We looked both ways before heading off to the border post to get stamped out – we'd be continuing towards South Africa after all. With all the cool and calm for which I am renowned, I sulked a bit about missing Sani Top before realising I was being a bit of an arse, and sorted myself out. The cracked lips and an emerging lump on my face weren't really helping my mood though, and we rolled on to Underberg along the steepest slope I think I've even been driven down courtesy of a ridiculously tight series of hairpin turns.

South Africa seen from the Sani Pass

A bunch of tourists seen from the Sani Pass

A quick change of minibus in Underberg took us to Pietermaritzburg, where we'd be spending the night before heading out to the Drakensberg National Park for less windswept hiking and the chance to spend more than one night in the same place, which we hadn't done for quite a while by this point! Hurrah. “Maritzburg” was another one of those towns which I'd have liked to walk around more but neither of us really had much energy for it. Instead, we took the easier way out of having a beer and reading “Getaway” magazine, of which there were large piles at the friendly Umphiti backpacker's that we'd ended up in. “I'm sorry”, the owner said, “but I don't get much demand for camping these days. You can put your tent up there, though, while I try to chase the chickens back into their cages”. That raised a smile, but M and I decided that spirits could only truly rise by being taken around the corner for a Scooter's pizza. As always, it did the trick wonderfully well.

T celebrates his return to South Africa with another fabulous lump

The Walk in the Sky

15^th September-19^th September – Days 350-354 – Semonkong, Lesotho

Semonkong isn't really a one horse town in a literal sense – I don't think any town in Lesotho is. It's a town where the local shebeen has no car park but a place to park your horses. There's a big horse station on the main “square” (which is surrounded by two dusty Chinese-run supermarkets, various patches of grass and a South African “Pep” store which looks bizarrely out of place). Metaphorically though, it is the perfect example of a one horse town. The road from Maseru ends abruptly here, ensuring that anyone who comes this far faces a bumpy off-road bus ride all the way back to the capital, and there are just a few houses dotted around. Tarmac is, of course, a distant dream and local people mill around wrapped in their Basotho blankets and all toting rubber boots. It's a strange yet beautiful, enchanting place. Semonkong lodge, which seemed to be the only place in town to stay, is slightly out of town and set on a hillside, at one with nature as these places should be. There are small cottages dotted around and not a sound for miles around. The fact that our cottage was right at the top of the hill was not helped by the thinning air at this altitude and we were always out of breath when we got to the top but it was well worth it for the views across the valley.

M navigates the perilous slope to the cottage in the sky

Downtown Semonkong

Even more downtown Semonkong!

We'd signed up for a wander out of town towards the Maletsunyane Falls, which go nearly 200m into a gorge. In the spirit of Southern Africa it's been exploited by a company offering the longest commercial abseiling drop in the world but it's pretty discreet. We wander through fields, our guide chatting on passers-by on horses. I smile as I tell him that, back home, horses are for the rich. “Ah, but in Lesotho” he tells me, “Cars are for the rich. You have your cars, we have our horses”. As we get to the Maletsunyane gorge, he takes us to a small path which weaves its way almost vertically all the way to the bottom. It's a strenuous descent during which both of us took spectacular tumbles – so strenuous in fact that it wasn't until we got to the bottom that I realised we'd have to climb all the way back up. Hell. We had a bite to eat and a snack (and the guide disappeared for the third time, which I'm sure has nothing to do with the fact that we'd agreed to pay him by the hour) and met up with two horse riders living in South Africa who we'd seen at the lodge, Hunter and Jana. We had a chat, agreed to meet them at the shebeen later on, and hit the slopes up again. It's hard really to encapsulate the beauty and wilderness of the area in words so I'll let the pictures do the talking...

Basotho horses on the way to the falls...

The Maletsunyane Gorge

Maletsunyane Falls from the top of the gorge

Our guide tries to work out how to squeeze an extra hour from the walk

Following the river back to Semonkong

There's not much to do in Semonkong – wandering around town and having chats in the shebeen were about it, but it's a great place to take a breather. Unfortunately though, we were out of cash and the phone lines into town weren't good enough to take Visa Electron cards and so we had to cut the stay short. Hunter and Jana, in good South African style, offered to pile us into the back of their pickup for the long ride back to Maseru. We exchanged numbers, agreed to meet up in Johannesburg and waved them off, once again reflecting on how friendly people are around here.

Hunter, M, Jana, Chris in the happenin' Semonkong shebeen