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Other entries in Johannesburg

Goodbye to Africa

Well the 18th was my last day in SA and since my last entry I have been on a 4 day road trip with my uncle's retired policeman freind Derick. We headed south from Johannesburg to a place called Golden GAte National Park in the Orange Free State, where we embarked on a 2 day 28 Kilometre hike throught the mountains. It was absolutely awesome - some failry rugged terrain beautiful scenery and aside from drinking from pristine mountain streams we saw heaps of game including eland, hartebeest, burchells zebra, mountain reedbuck and black wildebbeest (very rare). Hopefully the attached photos will give you an idea.
After finishing the hike we took a trip to a Basotho cultural village, although clearly run for tourists it was pretty interesting and I even got to drink sourghum beer with the "Cheif". It was a little tacky but at the same time it is run by the local community so it was worth it I reckon. After that we headed into the mountain Kingdom of Lesotho (on a map of South Africa its a small country embedded in SA just south of Johannesburg). Driving through there felt like much of the rest of Africa, dusty shithole towns and traditional villages that have changed very little over the past few hundred years. Derick and I bought sweets to give to the kids along the way. We gave them out as we drove up through the mountains, ascending steep mountain passes all the while driving past and through thatched villages perched on the side of the mountains and herd of livestock tended by herdsmen on tough Basotho ponies. We eventually got so high that the air started to get thin and the engine began to struggle due to a lack of oxygen. Finally we reached the top of the infamous Sani pass - apparewntly a Mecca for 4wd afficionados. The border guard at the top of the pass told us that we would not be able to proceed because the SA border was closed. We figured that he was trying to pull as fast one to get us to stay at the very expensive lodge at the top of the pass. We persisted and he let us go. We began our descent of the in credible steep dirt road pass and probably went down about 2000m over endless switchbacks and increasingly slippery roads due to the rain and mist. After about an hour we reached the bottom to discover that the border post was indeed closed for the night. So we pitched our tent in the rain infront of an abandoned park ranger cabin finally entering SA in the morning. Despite the fact that SA and Lesotho border each other we left Lesotho on the 13th of March and only arrived in SA on the 14th spending the night in no man's land. We spent another 2 hours slowly negotiating the rest of the slippery dirt road before finally hitting tarmac again to begin the journey back to Jo'burg.
Spent the rest of my time in SA visiting with the family and had one last night out with my cousin before heading to the airport to catch my flight to OZ.
I leave Africa with mixed feelings. I'm excited to OZ and continue my trip but I feel like I'm somehow leaving home. There is still so much I want to do there that I didn't have time to and I don't really knwo if my pictures give a good impression of just how awesome a place Africa is. I could hold forth here with my opinions about the place, the problems, the contrasts, the staggering natural beauty and the generosity of everyone I encountered be they family or new freinds but I won't, I'll just say this; Africa is not somewhere you visit its somewhere you experience and when I get home and people ask me how it was I won't try and descibe it, I'll just say "you should go and find out for yourself".

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