Now most of you know how much I now hate flying, so this will come as no surprise. The flight was delayed boarding so all the really keen people (us) stood around for about 45minutes for them to open the door, then the families with young children boarded first.
Then the rest of us piled in, I got comfortable put my noise cancelling headphones on so I couldn't hear the screaming kids and went to sleep. Lisa on the other hand didn't sleep and got to listen to them....At around 1:30am I woke up to discover we were waiting for the missing passangers to arrive, it was after that very long wait (plane was suppose to leave at 11:45pm) we took off.
I can tell you that there was lots of screaming kids, but I thank god for my noise cancelling headphones so I got to sleep most of the way, Lisa not so much. Which brings me to one of my many thoughts. When Sheldon invents a functional Teleporter I'm using it, of course I know there will be side effects which I presume one will be throwing up, but let me say I'm good with that... I figure if the flight is about 10 hours then a 10% vomit levy seems reasonable.
Upon arriving in South Africa we were pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to get through customs, really the only bit of excitement came when a very unhappy South African women gave her unfortunate husband several serves. One of which was "I don't know why I'm still with you", which Lisa and I wondered why he was still with her, but we figured he was to scared to leave without her permission. Now we can speculate that he did finally get his revenge by running their luggage trolley into her ankles, which was met with another serve and a final parting shot of "I don't want to speak to you!!!" which I have to say sounded like a really good deal.
We headed out and jumped onto the train to Standton, now let me say it was awesome.
For all the pollies in Western Australia, look at how South Africa's Airport train works. Super quiet, super fast, super smooth, and really quick. Truely Brilliant!!!
Our Hotel was directly accross the road from the train station so that was also really easy. We basically arrived around 7am and the hotel gave us a room straight away. Perfect!!! Shower and breakfeast and a quick look around the shops before heading to Soweto for our Tuk Tuk ride.
We organised the tour through LEBO's backpacker and our Tuk Tuk tour guide was Lebo, he was really entertaining, knowledgeable and everybody knew him the kids loved the Tuk Tuk. Every where we went in it we were treated like rock stars, more because of the Tuk Tuk than anything else.
I've heard alot about Soweto over the years, some good some bad and I wasn't really sure what to expect. The good news is that there are parts of Soweto that are really impressive and is now the place to be seen, the bad news is that there is still so much to be done. (sewage, clean water etc) On our drive we stopped at a Shebeen (illeagal drinking house), the story goes that every street has one and it would appear that is true. We par-took of the locally brewed beer which is white in colour and made by the ladies. Their culture is that they share everything, so the beer must be good because you don't want to give your mates a bad brew. Part of the deal was Lisa had to wear traditional hat, to get the photo of Lisa in the traditional hat I had to crouch in the door way where all the local children crowded around / leaned on me. the funny thing is they all want their photo taken and they love to pose.
We saw Nelson Mandela's old house, Desmond Tutu's house (apparently Desmond loved jogging around Soweto every morning) which is now the happening area of Soweto. We then moved onto Winnie Mandela's new house and where other significant anti aparthied campaigners once lived and where some still live. Most of the remaining activists from that era are Musicians and Artists. We also went to the Memorial for all the students who were killed and for Hector Peterson the little boy who was shot during the protests against the education system of the time. There is a photo of him being carried by a fellow student with his sister running alongside. (his sister now runs the Memorial Museum)
Soweto wasn't what I expected, It was a really interesting place, rich with history and culture. It's a township that has had a lot of adversity but at least has hope of a better future. For me it seemed quite surreal being there given how much I've followed Soweto's history.
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