South Africa – A World in One Country
Day One – 22 Sept 2013 – Day of the Glitch (or The Day My Luck Ran Out)
Weather: 15, cloudy
I woke at about 5 am and breakfast was served not long after. I watched the movie and we landed in Johannesburg about a half hour early. It was a long walk through the terminal to passport control and I went to the Visa Not Required line. Since it was a South African airlines flight, most people seemed to go into the Resident or Visa Required line. I was one of the last off the plane and there were like ten people in front of me (whereas a later Virgin Atlantic flight had hundreds in the Visa Not Required line).
I got through pretty easily and picked up my luggage. It wasn’t even 7:30 am. I followed the crowd out into arrivals where a line of people with signs were waiting for us weary travellers. I walked by the line twice and didn’t see my name then saw more sign holders standing off among the others waiting for people they knew. Remembering how my Greek transfer was leaning against the rent-a-car stand way in the back chatting with the clerk rather than looking for me, I went expecting to find the same sociable transfer.
I looked and looked and looked.
Remember how I always say to have local currency with you when you arrive? This is one such occasion. I didn’t need to take a taxi in the end, but came close.
But I get ahead of myself.
I looked so long for this transfer, I was on a first name basis with the taxi guy offering taxis to people coming right off the plane (the kind of taxi we’re told to avoid). I finally dig out my documents and the voucher tells me to call if there is a problem. The information desk tells me how to dial the number and I get a hold of Thompsons Africa – the local company that is running the tour. I tell her my name and she hesitates then asks what I want.
Well, my transfer would be nice.
I have no cell number to give her so I tell her I have a voucher and that I’ll be waiting by the escalators that are right next to arrivals. She’s says okay, she’ll send someone.
Now, I learn later that this transfer picked up another tourmate and had mentioned to her that he was supposed to pick up someone else but that the name wasn’t on the list. The tourmate said they should pick me up but he said no and they went on.
So, think about it. I’m told I’ll be picked up and rather than walk a few metres to say hello and can I see your voucher…he just drives off. This is the one event that I found unacceptable. Mix-ups can happen, but to be sent to pick someone up and not even check was simply wrong.
As it turned out, it didn’t matter (and if I had waited another hour with no arrival, I would have used that local currency to take a cab to the hotel). For some reason, I went back to look at the signs right at the arrivals door again and just happened to notice one woman holding a Thompsons sign. I asked her and the Virgin Atlantic guy with her if they were there for me. They looked at the list and said no. I told them my tour name and they said yes, that was the tour they were picking people up for. So, they told me to take a seat and they’d take me to the hotel.
So, I sat and didn’t move for two more hours while we waited for those others to navigate their way through the hundreds in that Visa Not Required line. I picked up the airport internet then realized it was only free for 30 minutes, so knowing I’d be back for a 5 hour wait on Oct 9th, I bought the option valid for 30 days and surfed while we waited.
A total of six from the UK showed up and we made our way to the hotel by 11 am (almost 5 hours after I landed). The transfer mentioned that I need only talk to the hotel front desk to see about doing the Soweto optional that afternoon.
Cool…seemed my luck hadn’t quite run out.
Well, until I got to the hotel.
The six UK tourmates got their keys and went to their rooms. When my turn came, the clerk just kept shaking her head and saying that my name was not there. So, I show her my documents that said I’m supposed to be there and show her the Thompsons number. She calls and I talk to buddy. I give him my code and I can imagine him sitting at his desk shaking his head like the front desk clerk as he said my name was not there.
So, he asks me who booked the tour and I give him Brendan’s number in the US (where it’s like 2 am on a Sunday morning). He says he’ll call them and call me back at the hotel. So, I sit down and wait. It’s noon by now and the front desk clerk has told me the Soweto optional leaves at 1:30. I tell her I can’t go if I can’t get this sorted out.
Thompsons calls back and has Brendan on the conference call. It takes two of these calls to give them both all my information and codes and that. By now, the clerk has taken pity on me and said she’d give me a room. I offered her my visa card in case I ended up having to pay for it. By now, I’m starting to get a tinge of panic.
Not crazy funky chicken panic. Just a slight rise in heart rate type panic. I knew I had paid in full. Brendan had my money and the tour was still listed as available the day before, so I really didn’t foresee a problem now that they were talking to each other. But it looked like I might miss the Soweto optional.
At 12:45, I take my luggage up to my room and the phone is ringing before I even have the key in the door. I race to the phone and the clerk is telling me they have figured it all out and everything is okay and would I still like to go to Soweto.
Poof. Just like that.
It’s 12:46. I say okay.
Before I leave the room, I talk to Brendan again and they assure me everything is okay. I take their word for it and head off for the Soweto optional….hoping they’re able to get me a room at all the hotels at the last minute.
Or I might be sleeping with the lions yet.
So, despite a very very long morning and those tinges of panic, it did work out. This incident is the reason I like to travel with a large company like Brendan, Trafalgar and Insight. If there’s a problem at 2 am on a Sunday morning, there is someone to call. Someone who can actually do something. I was impressed.
I did try to get an answer from Brendan as to why there was a problem in the first place but they said Thompsons only keeps records for six months and after a couple of failed attempts to get an answer via Brendan, the six months elapsed and I never got an explanation as to why it happened or why the transfer didn’t come in to check on me. IN the end, Brendan offered me a discount off my next tour. So, it took time but in the end, I was satisfied and have no qualms about traveling with either company again.
So, at 1:30, I get to the lobby just as the driver for the Soweto optional shows up. I get aboard the van with one other couple from the tour and two other couples. The driver introduces himself with a long name that none of us want to attempt…then says he prefers to be called King.
Okay. Cool.
He starts our tour driving through an area of gated neighbourhoods. The houses/condos are all behind walls with security cameras and ADT signs that state “armed response.”
That’d keep me out.
King tells us that Johannesburg started as a mining town when gold was discovered there in 1886. The area was a huge savannah with no trees so they planted a forest to have wood for the mines. Much of that forest remains throughout the city.
Our first stop is at Nelson Mandela’s house.
He said usually they don’t let people stop to gawk and take photos, but there’s another mini bus there and he tells us that maybe we can. So we get out to gawk and take photos of the house and the three media people sitting in a tent wrapped up against the cold. We guess they were on a death-watch as he was quite ill at this time and passed away two months later.
What was really nice was to see the well wishes painted on stones around the plants just outside the wall.
Then security shows up.
Time to go.
We scramble aboard and King takes us to a section of Johannesburg called Hillbrow and eventually come to Constitution Hill that used to be a prison.
Mandela had been kept there for a couple days and Ghandi also spent time there. King stopped next to a statue that represented the strip search that used to be performed on the prisoners.
We drove up to the constitutional court and had a look at where the eleven justices meet.
From there we drove towards Soweto, passing Johannesburg’s own China town where King said he can get “three kilometre shoes.” Cause they only last 3 kilometres. As we approach Soweto, King told us that the area has four million people – a few hundred thousand more than Johannesburg. Then he told us where the name Soweto comes from.
I bet you think it’s an African name, right?
Nope. The name comes from the fact that it was the “SOuth WEst TOwnship.”
Yeah, he got the same “ooooooh” response from us that our Croatia guide got when he said Montenegro means “Black Mountain.” Terms so obvious, we miss them.
Our first stop is the soccer stadium where the World Cup was held.
King said the stadium is built to represent beer. Yeah, you heard that right. It has a white top to represent the foam and the various brown colours on the side to represent the different beers. Well, it is a sports stadium after all.
The population of Soweto is made up of blacks that were forcibly removed from Johannesburg when Apartheid started in the 40s. The township was divided by tribe to dissuade them from uniting. No whites were allowed to live there though today roughly 0.1% of the population is white. The government had policies to give homes to the residents, one of which was that they’d get a home if they had dependents. Of course, you know what happened. A lot of children got born soon after.
Our next stop is my Amazing Race moment for this tour – the Orlando Cooling Towers. It was the site of a Fast Forward on season 7.
The power plant was built after the Second World War and the towers added in the 50s. The plant was shut down in 1998. The mural on the towers is the largest mural in South Africa.
Our next stop is Vilakazi Street.
It’s the only street in the world that was home to two Nobel Peace Prize winners – Mandela and Tutu.
Since Mandela’s house had been attacked at one point, he got a bulletproof house. Winnie Mandela lives there now.
The children in Soweto were educated together. In 1976, they learned that they would now be taught in the Afrikaan language and in June, 1976, a group of students ranging in age from 11 to 18 marched towards the stadium to deliver a memo to the government protesting this move. En route, they were met by police. A 13 year old boy, Hector Peterson, was killed and this iconic photo taken.
The man carrying the boy left South Africa soon after (not liking the publicity and last they knew he was in Canada). A museum near the shooting was built and the boy’s sister works there (on the left in the photo).
The result of the shooting was more than 150 dead in what became the Soweto Uprising. See wiki for more information at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soweto_uprising
The museum had a good selection of news footage on the event and was well laid out. On entry, there was the usual sign telling you what you can take in like no food, no guns. And in a first, the museum also states “no open fires.”
Yes. That is appreciated.
Though, you have to wonder if there’s a story behind it.
When we were done with the museum, I needed a fix of caffeine and noticed a store across the street. I asked King if I could get one there and he said yes. I went in and the shop was an open space with the products and employees behind a cage. I asked for a coke and she pointed me to the cashier. I asked how much and though she said 12 franc. I’m guessing it’s meant to be rand in their language or dialect. I got confused for a moment and looked back and there were like six people standing there all staring at me, including two young girls standing right next to me that just watched my every move. I wasn’t sure if they were just interested or thinking “boy, you’re one brave woman.”
I got my coke and went back to the van where King informed us that he was broke.
That’s our cue to pay for the tour.
I asked what happens if we didn’t pay….would we have to walk back to the hotel?
King laughed at that.
As we drove back, we were treated to a dance by three kids on a street corner.
King drove us back to the hotel for 4 pm and that gave me time to get sorted out before the welcome meeting at 7 pm.
I went down a few minutes early and it wasn’t hard to find others from the tour. We went into the bar area for the meeting. Our guide’s name is Canaan and there are a total of 17 people on the tour. Two Americans, eleven Brits, five Canadians…I think. And two are male solos which is something I rarely see on tour. On my other eleven tours, I had two male solos total.
As Canaan gives us a breakdown of the tour, he tells us that he is our guide until Durban and we have another guide for the second half from Port Elizabeth. (This part of the tour is the Panorama Tour and the second is the Garden Tour).
As he is giving out the information, he is interrupted by one woman and you know how you can peg the “complainer” right away. Well….it couldn’t have been more plain if she had stamped it on her forehead. The biggest complaint was that they had sat in the hotel since 2 pm and were bored. They didn’t want to go to Soweto they said. I said they need only ask at the front desk and they could have arranged any tour they wanted and her response was “she shouldn’t have to.” She was disgusted that the welcome meeting was at 7. Why couldn’t it be at 2 so that they could have gotten an orientation tour? The fact that several people on the tour didn’t arrive until 6 pm didn’t seem to factor into it for her. LOL
(I will include a sample of the string of complaints that come from this woman only because it fascinates me that one can come to a foreign country and see such fabulous things yet find the most mundane things to complain about constantly. And it’s only a sample of the complaints. I don’t mention how pretty well every meal was “disgusting,” how her seating at restaurants never seemed to be acceptable and how she’d try to manipulate her way into the front seat on the bus every day despite being told not to sit in the same seat twice. I want to include it partly because some complaints were hilarious but also because I hope including it indicates how this behavior can impact on tourmates and their enjoyment of the tour).
As Canaan tried to give out the information, he would be interrupted with questions about something he had just explained. Seriously, people need to “listen.” It got to the point that people walked away confused but it had nothing to do with Canaan. He was pretty clear. The worst one was when he asked for our flight details to Port Elizabeth so that he could confirm them. The flights were booked by our travel agents, not by Thompsons and he wanted to make sure the flight time hadn’t changed so that there would be no problems at that end.
Simple, right?
Well, a few minutes later, one man got into a near panic…what happens if we miss our flight? Will they give us a hotel? How will we catch up to the group? Will they fly us out the same day?
Canaan, very patiently, explained again that he was just “reconfirming” our flights to make sure we don’t miss them.
Five minutes later, another woman asked what happens if we miss our flight to Port Elizabeth.
After the day I had had, I was ready to pop. By the look on the faces of some others, I wasn’t the only one. LOL
We broke up at 8 pm and I asked Canaan if everything was settled for me and he said it should be okay.
I went back to my room and was finally able to get a shower and lapse into a coma.
Go to Day Two
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