Jo’burg in a day

I have one day in Johannesburg, a city of 8 million. I wanted to get out of the backpackers so I signed myself for a mini-bus tour of the city.
For a tourist sum of R480 (NZ$96), you get thrown into a van and paraded around extortion hotspots for the day. Our guide was [...]

On the move – Cape town to Jo’burg

The list of things to do in Cape Town is endless. There’s a dizzying drive round the twelve apostles to Cape Point, where it’s popularly claimed the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet in their fury. In the city there’s the array of theatre and music, as well as a visit to the Bo [...]

Robben Island

There were two things I would crawl over crushed glass to do in Cape Town. The first, achieved last week, was to climb Table Mountain. It was an exceptional day. The 600m climb was steep as could be imagined, and the mountaintop a plateau, lush with flora and views to kill for. [...]

Cape Town and Table Mountain

After a quiet few days in Stellenbosch I decided to do the tourist thing in Cape Town.
I’ve been given a car to use for my time in the Western Cape, a godsend. While I could be in the heart of the city at a backpackers, staying in sleepy Stellenbosch has been good for the [...]

The white perspective

I haven’t done the family thing for a number of years, ten or thereabouts. So when I arrive at my cousin Tania’s for a braai, I’m a little nervous.
Not dissimilar to the kiwi barbeque, the menu is filled with meat: chicken, ostrich, steak, lamb, and of course, the spicy borewors sausage which has [...]

Cape Town by night

I’ve spent a week in what is considered the jewel of Africa. Cape Town is a city boasting a population of four million, matching that of New Zealand. It’s a breathtaking oxymoron of affluence and slum dwarfed by Table Mountain, which towers above the city like a god overlooking its subjects.
My Cape experience [...]

In the papers today

I’m living in Africa now, and it shows everywhere. Picking up a paper this morning, I see President Mugabe makes a cameo. Zimbabwe, in an effort to withstand the flood of terrorist activities, have begun jamming overseas radio broadcasts. Since they also happen to have shut down ‘insurgent’ radio stations within their [...]

Arrival

I made it. Arriving in Jo’burg airport, I realised that I had just over an hour to clear customs and check into the domestic terminal for my flight to Cape Town. An hour is the equivalent of a photo-finish in a 100m sprint. A single nose-hair’s difference means boarding or missing my [...]