Johannesburg - Couchsurfing

A comfortable desk it is, in a two bedroom apartment, with a splendid view of the Sandton area, Johannesburg. Compliments of Mr du Plessis, our host for two nights! But let me tell you how we got here, since the last blog told you we still did not have our passports back!

Well, they were retrieved allright thanks to many many friendly people from PostNL (thank you Petra!) who were willing to go out of their way to make sure we (actually my sister in law) got them out of the system in time. With thos added, our total weight added up to 35 kgs. 6.5 for Tijl (weighing 27 that's a lot!), 7,5 kgs for Silke and the rest for me.

Put nicely into travel bags that's actually a lot less than allowed on our flight. Emirates allows 30 kg per person!

So we flew. What's there to say. They were filled up, the aircraft. The A380 was nice. I got a chance to see the J-Nose made by my neighbour Bert. Thanks Bert, it held up nicely! The kids were allright, we were given a complementary meal by Emirates in Dubai. I saw the Burj Kalifa from the plane. What a massive symbol of Dubai's masculine pride it is! Majestic! And we slept on the flight to Johannesburg. I saw a recomendable SA-movie, Fannie Fourie's Lobola. And we made it to the airport ok, stood in line for passport control for more than half an hour, retrieved luggage from the conveyor and were out!

First thing I did was to buy a Cell simcard, so I have a South-African number now. (call me at +27613328298 if you like) We took the Gautrain to Marlboro to go get our rental "bakkie". Advice: Do not take the Gautrain from the airport. It's a ripoff! We had to pay 10 Euro's each for the ride, a taxi would have been a lot cheaper!

Anyway, we got our bakkie, to fit 3 (or many more inthe back) seated and with enough room to sleep in when absolutely necessary. It took them 4 hours to get it fixed though, sadly. The kids were playing in the enclosed industrial area....

But Pace cars had it all done by 4 in the afternoon. Driving on the left was the new challenge, but it was ok. Having navigation on my phone was a blast, since navigating Johannesburg without is unadvisable. Even with a map I think it would be hard, you'd have to have a well trained navigator (no offence Silke).

Eventually we ended up at our couchsurf place, Leon was not home. But he let us in nonetheless! Great guy! And gave us a bedroom, biltong (dried SA meat - try it!) and numerous stories. He talked to the kids in Afrikaans, which they understood quite well! We had dinner with him at a restaurant (pizza Marguerita for the kids, surprise...) and then some conversation accompanied by classical music. 

We slept great and this is my view now:

Great!