I loved the film Out of Africa – all that hair washing & big open skies! Always seemed like such a big continent with dramatic contrasts (always wanted to be just like that!)
And today I landed in South Africa & after a long day with really hardly any sleep for 48 hours I feel more alive than ever – but think that might have something to do with the marvellous bottle of blush rose I’ve just purchased for about £4. To drink wine in a country where the grape is grown… Shirley Valentine’s dream …
So we landed in Johannesburg at 10.00 am this morning, picked up the car, worked out the Sat Nav and set off for Constitution Hill, once a notorious prison for political activists, which gives visitors a valuable insight into the horrors of discrimination & man’s inhumanity to man. A moving place where you can spend time contemplating what it must have felt like being locked up in cells – simply because you were the wrong colour.
It seems incomprehensible – but it’s not so long ago really. As a quick storm blew in over Hillbrow, one of Johannesburg’s notorious areas known for its lawlessness & violence, I couldn’t help but wonder why all I could see was decent people going about their business & living their daily lives. Yes, of course, the poverty struck me, but just people all the same. The beautiful old Art Deco buildings give a nod to an era that’s maybe best forgotten?
From Constitution Hill we drove through ‘notorious’ Hillbrow- which just seemed to me to be a bustling city full of life and energy with people going to market, shopping, chatting, hanging out, going to school, falling in love – to the Carlton Centre where we took the lift to the 50th floor to get some outstanding views of the City. We were the only white people around – it gives you a sense of what it might be like to be a minority?
Of course, although I was tired and really just a bit smelly from travelling, I’m already beginning to love it.
We drove north to Pretoria along wonderfully constructed highways which wouldn’t look out of place in America and Australia and checked in at the Eagle’s Rock Hotel – perched high above the city now famous for the Oscar Pistorious trial – and found some time for a quiet dinner and some South African wine, already planning the onward route.
A contrast between modern and traditional, new and old, freedom and slavery …I’m not sure how much things have changed … And I need to know more. Which is why travel is so enlightening… And so appealing.
No swearing yet. And I’m not sure I’m going to get my hair washed…
But what a fascinating history and culture and what an adventure lies ahead…!
Mags Winthrop Blog 