joburg

Just returned from a weekend in Johannesburg, South Africa. Rwandair was launching weekly service to Johannesburg so tickets were 60% off.

They told us the flight would stop in Burundi. They didn’t tell us it would stop for 3 hours of cocktails with the Burundian Minister of Transport.

The flight down was packed full and felt like a spring-break party bus -- everybody was drinking and yucking it up. Turns out it was a spring-break party bus -- when we arrived in Johannesburg they announced “if you are returning to Burundi, please remain in your seat.” Half the people on the plane flew four hours each way just for fun (I’m assuming they didn’t pay for those seats). I suppose if you lived in Burundi you might, too.


What I’d heard about Johannesburg was that it was unsafe, violently racist, and dirty. Not at all what we found.

• Johannesburg is heckof developed. There are freeways with off-ramps and malls and movie theaters and banks and fancy cars. When you are on vacation from New York, camping is great. When you’re on vacation from Kigali, you just want to go to the mall.

• We took a city and township tour. General conditions seem to be a big step up from Kigali’s and the government is building tons of housing and providing portapotties in the meantime. We felt relatively safe. Still, I’m sure we were getting the government-sanctioned tour; a friend tells me the electricity and water in the townships has been turned off because the poor can’t pay. At least in Rwanda there’s no pretense (and no power).

• We saw quite a few young mixed race couples -- a definitive end to the apartheid era?

• Took a tour of Nelson Mandela’s old house in Soweto. Random fact: he was once an amateur boxer.

And it was a great vacation for us.

• Boy did we eat. There’s a Smith & Wollensky in Sandton which serves a $12 fillet mignon which is to die for. We also found sushi and Thai curry and orange juice.

• We saw two Hollywood movies. With popcorn.

• The shower worked, the bed had springs in it, and you can drink the tap water. Wow.