Soweto & Pretoria

Now a few days have passed without me being able to write a blog entry. I spent the last 7 days in Botswana and Zimbabwe. Currently, I am on my way to Kruger National Park ☺️ A post about that will follow as soon as I am back from my safari.

But now let's talk about my time in Johannesburg, the township of Soweto, and the capital of South Africa, Pretoria. I must say that I didn't see much of Johannesburg itself. The city is quite a contrast to Cape Town. While I could walk around the city during the day in Cape Town without any problems, this is rather difficult and partly very dangerous in Johannesburg. When I arrived at my hostel, I met some other travelers from Europe after a short time. A Frenchman told me that he had just been robbed this morning. And not in a nice way...

I have unfortunately heard such stories several times until today. Fortunately, nothing has happened to me so far. But I never went far from my hostel alone. To do something anyway, on the second day I took a guided tour to the township of Soweto and the Apartheid Museum. The tour was really worth it. It was an interesting experience to learn more about the people in the poorer areas of the city. The highlight was definitely the visit to a kindergarten or school. Afterwards, I spent a few more hours at the Apartheid Museum. Even though I knew beforehand that South Africa has a dark past, the extent of the problems was not known to me in this form. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough time to fully explore the entire museum.

The next day, I went on a day trip to Pretoria with a few people I had met on the tour the day before. Pretoria is only about 30 minutes away from Johannesburg by train. I really liked the city and it was the complete opposite of Johannesburg. I felt much safer in Pretoria. So it was no problem to explore the city on foot. After a long day, I returned in the evening. The next day, it was time to get up early. I was picked up at 5 a.m. and the adventure safari began 😃

To be continued....