Thursday, April 14, 2022

Rainy Johannesburg and Sunny Cape Town

Sunday morning dawned cold and wet in Johannesburg.  While I was not feeling ambitious at all, Cheryl thought we ought to see some of this major city, and so we opted for an Uber ride to the Apartheid Museum.

Like the country folk who come to the city and use the elevators for the first time, we (or at least I) marveled at this, our first ride in an Uber.  The vehicle pulls up--like magic!--at exactly the time they say, the license plate matches, this is our ride.  Watching the little car move down the map on my phone as we headed to our destination!  Door to door service!  Wow!

We never used it in the USA because it's really expensive, and we have cars.  Here, it's crazy cheap, like almost everything.

The Apartheid Museum is simply epic.  Just absolutely dense with material, it's really telling the modern history of South Africa itself.  Along with the regular exhibition, they had an additional special exhibitiion about Mandela, who was really like a 20th century George Washington to the country.  Almost 4 hours in, we still had plenty of museum left to see but closing time was approaching.  Still cold and rainy, we called for another Uber and waited outside, without a protected space.  Nine minutes away.  Would the magic happen again?  And it did!  The white car with the exact correct license plate.  Salvation from the cold rain!  Amazing!

By this time all we cared about was a decent meal and a good night's sleep before our flight to Cape Town.  We opted for the adjacent mall and ended up in a South Asian fusion restaurant.  Very spicy food, Naan the size of large pizzas, and lots and lots of patrons following premier league football on the big screens (this was a Sunday night).  

Monday dawned cold and wet with lots of traffic in JoBurg.  We were happy we were on rapid transit to the airport, and we managed to get there and get ourselves on the flight to Cape Town.  Two hours later we landed in 86 degrees and sun.  What a difference!  Cheryl said it was like flying out of Boston and landing in Florida. 


1 comment:

  1. These posts are great. Thanks for chronicling your trip!

    ReplyDelete

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