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After taking a look at the nice beach outside Maputo we returned to the "safety" of Swaziland. The next day we took the bus to Johannesburg and stayed the night at the Drifters Inn. On our final day in South Africa we went on a guided tour of Johannesburg before flying home to Norway in the evening.

South African Adventure 1999, Part 11: From Swaziland back to Johannesburg and home to Oslo

Jan Arild Teland
2006-05-08 20:37:40

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The tour started with us driving away from the suburban area towards downtown Johannesburg, with Simba telling us about the specific sights which we passed along the way.

Downtown, we made our first stop at the Museum Africa. We were all given 45 minutes to explore it on our own before we had to meet Simba outside. It was a huge museum, dealing mostly with the history of the Johannesburg area, from political history to geology. To really see this museum would require a lot more than 45 minutes, which was only just about enough to get a feeling of what the museum was all about.

Next we drove around a little bit in the center of Johannesburg. The difference from the empty streets of yesterday evening was enormous, as there now seemed to people everywhere, most of them selling something. Simba again pointed out the various sights to us as we drove along. Our next stop was at the socalled "Museum of Man and Science", which was located in a busy street, right in the heart of Johannesburg.

We were quite surprised when Simba didn't bother locking the car when we went inside. We thought that Johannesburg was unsafe, so leaving the car unlocked didn't seem like an obvious thing to do! Even in Norway, you never leave your car unlocked anywhere! Figuring he probably knew the city better than us, we followed him inside, but remaining slightly worried that the car would be gone when we returned.

The place didn't look much like museum to us, more like a very strange shop. They had all kinds of weird looking stuff, like dead animal skin, hair, fur and so on, both in the shelves and hanging from the ceiling. The place was quite simply packed with the kind of stuff that you would expect to find at some crazy voodoo witchdoctor's place! We were not too keen on the smell inside the museum either. Simba was very enthusiastic, though:

"You see that colourful medicine over theeere.... .....This is ...