Text by Patty Simon | Images by Dick Simon
South Africa

I left you reading about the Pygmies or Twa in Rwanda making pottery, singing and dancing.

I mentioned that our flight to South Africa became somewhat of a nightmare – one needs a different kind of endurance while traveling… Finding energy to keep going until the next opportunity to put your head on a pillow.

What happened? Little did we know we were entering into a marathon. Arriving at Kigali airport at 11am only to find out our flight does not “exist”. Rule number one, always confirm flights. The next flight is one in the morning, which means we stay up all night. I always find the silver lining and it was visiting the Twa, have dinner and go back to airport at 11:30, fly out at 1:30 am, arrive Joburg at 5:30am where we are met by our guide and taken on a city tour till noon. We visit Mandela’s first home with Winnie, the mansion he lives in now, the famous township, Soweto, which was quite interesting as it has three distinct sections – the shacks for the poorest of the poor, government housing and what they call Beverly Hills (suburban houses where people have good jobs and choose to stay in Soweto… The reason? Close community.) We visited museums explaining some of the complicated history around Apartheid. We jump back on the plane to take a 2 hour flight to Kruger National Park where we are met and driven another two hours to the private game lodge, nDzuti Lodge run by Judy and Bruce. By dinner we had stayed up for almost 40 hours! I call that a full day(s)!