Tuesday, September 20, 2022

roadtriPpING to Johannesburg

First thing on the itinerary today was one final early-morning game drive. The night before, Jamie had said that we’d be leaving at 6:00, and if we weren’t there he’d assume we weren’t coming. I set my alarm for 5:20, hit snooze, hit snooze again, got up to turn on the lights… and ended up not being able to resist the temptation of staying in bed.

Knowing we’d only be traveling within the immediate vicinity of the lodge, and the fact that the weather was kind of dreary, I made a gamble that the animal sightings would be the giraffes, antelopes, zebras and such that we’d seen over the last few days. Without my camera and that photo opp carrot to get me out of bed, I decided that the sleep-in was worth it.

I eventually got my act together and headed down to the deck area with my computer, thinking I’d leisurely work on some music stuff I needed to do, but ended up running into Sam & Jason who had also skipped the drive and were down there having breakfast and coffee. We chatted for a while, and around 9:30 the rest of the group returned from their game drive. Turns out I was mostly-right about the sightings – the group did see a sable antelope for the first time, which, looking at photos, is definitely cool-looking, but I’m content with my decision to have a lazy vacation morning.

We had some breakfast, then several of us did a little souvenir shopping at the cute little lodge store before checking out to hit the road to Johannesburg.

The drive from Kruger to Joburg is about six hours and was mostly uneventful. Somewhere in the middle (literally in the middle of nowhere – mapping my photos there’s not even a town labeled there haha), we stopped for lunch at a rest stop. It looked just like the rest stops you see on long drives in the US – coffee shop, a couple of fast food places, souvenirs, gas station, bathrooms, etc – the big difference being that behind the building was a farm with a bunch of rhinos, zebras, and antelope. Not something you see every day at a rest stop! (Getting off the bus, Jamie had told us we might see rhinos and we assumed he was just giving us shit since we hadn’t seen any in Kruger haha.) It was cool to get to see them, though I’m not sure it really counts since these were clearly all domestic animals that belonged to the farm they were on.

It was also my opportunity to finally try Nando’s, a chicken place that I know is a big thing in the UK. (Apparently there are a few US locations too, which I had no idea.) It’s just fast food, but I had a shredded chicken in a pita thing and it was tasty!

Arriving in Joburg, we checked into our hotel, the African Pride (part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection) in the neighborhood of Melrose Arch. The hotel was really attractive, with sort of a vintage feel in the room, and we had the late afternoon free to relax before meeting for dinner. The hotel was load shedding, which made for an adventurous pitch-black shower with no power haha, but it was nice to get a little more dressed up than we had been for our last night together.

Our group dinner tonight was an interesting one. We were scheduled to go to “Charlie & Gerald’s Town Treasure,” a sort-of dungeon (really) of a restaurant where they serve a multi-course progressive meal of African foods, while telling us the story of Johannesburg. We drove over to the restaurant, but before we could get off the bus Charlie the storyteller jumped on and said that he was kidnapping us to take us to a different location.

He ended up taking us a couple of blocks away to the Johannesburg Culinary & Pastry School, where we’d experience that same storytelling dinner but in this new environment.

We started out with some (delicious!) canapés and a local gin before heading upstairs to formally meet Charlie and mingle at the bar.

From there, we alternated between enjoying a course of dinner downstairs, introduced by Gerald, and coming upstairs to hear the story of Joburg as told by Charlie. The food was excellent, Charlie’s storytelling was excellent, and it was all really fascinating, though I think between the drinks, the last few days of early mornings, and the 10 action-packed days we’d had, the trip had caught up with us. At the beginning of dinner we had all sorts of grand intentions to have one final afterparty for our last night together, but when we got back to the hotel it was all we could do to crawl back to our rooms and fall asleep.