Last Day in Africa!

We're back in Pretoria where we started this adventure.  Today is our last full day in Africa, and this will be our last update from Africa.  Our flight leaves Johannesburg at 7:45 local time and it will be a long one!  19 hours later, we'll land in New York and frantically take 5 different trains across to Newark, NJ for our flight to Regina, which departs about 3 hours and 50 minutes later.  We'll have to be quick!

In the meantime, we'll spend tonight just relaxing here at the lodge.  Tomorrow, we're booked to do a tour of Soweto (short for South-West Township). south west of Johannesburg.  Soweto is home to about 3 million people, and I don't think any of them are white.  This is because during the Apartheid era, most of the black people from Johannesburg were evicted from their homes and sent to live in townships like Soweto.  Tomorrow we'll learn more about Soweto and its history.  If I'm not mistaken, I believe that Nelson Mandela spent part of his growing up years in Soweto, and I think our tour may stop by the house where he was born/grew up.  The others in our tour will likely stop by the Apartheid Museum.  Since we were there at the start, we'll either go straight to the airport, or spend some time on the rides at the nearby Gold Reef City, an amusement park right beside the museum.

Yesterday. we were in and around the Blyde River Canyon.  What an incredible area!  The scenery is absolutely amazing.  We went to "God's Window", which is basically just a really nice lookout point; the Bourke's Luck Potholes, big holes formed by the weathering of the rock at the meeting of two rivers (Bourke was one of the main gold prospectors back in the day, and he threw money into the holes for luck when he discovered them.  Of course, he discovered gold soon after); and another lookout over the canyon.  There were weird guys at the last place that wanted to be our best friends.  We were a bit suspicous of them, but we left with all our belongings.  Other than that, not much is new.  We're looking forward to seeing everyone again at home!

D&K