Snapshot Chronicles Roadtrip

Family travel through a slightly twisted lens. Sense of humor required. Shoes optional.

Leaving Zambia

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img_6029Wednesday September 16, 2009
Livingstone, Zambia to Johannesburg

Our flight to Johannesburg departed in the early afternoon, giving my brother and I just enough time to take a quick last photo walk at Victoria Falls that morning. I was lucky enough to catch another rainbow (at left and on Flickr)

Then after our walk around the Falls, we wandered over to the bank to break some larger bills. As we were walking back to the restaurant to meet up with Mum, we found a little stall selling smaller versions of the sculptures scattered around the Zambezi Sun. I could not resist buying a warthog for my son — for only $10 US. The man working at the stall was the artist, so we also were able to congratulate him on his work.

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The bus collected us on time for our transfer to Livingstone Airport. As I mentioned in my earlier post, Livingstone is the quintessential colonial airport. A few tips:

  • You must reconfirm your outbound flight 24 hours in advance. When you get to the airport, security has a list of departing passengers, and your name better be on it.
  • There aren’t many services at the airport. We were lucky to be on British Air, which has an airport lounge available to its club members at no charge or passengers on BA for $12.00 each. It isn’t much, but the cold drinks are free, there’s a bathroom and they let my brother smoke in their backroom.
  • You have to go through security for a second time as you board, so don’t bother buying a bottle of water at the airport bar. It will be confiscated. We’d gotten ours at the BA Lounge so it wasn’t a financial loss, just a hydration one.

    • We got back to Johannesburg’s OR Tambo Airport in the late afternoon and made our way to the Southern Sun at the airport for an overnight and early early departure the next morning for a flight to Polokwane, South Africa followed by a trek north by car to Botswana and the Mashatu Game Reserve.

    I’ve mentioned before and in the Recommend section how much we appreciated the hospitality and food at the Southern Sun, but nothing compares to the wonderful ladies from Housekeeping who squeezed in some laundry well past the usual deadline for three travelers running dangerously low on clean clothes. There is a very serious weight limit on your baggage when traveling in/out of South Africa, and even more so on the smaller aircraft that we would be taking later in our journey. We just didn’t have a lot of extra stuff, and they so came through for us.

    Next stop: Mashatu.

    —

    My brother has set up a website to chronicle our African trip. www.mashatutiger.com Yes, we know there are no tigers in Africa. There’s a story. I’m getting to it.

Johannesburg, South Africa – The Apartheid Museum

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ApartheidTurnstile2Sunday September 13, 2009 – Monday September 14, 2009

We arrived in Johannesburg at about 8am. Customs was efficient, as was the greeter from Journeys of Distinction, the travel agency that had arranged our trip. She guided three fairly weary travelers to the shuttle bus for the Southern Sun airport hotel and confirmed that Patrick, our tour guide from Wilro Tours, would pick us up promptly at 1pm for our visit to the Apartheid Museum.

Yes, we were tired but it’s always a good idea to get on local time as quickly as possible.  I wanted to visit the Apartheid Museum, and the first day was our only window of time in JoBurg for sightseeing. Mum and Doug were kind enough to go with me, although I suspect they would have been just as happy relaxing by the pool. It turned out just fine though; they really enjoyed chatting with Patrick  while I meandered through the exhibits.

When you purchase your ticket at the Apartheid Museum, you are given a token representing a racial identity and you enter the museum through the appropriate door (pictured above.)

Once inside the museum building, you follow a timeline of South African history that explains the roots, impact and aftermath of apartheid.  I think the thing that astounded me the most was how narrow the victory was for the apartheid forces in 1948. If the opposition had been less fractured, South African history might have been very different. There was also a special exhibit devoted to Nelson Mandela.

We were there for about two hours but I could have spent a whole day. Photography is prohibited inside the museum, but I took a few pictures of the exterior. On the way back, Patrick took us on a brief tour of the city, pointing out historical and cultural landmarks.

We wrapped up the day with dinner at our hotel, and an early night. Needless to say no one had trouble sleeping!

ORTamboOutofAfricaStoreRecommendation: I highly recommend the Southern Sun OR Tambo. The rooms are pretty standard for a luxury airport hotel, but the food and the service are far better than I have experienced in similar properties in the US and UK. When we left fairly early the following morning to catch our flight to Livingstone, Zambia, we were privileged to hear the housekeeping staff chorus that starts every day with a song or three.

The picture at left is a display at the Out of Africa store at the departure gates at OR Tambo. It gave us a bit of inspiration for the next stop on our trip: Livingstone, Zambia and Victoria Falls.

Copyright 2009-2018. All Rights Reserved. Photos copyright Susan Getgood unless otherwise noted.