A short drive through Johannesburg's history

This is a little tour guide written for the out-of-town guests staying in our pretty cottage we have on AirBnB. It describes the route from the cottage to the Apartheid Museum. I thought I'd share it here, for those interested in some of the lesser known history of Joburg.

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If you intend driving or taking a taxi from the cottage to the Apartheid Museum, there are a number of interesting things on the route to see, both historically and present-day. The route runs through some of the oldest suburbs of Johannesburg and places where gold was first discovered during the 1870s.

It’s hardly a ’tourist route’ but nonetheless interesting and quite scenic in its own way.

We recommend you drive this route slowly to get the most out of what you’ll see along the way. It’ll take about 30 minutes or so at a leisurely speed.

When leaving the cottage, turn right in Indra street at the first four way crossing. Drive down Indra street, past two four way stops to a T-junction. Turn left, and immediately enter a roundabout. Leave the roundabout on the opposite side and onto the railway bridge. On top of the railway bridge turn right, and at the traffic light right again.

Follow this street (Albertina Sisulu Road) up to a traffic light where you’ll turn left. At the traffic light, look to your right - this is the Langlaagte rail station, and the exact spot where a famous Afrikaner military leader during the Anglo Boer War, General De la Rey, was mistakenly shot dead in his car at a road block set up to catch the Foster Gang, a notorious group of robbers, in 1914. The incident is the stuff of legends, and conspiracy theories that he was set up by the government of the day because of his rebellious behaviour. You'll notice a grey marble plaque on the wall commemorating the tragic event.

After you’ve turned left carry on for a few hundred meters, following the road where it veers to the right. Turn left where the road intersects, into a street lined with poplar trees on both sides. Careful here, there are speedbumps in the road!

On the right you’ll see an old Dutch Reformed (Protestant) church which is one of the oldest in Johannesburg.

The cornerstone of this historic church was laid in March 1889, but the Boer War delayed completion and it was only inaugurated on 12 December 1902. The founder of the Abraham Kriel Orphanage on the opposite side of the street, Rev. Abraham Kriel, was the first minister at the church and served from 1902-1917, he is buried with his wife in the grounds of the church.

Soon you’ll get to a set of traffic lights. If you look to your right, diagonally across you'll notice a fairly plain entrance gate.

This marks the spot where gold was discovered for the first time in Johannesburg in 1886, changing the fate of South Africa forever.

Cross over and onto another rail bridge - through some bluegum trees ahead you’ll the autumn-coloured calabash shape of FNB Stadium (also known as Soccer City), built for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. As you drive along prepare to pass underneath another rail bridge, and keep an eye on the top right part of the bridge. You’ll notice a piece of graffiti that reads: "Comrade Hani, our nation weeps”. "Comrade Hani" refers to Chris Hani, a revered ANC leader during Apartheid that was assassinated in 1993 by rightwing activists.

After going underneath the bridge, you’ll notice on the right one of Johannesburg’s characteristic but disappearing landmarks - a yellow sand mining dump. There used to be dozens of these dotting much of Gauteng province, but most have been recycled and the sand used for various purposes.

Soon afterwards you’ll pass underneath a bridge and see the 90 000 seater stadium in front of you. If you have time you can pause and visit the stadium, or turn right at the traffic light just after the bridge. The stadium is used mainly for football matches but also for music concerts - early in 2014 we watched Bruce Springsteen perform here!

After you've turned right at the traffic light, the road does a full circle onto the top of the bridge. Follow the road for two or three kilometers. You’re now passing through land still owned by mining companies. Almost all of the mines here have closed down - look out for the ruins of one such mine on the left.

At the next set of traffic lights turn right. You’ll now pass the offices of De Beers Diamond Company and the research facilities of the gold mining conglomerate Anglo American, again signs of the history of mining in this area. About a kilometer on keep an eye out for the road sign showing where you’ll turn left for the Apartheid Museum and Gold Reef City. Turn left into a slipway and follow the road past a set of traffic lights. After that you’ll see the large entrance for Gold Reef City on the left, and again to the left, after passing through it, the parking lot of the Museum.

We hope you enjoyed the drive!

New arrival in the garden....

A few days ago I went to my local camera shop, took out the family jewels, and exchanged them for a Sigma 120-300mm 2.8 lens. For about three weeks I'd read up reviews, enlisted opinions from photographer friends, looked at hundreds of photos taken with this beast of a lens, and it the general opinion was that it was the next best thing to forking out six figures (in Rands) for a Canon of the same range and quality. But most of all, I asked Adeline what she thought. And when she said, just go and buy the damn thing, well, that's what I did.

It's a monster of a camera lens. I haven't weighed it, but it's not the sort of lens you take on the Camino de Santiago (read what I took with on that little 46-day excursion here) unless you're looking to develop serious back-aches. Nope, I didn't get it with a view to traveling far; I got it for birding and wildlife photography, which in South Africa means anywhere from my back garden to the Kruger National Park, which is only a six hour drive a way, plus at least a dozen wildlife reserves inbetween.

My timing for acquiring the lens was good - our resident garden Cape Robin had given birth to a youngster just a few days prior, and soon the little one was driving us insane with its incessant, high-pitched tweeting for food. The parents were constantly flying back and forth with morsels of insects and worms, and dropping it into a seemingly bottomless gullet that could never get enough to eat.So I set up my Manfrotto tripod on the verandah, mounted my new lens onto the Canon 5D MkIII and waited to see if I could catch Cape Robin feeding time on camera.

For the first try I added in the Sigma 2x extender, but at 5pm the light was simply not enough to ensure a sharp photo. For the next try, two days later, I took off the extender and stuck with the lens only, which was more successful. The resulting photo was a mix of luck and preparedness. There was literally a half-second window opportunity between Mrs Cape Robin arriving with lunch, Junior opening wide, and mum dropping in a yummy piece of earthworm.

I didn't do much to the snapshot in Lightroom afterwards, just the usual bit of cropping and sharpening. And there you have it. My investment has started paying for itself, perhaps not in Rands and cents, but certainly in photographic satisfaction.

But most of all, we're happy that the Cape Robin lineage is continuing in the garden - the Robins have a more of less permanent spot in the hedge where they return to breed every year. And now I can start a family album of photographs!

Stories from the Camino de Santiago: The Carrefour Town

'The next town,' says Adeline while studying her iPad screen without breaking her five kilometer-an-hour stride, 'is a Carrefour town.'

'What's the town called?'

'I don't know, but it's a Carrefour town. It says so on the map. There's a little icon here.'

It's five in the afternoon, and I'm famished. We still have four kilometers to go along a brilliantly white and perfectly flat strip of gravel road that runs through the fading green wheat fields west of Burgos, ending at the next little pinpoint of civilisation, where we'll bivouac for the night. Since the last town, the paced crunch of our trail runners on the gravel path we're on has been slowly diminishing, like two steam locomotives nearing a station.

For the past five days our evening meal choices have been limited to that old culinary Camino standard, the peregrino menu. I'm amazed to think back now, after 800 kilometers, how absolutely standardised, ritualistic and exceptionally bland  the peregrino menus are all along the road. Order the ensalada mixta, the staple first course on the menu at Pamplona, you get lettuce, tomato, onion, and with slight variations boiled eggs and asparagus. Order it in Estella, you get ditto. And more of the same in Hontanas, Astorga, right down to Santiago. Little or no dressing, no condiments. I dare say that even the author of the Codex Calixtinus, bless his pilgrim soul, probably ate the same tired recipe on his pilgrimage tour, eight hundred years ago.

Which is why we're looking forward to the Carrefour town where, before we shower, wash clothes, or even take our trusty trail runners,  we'll drop our packs at the entrance of the Carrefour and stock up on dinner goodies. Sure, its over-lit, ample shelves are filled mostly with pre-packaged, radiated food prepared by a faceless international conglomerate who probably buys hot-house grown lettuce by the metric ton from corporate-owned farms, but we don't care. Why?

It's simple. Because Carrefour's gazpacho is the smoothest, richest, yummiest gazpacho you'll ever taste this side of the Pyrenees. Throw in a generous slice of goat's cheese (we're happy if it's local, but we'll settle for something imported from Italy) and a chunk of freshly baked pan and you'll see us kicking back on Adeline's sky-blue sarong on a lawn in a scenic park, or on a park bench next to a romanesque church, contently slurping from our green plastic mugs in-between mouths-full of tangy cheese and bread.

The rumour that, on the Camino, the pilgrim's journey is a fruitless search for culinary delight may be largely true, but there are notable exceptions, such as those you'll find in Carrefour towns. Go on, be a devil. Be different. Succumb.

Follow the first fifteen days of our Camino trip, starting here.

Camino de Santiago Day Fifteen: Monreal to Puente la Reina: Goodbye, Aragones

We left Monreal chirpy and well rested. It's our final day on the Camino Aragones before we join the pilgrim river at Puente La Reina. Up to now the road has been wonderfully quiet, serene and remote in large parts. It'll be a new, rather more social experience from tomorrow, and we'll just go with the flow.

We'd not had a particularly early start and soon the sun was burning down on us from a cloudless sky. In one village we walked through a digital sign laconically announced that we're walking in 31 degree heat. Our hydration packs worked overtime. Long stretches of the farm roads we we're on were shadeless. It was taxing.

At one point we were glad to see the pillared hulk of the must-see Eunate church appear ahead of us, with the promise of its dark, cool inside to rest in and escape the sun.

Except that it was Monday, and we found the church locked and deserted. (Note to Spanish authorities, Pilgrims want to see churches on Mondays too, you know). So we were left to huddle for a few minutes under a sparse olive tree before continuing our hot trek to Puenta La Reina.

Along a particularly long and scorching stretch close to Puenta La Reina we were surrounded by bare, ploughed fields both sides of the dusty track we were on. 'What we need right now,' I said to Adeline between wiping beads of sweat from my face, 'Is someone to turn a watering hose on us to cool down.' Suddenly, out of the blue, the irrigating system start shooting long arms of water into the air on the field next to us. We didn't need an invitation - we both ran onto the field like kids and within two minutes we were soaked to the skin. I'm not making this up. This is the stuff that happens on the Camino.

I'd be lying if I said entering Puenta La Reina after a long trek of 35 kilometers wasn't somewhat of a shock. Every second building seems to be an albergue, with socks, towels and garments dangling from window sills. Petite pilgrim girls in sarongs, their pristine feet removed from their leather sandals daintily sat on the lawns, nibbling on goat's cheese and bread while reading well-thumbed copies of Brierleys. Almost everone we saw was a pilgrim. Moreover, they all looked fresh-faced and pink-cheeked. Our sun-burnt, sweat-stained and dusty demeanours stood out. We'd been on the road more than twice as long as most, and judging by the stares it must've showed.

I'm glad we'd opted to start in Lourdes and complete the Aragones route before tackling the long, well-trodden path to Santiago de Compostela. It had given us the chance to get a head start and savour the culture and history of the old pilgrim routes while being gently introduced into the mores, ethics and quirks of daily life as modern pilgrims.

Later we settled at a bar on one of Puenta La Reina's lively streets and drank a toast to the Camino Aragones. It had been tough going, but very, very rewarding. We felt ready for the next chapter. It's on we go.

POSTSCRIPT

We carried on yes, right through to Santiago. And even by bus to Kilometer Zero, Finisterre. But I stopped blogging once we got to Puente la Reina. I wanted to just take in the rest of the road without having to think about writing. I made some notes from which a story or two may still flow, but this is it for now. Now, get online and book an air ticket, go walk the Camino. Now.