To decompress after last night, a group of us hung out in my room and had our customary "pot luck" dinner of cheese and crackers (we decided that sharp cheddar would be the only cheese we'd eat for the rest of our lives, if we had to choose...), digestive biscuits (with chocolate, of course!), and a huge bag of M&Ms which we polished off quite quickly! We definitely needed the chocolate! Our hotel in Jo'burg has VH1, so we spent quite a bit of time watching that...except
it's not like the VH1 at home. In South Africa, VH1 will play a Beyonce Video and then the next one is Dancing in the Streets by Mick Jagger and David Bowie. Awesome, to say the least. During our "dinner" the security knocked at the door and turns out that Mary and Jane left the water running in their sink and flooded their bathroom and part of their room. Not what they wanted to deal with after the day we had!
This morning we headed into Pretoria, the Administrative capital of South Africa. It's a big city outside of Jo'burg. Our first stop was to the Administrative building and gardens. We frolicked about and took some fun pictures on the steps.
Here we all are, in age order, acting goofy! I especially love the wet willy that Mary is giving Chris! More proof of the fun people I've come to know and love!
Our next stop was the Voeltrekker monument which pays homage to the white Nationalists. They were responsible for starting the Apartheid. Really don't have much to say about that... Moving on.
Then we went to some fort and aside from laying on the steps and basking in the sun, we saw this gem of a picture.
We had time to kill before our date at Freedom Park, so we went to the Kruger house. He was a former PResident of the SA republic... He had a large pipe collection. That's about all I got from that. We left HEather behind at the museum....whoops. Partially my fault because she is one of my "people" aka her name is after mine in alpha order, so I have to make sure she's on the bus. Whoops.
We finally made it to Freedom Park (after going back to get Heather), and got a tour of the park wh
ich commemorates the lives of all South Africans and all the lives lost in the liberation struggle, South AFrican War, Slavery, Genocide, etc. The highlight of the Freedom Park is the Wall of Names which had the names of everyone killed in various struggles in South African history.
After that we headed back to Jo'burg (it took us 2 hrs...fun fun traffic!), and then we headed out to Melville for dinner. Our group went back to SOI (the Thai/Vietnamese Place) and we had some amazing Saigon Sizzling Beef, Chili Ginger Chicken, Pho Ga etc. DELISH...I will miss that restaurant.
Tomorrow we leave bright and early for our two day stay in Botswana. After that it's three, one night stops and back to CapeTown. I can't believe that I'll be home in 2 weeks. I don't want to leave.
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