First day in Johannesburg

Arrived late last night so haven't actually seen an awful lot just yet. Rich has taken the kids to school and Jayne has got to work.

I didn't quite twig, before coming here how big South Africa actually is. About 1 hour south of J'burg is a lake which is apparenlty the same size as Luxemborg. It also takes roughly two hours to fly from J'burg to Cape Town.

On the trip down from the airport Rich pointed out a load of new roads which had been put in or rejuvinated for the world cup last year. It seems the whole country was up for it. For about 3 months Friday was a day where everybody from school kids to office workers wore the shirt of their favourite team. Apparently the same thing will happen for the cricket world cup as well.

The power sockets here are very similar to the UK in that they have 3 pins, the earth being in the middle and is larger and longer than the other 2. The only difference is that the pins are round. Because they're so big they are not generally included in those multi-country converters you see at the airports. I just bought two EU/UK to SA adapters. Not sure when I'll use them after this trip but worth the money to avoid power loss.

Rich and Jayne's kids are very polite. Chloe (aka Clogs) is the younger of the two. Sophie is the eldest (obviously) and she's a bit of a sports nut as well as a tomboy. She has tennis this afternoon and owns her very own cricket bat (for kids!)


Went with Rich to buy some clothes, fix a battery in his car and go to his sailing club where he has his business. www.crocssailingcentre.co.za

We setup a Feva he has on trial from RS. It had arrived from Cape Town the previous day.

Had a picnic lunch.

After lunch Rich took me round a local game reserve which actually borders the Pretoria Sailing Club lake he uses. Unfortunately the rains are here and the grass is very tall. There were supposed to be ostrich, hippo, zebra etc. We only saw some zebra close up but there were some excellent birds. Bright red & blue as well as eagle owls.

Very hot, caught some sun. Promise of big storm which never really arrived. On the way back to Rich's house we stopped at the local liquor store and butcher to stock up for the BBQ in the back garden.