Tuesday 8 March 2022
Yup, back in Johannesburg, Joey's, Joburg, Jozi... except on the West side. It's a rather large city geographically and is known as the economic hub of South Africa. It's not often thought as a tourist destination but a transit city.
A few years ago I started attending Heritage walks of the city center and buildings. I immediately realised that I had been sitting on a goldmine of interesting things. I had lived in the city as a young adult but moved to the more affordable and sedate side of the city 30+ years ago.
Suburbia.
Except millions of people had the same idea and now there is a crazy traffic race around the highways. Unfortunately the public transport system is lacking so it means that everyone drives everywhere.
As my soon-to-be-returned car floated onto the 4 lane motorway and the madness persued, I smiled at the thought of the dusty one lane road complete with dogs, geese, donkeys and horses of Nieu Bethesda.
A few people have said to me 'back to reality?' And I started thinking about my next phase of reality.
Why not make Chapter Three about the cities? Johannesburg and Pretoria?
So I started my accommodation search to see the feasibility. There's places from R250 upwards and suddenly I got excited about exploring different suburbs within the city. Of course I will need to intersperse my stays with some 'visits' to my friends and families with spare rooms to stretch the budget. But I did start thinking about how I could possibly swivel this to earn some money too. I'm still toying with the ideas but I'm really beginning to 'feel it'.
I have a couple of days before that Chapter formally starts and in those days I am going on a running group weekend in Magoebeskloof. I'm quite nervous at the prospect of running though, so I might end up doing much shorter distances than the others who have been consistently building up their kays.
If I'm driving around the city to different bnbs, my Smartie will be ideal plus parking it should be a lot easier..
Jozi, here I come...
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