Summary of South Africa

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I just want to give a brief summary and also a review on South Africa after being here for 2 months.

For those of you that were wondering (or not – it doesn’t matter :p), my eyes are doing just fine. I have no problems seeing things and it’s so great not having to worry about fiddling around with contacts or glasses.
It was great seeing all my family again but boy do I have a lot! Two months is definitely not long enough to see everyone and spend time with them!
South Africa as a country has a long way to go in terms of becoming a First World Country. Their electricity supplier, Eskom, carries out load shedding at various times. This is when they cut the power to a whole area during peak times. The amount of revenue being lost by stores is huge! They have to close because of no power, but as well as this, traffic lights are down so there’s chaos on the roads. There is not enough electricity for everyone, let alone the demand. Eskom blames the apartheid government but they just didn’t plan well enough.
Another thing is that this is a country that is set to host the 2010 Soccer World Cup so the power outages are not a good sign. Hosting the World Cup brings a lot of tourists and tourist will want to do touristy things and if places like Robben Island needs to be booked up to 2/3 weeks prior then it shows they can't cope.
They are also building new stadiums for the World Cup and the workers are too sharp! They were striking several times demanding more money to complete the stadiums as well as getting a bonus when it’s completed. The authorities have to give in because they need the stadiums built!

But the things that I did like in South Africa varied from city to city.

Johannesburg did not have much going for it. It’s just a over-populated flat land-locked city with no distinguishable features EXCEPT for it wonderful electric storms! The storms there are so powerful and electric they light up the whole sky. The storms in New Zealand don’t even compare to these storms! I used to live in JHB and this is one of the things I really miss.

Durban was a beautiful coastal city but the weather has changed since I last lived in SA. Durban used to be really hot and humid with rain mainly in winter but now there were four seasons in one day. I promised Alisa she could get a tan on the lovely beaches of Durban but the weather let me down.

Cape Town, in both of our opinion, is one of the best cities in the world!!! It’s so picturesque and stunning that words don’t do it justice. You have the glorious Table Mountain behind you and in front of you is the stunning blue water beaches (albeit it’s a bit cold, but still). We definitely could live here! We also felt really safe here compared to the rest of SA, and almost forgot that we were in SA!


There was a great ad on SA TV for coke. I put the link here to go to youtube to check it out. The best seen is when the Indian guy tries to do it!!
Brrrrr - click here to see the video