JOHANNESBURG
22-24 June
post by scott
I was not particularly happy to be stopping over in Johannesburg. To be honest I was scared, and not completely without reason.. For years now we have seen a constant stream of South Africans making a new life in Australia due to the security problems in their country, and Jo-burg always seems to get mentioned as the most dangerous place of all. There is a notorious hospital in the city which attracts adventurous medical students on elective and prospective trauma surgeons because the ED gets such a tremendously high volume of stabbings and gunshot wounds. Students who train in their department are by necessity extremely proficient in all manner of trauma related procedures simply because of their location. I didn’t have the balls to apply there for my elective. The only reason we were overnighting here was because we had to pick up our dive gear for Madagascar which had been mailed by sea over 3 months prior. It was supposed to be waiting at our hotel so our plan was to get in, pick up the gear and get out. Thankfully we had booked to stay an extra day in case the gear didn’t arrive, which it didn’t. We later found out that SA post workers have been striking recently so perhaps that’s why.
My first impressions of the city were through the cab window at dusk on the long drive from the airport. In two ways it was like being in Brisbane again: (1) The city is an endless sprawling mass of lowrise which takes hours to get across, and (2) the taxi meter ticks over at a ridiculously fast rate. However unlike Brisbane there was razorwire and perimeter fences everywhere and a layer of black smoke straddled the city from various bonfires. During our few days we also noticed the scarcity of pedestrians walking around the streets – it seems like the only way to get from secure compound A to secure compound B is by car.
We had chosen quite an expensive hotel in the suburb of Roodeport because they were willing to hold the dive gear for us (which didn’t turn out to be necessary) and also due to its proximity to a few different dive shops (which did turn out to be necessary). In desperation Allana had emailed them all in the prior days and we had settled on a shop which seemed to have everything we needed and also happened to be open on Sunday. Stress levels were high when we arrived on Saturday night as we knew we only had limited opening hours the next day to find and purchase everything needed for the next 7 weeks. You can’t really get anything in Madagascar so we couldn’t afford to mess it up. The list was: wetsuits, booties, fins, masks, snorkels, dive computers, dive knives, slates, SMBs and torch as well as all the bits and pieces that we were still missing like batteries, toiletries, medicines and snacks.
Alf, the owner of Brightwater Scuba could sniff a bundle of cash coming his way so he obligingly picked us up the next morning and took us to his dive shop where we managed to get everything needed. Job done, I was happy to get the hell out of Jo-burg.
My first impressions of the city were through the cab window at dusk on the long drive from the airport. In two ways it was like being in Brisbane again: (1) The city is an endless sprawling mass of lowrise which takes hours to get across, and (2) the taxi meter ticks over at a ridiculously fast rate. However unlike Brisbane there was razorwire and perimeter fences everywhere and a layer of black smoke straddled the city from various bonfires. During our few days we also noticed the scarcity of pedestrians walking around the streets – it seems like the only way to get from secure compound A to secure compound B is by car.
We had chosen quite an expensive hotel in the suburb of Roodeport because they were willing to hold the dive gear for us (which didn’t turn out to be necessary) and also due to its proximity to a few different dive shops (which did turn out to be necessary). In desperation Allana had emailed them all in the prior days and we had settled on a shop which seemed to have everything we needed and also happened to be open on Sunday. Stress levels were high when we arrived on Saturday night as we knew we only had limited opening hours the next day to find and purchase everything needed for the next 7 weeks. You can’t really get anything in Madagascar so we couldn’t afford to mess it up. The list was: wetsuits, booties, fins, masks, snorkels, dive computers, dive knives, slates, SMBs and torch as well as all the bits and pieces that we were still missing like batteries, toiletries, medicines and snacks.
Alf, the owner of Brightwater Scuba could sniff a bundle of cash coming his way so he obligingly picked us up the next morning and took us to his dive shop where we managed to get everything needed. Job done, I was happy to get the hell out of Jo-burg.