Day 3 - Jo-burg Tourists

The next day we slept in a little and just enjoyed being on vacation with no real agenda that day. About mid-morning we decided that it would be a good day to go into downtown Johannesburg and be tourists for the day. My parent's didn't really care to go this time, so it was just us cousins and my Uncle William who took us. We ate outside at this little cafe overlooking a large square near the museum. Everything about being in that location reminded me of Mexico for some reason - the climate, the trees, the architecture, the big square (like the Mexican Zocalos). Here are a couple of pictures to show what I mean.









As we walked back to the car, Uncle William pointed out the DeBeers Diamond Building and explained to us that they have a monopoly on all the diamonds in world and diamonds are not as rare as we think they are. They have thousands of tons of diamonds in vaults there that they only release a certain number of a year. Also they own the entire west coast of Africa called the skeleton coast and they have guards posted there to keep people from collecting all the diamonds that scatter the beaches. That was very interesting to learn.
As we drove through the real downtown Jo-burg, I was starting to feel a need to be more cautious and I was really glad we had Uncle William with us. I would say that that was the most "unsafe" I felt on the whole trip. It felt a little bit like we were driving through the Bronx. We didn't stay downtown too long, and we never got out to walk on the streets (we would have stood out like a sore thumb if we had). Instead we parked in a parking garage and went up to the 50th floor of what used to be the tallest building in Africa, The Carlton Center. It had windows all the way around and you could see the whole city from every angle. It's a pretty big city - about the size of Chicago.On our way back home, Uncle William drove us past an even poorer area so we could see the contrast of lifestyles. This is a squatter camp. It is formed of little shacks thrown together with no electricity, running water or trash pickup. You would think that the people who live there have no work and are dirt poor, but that is not always the case. Some people were arriving home in suits heading back from their "white collar" jobs, but this is all they have known, so they are quite content to live this way. Seeing this area made us realize even more the large gap between upper and lower class in this country.

That evening after dinner we packed up our things, getting ready to leave that country and spend the week in Swaziland.