South African Observations

In my short time here I have made some observations about the people, the culture and the lifestyle. These are just my observations of a unique country I was able to travel for 10 days.

1. South African urinals are unusually high up on the walls. I literally have to pee up to arch it into the urinal. Trust me, they are placed rather high on the wall....or I have shrunk in height.

2. The ghettos here make the ghettos in the USA look like Beverly Hills. Rappers rapping about hard knock lives should come to the shantytowns here. I saw a card board box "hair salon" with the "S" backwards. I saw a tin-walled "night club" called Club Fantasy. These shantytowns have everything, hospitals, bars, homes...but you wouldn't want to spend more than 12 seconds in one of those ghettos.

3. The drivers in the rural parts of South Africa are rather polite. Anytime you come up on someone driving slower than you, they move onto the shoulder and let you pass.

4. Police cameras that "catch" you speeding suck. I think this is cheating. They didn't "catch" me. If they send me a ticket with a picture of my car speeding, im gonna send them a picture of the cash they want me to pay.

5. Walking around the city centers (centres) of a South African city at 10pm looking for a place to buy beer is not a good idea.

6. Apartheid is still alive in South Africa.

7. 81% of blacks in South Africa are unemployed. 6% of the whites are unemployed.

8. There is a saying here: "In London they have watches, in South Africa they have time." Things here don't happen on time. Case in point, I ordered lunch with two of my friends. It was not a busy time of the day. We all ordered our dish. After 25 minutes my two friends got there meals. I asked where my warthog meat pie was (seriously) and the waitress said, oh I forgot. That will be another 45 minutes until I bring it out. What? Not Cool.

9. To get details out of a South African is rather hard. I stopped by another restaurant near the Southernmost point of Africa. I went in to the nice cottage with it's door wide open at 11am. I asked the waiter if they were serving lunch. "No we only serve breakfast and dinner, not lunch here" he replied. I continued with "ok, can I have some breakfast, it is 11am." He slowly answered "no sir, we are finished with breakfast." "Ok" I said, "What about dinner." Again in a slow paced voice "No sir, it is too early for dinner." I stood inside the open door and said "ok, can I get any food to eat?" "No sir, we are closed." Well tell me that when I first opened my mouth! And shut the damn door. And flip your "open" sign to "closed".

10. GPS is not infallible.

11. South Africa has a weird balance of stunning beauty, and terrible dirty trash laden cities.