Jo-burg 1

So we arrived in Johannesbug (aka Jo-burg or Jozi) on time and hassle free. A good friend of Marks, Kuda, picked us up at the airport and dropped us straight back to her house, where she was putting up all three of us. Obviously myself and Sarah felt a bit cheeky crashing in the house of someone we'd never met, but Mark assured us it would be OK. Little did we know that Kuda had two kids (Curtley, aged 14 and Vuyiso, aged 7), and myself and Sarah were to be given their room.

The original plan was to only spend 4 days in Joburg, as Marks entire holiday was just 2 weeks. We spent the first couple of days visiting Soweto (Nelson Mandela's house, Wandys famous restaurant) and touring the excellent Joburg museums and some of the huge shopping malls. Mark then showed some signs of wanting to extend his holiday, naturally enough, so of course we pounced on him and badgered him into actually doing it (Sarah and Kuda took turns on the phone to the various ticket agents to rearrange everything for him).

So we ended up spending a total of 10 days in poor Kuda's house. The kids were off school for the holidays so when Mark and Kuda went out for the afternoon doing some wheeling-and-dealing myself and Sarah would lounge around or go down the road to play tennis and go swimming with the kids. What with playing Mark in Zim, and Curtley in Joburg, I've developed a taste for tennis - something I haven't played since watching Bjorn Borg as a kid.

One of the days Mark, myself and Sarah took the two lads off to Hartebeesport Dam for the day. It was a nice drive and the dam was impressive enough. We went to a pretty cool zoo there too that had all the big cats. Curtley had borrowed Sarah's sunglasses earlier in the day, and while myself and Curtley were teasing the lions to get a reaction from the lazy loafers Sarah's glasses flew off the top of his head and straight into the cage. The understandably frustrated lion pounced on them straight away of course, and then began eating them while Curtley ran off to get the zookeeper. He just laughed when he saw the lion munching away, although Sarah was anything but laughing when we told her her glasses had been eaten by a lion (I had to show her the photos to prove it). Ah well, I'd told her not to buy such expensive sunglasses before we left, as on a trip like this the chances of managing not to lose them is slim indeed, although admittedly I hadn't thought they'd be eaten by lions!