Ashley & Jozi

Some local art work

Some signs outside of the market

I'm sure you just saw this title and thought 'Isn't she supposed to be backpacking across Europe by now?' Well truth is I probably am but these posts have to be spread out somehow and plus it gives me time to see everything and post afterwards or when I'm heading to bed or waiting around for whatever. You are also probably wondering what Jozi is. Well I was or still am in Johannesburg, South Africa! Johannesburg is a very diverse community and full of surprises around every corner. Johannesburg also goes by numerous names such as Johannesburg, Joburg, Jozi, J-burg and many others i'm sure I haven't heard of yet. I have to break this blog post up into two posts because I've done so much! I'm only here about a week and I have treasured every moment and embraced everything from the culture to the people. It's pretty exciting because this is a new continent for me, and even a new hemisphere! Which if you guessed it good job, means it's freezing here. Well not freezing but it's about 15C or around 50-60F which is insanely cold considering I come from the desert so i'm typing this now with very cold hands because I most certainly did not dress for winter at all.

 

Some wooden spoons



Soft stone figures

Soft stone bowls

Now on to the fun stuff! My first few days here my lovely host took me out for food and we went to some neighborhood markets that were absolutely delightful and I was able to purchase some souvenirs and just walk around and meet and greet people. We went to two markets that were near by each other I believe (I don't know where anything is), The first market was more artsy (which a lot of Jo-burg is) and had more food than the second market. We walked around the first one for a few hours and then moved onto the second one which I just adored. There was so much stuff to see from people cooking things, to selling items and even live music! It was so vibrant and I enjoyed every moment of it, too bad I arrived on a Sunday and we could only see it that day and I flight out on a Friday and it's only a weekend market. It was wonderful and one day I hope to come back here and see it again. Later on that day we went to another market that was more of a store, well it had a store front and on the second level there was roughly 20+ merchants selling their wares and i'm a pretty good bargainer so I got some killer deals. I bought some wooden items and went to the post office to ship them only to discover they have to be fumigated in order to be shipped? How about I just won't ship it. The underground shops were my favorite to shop in because they had everything from various hand crafted dishes, elephant hair jewelry, clothing, key-chains and pretty much a little bit of everything. One stall could have the same item as the next and they would be different prices such as a key-chain here can be 45 rand and across the market it could be 20 rand. Right now the exchange rate between the rand and US dollar is about 16 rand to every dollar.
 

Later on in the week I did a hop on - hop off bus tour which i'm sure you've seen or heard of by now. They are the big red buses with seats up top full of tourists going around town. It was pretty fun, of course I had to sit up top and I only put one head phone in my ear so I could still hear the city noises. It had about 7 stops from the apartheid museum, constitution hall, and few other places and I chose to go to the Gold Reef City and Theme Park. In case you didn't know the reason most stuff in Jo'burg revolves around gold and mining is because they are a mining town and that is pretty much how they started. They acutually tell you on the tour that they shouldn't even be a city because it is so inconviently placed 1700m above sea level one of the highest cities in Africa if not the world. So the theme park had old mining equipment placed around and had a few rides named after some various gold related things. It was a total blast and I loved every moment of it, espically all the crazy rollercoasters I went on. 

Now this is only part I of II for this beautiful city and beautiful culture!