A tower of Giraffes

Tara Larkai
Dec 13, 2016
2 min read

After that unfortunate event in Maboneng, the rest of our trip was smooth and filled with loads of fun. We visited Mandela’s house in Soweto. I know most of you have heard horrible things about how sketchy Soweto is but the strip where Mandela’s house is located is very developed and touristy. Lots of restaurants, souvenir hawkers and those little pestering boys singing fake Soweto songs for some change. I say fake because the lyrics of the song is a repetition of 3 words, “Welcome to Soweto”. And whether you like it or not they will sing it for you and chase you around the place until you give them some money. As a matter of fact, they chased us around until we left even after Chloe gave them some change. Mandela’s house is the main attraction in Soweto. This 3 room house sits on a very tiny gated compound. Since it is a tourist attraction, it is setup like a museum, you first pay upon entering. There is an African Union fee and everyone elses' fee. We all claimed that African fee including Jackson. lol All the rooms are staged to show how they were used along with many of his pictures and quotes displayed. The tour guides walked us to each section of the house to highlight its significance. Who knew a house that small had all that history. There is even a gunshot mark on the front of the house from when his house got shot at during Apartheid.

We spent our last day in Johannesburg on a safari at Pilansberg. It was an all day tour. Initially I did not want to spend 3 hours on the road just to see some wild animals but it was so worth it. We pretty much saw every animal except lions. Everyone kept saying they are shy animals but I questioned whether or not they had lions because we roamed around the park for 6 hours and even saw 3 cheetahs but no trace of lions? I call B.S lol I didn’t care much about seeing the lions anyways. I was looking forward to seeing Giraffes which I did. My heart was full afterwards, didn’t care about anything else but them. Now you know, my two favorite animals are dolphins and Giraffes. Lol