We arrived in Johannesburg at 8 AM and got our first taste of Africa. The arrivals area was complete chaos, with a solid throng of people waiting for friends and relatives. We were lucky to quickly find Elsa, our driver who would take us to our hotel. Elsa was from Cape Town and had (in James’ opinion) the cool Afrikaans accent to prove it. And she was just fluent enough in English to be dangerous.

Elsa’s a professional driver in a city known for horrible traffic and frequent carjackings. She drove like it — a white-knuckle combination of knowing lots of local shortcuts, a heavy foot, and a casual disregard for traffic laws we tend to adhere to in the US. Conversation under these circumstances was a bit hit-or-miss.

We checked in to Cloud’s End Bed & Breakfast in the Melville neighborhood and were soon picked up for a tour of Soweto (South West Township). Our guide, Thabo, gave us a great history of the township and the anti-apartheid movement on the way out of the center of Johannesburg. We drove past huge slag heaps left over from a bygone age of gold mining, roadside fires, and endless construction. The City of Gold looks a bit now like the City of Cranes as they frantically prepare for the World Cup in 2010. (I’ll be happy to take bets on whether the monorail is done in time. I’m betting against. - James)

The tour included a stop at the Hector Pieterson Museum (highly recommended shorter alternative to the famous Apartheid Museum) and swings past the homes of Winnie Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu, both of whom still live in Soweto. One of the notable local construction projects is the creation of huge amounts of public housing to try and improve living conditions in Joburg’s outlying slums. We passed a collection of these shacks, a patchwork of corregated tin, brick, and wood - living conditions that must truly be awful.

Just before our jet-lag-induced early bedtime, we headed over to the main strip of Melville for dinner. We were startled to find a street that would have been perfectly at home in San Francisco — clubs, bistros, more restaurants than we could pick from all packed into a few short blocks. After a lovely dinner at an Italian restaurant, it was straight to bed to try and get our tired bodies nine hours ahead of San Francisco time.

Next up: Zimbabwe, land of hyperinflation and baffling border bureaucracy.

Part of the fun of an African vacation is getting there. From the West Coast of the US, you’ve got to really want it — you’ll be flying for at least 24 hours just to touch foot in South Africa, not including layover time. From there, you might have to take one or two connecting flights in addition to time on the road before you’ve reached your destination. Once we started to peruse 40+ hour itineraries, we were emboldened to take a nice, long block of vacation. If you’ve got to burn at least 2 days on both ends of your trip, why not just take a month off?

We chose the San Francisco - London - Johannesburg route on Virgin Atlantic because both flights were direct and avoided a layover somewhere in the US. And also because of Virgin’s seat-back entertainment systems.

First up: we took a 12-hour red-eye from San Francisco and arrived in London’s Heathrow at 10:30 am. We had an eight hour layover, so we hopped on the Tube to meet our friends Sarah and Dave at Piccadilly Circus. Somehow we missed the forecast for rain — rain in London? madness! — so we got drenched. We had a lovely lunch at Tiger Tiger catching up with both of them. Sarah had to go back to work, so Dave kept us awake and moving with a walk to Trafalgar Square and some time in the National Portrait Gallery. Just before rush hour we got back on the Tube and trekked back to Heathrow for another red eye flight to Jo’burg.

No photos for this leg. I did try to take a few pictures of the architecture of the National Portrait Gallery, ignorant of the rules. I’m happy to report that even a stern verbal warning sounds better in a British accent.

Next up: Johannesburg, the City of Gold. And car-jackings. And caustic smog. Fun!

Last week, Amanda and I got back from an amazing trip to Southern Africa. We spent two weeks camping out in Bostwana, a few nights in the Luangwa River valley, stopped in Johannesburg, Victoria Falls, and Lusaka, and spent days on airplanes. Along the way we took nearly 4000 photos — lucky for you, about 3000 of them were terrible.

We’ll be posting more about our trip here over the next week, with a little background on each place we visited. But first, we’ve put together an album of our favorite photos from the whole trip. Enjoy!

Our Favorite Africa Photos