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.