Kilimanjaro Trek 2005
		sam and pippin  there and back again
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November 11, 2005

I finally got a chance to see Pretoria proper today and I must say, it was pretty disappointing. Hendrik drove us in this morning and the first stop was the Home Affairs office, to get Debbie's visa extension. Surprisingly, it was very fast and then we were on our way to pick up a bus schedule at the central office. For a city of this size in a very modern country, I'm surprised at the poor state of their public transit. Although we got the schedule, it only shows the time the bus departs from the beginning of the route, so you have little idea of when it will reach your stop. There's also no way to purchase a map of the routes - it only hangs on the wall of the office there. How useful is that when you're trying to figure out the route to someplace new? But we found the routes we needed and where to catch the bus for later in the day, and then Hendrik was off and we were on our own.

Our next stop was the Museum of Culture, where we studied San rock paintings and read about 9 South African family stories of today, admired artwork of local high school students and lots of other parts of South African culture. It was all very interesting but after a couple of hours, we had information overload, plus we were starving, so we left in search of food. We discovered that downtown doesn't have many choices in the way of restaurants, particularly sit-down places. We first tried a traditional African place - sort of a deli with bowls of mealies, chicken feet, livers, necks and various other things I don't normally eat on display under the glass counter. We were just about to try the chicken when the flies started buzzing around it, and we decided we weren't that brave! Instead we found a British burger place called Steers - the same one we ate at a couple days ago, but we didn't mind.

We did wander around downtown for a while, seeing if there were any craft or fabric stores, but there were none to be found. Pretoria is quite a sterile and fairly boring city, truth be told. There are some interesting buildings and museums, but there's not much by way of atmosphere or cultural vibe, at least not downtown. I'd choose Capetown any day! Capetown is my favorite city that I've ever visited.

After a brief walking tour, we decided to get on a bus towards Menlyn Park, a huge shopping center near their home where Hendrik would pick us up after work. We spent most of the time reading books in one of the big book stores - I went through a few African novels and was very tempted by a couple but the prices on books here are so high. By 5:30, Hendrik arrived and then I took them out for dinner at a steak place in the mall, which wasn't bad. I was dying for a big salad, but it wasn't on the menu, so I got Indian flat bread instead, filled with ham, cheese and tomatoes. On the drive home I rode in the back of the bakkie by myself this time (I insisted Debbie sit up front) and nearly fell asleep on the comfy mattress they put back there. I probably could have stayed all night!