The South African Tourism Board's motto. Looking forward to seeing whether it holds true in the course of the next 4 days.
I have just arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa after an 11-hour overnight flight from London. I’m exhausted but expectant. Although I was born in Kenya, I have never visited any other country in the continent. South Africa has been on my hitlist ever since I got bit by the travel bug in my early twenties, and now that I’m here, I intend to enjoy the next 8 days – two in Jo’burg and six in Cape Town – to the maximum.
I haven’t seen much except road-side views from the airport to the hotel. At the airport I marvelled at the diversity of the country’s people. I am not exaggerating when I say I saw every single race on earth represented at the OR Tambo Airport Arrival Bay. Driving from the airport to the Southern Sun Hyde Park hotel, the impressions are just as varied. The neatly-kept country-like industrial surroundings immediately after the airport reminded me of parts of Oslo; midway along the journey, industrial warehouses and fashion outlets take me back to the outskirts of London and as we got closer and closer to the Sandton area, I was reminded of the more upmarket areas of Nairobi. This is how I make sense of my immediate surrounding when I arrive at a new destination – compare it to other more familiar places.
When I finally arrive at the Hyde Park area of Jo’burg, I am told by our trusted communications officer that it has the highest concentration of 4X4s in Africa – a fact which speaks volumes on the affluence of the people living here. So it’s perhaps only natural that I have great expectations with regards to the room I am assigned at the Southern Sun Hyde Park:
Room 203, Southern Sun Hyde Park Hotel Johannesburg.
So far so good. Until I take a closer look at the bed linen…
Stains...
And…
Torn bed-linen....
Now I’m not easily scared by torn linen, germs or bacteria. I’ve been blessed with a pretty hardy constitution and rarely get sick. Even in the instances when my significant other – affectionately referred to as the redhead – has been doubled over a loo with a serious case of traveller’s stomach, I have always been the one left standing. Or rather running around getting pharmacy supplies and generally making sure buckets and loos are in the near vicinity. But there’s something about looking forward to catching some shut-eye after barely getting one on an 11-hour flight that makes one bitterly disappointed and aching for some clean home comforts. I’m assured the bed linen will be changed without a fuss, though it takes more than an hour for housekeeping to arrive.
In the meantime, what I have come to refer to as hotel envy comes over me. I experience this whenever I’m in a new city and I’m staying at a hotel that leaves much to be desired, in the full-knowledge that there is another one that is much better in the same location. The one causing me serious hotel envy here in Johannesburg is the Saxon Boutique Hotel, Villas and Spa. I have been reliably informed that this is where Oprah and other celebrities and visiting heads of state stay whenever they are in town. Oh dear. Perhaps next time?
Come back tomorrow for Day 2 of Travel Diary – The South African Edition.
