Touch down

Well, we've been in Africa less than 36 hours and Jason has already managed to get bitten by a lion. But, I'm getting ahead of myself so let me start at the beginning. The flight over was long, long, very long (26hours door to door) but like all good flights it was boring and uneventful. We arrived in J'berg at 5:20am and found a nice taxi driver to take us to our hostel. Unfortunately he spent the hour long trip telling us horror stories about muggings and car-jackings. He had been car-jacked 3 times. The first time they took the car, the second time he killed two of them (seeing our faces he hastened to add that he is now Christian and no longer carries a gun), the third time they took his meter, wing mirror and smashed a window.

Arriving in Pretoria with these stories in our heads we were confronted with 8 foot walls topped with razor wire or electric fences. The taxi driver gave a final warning not to walk around by ourselves as the gate to our hostel was opened by some mysterious hidden person.

We are staying at 1322 backpackers and everyone has been very nice and helpful. They've booked tours, organised lifts and explained where we can and can't walk. The first day we were just exhausted. We managed a walk to the nearby shops and a very pretty park. We sat in the park for a couple of hours enjoying the rose bushes and watching people (I'm pretty sure there was a quick nap in there too!) and gradually began to relax. Today we went to the nearby lion park, where after driving past wilderbeest, impala, zebra, giraffe and a few other animals we entered the lion camps. The lions lay in big piles beneath the trees, moving from sun to shade to control their temperature. The highlight though was 'cubworld' where you can go into the enclosure with the cubs and give them a stroke. Numerous times we were carefully posed for photos with one cub when another lion would approach from behind to get some attention too. Then one decided to get a little too friendly with Jason grabbing onto his pants and rolling onto his back and trying to bring him with it. When this failed he started on the shoelaces, but Jason retreated.

So we are now relaxing this afternoon before catching a bus to Botswana tomorrow morning.