Johannesburg: Worries, Wearies, Wonders, Wildlife

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Lion at Lion Park Photo - Lion Park, Johannesburg, South Africa

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We used Johannesburg as our central hub for a 18 day tour of southern Africa, flying in & out of Jo'burg.Worries, wearies, wonders, wildlife! Wearies because it took 2 days to get their (fly overnight Chicago-London, 12 hour layover in London, fly overnight to Johannesburg). The other two days when we wound up in Johannesburg were also after big travel days. Worries: my wife was the designated worrier for this trip: Will my husband remember to drive on the wrong side of the road? Remember the anti-malaria pills. Will we get car-jacked of mugged? (Johannesburg's reputation for crime, as well as the occasion highway sign warning "Hijack Hotspot" don't exactly fill you ...Read More

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Garden Court Hotel

Hotel | "Garden Court Johannesburg International Airport"

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This is one of many hotels run by the Sun International hotel group, and was formerly referred to as the Holiday Inn Garden Court Joburg Airport --- there are other Garden Courts in Jo'burg also.It was a nice clean hotel, for about $120/night for a standard two double-bed hotel room. (We had two adults and two kids). The Garden Court was also quiet. They allowed us early check-in (about 10am) and we slept midday for a couple hours, having just arrived after a long journey from the US. I recommend it. But its not really near any "attractions" other than the airport.They have a shuttle bus (R25/person) that leaves the airport from outside the Intercontinental Hotel (like all the other sh...Read More

Member Rating 4 out of 5 on July 28, 2006

Garden Court Hotel
2 Hulley Road
Johannesburg, South Africa
011 392 1062

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Hilton Sandton

Hotel | "Hilton Sandton Hotel"

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The Hilton is in the upscale suburb of Sandton. It's in an area with a lot of other hotels with plenty of nice shopping centers close by. Just across the street is a small shopping plaze with a smallish craft market, and the Hilton has a complimentary shuttle to the Sandton City shopping center, only a half kilometer away or so. Sandton City is a huge shopping mall adjacent to Nelson Mandela square which is lined with several nice restaurants.The Hilton is a very nice executive style Hilton hotel with full amenities such as spa, pool, concierge desk, parking garage (35 rand/day), executive lounge, and full-service restaurants.The service was very accomodating, and the room and bathr...Read More

Member Rating 4 out of 5 on July 28, 2006

Hilton Sandton
138 Rivonia Road
Sandton, South Africa 2146
+27 (11) 3221888

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The Airport Grand Hotel

Hotel

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The Airport Grand Hotel Johannesburg is a pretty nice clean hotel, sort of the same order as a Hampton Inn in the USA, maybe a little bigger. We got a room for about $90/night (2 double beds for 2 adults and 2 kids), including breakfast for adults, so we thought it was a pretty good value for the money. BUT BEWARE! It is directly under a runway approach. The planes fly over the hotel only about 50 meters up and it is very LOUD! Standard foam earplugs will not keep this noise out of your head even inside the hotel rooms. There isn't any air traffic all night long, so we did get a good night's sleep (as long as you're ready to get up by 6:30 or so when planes start landing), but I'm very glad we didn't ...Read More

Member Rating 3 out of 5 on July 28, 2006

The Airport Grand Hotel
100 NORTH RAND ROAD
Johannesburg, South Africa
118231843

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Premier Mine/Cullinan Diamond Mine

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Attraction | "Cullinan Diamond Mine"

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Cullinan diamond mine is a working diamond mine where, in 1906, they found the Cullinan diamond, still the largest uncut diamond ever found. It's on the edge of the town of Cullinan, a little ways northeast of Pretoria. We booked our tour through Premier Diamond Tours, whose name and number we found in a Gauteng province tourism guide. They provided a great tour roughly 2 hours long, led by a retired diamond mining engineer. He was the best part of the tour, since in his many years in the industry, he'd had enough experiences to fill a book, and he sprinkled anecdotes throughout the tour.You don't get to go underground on the tour, but they have some good displays explaining th...Read More

Cullinan diamond mine is a working diamond mine where, in 1906, they found the Cullinan diamond, still the largest uncut diamond ever found. It's on the edge of the town of Cullinan, a little ways northeast of Pretoria.

We booked our tour through Premier Diamond Tours, whose name and number we found in a Gauteng province tourism guide. They provided a great tour roughly 2 hours long, led by a retired diamond mining engineer. He was the best part of the tour, since in his many years in the industry, he'd had enough experiences to fill a book, and he sprinkled anecdotes throughout the tour.

You don't get to go underground on the tour, but they have some good displays explaining the geology of the Cullinan mine, and of course, replicas of the Cullinan diamond and all the sparkling gems that it was cut into. It was also interesting to see the tiny pile of diamonds which results from a day's working in the mine.

You get to walk around some of the equipment, and the process of crushing the kimberlite to separate out the diamonds is explained. Cullinan is unique among diamond mines in that it actually has cutting and polishing facilities onsite, staffed by local workers (as opposed to sending all the rough stones away to India or somewhere to be cut), and we saw these areas in operation.

One of the highlights is seeing the "big hole", about the 4th largest man-made hole in the world, from the time the diamond-bearing kimberlite was mined from the surface.
These surface deposits were undercut geologically by a thick layer of non-diamond bearing rock, and so now the mining is all done in tunnels beneath the surface.

At the end of the tour, you go to the diamond jewelry shop on the premises, where you have the opportunity to spend tens of thousands of dollars on diamonds. (Sadly, we had to decline the opportunity to purchase, but it was fun to look.)

Immediately outside the mine gates in the town of Cullinan are several quaint shops in the stone-walled former housing for miners.
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Member Rating 4 out of 5 on July 21, 2006

Premier Mine/Cullinan Diamond Mine
Cullinan, South Africa
Johannesburg

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Lion Park

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Attraction

Petting lions at Lion Park Photo - Lion Park, Johannesburg, South Africa

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After being out in the expansive game reserves like Kruger Park, it was a little odd coming to Lion Park, just outside of Johannesburg, relatively close to the posh suburb of Sandton. Lion Park is more like a zoo or smallish (200 hectare) game farm. It has two main parts: The game camps that you drive through and Cub World, where you get to have close encounters with a few animals. Cub World is what makes Lion Park a unique experience--you get to go in a small fenced area and actually pet lion cubs, including white lion cubs. They also have other animals and cubs such as cheetah, hyena, and jackals in penned areas. There was a pen for a leopard cub, but we were told he gets moved to a different,...Read More

After being out in the expansive game reserves like Kruger Park, it was a little odd coming to Lion Park, just outside of Johannesburg, relatively close to the posh suburb of Sandton. Lion Park is more like a zoo or smallish (200 hectare) game farm. It has two main parts: The game camps that you drive through and Cub World, where you get to have close encounters with a few animals. Cub World is what makes Lion Park a unique experience--you get to go in a small fenced area and actually pet lion cubs, including white lion cubs. They also have other animals and cubs such as cheetah, hyena, and jackals in penned areas. There was a pen for a leopard cub, but we were told he gets moved to a different, unseen area on weekends because the crowds prove too stressful for it. Also within Cub World is an platform where you can feed giraffe (they sell bowls of giraffe food for a few rand).

In the game park part of Lion Park, you drive through fenced fields containing assorted antelope, zebra, and a couple ostrich. Then you drive past some smaller (zoo sized) fenced in areas which are their hyena and cheetah camps. The highlight of the game drive area are their lion camps. They have four different prides of lions in separate areas that you get to drive into. You drive into each pride's field, and get to observe the lions very close up (as in walking right up to the cars). They have some very handsome lions, including black-maned ones and white lions. We got to see a couple of the lionesses climbing a tree.

We visited Lion Park on our last day, when we still had our rental car, before we had to head to the airport for our end of the day flight home. It was an enjoyable way to spend a few hours, and the experience of petting the lion cubs was unforgettable.

Still, we did feel a little hypocritical visiting the animals in such a zoo-like setting after seeing their freedom in the wild in the big game preserves.

Admission was 70 rand/person (about $10-11), including Cub World and the self-driving part. There was also a small restaurant and picnic area on the grounds.

There is another Rhino and Lion Park a little further west and south of this Lion Park. It sounded interesting and a little bigger with a few more things to do (caves, etc.). We initially started towards it, but decided to go to Lion Park when it seemed it was going to take too long to get to Rhino and Lion Park.
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Member Rating 4 out of 5 on July 21, 2006

Lion Park
Muldersdrift Road
Johannesburg, South Africa 2194
+27 (11) 460 1814

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Driving in South Africa and Swaziland

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We rented a car for 9 days in South Africa, and driving ourselves around worked pretty smoothly. The main roads are very good, with mostly clear signs. There's a good expressway toll road between Johannesburg and the Kruger area. The tolls come out to about $3 to $4 for an hour's driving.We picked up our car from Europcar at the Johannesburg airport. We paid about $34/day for a Toyota Corolla, including coverage, taxes, etc. That seemed to be a pretty standard rate for that size car (manual) at various places on the Internet, although you can easily pay more if you just go straight to someplace like Hertz. With a rental car, you can also get a "free" rental cell phone from the airport. N...Read More

We rented a car for 9 days in South Africa, and driving ourselves around worked pretty smoothly. The main roads are very good, with mostly clear signs. There's a good expressway toll road between Johannesburg and the Kruger area. The tolls come out to about $3 to $4 for an hour's driving.

We picked up our car from Europcar at the Johannesburg airport. We paid about $34/day for a Toyota Corolla, including coverage, taxes, etc. That seemed to be a pretty standard rate for that size car (manual) at various places on the Internet, although you can easily pay more if you just go straight to someplace like Hertz. With a rental car, you can also get a "free" rental cell phone from the airport. Not quite free in that you have to pay 10 rand(about $1.50)/day in insurance, and, of course, you pay for the calls you make (reasonable charges). That worked well for us.

Most drivers are pretty courteous outside of the Johannesburg-Pretoria congestion, for example, pulling way to the right to let you pass on a narrow road. But the Johannesburg area has very bad traffic jams at rush hour, just as bad as those in any American city, such as my home area of Chicago. We were coming into Johannesburg on a Friday afternoon, and the outbound lanes of the expressways were totally jammed, turned into a parking lot. (Coming against the main flow of traffic, it wasn't bad at all, though.) So definitely do not plan to drive around Johannesburg at rush hours. The freeways around Jo'burg (and elsewhere) have a 120 kph limit when they aren't jammed up, and on Saturday, it was no problem going that fast (people in Chicago drive just as fast on the freeway, but the limit is only 55mph/80kpm).

Thankfully, we didn't have any problems with safety. Car-jacking is a problem in South Africa, apparently, and we even saw a few signs at selected points on the highway saying "Hijack Hot Spot", which is a little scary. So pay attention to safety warnings you can read elsewhere. We tried to avoid all driving at night, both in cities and out.

There are "squeegee guys" at some stoplights in Jo'burg, just like you'd find in American cities, offering to wash your windshield for tips. It wasn't a big deal when one cleaned ours before we waved him off and we paid a couple rand, but with all the safety warnings and the city's reputation for crime, it is a little uncomfortable.

There are plenty of gasoline (petrol) stations, and the price of gas was just a little bit higher than in the US, not a budget breaker. Gas stations are still full service, and they take cash, not credit cards. We saw ATM machines at some of them. They are also a good place to stop to ask directions after your tank is filled.

Since I'm from America, I had to adjust to driving on the wrong side of the road. You do get used to it pretty quickly, but it is worthwhile to have someone remind you out loud "stay left" when starting out or occasionally. (I never did get used to the turn signal being on the right of the steering column and probably inadvertently turned on my windshield wipers 50 times.)

Having our own car certainly gave us the freedom to explore wherever we wanted to, and with four people, it was an economical way of touring around. We didn't have 4WD and didn't really need it, even in Kruger or game parks in Swaziland.
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