Day 1 : 3rd June 2024 – Hop-on Hop-off Bus and Tour of Soweto

We woke up early at 6am to have breakfast at 7am with the plan to leave at 8am to catch the first Red Hop-on Hop-off bus at 9am. Our plan went astray when we thought we could catch an Uber from the ground level of our hotel, but after asking a couple of times at reception, we found we had to walk back towards the airport and enter the car park area E2 to get picked up. By the time we got there, it was 8.25am. I ordered the Uber, and Daisy saw it almost immediately, so he must have been waiting nearby. However, the arrival time was 9.05am. We were supposed to redeem our vouchers purchased online from Klook at the City Sightseeing office before boarding the bus, but fortunately, you were also allowed to redeem them on the bus. I was able to track the Red bus on their website. We were still 5 minutes away when the bus reached the first stop, and by the time we arrived, it had already left. Our driver was a lovely young man named Gracious, and he said, “No problem, we will catch up for sure”. He did, and we came alongside the left of the bus. Traffic has halted at stop lights. He bipped his horn and got the bus driver’s attention. The driver opened the door, yelled that he had passengers for the bus, and asked him to pull over, but the driver just gestured for us to board in the middle of the road. We all quickly got out and boarded the bus before the lights had changed. The driver said to get in; tickets would be checked later. I can’t imagine doing something like that in Sydney.

We needed to get on that first bus because we were booked for the 10.30am Soweto extension tour. The first 90 minutes were a tour of Johannesburg, including Munro Drive, which connects the ritzy suburbs of Lower Houghton and Upper Houghton. I noticed most of the homes had barbed wire or similar electrified wires on top of their fences. From Munro Drive, you get a good view of Johannesburg city. This takes you to Constitution Hill, which was formerly a prison and fort but now has museums and South Africa’s Constitutional Court.

We then went back down towards the CBD, passing through the old Mining District, which had many exhibits. Our next stop was Gold Reef City Casino, where we alighted to join our Soweto tour.

Before starting, we requested a visit to the restrooms, and the young lady was very obliging, which also allowed us to have a look inside the casino, which was like a Las Vegas-style casino in an Edwardian style.

There were just eight of us on the tour in a minibus. I chose this tour because the guides were local residents and very informative. Soweto stands for South Western Townships and is not a single place but a collection of townships. Our guide was very entertaining and told us the good and bad history of the area. He said some townships are now very safe to walk around in, but others remain unsafe. He also showed one of the areas where people live in makeshift shelters on free land. Another area was more middle-class, where the housing looked quite reasonable.

We were taken to a memorial square for the people killed during the 1976 Soweto Uprising, an event that was quite confronting. Then, to see the house where Nelson Mandela lived when he was in Soweto.

When the tour finished, we decided to have lunch in the Casino. As we still had time, we decided to stop at the National Military Museum. We had a quick look around before completing our Red bus tour at Rosebank, where we rang our Uber driver, Gracious, because I had received a message that something had been found in his car. It turned out not to be one of our items. We asked if he wanted to drive us back, but he was 40 minutes away, so we elected to just call another driver. I was using Uber XL. I noticed a 3 next to Uber XL, but didn’t know what it meant. The driver told us it meant three passengers. We said we’d get out and call another one, but he said it was OK, and we continued our trip. We ended up having a pleasant conversation with him during the drive.

We decided to just have dinner at the Hotel, and we met some of the others in our tour group, who informed us that they had found out our group was meeting in the foyer at 8am the next morning. So another night for us.