kitchen which was actually inside the owner’s house!! Most importantly it had wi-fi so we were able to speak to everyone at home and start planning our African adventure!!

We took a walk down to the local Spar shop - it was apparently safe to walk there in the day but at night we advised not to leave the hostel. It was kind of strange after the total freedom of South America to be in a hostel surrounded by an electric fence which if touched would result in armed security guards arriving within 2 minutes!! We were pleasantly surprised by how inexpensive groceries were here, and how good the range was. We even managed to find haloumi cheese and pita breads - heaven!!

After a fantastic tea we decided to have a few games of pool and then sat at the bar with Joni, a girl who worked there.

She was really friendly and for the first time we found out where we were. We were in fact in Benoni, a suburb of Johannesburg actually further out than the airport. She told us that this was one of the best places to be as there is no advantage in being close to the city as it’s not a place that you can visit unless on a tour. We sat up pretty late talking to Joni, and ***Denas***, another guy who worked there who used to be an overland truck driver covering everywhere from Cairo to Cape Town. Obviously then he was a wealth of information on this continent!!

Off to bed then and into our sleeping bags which we’d been lent as it gets pretty cold here at night. This was one thing we were to discover as time went by - although it was sunny and warm in the day we hadn’t really considered that it is in fact winter here and the temperature really does