South Africa 2025: Sept 20. Stacey’s 36th Birthday & Flight to Johannesburg South Africa

Today I was up at 5:45 and first thing I did was post on FB for Stacey’s heavenly 36th birthday. In the words of Kenny Chesney I always wonder “Who would you be today?” After a few tears and memories, I got ready for the day for my trip to Johannesburg South Africa. We landed in Johannesburg around 11 and headed straight on a tour of Soweto, where Nelson Mandela lived. We toured a museum that spoke to the apartheid and so many pictures of the fighting that took place. We were able to go into Nelson Mandela‘s home and saw pictures and remnants left of his life. Along our way we watch some typical African dancers. This leg of our tour really makes me feel like I am in Africa. Johannesburg is much different than Cape Town with many more low income housing areas with very poor shelters. The people though are very friendly that we have encountered. Our tour guide has told us, though that we are under no circumstances allowed to travel around the city on foot. His exact words were it’s an absolute no. After a bit of a drive we arrived at our hotel called the Southern Sun Rosebank. The hotel is absolutely beautiful so we stayed inside went to the lounge for some beverages and visited with our group. At 6 o’clock, we met up with the rest of the group joining us for the rest of the tour. We have a family of four from Australia and a single young fellow from Wales. The CEO of our group went over what to expect on our Safari and talked a little bit about what we will see tomorrow along the way. We are in for a 7hr drive to our next hotel, but we have several stops along the way to see other sites. At 7 o’clock tonight, we joined all the others in our new group of 11+ the CEO and our driver for a buffet supper of typical African food. It was all really delicious. As my luck would have it, it’s a cloudy evening and not able to see Stacey and Melissa’s stars but hopefully during my stay in South Africa, I will have evenings to sit and reminisce. Thank you to Mike and Swiffer and my friend Kim and Roger for taking flowers to the cemetery for Stacey today and celebrating her birthday in my absence. I love you guys. ❤️