You are a very brave, brave man

I know its been awhile since I've been back, and I have yet to finish the South African narrative, so here is the dramatic conclusion (cue dramatic music).

So, my cousin and I fly home from Zambia. Our plane ticket, in Zambia, is written by hand and the boarding itinerary was on a spreadsheet. After receiving said boarding passes, my cousin and I look at each other and almost simultaneously think, if there is ever a next time in Zambia, we're going to get one way tickets and forge the return trip. Yeah... we're those people.

We're back in Jo'burg, and thankfully we're staying in this nice hippie neighborhood with Che Guevara posters everywhere. It was the safest part of town, Melville, or so people say. It's also a gay district and yes, I ended up in a gay bar playing house music.

My cousin has been in Jo'burg before, so her and I have very different itineraries. We all catch a mini-taxi and it drops us off somewhere where none of us know. We find a tourist office and my cousin and her friend go to the Museum Africa while I ask for directions to Constitution Hill. I'm a dork and think that other countries supreme courts and history of the constitution is awesome. ask her if I could walk there from the tourist office, since, on the map, which I later found out was not to scale, seemed pretty close. She looks at me, laughs, and says "No, no, you can't walk there. Take a taxi. I mean I can walk there, but not you". I translated that as your an Asian with a camera, walking there would be ill advised. After consulting, not with her, but my cousin, I decided to walk, with my camera out, because I'm too stupid to bring a backpack.

On said not scaled map, it looks, in relative terms, to be about 2 kilometers away. Little did I know it was more near 8 than 2, and Jo'burg's roads aren't exactly labelled well. The one reason I have my camera out throughout all of this is because I noticed some really nice street art and tags along the way, much like this: fs

So, while I'm walking, I had one guy come up to me and just say "Mister, you are a brave man, walking around Jo'burg with a camera like that". Confirming yet again, Zao is an idiot.

Aside from that, to keep it short, since someone accused me of writing epics. Go to the Apartheid Museum, not just because you have a political leaning, but because it remembers one of the greatest tragedies of this world. It is also extremely uplifting at the end so its not all sad. And if that's not enough, there is always the amusement park RIGHT NEXT TO IT SHARING A PARKING LOT. The irony of South Africa.

Anywho, I leave you with this quote from Madiba:

"To be free is not only to cast off one's chains but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others."