Joburg outings with Ed and Kate

A weekend tale...

THIS: is the Top of Africa... well at least that's what they say to get 15 rand out of you. ANyways its just the tallest place in joburg- 50stories high with a lookout of the city and surounding areas.... i suppose you would go to Capetown for the Bottom of Africa? THey added the soccer ball to the tower in honor of the world cup...

that's how i know where i work if i get lost...

(i look for the soccer ball and my office is about two blocks from there. =)

who says i have no directional sense?? really.

(ok you are right. i couldn't tell you WHICH way those two blocks were...)

After this exciting excursion, we headed to Rosebank markets to walk around and get lunch. Lo and behold! who knew we would see such treasures as THIS! authenticity i tell you.

orr get interviewed by THIS guy - apparently we looked like good interviewees and ended up onthe Blue Nile tv station....haha.

Yup. were were probably THOSE "tourists"

After this we dropped one of the guys off at the airport, we came back to rosebank...

(can't get enough apparently)

and went to the movies!! - that's right.

we saw the new twilight movie.

muahaaha.

Ed you are such a good sport. Here you get to choose your seats when you order your tickets and they have an assortment of salt flavors to put on your popcorn...

some interesting flavors but tastey.

SUNDAY:

Ed and Kate must like me because after spending allll day saturday with me they still invited me for a hike on sunday - which was FAB! We ate breakfast at the south african favorite:

Wimpy's.

hehe its kind of like a cross between ihop and burgerking....ish.

we loaded up on water and biltong and headed out.

soo We get there and start off down the trail...

we are thinking the Zebra roete for a nice little stroll and then to be off back to jo'burg...haha. well we started well. came across this fun contraption... hoisted ourselves across and back and kept on... EVEN saw the sign for the zebra roete which we were on at that point... we were good to go...but perhaps Ed's naivity of my directional sense allowed for his choice to let me lead our charge. ahha. I think this might have been my mistake.

I took the path less traveled... Buuuuuuuuut we ended up finding some cool caves that went pretty deep and had lots of little rooms... =)We had fun. we decided to keep going and this part made me slightly cautious.. i kept waiting for a lion to bust out of his hiding spot since we were pretty much sitting ducks. It looked like the discovery channel. We kept our eyes peeled for any zebra sightings since we WERE on the zebra trail,

at least we thought. Didn't dawn on us until we noticed that our trailmarkers were now backwards....and unless Daisy here was hiding her stripes, she was the only wildlife we saw.

oh wait there was that bird. We finally stopped and checked our map since our little stroll had suddenly taken a turn up a very LOOONNG trail with a very steep incline and realised somehow we had ended up on the OTHER trail going backwards. HA. well we needed a stairmaster anyways. We finally got to the top and enjoyed the view. It really was a nice hike, no stroll in the park but definitely enjoyable!!the tall grasses i think are exquisite. there is a bit of green at the bottom then it turns to colors of red to orange to gold and its like a symphony when the wind blows. (ok so you can't tell from THIS picture and perhaps you'd have to be there. just trust me on this one. *winkwink)Saw lots of interesting plants and cacti.
We still made it back before sundown, no worries friends. Caught the sunset on the way home as well as saw a pre-finals soccer match .... made it back intime to watch a loong world cup finals match. There was some serious vuvuzella blowing, Shakira blaring, cheering, and dancing that lasted well into the night.

Great Job Jo'burg!