THE BEST WAY TO EXPLORE JOBURG is by hop-on, hop-off bus. Buy a ticket for the day so that you can use it as many times as you want. You can hop off and spend as much time at an attraction then hop on again when the bus is scheduled to come around. This gives you the opportunity to decide which landmarks you want to explore at your own pace.

THE BEST WAY TO START A DAY is “from the top.” Joburg is the brunch capital of the world and it has rooftop restaurants and hotels that offer brunch. And because it’s a flat and big industrial city, you can see the whole of Johannesburg over breakfast. It’s so beautiful. You won’t believe you’re in such a big city that’s just so green and peaceful.

ANOTHER GOOD SPOT TO ADMIRE THE JOBURG SKYLINE is from the decks of Sandton Sun.

ONE LOCAL ACTIVITY I NEVER MISS is the bungee jump in Joburg. It’s only 100 meters but it’s in the middle of the city. You jump off a water tower. After I did it the first time, I had such an adrenaline high. I got a sense of empowerment, I said to myself, “I made such a good decision.” That’s the kind of city Joburg is – it’s got so much color and vibrancy. It’s loud and has a very continental Africa feel to it. It’s very “in your face.”

TRENDY JOHANNESBURG

THE MOST UNUSUAL PLACE TO SEE is Maboneng which they call “The Inner City Revival Project.” They’ve revived this area after all the big businesses moved out. Entrepreneurs and young designers are given access to markets here. Even if you’ve only got four or five clothing items, you can put these on a rail that has your name.

Maboneng has everything from clothes, shoes, and handbags to furniture and household items. There are also restaurants and food stalls as well.

It’s the greatest place to shop in Johannesburg because of all these unique things nobody else has. It has a cool temperament because the interior design is interesting, and there’s good food and music spilling out.

TOURISTS SHOULD ALSO NOT MISS little-known Liliesleaf Farm in northern Johannesburg for a bit of history and mystery. The farm was secretly used by African National Congress activists in the 1960s. It’s where many prominent African National Congress leaders were arrested. Today it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

FOR AN UNFORGETTABLE NIGHT OUT, go to Teatro where international performances are showcased in its massive theaters. Or to the Back O’ the Moon in the Gold Reef City. This is one of the best jazz clubs.

AFTER A LONG DAY, I LIKE TO UNWIND AT the Four Seasons in Westcliff which is up on the hill in Joburg. When you sit at the Four Seasons, you actually look over the Joburg Zoo.

CULTURE CLUB

I LIKE LISTENING TO LIVE MUSICAL PERFORMANCES at Tanz Café. It has an electric atmosphere every night. Its gig guide features the South Africa’s best musical talent. This venue has hosted artists such as Jesse Clegg, Arno Carstens, and Civil Twilight.

AFTER TOURING THE TRADITIONAL ART MUSEUMS, I TELL MY FRIENDS TO GO TO the Johannesburg Art Gallery in Joubert Park. It is the largest gallery on the subcontinent with a collection larger than that of the Iziko South African National Art Gallery in Cape Town.

I book an early morning meditative session in the garden of Satyagraha House in Orchards TO CONNECT WITH MY INNER SELF.

The MOST STRIKING ARCHITECTURE IN JOBURG IS CIRCA on Jellicoe in Rosebank, a gallery renowned for featuring the works of top South African artists like Dylan Lewis and Zwelethu Mthethwa.

INSIDER INFORMATION

MY SECRET SPOT FOR A PICNIC IN JOBURG  is across the road from the Johannesburg Zoo. It’s right next to the lake, on one of the massive lawns. It’s really quiet, but since you’ve got the zoo literally in front of you. You can hear the animals from a distance. On weekends, amateur artists, sculptors, and painters display and sell their works there.

The Johannesburg Botanical Gardens is also an inspiring mix of open spaces. It includes marshlands, grasslands, trees, and cultivated gardens. It’s the world’s biggest man-made forest, with over 10 million trees.

MY FAVORITE BOUTIQUE HOTEL is 10 Bompas Hotel, because all the rooms look different and special. Even their menu changes daily as they only serve what’s in season.

WHERE TO GO OUTSIDE JOHANNESBURG

Maropeng is the site of the Cradle of Humankind. This is where you’ll discover the bones of our ancestors. It’s the place where we all come from. If you want an anthropological adventure, you can actually go to the caves themselves. It’s still an active dig, so visitors put on hard hats and everything to go further.

At the Maropeng Visitor’s Center, there are interactive exhibits and programs for kids that show the animals that lived in each particular period. They’ve taken paleoanthropoligism and made it into a science. It’s such a special way of explaining where we come from. Kids will also learn how much damage we’ve done to the earth and how we need to be careful and change the way we do certain things. They’ve taken
science and made it human.

WHAT TO EAT IN JOBURG

One must indulge in boerewors. This is a traditional South African sausage made from beef mixed with either pork or lamb and a
mixture of spices. Also, traditional Joburg street food is a must try. It’s healthy, fresh, and yummy.

For a traditional meal, don’t miss going to an African restaurant like Moyo. Or you can try a traditional Soweto township restaurant. Or, better yet, get yourself invited to a braai (barbecue).

WHAT’S THE BEST SOUVENIR A VISITOR MUST BRING HOME FROM SOUTH AFRICA?

Sidewalk art made from recycled items. You can get these at the Art Market in Zoo Lake, full of stunning local artifacts and craft work.

Read more about traveling around Africa in Travelife Magazine.

The post 36 Hours in Johannesburg appeared first on TRAVELIFE Magazine.

It’s been two years since I rode the Blue Train across South Africa, from the capital of Pretoria to the beautiful city of Cape Town, living a #Travelife.

Nevertheless, I still remember every moment of it, from the excitement of arriving at the old-fashioned train station of Pretoria to the fancy brunches and dinners onboard the train, to sitting in the viewing carriage at the end of the Blue Train to marvel at the loveliness of this part of the world.

On the day of departure, we woke up early at our hotel in Johannesburg to take a car to Pretoria to catch the Blue Train to Cape Town.

The distance between Johannesburg and Cape Town is about 1600 kilometers, and by airplane, from Johannesburg airport, which is the nearest airport for Pretoria, it will take you just under two hours.

However, by the Blue Train, it takes about 30 hours to travel from Pretoria to Cape Town or vice versa, passing through almost the entire length of the wild and remote Northern Cape.

But the journey is the experience in itself.

In fact, it’s an experience like no other — especially in this modern age when everything is instant and people are so impatient to get to their destinations as quickly as possible.

On the Blue Train, it’s all about the voyage, and the people you meet, and the things you see outside your windows as you travel across South Africa at a leisurely pace, just like in the old days.

It was a wonderful way to see a country I’ve grown to love.

I’ve been on several luxury trains before, so I’m quite used to the configurations for these old-fashioned carriages. None of them are spacious enough compared to a hotel suite, for instance, but the luxurious ones are good enough.

And I have to say that the Blue Train is among the most comfortable trains of this class.

The cabins are spacious, the beds are heavenly, and the ensuite bathrooms are positively palatial by train standards.

That’s the ensuite bathroom of the Blue Train

The company onboard is the other attraction.

You really meet very interesting people as most people who take the Blue Train are very experienced travelers with lots of stories to tell.

We met so many nice people on this train.

In fact, we sat next to one British couple by chance at the very first meal — and we liked them so much that we arranged to sit with them at every meal.

This is what brunch was like on that first day, by the way, as we rolled out of Pretoria and past Johannesburg, on our way to the Northern Cape, living a #Travelife.

We began with very nice pink champagne.

Then, anyone who wanted pastries or fruit could have some, as it was brunch.

Within the rather strict confines of this luxury train, a fruit and pastry buffet had been set up very nicely on one side of the Blue Train and passengers could just help themselves after enjoying a glass of bubbly.

For an appetizer, there were several choices but most of us chose the smoked salmon. It was a very nice way to start brunch and an omen of good things to come.

We enjoyed our conversations with this British couple so much that the result was that our table took the full course at each meal and lingered on way past everyone else had left.

We literally took hours to eat every meal, and happily so.

We were easily doing three hours for each meal, accompanied by lots of good food and wonderful wines, journeying across South Africa, and living a never-ending, and never-endingly eventful Travelife.

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The post Brunch on board the Blue Train of South Africa, from Pretoria to Cape
Town via Kimberley in the Northern Cape appeared first on TRAVELIFE Magazine.

So nice to have pork dumpling noodle soup on the way back to Asia, after three weeks in Africa

So there we were in the pretty crowded lounge of Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo International Airport, waiting for our flight to be called. After close to three weeks in Africa, living a #Travelife, we were finally heading back to Asia via the Middle East.

I’d been browsing the airport bookstore just before, conscious of the time we needed to board, which was 7 PM.

So I got to the lounge huffing and puffing, with just enough time for a cup of Rooibos tea before the long walk to the departure gate.

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A SUDDEN CANCELLATION

What do you know? We were already at the gate when our flight was canceled due to technical problems.

I’m on a plane almost every week somewhere in the world, living a #Travelife, and I can’t recall the last time I was on a flight that actually got canceled.

Or even seriously delayed. Yes, it’s been a very lucky never-ending #Travelife so far.

A WONDERFUL STAY AT 

THE INTERCONTINENTAL HOTEL

AT JOHANNESBURG’S 

O.R. TAMBO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

So the end result was that we business class passengers got booked into the Intercontinental Hotel in Johannesburg, which is just about the nicest airport hotel I’ve been in, in a long time.

No kidding.

The rooms are great and well-designed, the bathrooms are palatial by airport hotel standards, and you don’t even hear a whisper of an airplane’s engine at any time.

TALK ABOUT PRO-ACTIVE SERVICE

The service at the Intercontinental Johannesburg is very good as well.

I had a complaint about something at midnight, and the next morning I found out that it had been passed on to management by 5 AM.

It’s not just about negatives that they are hands on about, either.

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When we ordered room service dinner and breakfast, someone always rang up afterwards to ask if the meal was okay and if there was anything else they could do.

The South African version of eggs benedict at the Hotel Intercontinental Johannesburg

I also had trouble connecting to the Internet and the duty manager put me through immediately to their IT who fixed it in two minutes flat.

Then the duty manager called back to ask me if I had gotten online.

Plus, it was certainly nicer to sleep in a real bed at the Intercontinental instead of in an airplane bed, even if I was going to sleep on a flat bed onboard. The bed linen of the Intercontinental Johannesburg is very nice. 

MISSING OUR CONNECTIONS 

FROM THE MIDDLE EAST

The downside to this delay was that we were set to miss our respective connecting flights back to Asia.

I was supposed to have only a 90-minute wait at the connecting airport, and then our flight was postponed for 12 hours.

From the Middle East, you see, I was on the flight straight to Tokyo Haneda as I wanted to ride the Dreamliner back to Asia instead of a 777, and I was clearly going to have to take the following day’s flight instead, at the rate things were going.

HOW LUCKY CAN I GET?

And just like how everything always works out in a #Travelife, the next morning, after breakfast, the hotel concierge called to tell me she was sending up my new tickets.

I wasn’t going to take the rescheduled flight after all.

Instead, my airline had rebooked me on Cathay Pacific to fly from Johannesburg to Hong Kong and onwards to Tokyo Haneda with a 90-minute wait in Hong Kong.

How lucky was that?

The schedule was way better, I got to eat Chinese noodles and watch the rest of Downtown Abbey before falling asleep somewhere over the Indian Ocean, and then I arrived in Tokyo’s Haneda Airport with enough time to get home and dress up to go out for a fancy dinner.

A nice welcome awaited me at the airport as well, living a #Travelife…

The post A flight cancellation in Johannesburg ends up with a better connection via Hong Kong to Tokyo Haneda. And about a nice stay at the Intercontinental Hotel in Johannesburg Airport. appeared first on TRAVELIFE Magazine.

Last night, I attended a very elegant and enjoyable dinner party in Johannesburg given by Bernice Morrell, a most charming lady who loves flowers.

She also owns a series of under-the-radar luxury properties that include two very private boutique hotels, a bistro, a wedding venue, a retail outlet for gifts and the home, and this very special venue for events and celebrations.


All her properties are a photographer’s dream, full of quaint touches and elegant accents. And filled to the brim with the most beautiful flowers.


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Most of her properties are historic buildings that have been lovingly restored.

One of her boutique hotels is a 19th century dairy farmhouse, while the other is an elegant mansion that was once owned and lived in by one of South Africa’s most prominent judges who fought against apartheid.

More on these lovely places later.

Last night, I was invited to join her dinner, and I was the only foreigner in our very merry party of eight.

We all arrived at seven, and were greeted in the driveway and then led to the garden where butlers waited with glasses of bubbly.

Then we all sat down in her flower-filled patio, as it was a very fine evening, and the conversation flowed ever so naturally even if we had just met.

I liked this lady immediately when I met her.

She has an amazing passion for what she is doing, and this is something I can identify with.

She also has a very big heart, incredible taste, and a great sense of humor.

We sat next to each other, and if I did not have jetlag and an early start the next day, as over two sozen friends of Travelife Magazine were arriving in Johannesburg via Cathay Pacific from Hong Kong to experience a wonderful adventure with me in South Africa, we would have talked all night.

And laughed all night as well.

Meanwhile, her very talented chef prepared a four-course dinner sourced mostly from local ingredents, and this was paired with some very lovely wines.

We had figs wrapped in Parma ham to start, and then very delicious main courses of fish and meat, including his version of a deconstructed Beef Wellington.

My discovery for the evening was a local wine called DMZ, which — being Travelife — immediately made me think of something in the world: Korea’s DMZ, meaning the demilitarized zone.

I’d visited it as a child, one summer holiday, at the height of the one of the tensions between the two Koreas.

But the DMZ at the dinner was happily a more palatable version. It was a sauvignon blanc that was so full of delightful complexities.

This evening made me feel so happy and at home in South Africa.

It was so relaxing to just sit around, with a roaring fireplace next to us, enjoying the best of South African hospitality on a beautiful evening in Johannesburg, living a never-ending, and never-endingly eventful Travelife.

The post An elegant dinner party at Morrells in Johannesburg appeared first on TRAVELIFE Magazine.

Breakfast on board the beautiful Blue Train, as it crosses the country from Pretoria to Cape Town and back, is an elaborate and elegant affair.

It’s just like in those period movies, really, except the food is probably much better on the Blue Train.

Moreover, it’s a beautiful vintage train, but it’s got every modern convenience, and onboard WiFi to boot.

But going back to that elaborate production for breakfast, it’s really a wonder to think how the Blue Train team manages such a meal, considering it’s a moving train with obviously very limited space.

It’s literally breakfast with “the works.“

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Passengers can dine in the dining car at their leisure, between 7 and 10 AM.

They can also basically sit where they wish, and with whom they wish — or else dine by themselves, too, if they wish.

We chose to share a table with the same British couple we’d been sharing a table with since the Blue Train rolled out of Pretoria Station.

I was the first one to the table, as I was hankering for a pot of rooibos tea early in the morning. Then I set up my laptop to try and do some work until the others arrived.

For breakfast, there is a very nice buffet spread of pastries and fruits, and some cold cuts.

Again, you marvel at the fact that you are staring at two buffet spreads on both sides of a narrow train carriage, as it rolls along 140-year-old train tracks.

After you’re done with the cold foods, you can order hot foods from the menu.

When I opened my breakfast menu, I got very hungry just looking at everything.

It was also quite a novelty to have a leisurely breakfast onboard the Blue Train, so I decided to have three hot courses.

There was nothing on my schedule after all, except to gaze out at the scenery until we  reached Cape Town. So I had breakfast with “the works.”

After my fruit plate and some bread, I had eggs benedict, but with salmon instead of ham.

If you read this blog regularly, you’ll know I love eggs benedict with a passion and I have it almost everytime I see it on a menu. At almost every hotel I stay in, everywhere in the world.

But I especially love ordering this in South Africa, where I have yet to find a badly made eggs benedict.

Then I ordered French toast, just because I haven’t had French toast in such a long time.

This was delicious as well.

Finally, I ordered savoury scones with cream cheese, cheddar cheese and lashings of bacon, just because I’d never had this before and it looked interesting.

It was so good, and breakfast ended up a two-hour affair, especially with all my orders.

And then sooner rather than later, we were rolling into Cape Town, to begin another adventure in our never-ending, and never-endingly eventful Travelife.

The post Breakfast onboard the Blue Train, from Pretoria to Cape Town appeared first on TRAVELIFE Magazine.

Ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to take the Blue Train.

Living a never-ending Travelife, I’m up for all sorts of adventures.

I especially like trains and cruises — and how lucky, then, that I’m doing this wonderful train journey in South Africa, and also a two-week cruise somewhere in the world, over the next four weeks.

Yes, I literally have 24 hours between my trip to South Africa, and the cruise trip somewhere else in the world.

It’s truly a never-endingly eventful Travelife.

Scroll down to read more…

And tomorrow, I’m off to explore South Africa’s Garden Route, after several blissful days of going around the wine country.

But for now, let me share with you some details of the Blue Train experience.

It’s really an old-fashioned way of traveling — and I mean this in a nice way.

The attire is casual most of the time, save for dinner, when the gentlemen actually don tuxedoes and the women wear fancy dresses and good jewelry.

I decided to wear a colorful but casual long dress, with a hint of Africa on it.

The meals are all elegant, whether it is breakfast or dinner.

Each table setting has a full complement of silverware and each course is plated beautifully and served on porcelain.

Wine — and there is lots of this to accompany every course — is poured into crystal goblets by formal, uniformed servers.

You would think you were not on a train, traversing a desert.

And did I already mention that the food’s delicious?

Meanwhile, the cabins of the Blue Train are among the most comfortable train cabins in the world.

They are very tastefully decorated and quite spacious, especially in the context of a vintage train.

It’s not a hotel suite in terms of size — but when you think that you are on a train, the cabins are quite remarkable.

Each cabin has either a double bed or two twin beds, and either way, the beds are wonderful.

It has flowers, a writing table, adequate storage space, and even a television with on-demand entertainment.

The ensuite bathrooms on the Blue Train are surprisingly large, as well, especially compared with other specialty trains. These are well-appointed, and each has a picture window looking out.

And, while shower stalls are the norm, some cabins even have proper bathtubs.

Best of all, perhaps, especially for me, is that there’s free onboard WiFi. None of these pay-per-minute WiFi systems found on many cruise ships — which often leaves you stuck with a ridiculously high bill, especially if you like to surf the Net.

However, I have to say that the onboard WiFi is intermittent at best. It is a moving train in the middle of nowhere, after all.

Still, it’s way better than having nothing for 30 hours.

I loved our Blue Train experience — so much so that I can’t wait to do another train experience again, sometime sooner than later, in my never-endingly eventful Travelife.

The post The Blue Train experience in South Africa appeared first on TRAVELIFE Magazine.

Happy holidays to everyone

from all of us at Travelife Magazine.

*     *     *

A four-course dinner by lamplight at Sabi Sabi’s Selati Lodge

We were seated across our ranger Neil — your ranger usually joins you for dinner, so there were about three or four rangers seated with us eight guests that night — and we were having a wonderful meal of impala carpaccio and a beef steak when suddenly a lion roared in the distance.

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A Boma dinner at Selati Lodge

That’s a photo of our tracker and Neil at the wheel, and we’re seated at the back of the jeep. And we’re racing after a lion in the dark!

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The post Best of Travelife 2012: Our most exciting evening was spent hunting a lion at Sabi Sabi appeared first on TRAVELIFE Magazine.

There was once a time when people actually talked to their seatmates on airline flights, perhaps because there was little else to do.

Airlines then didn’t offer the smorgasbord of in-flight entertainment they do today, business class seats were still configured for congeniality rather than privacy, and notebooks—the paper kind—were the standard carry-ons.

Socializing was the other activity travelers looked forward to, as an acceptable way of relieving the long flight’s ennui.

Scroll down to read more…

With the frequency of our flights on a never-ending Travelife, there’s no shortage of amusing stories or encounters in-flight.

In fact, just last month, on the return flight back from South Africa to Hong Kong, an Asian couple had struck up a conversation with us just as we were about to land in Hong Kong.

“You were also on the flight with us two weeks ago from Hong Kong to Johannesburg,” the guy said to us with a smile, as we stood in the aisle fixing hand luggage and all.

We then compared notes on trip itineraries as they’d done almost exactly the same route we’d taken: Johannesburg, safari and Cape Town. However they’d chosen a self-drive safari while we’d flown to the Sabi Sabi Game Reserve for one of these all-inclusive safari holidays.

Read about our amazing safari experience in the current issue of Travelife Magazine. On sale everywhere now.

On our part, we’d not noticed anyone on any flight as we’d both slept most of the way to and from South Africa.

On the way to South Africa, the flight left Hong Kong at midnight and I knew I needed to sleep since we were hitting the ground running as soon as we reached Johannesburg. So as soon as the plane was at cruising altitude, I hit the “flat bed button,” put on my eye mask and went to sleep — waking up just in time for breakfast before landing.

And on the way back to Asia, the flight left Joburg in the afternoon, but we forced ourselves to sleep even at that odd time, since we were landing in Manila and both heading straight for work from the airport, after two weeks away.

Then, just as we were ending our conversation and landing in Hong Kong, the guy said to me: “By the way, you were wearing exactly the same clothes on the way to South Africa.”

I looked at my pretty generic overnight travel outfit, which consisted of a white polo shirt, loose black pants and red ballerina flats, and thought to myself: There were so many flights and so many seats on the airplane, and I was wearing the most nondescript clothes possible. What are the odds of this happening?

Read about other inflight entertainment stories on flights to Paris, London and New York in the next blog entry….

For more stories like this, please pick up the latest issue of TRAVELIFE Magazine at the nearest bookstore.

The post Remembering the real in-flight entertainment on airplanes appeared first on TRAVELIFE Magazine.

Breakfast with a view at the Westcliff in Johannesburg

On our third day in South Africa, living a TRAVELIFE, we had a very leisurely breakfast at the beautiful Westcliff hotel before checking out to catch our flight to the Sabi Sabi Game Reserve in Kruger National Park.

A sunrise balloon ride with Air to Africa over the Cradle of Mankind

Since we arrived, it had been a pretty crazy schedule of doing all kinds of stuff because we wanted to see everything possible in Johannesburg.

We’d ticked off every major sightseeing destination on our list and ate in the four restaurants we really wanted to eat in. And we’d even done a hot air balloon ride at sunrise and driven all the way to Sun City as well.

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Our 48-hour schedule could’ve probably killed a springbok — excuse the pun — but we’d had lots of fun doing it. We’d just had two very full days, and that third morning in Johannesburg was our very first relaxed moment. Finally.

Perhaps to make up for the rush of the past 48 hours, not to mention the 18-hour door-to-door travel time between Manila and Johannesburg, we spent over an hour just having a nice breakfast at Johannesburg’s grande dame of a hotel.

The elegant breakfast venue of the Westcliff

It was a sign of things to come, because after that day, I don’t think we ever sat at a breakfast table — or at any table, for that matter — for less than an hour again. All our meals after that were very, very leisurely, and we were doing at least three courses whether we were having breakfast, lunch or dinner.


And one dinner in Cape Town was eleven courses! (Test Kitchen by Chef Luke Dale Roberts, South Africa’s most famous chef…)

Everything was bloom in Johannesburg, when we were there

The weather was beautiful and we chose a table with a view of the greenery of suburban Johannesburg. Meanwhile, out in the terrace, a very long table of extremely chic-looking women had gathered for morning tea and what looked like a baby shower.

In Johannesburg, the Westcliff is everyone’s favorite destination for all the milestones in their lives, you see, so we were constantly seeing weddings, baptisms, birthdays, and baby showers going on, all over this massive and extremely picturesque property.

The locals are very proud of this hotel, as well. The Westcliff is very large and spread out, so you need to ride a van from the lobby to your room; and twice, we shared the van with some locals who were taking their overseas visitor to one of the Westcliff’s restaurants for a meal.

The Westcliff is the favorite venue for all milestones…

Yes, the Westcliff experience is considered one of the “best experiences” in Johannesburg, and that’s how proud the locals are of this hotel.

Personally, I would say don’t miss a magical experience of champagne at sunset by the infinity pool, and definitely have breakfast on the terrace of the La Belle Terrasse restaurant on a beautiful and relaxing morning.

Breakfast here is very elegant, refined and old-fashioned. I had my usual, favorite hotel breakfast, and it was a pattern that I would follow almost religiously every day in South Africa.

I always started with a plate of fruits and a pot of roobois tea, no sugar or milk.

Then I got some smoked salmon, some cheeses, and a croissant for a second course.

For the third course, I almost always had the eggs benedict, just because I love eggs benedict. And now I can write an entire discourse on the best versions of eggs benedict in South Africa, since I’ve tasted the eggs benedict in all their best hotels.

The Westcliff version of eggs benedict is a classic, which is very appropriate, considering the environment and their reputation.

Muffins for two

And when we left the restaurant, we took two bran muffins to eat on the plane, on the 70-minute flight to Sabi Sabi from Johannesburg, for the next chapter in our amazing South African adventure.

Lunch enroute to Sabi Sabi

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The post A delicious eggs benedict breakfast at the Westcliff in Johannesburg appeared first on TRAVELIFE Magazine.

That’s really us in our balloon. Someone took this photo from the ground.

That’s the balloon, getting all fired up…

On our second day in South Africa, living a TRAVELIFE, we did the craziest thing: we decided to add a hot-air balloon ride to an already maddening sightseeing day that took us all the way to Sun City and Pretoria.

And then it ended with a fancy dinner at the Saxon Boutique Hotel in Johannesburg, cooked by David Higgs, one of South Africa’s top chefs.

This original schedule was supposed to start at 6 AM and end at 10 PM. But with the hot air balloon ride suddenly in the picture, we ended up starting from the hotel at just after 3 AM and coming home at around 11 PM.

Some animals joined us for breakfast….

Interestingly, I didn’t feel very tired in spite of such a grueling schedule, although our driver, who we contracted for two days of driving around, said that he’d never worked so hard in his life before.

But getting up early was worth it. The balloon ride was wonderful, and a great start to an amazing trip around South Africa for two weeks.

All systems go, said our pilot.

Our first view of the balloon

I got the idea to do the balloon ride in South Africa just a few days before leaving Manila for Johannesburg — one of those nights when I just couldn’t sleep, and I was thinking about whether we’d missed anything significant to see or do (or eat!) in South Africa.

I remembered a fantastic balloon ride in Turkey and I’ve been hooked on balloons ever since.

Getting the balloon up into the air…

Researching on the Internet, I found the Air to Air Africa Hot Air Balloon company, which flew balloons over the Cradle of Mankind which is about 35 kms from Johannesburg. If you’re driving in the early morning — like us, at 330 AM from The Westcliff in Johannesburg — then it takes you about 20 to 30 minutes.

Air to Air Africa has pilots with 30 years or so of experience flying balloons.

That’s our pilot, taking us up….

What also impressed me was that they were very serious about safety. As soon as we’d booked our ride, we received a packet by email with very detailed instructions regarding safety precautions.

Look at all those contraptions on our balloon..

Then, when we reached the lodge near the launch site at 430 AM, we got another briefing from the management on what to do and what not to do.

We also were asked specifically about our weight and other details, as apparently this is a big factor in balloon safety and trying to ensure balance in the basket.

Beautiful views over South Africa… this is the largest manmade dam in the Southern hemisphere, and that’s a 20 meter drop down into Crocodile River

Finally we were off. It was incredibly peaceful and nice to be seeing South Africa from above. And when the sun finally rose, we were met with a pretty glorious view of the Cradle of Mankind, where everything in existence began.

Sunrise over Africa on a glorious morning….

We spent an hour up in the air, and for most of the time, we were just all looking out at the scenery below us. I remember that I still couldn’t believe I was in South Africa, as we hadn’t even been in South Africa for 24 hours yet.

Then we landed back on earth. We had to brace in the emergency position, and then the basket got dragged several meters before the team on the ground was able to stop it. But we were already briefed about this at the outset, so I wasn’t too worried when it was happening.

My first proper breakfast in South Africa

Then we all drove back to the lodge for a hearty breakfast. We weren’t expecting much, frankly, so we were happily surprised to enjoy such an excellent breakfast.

On the patio of the lodge, by the swimming pool, we had freshly-baked croissants, delicious sausages and cheeses, and some African stews that we tried for the very first time. These were wonderful.

We had breakfast outdoors on this table, and pretty soon the giraffe came over to join us.

This was also the first time in South Africa that I had a pot of rooibos tea, which is supposed to be one of the most powerful detoxifying teas in the world. I’d had it before in Sri Lanka, but here in South Africa, where it is a native plant, I was having the real thing.

Champagne (or rather sparkling wine, in South Africa) when it was all over. Then we had rooibos tea with breakfast.

I got hooked on rooibos tea from this very morning onwards, and it became my standard breakfast fare and just-about-anytime drink for the next two weeks. Drunk straight without sugar or milk.

I decided to write about this balloon ride today because I just found my balloon ride certificate in my folder of brochures, tickets and trip paraphernalia that I saved for a memory book. Each passenger was given one. And what a nice souvenir of a wonderful memory, being up in the air over Africa, this is.

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