Postcard from South Africa

Sorry again for the long break in writing. What has happened is this: J went on a business trip to Johannesburg, South Africa, for a week. When he got back, he got a cold from the airplane and was coughing for a week. Then, he recovered but now L has the cold.

Anyway, I thought I would put up some pictures of South Africa. It was on business, so basically I shuttled between meetings, field tests, and the airport hotel where I was staying. But what an airport hotel! I mean, have you ever stayed in a hotel with a food court done up in classical/rustic Italian style? (To be fair, the hotel was in a complex with a casino, so this is actually the casino food court).
 

Apparently an exact replica of Michelangelo's David, at this point tastefully advertising St Patrick's Day. 

A passageway in the food court

Beautiful trompe-l'oeil artwork in the lobby for the auditorium where Deepak Chopra spoke. Also, apparently people will shell out $70 to hear Deepak Chopra. 

I'm halfway sure these are actually copies of Pompeiian artwork

In case you're now craving to find out where you may find this magical mixture of graceful design and tacky vulgarity, it is the "Emperor's Palace", or as its airport mini-shuttles proclaim, "The Palace of Dreams". Yes, dreams...but of what sort?

In the food court, there was an African-themed restaurant. This was surprising as I figured that this wouldn't be possible here, since everything would automatically be African-themed, since we were in, you know, South Africa. But my host here talked several times about "going to Africa" to visit mines - clearly there's a distinction between the country of South Africa and the Rest of Africa. Anyway I visited the restaurant and found I had a choice between steak, kudu steak, impala steak, and ostrich. I'd never heard of kudu before and asked the waiter what it was. He helpfully came back with a page giving pictures and descriptions of kudus, impalas, and ostriches. The kudu looks like a large gazelle. I found that the kudu tastes like venison, or very lean beefsteak.

Johannesburg more or less exists because of the gold mines, which surround the city. In fact the city is now encroaching on old tailings piles. Apart from the usual nasty aspects of tailings piles, it turns out that some of the tailings in the area are mildly radioactive due to the presence of uranium in the ores. Several of the historical tailings (ie from 1800s or early 1900s) are now being reprocessed to scavenge more gold out of them.

A tailings impoundment

At the left, there is a tailings impoundment. To the right, a new development of low-income housing is going up. In between, there isn't much. 

Driving into downtown Johannesburg

Well, a week goes by fast in South Africa and soon it was time to head back home. For the next posts we will return you to your regular programming of chicken updates and home maintenance shenanigans. A few last pictures:

Picture quality isn't great, but it's an ibis poking around in the roses outside my hotel room.

The Afrikaans language is alive and well it seems. This is an ad for a stage version of Cinderella.