Around the neighborhoods of Johannesburg

We transited several times from Johannesburg, but we never visited the city; often for us it was simply the airport where we started or ended our trip; but this time, as we stayed here a few days, we decided to visit it.

We did not feel like visiting it alone; one thing is driving on the highways to cross it; another is venturing into the neighborhoods and suburbs of an African megalopolis that we do not know and that has the fame of not being very safe.

We take a guide, advised by the hotel, and start off to discover Joburg.

First of all, we visit a spectacular villas district that, when there was apartheid, was inhabited only by whites; today there are also several blacks who live here.

Among these tree-lined avenues there is also the villa where Mandela lived with his third wife, since becoming the first black president of South Africa.

From there we went downtown; here some colonial buildings have survived, though not always in very good condition, among the skyscrapers; the symbol building of this area is the Diamond Tower, built, incidentally, with the proceeds of South African diamond mines.

Not far from here we go to a shop where those who practice traditional medicine come; on the entrance they still retain the sign, dating back to the apartheid period, indicating that this place was only reserved for blacks.

Inside the shelves on the walls are full of roots, barks, seeds and pods of plants and parts of animals, such as the paws and horns of different antelopes, some of these objects are also hanging on the ceiling; it looks a bit like a feticheur market, although we are thousands of miles away from the homeland of the voodoo.

From here we continue our tour and arrive at Hillbrow, this, in the last century, was a wealthy neighborhood inhabited by whites but was abandoned when the Black Government came to power; now it is in a state of degradation that seems hopeless.

We take a ride in the car, with the doors closed with the safes and the windows raised; around we see destroyed buildings, broken windows, entire plans of stuck buildings, here and there some fire on the street.

Our guide tells us that this is the realm of drug dealers and bad business; people who roam around its streets look like zombies, you do not understand if they are drunk or stray or simply are hopeless.
 

Our tour of Johannesburg is over, we know we've only seen a glimpse of what Joburg is; a city with strong contrasts that hit us a lot.

But our tour today is not over, we will continue our visit and go to Soweto.