alicat

Thanks for your responses everyone! We're still busy playing keep-up with our families since we got home and I haven't been able to respond till now.

Thanks for the welcome back Shani and Tecoyah! We're glad to be back home and to the TFP (hubby and I--he lurks like ShaniFaye's Dave does!).

Glava: Your question is legitamate, I wondered the same thing myself for months before we actually went. All I could find on the net were horror stories about the crime and violence in South Africa and I was, quite frankly, scared to death to go there. I really (sorry) can't give you a satisfactorily answer because the company my husband was working for put us up in a very nice hotel. We were in the Protea Centurion hotel in Centurion, which is between Johannesburg and Proteria. It was a very nice area with a pretty upper-class mall adjacent to the hotel. I still looked over my shoulder most of the time but I went to the mall 3 times by myself (which included a long trek through a parking lot filled with people following you trying to hawk cheap products the whole time).

Yes, there were security guards, (2) in the lobby of our hotel and multiple guards in the next-door mall. However, the mall was quite unlike any mall I've been in here in the US. The terrain in South Africa is very hilly (and I mean tiny mountain hilly) and the mall was built onto a hill and therefore it was three levels tall to acomedate the land. It was very unique in that the main body of the mall was outdoors (concourse, running north and south) and exposed to the elements while there were multiple offshoot hallways (running east and west) that were indoors. There were security guards almost everywhere you looked. As paranoid as I am, I (and my hubby) felt perfectly safe walking through the mall, although we didn't dare take our camera there to take pictures because we were told that would target us as tourist's and we might be followed and robbed. The bottom line: we didn't have any trouble but we were also in a pretty upper-class area and not downtown Johannesburg.

K-wise: Not in the traditional sense of the term. Like I said, we went to a private "Big Cat" park which is on a much smaller scale but you are still able to see the animals up close. From what we heard, it's actually better because you can go on a safari in, say, Kruger national park, and there is no guarantee that you will get to see any animals, much less the "Big 5" (lion, elephant, rhino, giraffe and buffalo). In a small, private park you are sure to see the animals (although I admit it is somewhat disheartening to see them penned in like in our American zoo's). I should say that only the giraffes, baby lions, (2) tigers, hyeanas and boars were penned in. Otherwise, the boks, zebras, buffalo's, wildfowl and ostriches were free-roaming on acres upon acres. The adult lions and older cubs, as well as the hyeanas that weren't rotated to the walking part of the park, were also in free-range area's, just seperated from the other animals they might prey on. Unfortunately for us, the park didn't have elephants or rhino's (or, maybe, fortunate for those two animals!)

I'm not going to go into too much depth because I don't want to get into any arguments, but hubby and I were both sickened by the state of racism and the seperation between whites and blacks there. Anti-apartheid happened a decade ago and yet from what we saw and experienced, we might as well have been back in the US a decade or so after the Emancipation Proclimation was enacted. We in the US have no concept and are not told about the state of race relations as they stand now in South Africa. As (white) American's, we both felt ashamed and embarressed while with white South African's (for their behavior) and also saddened and sorrowful towards the black South African's we met (for their situations and plight) Although we didn't feel it was our place in a foreign country and culture to vocalize any of that. The white people would have looked at us like we were crazy for caring about the black people and the black people also would have thought we were nuts for caring and/or voicing our compassion. I can't even tell how many strange looks I received from black people (which, sorry to say, fill almost all the service industry jobs) when I asked or said as I normally do, "How are you?" or "Have a nice day!". We were very, very sad to experience the state of affairs in the country.

Nowthen: I'm sorry but I have no clue as to what you mean...

Again, thanks everyone for posting and when I finally figure out what I'm doing (completely computer illiterate!), I'll post some photo's!

Ali

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"You cannot do a kindness too soon because you never know how soon it will be too late."--Ralph Waldo Emerson