Late deals

IT WAS a birthday celebration like no other.

We had flown into Johannesburg to take up the trail of South Africa’s magnificent wild animals.

My big celebration happened to fall slap-bang in the middle of an action-packed six-day trip.

Our party were heading for a game reserve tucked away at the edge of the world-famous Kruger National Park to spot the Big Five – elephants, lions, rhino, buffalo and the elusive leopard.

But first we wanted to check out the virtues of Jo’burg, the country’s largest city.

Politics and Nelson Mandela aside, I knew little of the rainbow nation. As a guest of the country’s tourist board, surely Mr Mandela and politics wouldn’t be concerning us much on this visit. Wrong.

Three hours later, I found myself spinning on a bicycle through the once infamous township of Soweto, now part of the greater Johannesburg area.

Here we were in the middle of countless rows of the small, red-brick homes that were so familiar from the violent scenes that used to be screened around the globe.

But the people of townships like this have come a long way since Mandela was freed in 1990, apartheid was dismantled and the country’s first democratic vote was held in 1994.

Now they’re only too proud of their districts. And everyone in and around Johannesburg seems to be pulling together to hoist South Africa up the world tourism league.

After an hour, encouraged by our guides Zigi and Brilliant, I found myself joining in an impromptu rendering of The Lion Sleeps Tonight as we looked down over the sprawling area where more than three million people live.

Apparently it’s an old African

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hunting song that used to be sung in Zulu. Music and dance, I would find, were never far away in this part of the world.

The message that kept coming at us in Soweto – and the bigger city itself – was of the great strides that have and are being made to make the region tourist-friendly.

For too long now, holiday bosses have watched most visitors fly in to Jo’burg and skip on to Cape Town or Durban for their beach attractions, or straight to the game reserves.

The City of Gold is fighting back. Take the area of Maboneng near Jo’burg’s centre for example. Artists and designers are reinvigorating this inner-city district and it’s bustling with trendy little museums and restaurants.

After a day in the metropolis, we took a short flight to Nelspruit and stepped out into the Africa that I had always imagined – a moist, sub-tropical climate with lush greenery everywhere.

Our group were bussed to the jaw-dropping scenery of the Panorama Route and the Blyde River Canyon with their awesome collection of mountains and waterfalls.

The fantastic names of these