Day 1

Well, I've survived my first day in Pretoria... South Africa's 'administrative capital'.

It's a bit of a commuter town I think. Not really very cosmopolitan compared to what I saw of Joburg.

Weirdest thing so far is... the moon is on its side! I never noticed that last time I was here.. i.e. it is like a smiley face. I'll need to get a picture of it.

Second weirdest is that.. this is their coldest month.. middle of winter. Still 15-20 degrees during the day though, so t-shirt weather for me, but everyone else has hats and coats on, etc. And of course because it is warm, when it goes pitch dark by 5.30pm you wonder who switched the lights out! strange.

Funny enough, it actually seems more integrated than cape town. Most houses don't have 10 foot high barbed wire all around them. Factories don't have 20 foot high electric fences round them. The centre is just pretty much like down town LA.. run down.. poor housing/people and crap shops.

There is a big mall somewhere. Friday night it opens till 9pm, so I might try to get down there then and leave the weekend free...

since at the weekend I want to try and fit in some sky dives to finish my course !! - however I've already contacted the local club and they have a competition on all weekend, so they are not doing any training so I might need to look further afield.. if I find somewhere I'll hire a car for the weekend, and go to wherever it is.

According to my log book I needed one jump to complete the training (just a low out a 4500 and pull), but because its been a while, I'll have to do 3 jumps to complete and refresher training.

Anyhoo, we'll see.

I'll try and take some piccies to capture life here tomorrow.