Ok, there’s no arguing with statistics, but everyone I have met in Johannesburg was then nicest and mist helpful person imaginable. Everyone – police, street cleaners, shop workers, skateboarders on the street – is smiling, greeting, eager to chat. I guess there must be rougher neighborhoods than the ones I have visited.

I am now on my way to the Kruger National Park to join a safari. It’s a long bus journey. In Johannesburg I had noticed how similar things look to American inner cities. Small villages in South Africa repeat the theme, they feel like rural small-town America. Albeit the strip-mall kind, not the white picket fence kind. Replace the brands with American ones and draw a double yellow line down the center of the street and nobody would notice. Well… they drive on the left here.

And I suppose there aren’t too many freeway gas stations with large enclosures for ostriches and buffalo in the US.