Johannesburg

After a 400 km drive lasting just over four hours we arrived at Sandton, a suberb of Johannesburg, the largest city in South Africa. The city was founded on the back of the gold rush in 1886 and within 10 years it had a population of 100,000 people.

We stayed for a couple of nights prior to flying to Botswana, but took the opportunity to visit The Wanderers to watch Johannesburg Super Kings versus the Durban Super Chargers in the SA T20. The Wanderers, built in 1956 to replace the old stadium, has a capacity of 34,000 and is known as the bullring because of its intimidating atmosphere for visiting teams. We could see why – although the stadium was not full, it was extremely noisy with most people having whistles. It is one of the highest international grounds at 1,640 m; Kingsmead in Durban which we visited earlier in our trip is one of the lowest at 3 m. The game we went to in Durban was rained off, however this match was a first for us – play delayed by lightning , but no rain. After the lightning delay of almost an hour, Durban managed to win (against their recent lack of form) in a 16 over second innings run chase.