January 23^rd we arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa. Fresh off the plane we had only heard rumors of what to expect. Dirty city, criminals that’ll take your wallet, horrible driver were all things that we had been told. Naturally, this caused a bit of fear when we first landed. Fueling this fear was the fact that we had to take a train to drop one of our bags into the city, where it would wait 10 weeks for our return.

We were on ultra high alert, head on a swivel and listening for any tension in the air. We boarded the train and made our way to Sandton (we learned later this is the nicest part of the city). When we arrived we came out of the train station and immediately saw the metropolitan Africa we were expecting. There were black taxi’s buzzing around the streets and crowds of people sitting around talking and selling cheap goods. We made a point to look like we knew what we were doing and headed for Mandela Square and the Sandton Mall. We made it to the hotel to drop our bag into storage and headed back to the train station. This was the first time in Africa and it was a little stressful knowing all horrible things that we had heard and were told to expect.

After our 10 weeks in South Africa we had to return to Johanessburg to collect our bag and change out our kit for Madagascar. Sandton was no longer the scary place we remembered. In fact, it was downright fancy. The streets were lined with five star luxury hotels with half million dollar cars parked outside. Walking through the clean, air conditioned mall was almost pleasant (because, after all, it is still a mall). We were no longer paranoid, walking quickly, worried someone may come up to us. Instead we languidly strolled along, trying to find a Woolworths, or where to buy data without searching faces for signs of malice.

What a difference two months makes. We had made our own opinions and saw much different place than we had seen when we first arrive. Very little had changed physically, but our perception had been radically altered. It was very interesting how much our perception was set based solely on what others told us and how much it changed as saw things for ourselves.