First we went through Hillbrow which is the really bad part of Johannesburg. It used to be an area for white people but then immigrants took over and the whites moved to the north. In these streets you can see a lot of people from Nigeria and Mozambique dealing drugs and commuting tons of crimes. It is for sure not a safe place to be! Supposedly the government is cleaning up joburg and after they are done with downtown they are planning to work on hillbrow. The neighborhood reminded me of downtown El Salvador, I would not go there by myself!

After driving through the neighborhood we were taken to Constitutional Hill, a prison where many people like Mandela, Sobukwe, and Ghandi were incarcerated. There was a fabulous exhibition about Ghandi and his trajectory! Too bad we weren't given enough time to really enjoy it and read everything.

The stories were heart breaking just like in Robben Island! The guide talked about the living conditions of the inmates and how they had only 8 showers/ toilets for 2,000 prisoners and all of them were allowed to shower at the same time for 30 mins once a week... Many of them didn't shower for months!

We also learned about the treatment given to whites compared to the black people... My heart was aching for all the injustices that went on in that place!

Then we moved along to the cleanest and best part of joburg (couldn't understand the name of it!) we crossed the Mandela bridge and we arrived to new town!

The guide showed us Chinatown and the funny thing was that we only saw one Chinese person inside a store sitting in front of the window busy with his cellphone! Jajaja quite different than the Chinatowns I've been to!

After a short drive we stopped at "Top of Africa" where we had a panoramic view of Johannesburg. Our guide showed us different viewpoints and shared with us the story of joburg and talked about gold mining, Mandela, Ghandi, businesses, and even the World Cup!

Our next stop was... The FNB stadium! Where shakira performed "waka waka" for the World Cup opening! 

Then off to SOWETO!!!!

This is a township in Johannesburg and I was amazed by what I learned during the tour. One third of Johannesburg's population lives in this township; most of the townships I have visited have a mix of middle to low and very low income class. Soweto, on the other hand, seemed to have a more middle-upper class housing... Or at least people pretending to be in that money bracket... We saw a lot of fancy cars and fancier houses and our tour guide explained the development of Soweto and the housing divisions. Johannesburg is well know for being very dangerous but we noticed that more and more houses had no barb wire or electric fences and the guide said that crime is lowering and the situation in joburg is getting better... 

We stopped at different places and guide told us about how taxis work in the township and how people get around.

Then we went To the Soweto tower and where people can bungee jump AND do a free fall from the top of the tower to the bottom!!! I thought he was kidding! But NO!!!! In one of the towers the have put a net on the bottom so people can just jump in! That is something that I would never do!!! It's crazy!!!! He says that nobody has died, but still the chances of hurting yourself badly and landing in the wrong position and messing your life forever are pretty small!!! Never ever in a million year!!!

Then we drove through the really low income part of Soweto.

I made the driver stop at the zozo housing- cheap houses made of aluminum- and gave away my clothes and shoes to the poor people! I felt like there wasn't a point of bringing back all the tshirts  and pants since i'll never use them again (and if I need them I could easily buy new ones). It felt really good to give them away, the women were taken by surprise since nobody ever stops out of nowhere and gives them a full bag of clothes! I do hope they were happy... And that they fit!

Our next stop was arbishop Tutu's house - Nobel prize winner, and finally Nelson Mandela's house!