The hop on hop off buses that I find in many large cities are a great idea!  Their routes take visitors to the major points of interest in a city and you hop off at your choice; once you have stayed there for as long as you want, you hop on the next bus that comes along.  So it was a car ride from the house to the train station then a two-station ride to Red Bus stop #1 in Johannesburg.

The Gold Cliff Casino was my first hop off necessitated as this was the pick up point for the Soweto tour.  As it turned out I was the only one on the tour (travel luck) so had my driver, my guide and myself.  I had asked each of them their names and even repeated them and practiced saying them but as you can probably can tell by now that I don't have any recollection of either of their names right now . . .  Soweto is a very large area of Johannesburg where workers were able to find  a place to live when they moved to the big city; the area was called southern workers township; rather long so was shortened to Soweto.  With about 3 1/2 million people and limited resources, homes are pretty basic and there was no visible sign of  anything promising.   The streets pulsated with thousands of people walking, some with purpose, others just passing the day it seemed.  We stopped at several places and got out of the van and my guide gave a more in- depth info about the area, the struggles of the people and apartheid, all of which was so very interesting and moving.

The Apartheid Museum was my second stop; a lot of it was difficult for me to read about and try to understand, but there were some very inspirational exhibits and it was well worthwhile.

My third stop was at the Science Museum.  The human body was on exhibit so I took the opportunity to see it as I had missed it in Canada.  Well worth the time; although I love science and will watch operations on tv etc, I found it a bit eerie to know that these specimens were real people, real dead people, but real people just the same.  A lot to learn here.