On Top of Joburg at 120 End Street

Nothing beats watching the sunset from a Joburg rooftop.

Downtown Joburg from 120 End Street
Looking down at the crazy evening traffic from the roof of 120 End Street.

On Sunday evening, Mark Straw from the Joburg Photowalkers organized a rooftop mission for all of the photographers who contributed their pictures to the recent #JoziWalks weekend. We drove together to 120 End Street, a 26-story residential building in the middle of the CBD, and spent the evening taking pictures there.

Swaziland's Bushfire Festival: My Top 8 Tips

Last weekend I attended the MTN Bushfire Festival in Swaziland. It was my second time at the festival (read about my first Bushfire in 2012) and my seventh trip to Swaziland, one of my favorite countries on earth.

The Wonders of Rock Art: Now at Sci-Bono

The Sci-Bono Discovery Centre is a science museum in Newtown, in the middle of the Joburg CBD. The museum is housed in a cavernous, 110-year-old former electrical workshop. Somehow I’ve never blogged about it before but last week I received a perfect opportunity when I was invited to the launch of Sci-Bono’s “Wonders of Rock Art: Lascaux Cave and Africa” exhibition.

10 Places to Visit in Melville's 27 Boxes

27 Boxes is a retail center made out of shipping containers on 4th Avenue in Melville.

Outside 27 Boxes
The beautiful new children’s play area outside 27 Boxes.

I recently wrote a story about 27 Boxes for the Differe**nt, which goes into the interesting history of the center and of Faan Smit Park, the Joburg City park that used to be where 27 Boxes is now. So I won’t go into that in this post.

Cycling Tour Through Diepsloot

Diepsloot is one of those places, like a lot of other Joburg places, where people are afraid to go.

Diepsloot street
A Diepsloot street.

Diepsloot, which means “deep ditch” in Afrikaans, is a huge informal settlement in the far northern outskirts of Joburg; in fact, it is so far north that it’s just as close to Pretoria as it is to Joburg. It emerged from nothing on an abandoned farm in the 1990s, as migrants poured into Joburg from rural South Africa and the rest of Africa and had nowhere else to go.

Tarantino's: Joburg's Most Secret Coffeeshop

This post, featuring Tarantino’s, is the fourth in an occasional series about my favorite new coffeeshops in Joburg.

I’ve written a couple of posts before about secret Jozi coffeeshops (see here and here). But the secret-ness of those coffeeshops pales in comparison to the secret-ness of Tarantino’s Coffee Co. in Marshalltown, on the eastern side of the Joburg CBD.

Some Shots From the Top of the Sentech Tower

Last week I got an incredible opportunity to visit the Sentech Tower, a.k.a. the Brixton Tower.

Sentech Tower at sunset

A picture I took a few years ago of the Sentech Tower at sunset.