Winnie Mandela personally thanks us

Fifteen Vespas, six LMLs, one Lambretta and a number of other bikes set out for Soweto this morning. On the way we somehow got tangled with a larger group of hogs (Harley Davidsons) who where off on an orderly Sunday ride. I must say their marshals didn’t like the wasps buzzing among their hog members. Thanks for stopping the traffic for us; it was a pleasure just riding through the red traffic lights although we did see one dangerous hog marshal who endangered himself and other road users. When the hogs joined the highway this marshal went and stopped across the middle lane of the three lane highway and tried to stop the cars hurtling round the bend. I had to try stop slow the cars down myself and was worried about a large truck just plowing into the marshal. Cars were doing emergency braking with me on my Vespa in the middle of all this.

Well let’s move speedily along. We ended up in the famous Vilakazi Street in Soweto and sat down for a beef korta at Winnie Mandela’s shop. A lot of tourists came by taking photos of our Vespas and even Winnie herself came down to have a look although did not get out of the passenger seat of the silver Audi A6 that she was driven in. She did speak to one of our riders thanking us for our visit.I could have kicked myself afterwards as I could have asked her for a photo of her on one of the Vespas. Anyway after lunch we took a ride around to see the Hector Pieterson Museum and then we got hijacked.

Oh yes hijacked, this dude Lebo comes round on a Gomoto scooter wearing a German WWII helmet and all the biker gear on. He welcomes us and thanks us for coming into Soweto, then asks us to come have a beer with him at his backpackers lodge down the road. So the rest of our tour went out of the window as we headed to Lebo's Soweto Backpackers at 10823A Pooe Street, Orlando West. I must say we were in for a surprise as it was a much better place than the tourist trap of Vilakazi Street. Being a backpacker their prices are very reasonable, the rooms look luxurious and they do bicycle and tut-tut tours of Soweto.We defiantly will be back either to sleep over or just to have beers and dinner.