Touch down in South Africa It's early evening on Monday October 6 and I'm on a BA flight from Johannesburg to Port Elizabeth with Tina from the Mandela and Beyond project.

In the past 24 hours, I've been on a total of three different planes; one from Glasgow to Dubai, another from Dubai to Jo'burg, and now this one. That's about seventeen hours worth of flying. No problem, because I like flying.

However, the rest of the team travelled to Jo'burg last Friday morning. The less said about why I didn't too, the better!

Anyway, I'll let them tell you what they did at the weekend...

So, we arrived in Jo'burg at around ten o'clock. We had already booked accommodation at a local hostel in advance, so we were picked up from the airport by their driver, and whisked over there at a frightening speed (much to Tina's horror)!

Checking in was quite a hassle, because some other residents had to be moved around to accommodate the size of our ten-strong group.

On Saturday, the hostel owner arranged a trip for us around the large Soweto township.

Although we didn't venture very far in, we saw some extreme poverty.

The 'houses' were more like two-room shacks, made of corrugated iron, and any other materials that could be scavenged together.

Water was provided to 50 or more people from single taps in the streets.

It was all a bit of a culture shock.

In the evening, we went to a restaurant in the city centre called Moya's.

It played a sophisticated brand of South African music.

The food was fantastic - even Riccardo couldn't complain!

We had seafood platters and salads for starters.

The rest of the menu was quite varied, and the traditional Gauteng-style braised beef steak was very good.

Afterwards, back at the hostel, some of us played guitar and chilled out.

The next day, we went on a safari at the Peelensburg National Park. Unfortunately, we were in a minibus which quickly became quite hot and stuffy.

However, we did see hippopotamuses, giraffes and monkeys, and other native species.

Overall, although bustling and fast-paced, Jo'burg was a very interesting place to visit.