This group of albums is from a trip I took to southern Africa in August of 1990. I had been invited to visit my friend Max Gilika who I had first met when he was a student at Adelphi University. I started out at his home in Gaborone, visiting historic locations near there. Next, I spent three days at a safari game park in the Okavango Delta in northern Botswana. Max made a business trip to Johannesburg South Africa, and I went with him. While there, he gave me a fascinating tour of Soweto, very much then in the news because of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison a few months earlier.

Leaving Botswana, I flew to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, and then to Harare, the capital. Having arrived in Harare, I rented a car with a driver, to visit Great Zimbabwe, a 180-mile road trip. After returning to Harare, I flew to Lusaka Zambia for my return trip home.

Chapter 8 – Gold Reef City Park and the Crown Mine

After we stayed overnight back in Johannesburg, Max had business meetings scheduled. He suggested I spend the day in Gold Reef City. Gold Reef City is part historical site, part amusement park. The highlight, to me, was that you could descend 700 feet into the Crown Mine (shaft 14 to be accurate) on the same lift used by the mine until it closed in the 1970s

The Crown Mine was, at its closing, one of the deepest gold mines in the world, a little over 2 miles deep. It was also one of the richest gold mines in the world, producing over 1.4 million kilograms of gold. At one point, over 30,000 miners worked underground in the mine. But by the time it closed it had become uneconomical.

The historic site includes tours of several homes of the mining executives (compare them to the housing of the miners in Soweto) and a small museum. There was a demonstration of pouring gold ingots and you can tour the “winder” still used to operate the lift. When I took the tour, you descended the whole 700 feet (about 70 stories) to what was the top level of the mine. The lower parts of the mine are no longer pumped out, they have become flooded. I understand that the underground tour now only takes you down about 150 feet, where a new exhibit area has been completed.

The highlight, of course, was the descent into the mine, with my hard hat and torch (lantern) for a tour of a small part of the actual mine. Obviously very sanitized for tourists, but still able to give one an inkling of the conditions experienced by the miners. Not an easy life.