I arrived in Pretoria with low expectations. South Africa had been a mixed bag. The delights of the Garden Route, a superb Johannesburg, falling in love with Cape Town and almost getting mugged there, wonderful stops in Hermanus and Durban. And then the disappointments: Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth) and Mossel Bay both left me cold. My South African friends, the same ones who had warned me off Port Elizabeth, had mixed things to say about the country’s administrative capital. I gave it a day and a half. It gave me considerably more than I expected. Pretoria…

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