sarah mcVey: South Africa and Mozambique (part one)

Here’s to another week of adventure in Africa, this one mostly consisted of a trip that went just about as far from planned as possible. The Plan: take a short and easy bus ride to Johannesburg and then get a taxi to our hotel which was strategically placed right next to the soccer stadium, spend the weekend in South Africa going to the soccer tournament African Cup of Nations to watch some legit ball, find a taxi ride back to the bus station, get on an over night bus to Mozambique where we would meet up with our friends and go to the nicest beach in the world, Tofo. Get a really nice tan, drink coconuts on the beach, go snorkeling, and be completely stress free for a week. Reality: almost none of that. Here is what really happened, I am in Africa and for some reason; I just assumed everything would run here like it did in the states. Back home I would totally plan a weekend trip and leave that same day so I assumed, how different could it be? VERY DIFFERENT, but here is the key difference… back home I would have my own car, a GPS, a cell phone that worked, my laptop, road signs, easy access to internet, safe roadside hotels, insurance, and my mommy and daddy a phone call away. On this trip, I didn’t have any of those things, not one.

We were set to go, had our bus tickets, had our visas, had a hotel in South Africa and we headed out. After a pretty relaxed 6-hour bus ride, we made it to Johannesburg, which we thought was really close to our hotel and the soccer field, this was our first fantasy. Turns out the soccer stadium is 2 hours from Jo-burg in a place called Rustenburg so luckily we found a bus the was on its way there, only thing was it was 100 degrees on the bus and no one would freaken open a window- pretty sure me and all my friends got heat stroke and could have died. But on a happier note: there was a really cute kid sitting in front of me on the bus and I started messing with him by smashing my nose against the window, not 5 seconds later, he was doing the same, then he found a hair that belonged to me but had somehow gotten to his seat and this sparked about an hour long game between the two of us.

Anyways, we finally got to Rustenburg and got dropped off at a bus station that was chaos at best, we asked and asked about some sort of taxi and after being hassled for a good hour, we found a man that was willing to drive us to our hotel- which ended up being about a 45 minute drive on a gravel road out to a little farm in the middle of no where. I do have to say, besides the fact that it was far away, this was the cutest little place EVER. Finally we were safe in our hotel that has emus and guinea pigs for pets. We got a barbeque dinner and met this guy from Pretoria who was taking a weekend trip to go to a game reserve about 10 miles from the hotel. Honestly I am not sure what we would have done without him, but he offered to take us with him for the safari the next day and of course we accepted! So we went to a park the was a lot like Yellowstone set up where you drive through it craning your neck so see animals. And we did! A lot of them. We saw hippos, giraffes, zebras, wildabeasts, rhinos, turtles, springbuck, warthogs, and some other deer like animals that I cant remember the names of. That was lovely.

Then our next challenge came about: how the heck are we getting to the soccer game? And how are we getting to the Spar store to pick up our tickets? The nice man who took us on the safari was so helpful, he drove us EVERYWHERE and after going to multiple different stores trying to find one that had our tickets, we finally found one and we told the guy he could go because he was trying to get home and had wasted like 2+ hours helping us. So again we were stranded and side note: taxis DO NOT exist in South Africa. DO NOT rely on public transportation. Again, thanks to a really nice manager at the store we were at, we got hooked up with a guy that was planning on going to the game anyways so he ended up being our taxi/body guard for the night. Once we were at the soccer stadium, it made all the struggles getting there worth it because of the amazing energy and excitement surrounding us. There were people dressed from head to toe repping their country with the constant sound of vovozelos buzzing in our ear and sometimes people thought they were super funny and blew them right in our ears, turds, but you couldn’t help but laugh. Finally we found our seats and there was a guy with the coolest hair I have ever seen sitting in front of us which is funny because he turned around during the break between games (we watched two back-to-back) and talked to me and asked for my phone number and asked to let him “show me off after the game.” One really different thing here, one of the first questions I ever get asked is “do you drink?”…no…”oh, do you smoke?”…no….and no one can quite wrap their brains around the idea that I don’t want to. Anyways the games were super intense and there was a wave and people singing the traditional futbol song of South Africa which I am now addicted to. We left the game like 5 minutes early because our bodyguard friend told us he didn’t want to get stuck in traffic, which we figured was pretty fair.

We got back to our hotel real late and all of us just were so drained from the day we passed out, trying not to think about how the heck we were gonna get back to Jo-burg the next day. Woke up in the morning and went to breakfast to see if the nice lady that owned the place had any ideas for us, and again thank goodness for nice people, she offered to drive us the whole way back which was actually a really interesting car ride because she was telling us how corrupt the government is, they can somehow get away with STEALING money for different projects throughout the country. There are roads that have been torn up and never re-done because the money keeps disappearing and the one that really gets me is they steal from the children’s education system. Last year they stole all the money for textbooks so the kids didn’t get any. BOTHERSOME. We also drove past quite a few shanty towns which just breaks your heart, people literally live in what we would consider a small tool shed in your backyard with tin roofs and dirt floors with no running water, sewage systems or electricity. Basic needs are not met which is not fair. Anyways, we made it back to the train station just to wait around for the ENTIRE day to get on our bus to Mozambique. We tried to go wander around the block just to get a taste of the city and the first street vendor that saw us told us to stop what we were doing and turn around unless we wanted to get mugged. We had literally walked about 5 feet out of the train station. So we talked to him for a minute and he said that because we were young and white we were the prime target. So we turned around and walked around a fenced off parking lot instead which you could at least see part of the city from. FINALLY after the entire day in that stupid train station, we got on our overnight bus to Maputo.