The Journey Home Pt 1

We were up at 6am. It was raining heavily outside but we still had the 3 warthogs waiting for us. I made coffees and then went outside with the last of the game pellets and fed the warthog. They wagged their tails with excitement and I felt bad I didn’t have more.
Once the pellets were gone 7 zebra moved in and the Warthogs left, now I felt really guilty as they all stood there in the rain staring at us.
Most of our stuff was packed so after our coffees all we had showers and then packed the bedroom up. Then we emptied the fridge of the last of our food and we were pretty much ready.
At 7:30am we headed to the tip to get rid of our 2 bin bags of rubbish. Then it was back to the house to load our bags into “little simba” and we were ready.
At 8:30am we locked the house up for the last time and headed back to the field security office and dropped the keys off, then I set the sat nav for our 65 mile journey back to Kruger International airport and we set off.
Our journey was pretty good considering the weather. We encountered the odd Moron that wanted to overtake but each time they overtook I just dropped back. The spray on the road was unreal and it was shocking to see how many cars didn’t have lights on. If there was a lorry in front and there are a lot of Lorries the cars with no lights were completely invisible until they were 20 meters away. Add to that some of the traffic lights or robots as the South Africans call them, being out because of load shedding it was a fun journey. Nobody knows whose turn it is when the robots aren’t working. I would have thought it was give way to the right the same as in England but it turns into abit of a free for all, the driving style in South Africa is something of an eye opener.
We reached Kruger International Airport at 10:15am but we had a message from kitted campers who rented us “ little simba” to say we could leave the keys with the concierge so we had toasties from the coffee shop, unloaded our bags and then dropped the keys off. Now we had to wait for Larrissa our taxi driver to turn up at 11am.
At 11:15am Larrissa hadn’t arrived so Ellie ran back inside to use the internet and she had a message to say she was nearly here but the rain was terrible and there had been an accident. We knew that was rubbish because we had just driven that same road but we figured she was going to be late because she was an hour late collecting us on the journey in. If we hadn’t already paid we’d have used someonelse. Larrissa is the size of a house but told us she has property’s to rent, lots of taxi’s and she never seemed to stop. We knew that was rubbish because you don’t get that size by running around all the time.
Finally at 11:45am she arrived telling us about the accident and the rain and water on the road and Ellie made a few sarcastic comments that she didn’t pick up on.
This journey should take 4.5 hours in total. I had just driven the first 90 minutes so we should have 3 hours in this taxi until we got to our hotel.
As soon as we pulled out of the airport and back onto the main road we hit a hill and it sounded like the bus was struggling. I mentioned it and Larrissa said the battery terminal was loose and we’d stop at a garage to get it tightened. 10 minutes later we pulled into the services and a little man tightened the positive battery terminal.
We set off again and now the bus seemed to be struggling all the time. Larrissa said it was fine and we were doing a steady 60-70kph in the flat and 80 downhill. Then it gradually got a little slower.
We stopped at the halfway point, the same place as on the journey in where they had the rhinos and we got a snack. Larrissa once again went to find a man with a spanner and he did something under the engine and when we got back in she said it’s all fine now it was the battery.
It wasn’t the battery and it wasn’t fine.
As soon as we got back on the motorway our top speed was 60kph. That’s just 35 miles an hour. The Lorries are doing 80kph minimum and the speed limit is 120 kph.
Larrissa put the hazard lights on and we gradually got slower and slower. Cars were beeping at us, Lorries were overtaking us uphill using there air horns and Larrissa decided to drive on the hard shoulder.
That’s great but there isn’t a constant hard shoulder and when we got to some roadworks it just disappeared, so Larrissa decided to go through the cones and drive in the section of road that was closed. As we continued we could see roadworkers up ahead getting nearer. Larrissa stayed in the coned off area and every lorry that passed honked there air horns at us. Then we got to the roadworkers and they just gasped at us as we sailed smoothly by at 45kph on a closed section of road.
Up ahead there was a dump truck in the way and Larrissa indicated to move back out but nobody was going to let us out at this speed. She edged closer and closer to joining the main traffic and cars were honking and the stationary dump truck was gradually nearing and at the last minute I thought we were going to hit it. She swerved out, and went straight through the makeshift barriers, bang, bang, bang and the bus flattened some and tossed others over the bonnet. Then she moved back into the closed section of road.
This was a nightmare journey and we still had 80 kilometres to go.
At every adjoining slip road she just sailed across it at 45kph and cars and Lorry’s were
Honking and I was looking all around us because we could have been hit from any angle. To make things worse most of the time she was on 1 of her 2 phones and sometimes both.
We finally reached our hotel at 6pm. It had been a 7 hour journey from hell and we laughed in terror when we got into our hotel room. We really couldn’t believe we had made it. We won’t be using Larrissa Again.
We thought we were going to be here in the hotel for 6 hours and the plan was to have a nap and then dinner and get dropped back to Johannesburg airport at 9pm. We decided to skip dinner and just grab a 20 minute Power Nap and then watch TV until our driver collected us from the room and dropped us at Terminal B for international departures.
It was now 9:30pm and we dropped our bags off, headed through what classes as security in a South African airport and then passport control and we were in the departure lounge at 11pm. We decided to grab a baguette each at a coffee shop so we could skip the plane food and at 11:45pm we headed to our gate.
We boarded at midnight and unfortunately for us the flight was completely full and once we were on the plane and up in the air we waited for water to be handed out and the food to go around and then we both took our magic American sleeping pills. Then the lights went out and so did we. It had been a very long day and we hoped to sleep for most of this 10.5 hour flight.Read more