Day 5 - June 28th - Drive to Ingwavuma

From here on out the posts will be slightly behind the actual days they occured on. I'll try to keep up the one post-one day standard, but I'm pretty busy. Hopefully the quality of the blog doesn't suffer for it!

Sunday, June 28^th:

Today was the Drive to Ingwavuma. Yes, that definitely deserves the capital letters.

For those who are not aware, South Africa is quite a large country. I'll look up the exact statistics when I have time, but take my word for this: South Africa is huge. We started out from Johannesburg at 8 in the morning and with only one brief stop barely made it into Ingwavuma by 5. Nine hours is a long drive.

So we got up early and left a little bit later than expected, but it was worth the wait for the breakfast our “host family” packed for us. The couple that owned the guest house we stayed in was probably one of the highlights of this trip. From breakfast to giving us advice to negotiating at the car rental place to providing some much needed Jerepigo after the flat tire, they certainly went above and beyond their call of duty.

So as I mentioned, we started off at 8 and managed to navigate our way out of Johannesburg with no trouble at all, which is not an easy feat between all the robots (stoplights), crazy drivers, and narrow streets. The initial drive was just long stretches of beautiful scenery broken up about once an hour with towns. I jotted down some quick thoughts in my notebook as we passed through them:

Leandra: pretty big shanty town coming in to it, pretty sketchy overall. Confusing turns with little signage. Boo, Leandra.

Secunda: didn't even notice that we'd passed it, which is good because it means N17 (the highway) didn't have to wind through it.

Bethal: Confusing, pretty sketchy, ended up in the hospital parking lot after a wrong turn, but had a pretty nice church. KFC count: 1

Ermelo: pretty nice, good roads, could have used a few less turns to find our new highway (N2). Turning while driving on the left side is extra confusing! KFC count: 2.

Piet Retief: Nice town! Stopped for gas and food, was able to find the tiniest can of Mountain Dew ever, which was glorious. The car parked next to us had a whole bunch of raw meat in the back. Was smiled at a lot as they pumped our gas. If you want a plastic bag for the items you buy in the gas station it was an extra R0.70. KFC count: 2.

Pongola: had a market called the JUNK market, which, as Marilee said, is truth in advertising if we've ever seen it. Roads became FAR better after here.

Jozini: Speed bump! And another speed bump! Garbage in the streets, but KFC count: 1.

You may have noticed the “KFC Counts”? That's because KFC here is like McDonald's or Walgreens back home—they're everywhere! Even in these little towns that barely have anything else, there's a KFC. Insane.

After Jozini was the real tricky part of the drive. We'd had construction and crazy drivers and narrow roads, but past Jozini (and especially past Bhambanana) there were POTHOLES. Yeah, if the Drive to Ingwavuma deserved those capital letters, than POTHOLES certainly deserve the full caps. These things could eat your car, and tried to eat ours a few times I'm pretty sure. There were times when we had to move into the other side of the road, times that we had to slow to a near crawl, and times when I was pretty sure there was no way through. Our contact at Ingwavuma Orphan Care, Nathi (pronounced Nah-tee), asked us before we came up, “You know what potholes are?” And of course we did... except we really didn't until that last 22 kilometers. Now, we definitely know what potholes are.

So now we're settled in our rooms (more on them later) and even though it's only 6:30, I think we're all about ready for bed.