Travel days….oh travel days.
They seemed to have gotten easier. Patience is a virtue I’ve acquired thanks to travel days.
This last travel day from South Africa to Mozambique was a little different than what we’ve experienced so far. It truly was one of those “only on the World Race” moments.
We left Coffee Bay a little after 9 AM on July 27th to make our hour and a half drive to Umtata where we were hoping to catch our noon bus to Johanesburg. After our hour and a half drive ended up being more like 2 and a half hours, we pull into a gas station in Umtata. At this point it’s almost noon so the logistic guys are freaking out trying to figure out why we’re pulling into a gas station when our bus is supposed to be leaving right then. After frantically running around and asking a bunch of people we find out that the bus is supposedly going to pick us up at this gas station and it hasn’t been through yet. So we all relax knowing we hadn’t missed our bus and go inside to get some snacks and stuff for our 15 hour bus ride that was about to be upon us.
So we all unload our stuff from the minibuses, get some food, go to bathroom, and wait for our bus. We wait….and we wait….and we wait. Buses come through, but none of them are our bus. Finally the men in charge start getting on the phone, trying to find out some kind of information about where our bus is. After some help from a bus driver who was going to Capetown and many hours we discover that all buses to Johanesburg are not running due to SNOW. Yep that’s right…SNOW in Africa. All we can do at this point is laugh…only on the World Race will your travel get delayed due to snow in Africa.
The boys go on a hunt to find us a place to stay while we guard all the stuff at the gas station. After an hour or so we get the news that taxis are coming to take us to where we’re staying. We drive up to this adorable Bed and Breakfast about 10 minutes from the gas station. We unload and discover that we will not be staying inside with the other guests but will instead be tenting in the yard. None of us seemed to care about camping we were just excited to have a place to stay! The owner, Lulu, let us come and hang out inside so we wouldn’t be too cold until we went to sleep. We got to watch TV and sit on for real legit couches. It was above and beyond what we could have asked for. We had a great night’s sleep then found out the next morning that the buses were running again. We had 15 minutes to pack up our tents and everything to go get in taxis to drive to the bus station. We made it no problem to the bus station on time and left for Jo-burg on the noon bus just like we were supposed to the day before.
We made it to Jo-burg in 15 hours, had a few hours of a layover, then got on another bus to Mozambique, and rode for another 6 hours or so when we got to the border. The border took A LOT longer than expected because there were so many of us. But we made it through and made it to our contact only about 4 hours later than we expected to arrive. Well one day and four hours later. The funniest thing is I had said that I really wanted to see snow on the Race, thinking it would be in Europe right before we came home. I had no idea I’d get to see snow in Africa!
