My worst day

Leaving Port Elizabeth, I embarked on what was anticipated to be a long drive to rejoin Cindy and Trevor Francis on the South Coast.  The first thing you should know about the South African highways is they frequently pass through towns forcing your speed to come to a screeching halt.  The second thing that you should know is that sometimes you have to inexplicably take turns to stay on the highway itself.  On my drive from PE, I of course stayed straight on the highway which, of course, means I actually left the highway (because I should have turned off).  After a good while, I realized that I was headed in the wrong direction; but no worries, there was a road that I could cut across to save time! (There are not many roads in South Africa) 

This road, of course, turned out to be a dirt road, at which point I realized I was running dangerously low on gas.  The third thing you should know is that gas stations (full serve and rarely accepting credit cards) are pretty rare on the highways.  But no worries, there was a small town randomly in the middle of this dirt highway.  Rolling into town on fumes, very much relieved, I looked for a gas station that I was not finding.   I finally pulled into a country store where the Domestic informed me that there was no gas station in town!  After a call to the owner in the shop, I ended up hiking a mile or two up the road with the son of the Domestic in search of some gas at an auto shop.  I found out that he had come from Cape Town and was doing odd jobs and some art (that was sold at the shop) to get by on.  I bought the last 4 liters of gas from the auto shop, had some tea with the Domestic, and was able to get to the next city to fill up.

The fourth thing you should know about the highways is that the mountain roads are clogged with very slow semis and are often only two lanes.  SA drivers are very impatient and often attempt suicidal passes.  After leaving the city that I got the gas, a huge caravan of cars ended up getting backed up behind a semi.  They slowly started making suicidal passes to where I ended up behind the truck.  The guy behind me wasn't waiting for me to take my pass so he passed us both.  I went to follow him, but so did the guy behind him.  My side mirror clipped his side and both our cars had some minor damage.  This would lead us to have to file a police report at the police station where he didn't speak English, I didn't speak Zulu, and the police didn't speak very good English.

Moving on from there, I continued on towards the South Coast.  Being without a GPS, I once again failed to turn onto the highway and started going up some mountain highway.  The sixth thing you should know about South African highways is that there is sometimes random speed bumps in the middle of them.  I hit one twice that has to be the biggest speed bump to ever grace asphalt!

After something like 13 - 14 hours of driving, two wrong turns, nearly running out of gas, a traffic accident, and random speed bumps, a very tire heavily caffeinated Irvin rolled into the Francis house around 12:30 am.  Trevor was very gracious to me and even eased my hunger pains with some local fried chicken.  The next morning I was able to recoup and enjoy the wonderful hospitality of Cindy and Trevor before heading out to my final stop in the Drakensberg mountains.