Back to South Africa, Johannesburg

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July 13th

Nicio and I had arranged the day before to get a ride with one of the owners of the Semonkong Lodge to Maseru, where we would get a bus to Johannesburg, South Africa. The lodge does two weekly trips to Maseru to get supplies and even though they were already planning on going they still charged us. Things like this kind of upset me, seeing how he basically was paid to have us give him conversation, I mean it’s not like he was going out of his way to give us a ride, he was heading that way anyways!!

Anyways, the drive was great as you can already imagine from the previous posts and pictures. I was able to get a couple photos on the way to Maseru and the border of Lesotho and South Africa. The one thing that was nice about paying the lodge 200 Lesotho Maloti (same as 200 SA Rand) was that the owner did drop us off at the border crossing.

After crossing into South Africa we inquired how to get to Johannesburg, and were pointed in the right direction. That of the microbuses/minivans, they hold 15 people and cost a few dollars to go somewhere about 4 hours away. The first two hours were miserable because after everyone had been seated in the van AND THEN they put in the luggage. This means everyone had bags on top of themselves, squished in like sardines in a can. At first it was comical and a crazy experience. After fifteen minutes it was horrible, not comfortable in the slightest. I would have hung myself if given a rope and a chair, haha, okay joking aside it was really just….shit. Two hours later we made a bathroom break and were able to arrange the bags more comfortably, this time with me able to setup my laptop and take MacBook photos and watch a movie with Nicio on the way to Jo’Burg.

A few hours later we were in JB and taking a taxi to Brown Sugar Backpackers hostel to get settled in for the night. A got a campsite for about $15 (ridiculously overpriced!) but it had a great view of a portion of Johannesburg so I was happy.

We had dinner shortly after and went through the typical “get settled in” routine, i.e. used the internet, got showered and had a beer. A good night of sleep beckoned me after all the miles we had covered that day so I tucked in early and got some zzz’s.

Hope you like the (lack) of photos…more next time, until then, Pura Vida!!

-Brendan

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