"Johannesburg is a safe city"

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After clearing customs at the airport in Johannesburg I decided to stroll over to the tourist information desk to enquire about buses from Pretoria to Swaziland. The guy at the desk told me that the best way for me to reach Swaziland would be on a minibus taxi from Jo'burg as these leave more regularly. I'd been planning on avoiding Jo'burg at this stage as I was pretty freaked out by all the horror stories and I'd not been planning on using a minibus taxi either. I'd been thinking more along the lines of a Greyhound bus. All the same - I decided to go with the Jo'burg plan as there seemed to be no viable alternative. I took a taxi into Jo'burg. The driver was a friendly guy from Soweto who kept assuring me that all the stuff about crime in Jo'burg wasn't really true, he told me that it was a pretty safe city. As I rightly pointed out later - what kind of a safe city has houses with bars on all the doors and windows and signs announcing, which private security is protecting a particular house? I arrived at the bus terminal and the taxi driver took me to the Swaziland stand. I'm glad the driver was there as it's a pretty scary place. There was a half full minibus taxi at the stand waiting to leave, so I loaded our backpacks into the trailer and paid the taxi driver. As I was about to get into the minibus one of the guys on the bus asked me for my passports - as you can imagine I was not overly keen to just hand them over. The taxi driver told me not to worry and that all passengers on international buses have to hand over their passports for registration before departure. After a moment of deliberation I handed them over - it was clear that I wasn't going anywhere if I didn't so I felt I didn't have much choice. I got on the bus and I found myself squashed on the back seat between two ladies who were rather larger than myself. I could hardly breathe. I spent the next 15 minutes imaging how I would look like a complete muppet having to report my passport stolen having been in the country for about 2 hours. Thankfully, just as I had given up all hope of seeing my passports again the guy came back with a whole pile of them and handed them back to all of passengers. The engine started and I was off to Swaziland. The journey was ok, despite being pretty cramped. I fell asleep for a bit and woke up close to the Swazi border. I got across the border without any problems. As I waited to board the bus again the Swazi lady who'd be sat next me kept asking wheather I am married or not. Somewhat I got confused I answered her reather ingnorant way. She didn't seem convinced, but she ambled off to chat to the other ladies all the same. I made it to Mbabane in pretty good time - the whole journey took just 4 hours.

I know this blog is pretty late - sorry for that and the lack of pictures. I will try and get the Swaziland one sorted as soon as possible.

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