PanicVantura to Hot-lanta to Jo'BurgWelcome to South AfricaVictoria FallsFirst SafariMicrolightsChobe Safari LodgeChobe Game DrivesMoremi Game ReserveCape Town, South Africa
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Johannesburg, South Africa
We arrived in Johannesburg, and passed through customs with no problems. Once through customs, I bought a local cell phone. Oddly enough, this required a trip to 2 different stores because the cell shop was out of handsets. I ended up getting a handset at the upscale clothing shop next door…weird. I got a cheap black Nokia which I think I am going to name Dimplestrabe. The number is 0787210876, but I don't know how you would dial that from the us. It might be +27 011 078 721 0876 but I am not sure. The guy at the clothing store was very nice and explained some local slang words to me after I heard a customer use them. Ayoba means “very good”. Oddly enough, the slang antonym for Ayoba is “Not Ayoba”.
Nicci and I used the phone to make contact with our evening accommodations at Shoestrings Backpackers Hostel. We proceeded to the Shuttle Bus Pickup Area right outside the airport where the shuttle would be picking us up “in a few minutes”. After about an hour and a half and 4 phone calls, they informed us “OH…we thought you were at the OTHER bus stop.” We made it to the “other bus stop” on the far side of the hotel right outside the airport, which was in fairness also a marked airport shuttle pickup area, and caught our ride to Shoestrings.
At Shoestrings, we received pretty sweet room, complete with Hannah Montana Pillowcases! Once we cleaned up a bit, we logged onto the haggard pc in the common area to access the internet and try and straighten out a flight FUBAR which we discovered shortly before leaving the US. Apparently, Air Botswana decided to cancel one of our flights later in the trip and move us to a different one without telling us. After about an hour of infuriating internet fail (at 10pm on a Friday night), we didn’t quite get everything straightened out.
Nic proceeded to hang out by the camp fire with some international hooligans (a Brazilian, a Spaniard, a South African, and a Minnesotan named Travis but called “The Kurgan”) while I took a shower and wrote this up. I went back out to the fire to hang, and apparently what I had missed was that the foreign national contingent (through some crazy I’ll out-man you kind of contest) had convinced each other to go skinny dipping in the unheated pool (it is freezing ass cold…in the low 40’s F). When I arrived back on the scene, the Spaniard was drying out his money belt jock strap on the barbecue over the fire…….welcome to South Africa.
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