Today after two and a half months I trundled out of hippos pools for the final time. I say trundled but the picture was more like me flooring Ryans Bucky with Hen desperately trying to appear calm during my 110 mph burst to the air port. When I got in the car I had one hour until take off and the airport was 40 minutes away.
I was there in 25. Surprisingly they let me on the plane so I had a final drink with hen and said goodbye, wondering how long it will be till I see Ryan and Hen again, and how our lives may have changed. I waved good bye and then boarded my South Africans Airways Airlink flight – a rickety plane if ever I saw one, it probably seated about 20 people.
As we took of I grinned as I had personally landed on this very runway only 2 days ago on my own.
So next stop Joberg, I had arranged for Tanya Stokes to meet me at the airport, she had very kindly offered to put me up for the night and take me to the CAA to collect my licence, she and Tony her boyfriend had offered if I was ever in town to look them up, but I had not expected such amazing hosting skills and was genuinely grateful. I had visions of having to hire a car at the airport and then getting lost/ Carjacked in Soweto. Shit if it going to happen to some one it would be me.
But now I had a guide/ host for my night stay. Joberg was well pretty nondescript, looked dodgy every where, security guards with Shot guns and machine guns lurking around. My kinda town.
We got to the CAA and with in an hour I was the proud owner of my pilots licence. Bring it on!
That evening I took Tanya out for dinner ( Tony was in the congo – but not drinking Umbongo) so we went to Rand Airport where there is a restaurant on the airfield. Prior to dinner we climbed up in to the control tower where I got chatting to the air traffic controller, a blonde 20 something fit bird. Now that was more like it, I had imagined some wide assed fat bird with a face for radio on the other end of the line… She showed me the traffic control system; the radar consisted of some disinterested African bird playing Solitaire on her computer. No flashy gadgets and machines going “ping!” just ALOT of paper shuffling. Not quite the safety conscious environment I had envisaged but hey: This is Africa.
After dinner, Tanya had to meet one of her drivers to give him some trip funds (her and Tony run a logistics company). So there we were in some shit hole ghetto of Joberg and she whips out an bag of cash about 6000 rand (£400) in 100R bills and hands me over a stash of money to hold. Now this felt unbelievably dodgy. Even more so as there was the dude hanging around with a shotgun. We met up with the driver and I got to check out his Truck, A huge beast – double trailer capable of dragging over 350 tonnes. What surprised me the most was the driver was about 4 ft tall, apparently he was from Zimbabwe where the Tribesmen are all tiny, what was more weird was that the bigger the truck the smaller the driver.
After we watched the driver pull away blasting his fog horn (mounting several curbs in the process) we went back to Tanya’s where her dog attempted to hump my leg (again).
I went to bed satisfied that I had not been shot stabbed or mugged and sucked off at the same time (Or should that be disappointed?).
Next Stop Cape Town….
24 – 25th April
South Africa Gap Year Research Trip
