When we left you, dear reader, we were on a long, slow train journey through the Karoo and on to Johannesburg. We pick up at the end of the journey…..
Arriving at Johannesburg train station we thought “As long as we stay with the crowds we will be fine.’ A tad unfortunately, we had somehow managed to lose our train tickets. When I say lose our train tickets I mean we threw them away. They were not the world’s most interesting looking pieces of paper and we thought that they had served their purpose since the train manager had stamped them 28 hours and 1400 km earlier and now that the train was nearing the station and the chap came round collecting our rubbish we lozzed them in along with banana skins, drinks cans and a couple of pages ripped out in frustration from the Times Cryptic Crossword book my mum gave me as a leaving present thinking it would pass an hour or two. Even working backwards by looking at the answers in the back and then reading the questions brought very little insight.
Also of very little insight was the throwing away of our tickets.
We shuffled along the crowded platform towards the bottleneck at the foot of the single escalator where guards were forcing the flock of hundreds of travellers to become a single line by taking their tickets. Everyone else dutifully handed theirs in and walked off away from the bowels of the station and up the escalator to freedom, looking all sort of happy and smug at having retained their tickets just long enough to give them away to the correct person. Leaving us to discover how rapidly an already unsmiling guard’s face could become an unsavoury mess of gall, bitterness and personal affrontedness. We couldn’t have asked for a more “this is NOT going to end as happily as you naively think it might” look if we had been left to look after his granny and his Porsche for a fortnight while he was on holiday and got the care instructions for the two mixed up.
We were escorted by armed guard to the security section.
On the bright side, we were probably in one of the safest places in Johannesburg at that point so we didn’t have to worry about getting stabbed or mugged (see comment on last blog) – but getting conned looked like it was coming right up. They insisted we buy tickets again even though we could show them our confirming email from their company showing we had paid in Cape Town and the train manager could vouch for us as we’d had several conversations withy them and they had stamped our tickets (albeit 28 hours and 1400 km before). This held as much interest to them as a toothpick to a jellyfish. They wanted more money.
Fortunately, when talk of hand-cuffs was moving from something I had unwisely joked about to becoming a distinct possibility Clive burst through the doors. (I say ‘burst’ purely for dramatic effect as he actually just walked through the solitary door but as he was going to be our saviour he definitely symbolically burst through.
Knight-like.
And unless I’ve mis-remembered there was a fanfare playing.
Clive looks like what he is – a successful businessman, Jo’bg born and bred and I doubt even his mother had ever managed to stand in his way. With an impressive fold of the arms and a stance which suggested he “knew stuff” he whisked us out of there faster than an SAS snatch team. We’d never met him before but, as a friend of a friend of Ella’s sister he had kindly offered to host us for the night when we’d emailed him the week before having decided to stay overnight in Jo’bg and fly up to Harare the next day in case the train was late.
Clive runs lots of businesses and has very cool cars. We told him about what the internet had said about how dangerous Johannesburg was and he said that he has lived there all his life and has only ever been mugged once – and that was in London. Having swam in their pool and giggled about what temperature it might be in England (sorry, England) we were taken out by Clive and Joanna to a meat-eaters’ (which I reckon could correctly have an apostrophe before the s, after the s, or not have one at all and each would be correct) paradise that evening. Not Carnivore, which Zoe suggested on one of the blog comments – but they were fishing in the same pool, or at least hunting in the same reserve. Crocodile tail pie and warthog curry were excellent and very reasonably priced, and Ella had kudu, which I thought was a little dear. (Falls off bed laughing)
Flight from Johannesburg to Harare was uneventful apart from a wonderful moment at the departure gate when we were told the plane was delayed. Someone asked the lady at the desk if she knew for how long and she replied: “I have no idea. Unfortunately we cannot find the plane.”
I hoped we would all be asked to help look for it but that was not to be.
What is it with having to buy a visa in order to be allowed in to a country? You get it at the airport and there may as we’ll be a sign above the booth that says: “licence to print money”. 55 U S dollars each. It’s not as if people coming in are not going to be spending money in the country while they’re here. Oh, and thanks “experiencezimbabwe.com” for stating that Visas cost 50 dollars on your website which you proudly say was updated only last week so there’s me thinking I only needed to withdraw 100 dollars in Jo’bg airport…. Ahh, no – you’ll be needing more than that.
