So this is Africa

Finally back on the road again! The last months had been dominated by my idea to start working as a freelancer which is why I found it quite hard to believe that I was now finally getting back on a plane. In that very same morning, I had had my last call, later in the afternoon I had then collected Max and in the evening, we had taken a car to the Berlin Tegel airport together.

The flight itself was already our first highlight. As usual, the service of Qatar Airlines was great: the Slovakian stewardess liked us and decided to take on the role of a bartender: every question whether we wanted one more drink, was followed by something like “Oh, why am I asking, of course, you do want one more drink, darlings!” … and a drink. An hour, a plane meal, two beers and two whiskeys later, I fell asleep even before they turned off the cabin lights. To my own surprise, I had a good nights sleep and felt even somewhat rested, when I woke up a few hours later.

We were almost there. Max was sleeping next to me with his sleeping mask on. I wasn’t suspecting anything, everything seemed perfectly normal. We land and I wake up Max. He starts laughing and tries to say something, but at the end doesn’t say it. Whatever! Our stopover is only 45 minutes long so we rush out of the airplane. Well, I do. No idea how it happened, but I had lost Max. What the heck, I think to myself, he had just been behind me. I wait outside and keep looking for him. When Max finally arrives a few minutes later, all of the sudden I realise what was going on: apparently I missed out on the greatest party a Qatar Airways Airplane had ever seen. When I fell asleep, a few passengers had been complaining about the loud laughter, so that the Slovak stewardess had decided to take Max and another girl we had chatted up, to the back of the airplane and dedicated herself fully to her hidden passion for bartending. Max was the protagonist of what seemed her masterpiece of cocktail (well actually long drink) mixing and had managed to get at least half of the airplane ticket price back in drinks. Although now, he was paying the consequences in a different currency. I was happy and had already had some great laughs before our trip even started.

A few films and some deep hours of sleep for Max later, we finally arrive. wow, Africa! What a new and unknown world. But also woohoo, Johannesburg. The city doesn’t exactly have the best reputation. In quite a few rankings of the most dangerous cities in the world, Johannesburg is up there, which is what pops into our heads when we arrive. Carjackings, people being robbed and even taken their shoes away and brutal murders, these are all things Johannesburg also stands for. It isn’t always easy to tell the real danger and well, we Europeans, and especially we Germans, tend to be slightly over cautious. Way over cautious, as we would find out later.

But luckily, we Germans do have a plan, a real survival program. The first step of that survival program was to distribute all the money and cards to different parts of our bodies, four to be exact. All of the sudden, it was really uncomfortable to walk now, but hey, safety first. Step two, always stay together, even if someone has to go to the bathroom and step three, mistrust everyone by answering all questions just with a very confident “No!” and of course, avoiding eye contact at all costs which turned out to be a big challenge in an airport in Africa. But we were still convinced, that it was the safest way to avoid potential tricksters and felons. Out of our three safety measures, step two was the one that worked out best. And also the only one that worked out. Our “yes-we-are-in-Africa-but-can-still-control-everything”-approach failed after five minutes, namely when we had to get to our hostel somehow.

I had hoped for an official taxi rank, but of course, there was none or at least, we could not find it. Eye contact or questions would have violated rule number three and the last option, taking a public bus, felt like a suicide. Damn, we were trapped! Already! I stopped for a moment and started looking around. One of the first people I saw, was a soldier that was sitting close to the entrance of the parking garage. I looked at him and thought to myself, if anyone knew where the taxis were, it must have been him. And for sure, he didn’t want to trick us. We bravely walked over to the guy in his green uniform and asked him for the official rank. But he had probably overheard the word “official” and only answered something like “Ah? Taxi?!”. Thereupon he whistled. Less than three seconds later another man came running from behind and shouted “Taxi, Taxi, come!”. And no, he didn’t look like a driver from the official taxi rank. He waved us into the parking garage. We looked at the solider, but he pointed at him and said: “He is Taxi. Go. He is Taxi!”.

We didn’t know what to do and went with the man to the parking garage. He started talking to us right away, asking us the usual questions: where do we come from? Is this the first time we come to South Africa? Are we married? And do we at least have a girlfriend? We answered politely, but our conversation was overshadowed by our constant fear of dying very soon. So and in order to de-escalate, when it was our turn to ask questions, we asked him if he really was an official taxi. And what the name of his company was. He showed us his taxi ID card. We still didn’t believe him. He brought in a colleague to show that he had exactly the same taxi ID. We still didn’t believe him. But we were impressed how well organised the criminals were in South Africa. I mean, they even hired actors and falsified more than one ID. When we finally arrived at the taxi, which of course didn’t have an official taxi sign, we were determined to leave. But for a not really explainable reason, we changed our mind and got into the car. About 15 minutes later we were in our hostel. Safe and sound. The whole story embarrassed me a lot. I apologised to the driver, telling him, we didn’t mean it personally. The driver laughed and wished us a great stay. At least now all our mistrust was gone. I guess that’s one reason you go travelling.

The days in Johannesburg were awesome, right on the first evening we had met a lesbian couple, which had taken us to a club where we were probably the only whites. Max jammed with some local musicians, we found out that it only takes two huge subwoofers to turn a burger fast food place into a club and during the day, we visited the famous Apartheid Museum. The first impression of Africa was wonderful. And this, again thanks to the people with whom we always had a good laugh. And Max and me, we always had a good laugh, especially, when saw some the advertising posters on the streets, before we rented a car the next day to start the second part of the journey.

The trip out of Johannesburg was not really spectacular. The only highlight was the left-hand traffic: our heart started to beat more quickly every time we had to turn right and you have no idea how many times we activated the the windshield wiper when were were supposed to activate the indicator. Also the landscape was not as spectacular as expected, it almost reminded us of central or northern Germany. This opinion of ours changed drastically when we reached the Blyde River Canyon. Originally we didn’t want to go there, but luckily we decided to do so and, it had been damn worth it. The Canyon was a masterpiece of mother nature, a river that runs through an impressive sandstone formation and eventually formed the canyon in the front, and a seemingly eternal flat landscape in the back. The view was so mesmerising that we almost didn’t realise the human-sized monkeys at the parking lot. But here, once again, pictures say more than 1000 words.

Next highlight: the Kruger National Park, one of the largest wildlife parks in the world. The park is that large that it takes you a whole day to drive through it. In Africa everyone wants to see the Big Five – the term refers to the biggest animals on the continent: elephant, rhino, buffalo, leopard and of course the lion – and travellers like to brag about their safari sightings. Actually, a very common first question is: “how many of the Big Five did you see?”. The fact that we had only seen three out of five, and that the lion wasn’t one of them,  in the end, didn’t really bother us , because neither Max nor I could take much pleasure in the guided safaris – somehow it was boring for us to sit in an open jeep for hours hoping that you would see something! So it was all the more exciting for us that you could drive around in Kruger Park on your own: on the first evening and after we had been clocked by a speed trap, searched for poacher weapons and been unlucky phoning several accommodations for availability, I convinced Max to make a tour shortly before sunset, which turned out to be the most beautiful nature experience of the whole trip.

The narrow dirt roads led across the park and we were alone for hours. We drove slowly over the roads and followed the tip to stop the cars engine once in a while. We were rewarded by a natural spectacle beyond all comparison. On the clearings at the water holes antelopes gathered, the view into the valleys was so wide that it was impossible to guess their end and beside the road elephants trotted with their young, with a tranquility, as if they did not know at all that there are also people or let alone cars in this park. When the sun went down to the horizon, everything, but really everything, changed its colour into a very deep orange. We stopped once more and looked at the sun, which by now, had become so big, that it had covered half the sky.The silence of the park was only disturbed by the crickets and the croaking of the frogs, which had started their evening concert. In the Kruger Park, we were immersed into another world, which was just as surreal, as an underwater coral reef. At this point it was absolutely unimaginable that we were only a few hours away from the noise, the dirt and the concrete of the vibrant African cities.

Actually everything seemed perfect, and after a short pause we drove back to the camp, when we were quickly taken out of our state of trance: the gates to the camp were closed. And the whole camp was barricaded and covered with barbed wire. Apparently we hadn’t read the park instructions they way would should have, otherwise we would have known that starting from 6.30 pm, driving around in the park was strictly prohibited.

After some waiting in fron of the camp gate, some flashing, a grumpy guard, armed with a MP, finally opened the gate and waved  us in. The guy was everything but friendly and told us to the stop the car immediately, it was clear that he was enjoying his moment of power. In a dictatorial tone he commanded us to fill in a form and write down exactly why we were too late. Meticulously he checked all our details and eventually released us so that we could go back to our bungalow. Luckily we managed to forget the guy very quickly and enjoyed the rest of the evening before, the next day, we continued our our journey through Africa…