Taxi Capers in South Africa
Because safety is secondary when you're low on Rand
Having spent a highly leisurely week or so partying and wandering in South Africa’s ‘mother city’ it was time to leave. Me and my travel partner were on the final straight of our gap year and had two weeks to amble north to Johannesburg before flying home. We had booked coach tickets for the 6 hour journey from Cape Town to Bloemfontein and had a leisurely two hour wait for the coach to arrive at its stop directly behind our hostel.
Having looked at the tickets and seen 0620 printed on them I opted to stay in the hostel till 6:15 before sauntering over, this casualness being based on how little fun sitting at bus stops is and the proximity of it to our hostel. However when looking at my coach ticket I had failed to see the R (rand) symbol following 0620. This of course denoting how much the journey cost and not what time the coach departed. Dick. The coach had left at six and by the time we had worked out what had happened it was six twenty five. In the grand scheme of things this was a moderate fuck up meaning a whole heap of hassle involving cancelling/rebooking hostels, travel arrangements and our schedule for the final two weeks of our gap year.
The following shit-scary joy ride entailed cruising through three red lights, the wrong way round a roundabout and some overtaking manoeuvres that meat headed chump Vin-Diesel would be proud of.
Based on this I took what was in retrospect a fairly large risk based on our delicately balanced finances and the startling combination of drink driving, lawless roads and cars that would make your average safety conscious Volvo owner vomit, which we had experienced frequently on out travels so far. I quizzed a taxi driver at the bus stop on how far away the bus would be now and where the next stop is. In the twenty five minutes since it had left the driver estimated it would be at the next stop 26km’s away on the other side of Cape Town. He also estimated that for the right price he could get us there before it leaves again.
What then entailed was pure Hollywood. After piling in with all our belongings the taxi had to be push started for around 100m before the engine snarled into life. A beauty our taxi was not. On cue the skies opened and our taxi devoid of front windscreen wipers, seatbelts and properly closing windows began its mad chase across Cape Town. The following frankly shit-scary joy ride entailed cruising through three red lights, the wrong way down a one way street, the wrong way round a roundabout and some overtaking manoeuvres that meat headed chump Vin-Diesel would be proud of. All this in a car that would have failed its MOT in the UK around 73 years ago.
The kilometres flew by and leaving the motorway we rose over a bank to see our bus down the valley sat gloriously stationary at the petrol station. With about with a hundred and fifty yards and a T junction to go we saw the doors of the coach close and the engines fire up. Aghast, our driver gunned the dilapidated engine, screeched through the junction and blocked the coach’s exit with a skid as small crowd of onlookers cheered and whooped (no exaggeration). We flew out, waving our tickets at a slightly bemused coach driver, who grudgingly let us on to the sound of cheers. Inconvenience and death avoided with a few thrills to boot. Sure it sounds like a classic gap year yarn embellished for entertainment, but I can assure you it hasn’t! As the locals would say: ‘That was lekker bru, massive jols or what, eh?’
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