When I returned last week from a business trip, I pulled my bakkie into the driveway with both a little flyfishing and a big sense of relief on my mind.
I don’t fit in big slick cities. I just can’t make them work for me.
I have found myself in dark alleys while the Uber driver waits for me on the other side of the Gautrain station. I was once caught at an outlying restaurant in Jo-burg at closing time with both Bolt and Uber unable to help me, and had to bum a lift on the back of a waiter’s bakkie, and walk the last 2km to my air BnB. My room service arrives without cutlery and I find myself lifting peas to my mouth between a piece of fish and a chip. My hotel booking goes adrift, and I get booked into a room which doesn’t yet have shower cubicle walls. My room has no opening windows and the Aircon is set at a temperature more favourable to hatching crocodile eggs than human habitation. The airport shuttle has a flat tire and I find myself sharing a taxi with another passenger, the only problem being that they (and the taxi) are going the opposite direction to where I need to be.
I was once booked into a place where the shared bathroom had no curtains in front of a plate glass window and was 2 floors below my room. Another spot had seriously dodgy graffiti on the walls in the showers, and at one spot the bathroom door handle broke off with me inside and no cellphone reception. Back in the day of printed air tickets I found myself at the airport on the far side of town from the bloke who had my ticket, while I had his, and 30 minutes left to the boarding gate closing. It didn’t help that no one spoke English.
So while travelling to “the big smoke” has its own excitement, adventure and possibilities for new ventures, I have to say I feel a lot more comfortable facing a bad road in a storm on the way out of a river valley, than I do under neon lights.
Damn its good to be home, with a fire in the hearth and waterside ventures in mind!
