The Republic …

I arrived around about 10:30am in South Africa the idea was that I would be staying at my my mums niece for the night before heading of into the Africa. My mums niece said that no-one would be home till around 4:30pm. I was fine with this as I would pick up my rental car and go for a drive around Jo'burg and Pretoria and do the tourist thing. Before leaving New Zealand I spend hours and hours looking up things that I could do if I choice so. Armed with my suit case and hand luggage and the tree that I killed with printing out all the info I headed of to Hertz office on O.R Tambo International Airport.

The man that couldn't decide if he should speak English or Afrikaans to me spend sometime filling in paper work for me while I spend the time trying to find my bloody wallet. I thought to myself 'great been in the country 5min and my wallet has already been stolen'. I finally located my Wallet inside of Gary and got my license out for Mr Confused. He took the license and and started trying out how the thing worked which was funny in its own right.

He looked at me and said 'Its Expired' my response was umm no its valid for 10 years it can't have expired. So it turns out I have had my license for 10 years now. I arrived in the Republic on the 10 Nov and my license expired on the 6 Nov. A HIMYM line went through my head ..' Yooou son of a bitch'. I asked him what this would mean and he politely said it looks like I'm walking. After swearing at myself for a while I headed over to a Internet shop on the airport and proceed to type the following in good old Google …' New Zealand High Commission in South Africa'. After ringing them and leaving a message with one of the people there I headed over to a Vodacom store to get myself sim carded.

All of this took about an hour once I had my sim card I was like what do I do now I have x amount of hours to kill before 4:30. So what do I do when I have nothing else to do … I eat! I sat at a pizza place for a while eating and switching between reading the newspaper they provided and my book. Sookie Stackhouse in the novel annoys me that much that I can only do a few pages at a time before having to put it down in fear of wanting to hurt anyone blond.

I finally caught a taxi to head to my Aunties, as I was walking towards the taxi stand my heart was pounding with fear of what I would find. The idea of using a taxi in Africa scares me. However I was pleasantly surprised this was a Merc and a nice one at that driven by a man that was that black that he would need to smile at night so that you could see him. I gave him the address and of we went, as we where driving he asked do I know the place I'm going to. My response was well its family but I have never been there. He was um ok can you ring them of his mobile and ask for directions. This is when I spotted the GPS bracket on his dashboard minus the GPS.

I thought better of it and rang my Auntie from my mobile and he spoke to her to get the directions. After 2 phone calls to my Auntie I decided that he should just drop me of at a shopping Centre near my Aunties place and she can come pick me up from there. I gave the man his money and he left me standing outside a supermarket with my big red suitcase waiting on someone that actually knew where I was.

I spent the next few days at my Aunties trying to solve the drama that was my license. I finally got word from the High Commission and they said yes I can get an extension on my license for 12 months but I had to deal with New Zealand directly. It turns out that it would take 3 weeks for me to get the new license by which stage I would pretty much be heading out of South Africa. Also if I wish to extent my license any further I would have to go back to New Zealand proper and do it from there …. yay. So yes here I was with all these plans and it all pretty much just went to hell and the question now was 'What do I do now' I had 4 weeks in the country and so far I have made it only 15min from the airport ...