Bloem and Back

(power outages are happening everyday, internet is totally inconsistent)

Sarah and Josh did make it out of J’burg Sunday, though not in the manner that everyone had hoped they would. It turns out that all the flights to Maseru had been cancelled because of the standing water on the run away. Apparently, if there is more than 22 cm of standing water, the planes won’t land. Oh, and I guess they go out and measure the water pretty frequently, but they don’t actually do anything about it…just measure.

The plan was that Sarah and Josh would fly to Bloemfontein if they could get on the flight as stand-bys. If that didn’t work, then they were going to rent a car and drive to Maseru from Jburg. So, around 3 p.m. I got the call that they had just been cleared to get to Bloem, with all of their luggage finally retrieved and a running trip down the corridors of the airport. It takes about 90 min to get to Bloem, and their flight was supposed to land around 4:30 p.m, so I planned to leave Maseru around the same time that I got their call. Since I was working off about 3 hours of sleep from Saturday night, my neighbor, Connie, graciously agreed to accompany me and keep me awake. All seemed to be working out fine.

It was pouring intermittently, but we figured we left plenty of time for getting gas at the border and getting stuck behind slow drivers in SA. What we hadn’t figured was that we were going to get slammed with traffic at the border to get into South Africa. This past weekend was a major holiday weekend, so all of the Basotho who work in SA were home. Seriously, I think it was really ALL of them. The line to drive in, walk in, get stamped in and even just to turn down the road was stopped dead with cars, people, hawkers, trucks…and rain. With a quarter tank of gas, I pulled into the station (after waiting in the queue for 15 min), assuming I wouldn’t lose too much time by getting gas there, instead of in South Africa. Only, they were out of fuel! So, creeping along for the next one hour (a good testament to my ability to drive stick!), Connie and I hoped that the car wouldn’t run out of fuel and cause even more traffic woes. Yes, it took us one hour just to get into South Africa. It was about 4:15 p.m. and we were supposed to have been at the airport in just 15 min. Not only were we just through the border, but we still has to go to the filling station. In order not to take a chance, we had to go to Ladybrand (the opposite direction from Bloem), because the closest station on the way to Bloem was too far away. So we cruise into LB, hit the first station, and…bam!...they are out of fuel, too. Finally, after driving through town, we find a station with fuel, and have to wait in that queue, too. It was 4:50 p.m. by the time we got back to where we should have turned to go to Bloem.

At this point, I called Sarah to let her know our status and that they should probably just rent a car to get home faster. We kept heading toward Bloem, though, and it was a good thing we did because there were no cars available at the airport. Finally, 3 hours later, we arrived at the airport, in the dark and collected the worn-out, but grateful passengers. The drive back to Maseru was torturously slow since there are not street lights which makes overtaking a car challenging. I was also so tired at that point, that I started to do that thing where I would just stare at the taillights of the car in front of me…dangerous! We passed a really bad accident, too, so that woke me up. 8 p.m. I was back home, starving and ready for bed.