On the road all day today from East London to Cape Town, a twelve-hour cross-country trek. Pretty scenic drive with lots of great landscapes, canyon crossings, little towns on the water, and such. Unfortunately we’re trying to make time so we don’t have to check in to our place in Cape Town in the middle of the night, so we’re just powering through and not doing much stopping. We did, however, make the executive decision to make it a non-stop drive back to Durban, apposed to breaking it up over two days. We weren’t able to find a place to stay for our trip back to Durban and had contemplated asking the people we stayed with last night if they had an opening on that night, but then we discussed how we’d like to spend a couple hours exploring Port Elizabeth so perhaps we could just do it in one shot and check back in to our Durban place in the late morning. It’s about twenty hours of driving, good thing we’re young. The Ortiz boys just sleep in the car 90+ percent of the time we’re in it, so they didn’t seem to mind, and I never sleep anyway, so we figured we might as well save some money and take advantage of those hours we’d waste sleeping.
Before we left the states I had my biennial half a second of brilliance while packing and put five blank CDs in to the secret CD holder compartment in my backpack. Their stock immediately went up once we got in our war wagon and realized it not only had a cd player, but an MP3 cd player. I’d done a quick run through the 4,500 songs on my laptop and compiled a, what was limited/cut down to, five disc ultimate mix right before we left Jo’Burg for Kruger Park. There have been a handful of surprises that have snuck on (I should have actually looked at what songs were in the one hit wonder folder) and some I swear I’ve never heard before in my life and am curious how they got on my computer. We got about 120-150 songs on each of the five CDs and we ran out of fresh car tunes this evening and had to start back over with CD one. That gives you a good idea of how much time we’re spending in the car. What’s even more impressive is that we listen to the games on the radio, which takes about four to six hours a day out of that time. Another interesting tidbit about the radio here, it appears they have the same stations across the entire country. We’ve been listening to the games on the same sports station since we left Jo’Burg, and we’re now in the opposite corner of the country. Every time we scan the channels we appear to have the exact same options…and none of them are country! Just another reason to add to my list of why I should stay here.
The highlight of the day came when I set a new War Wagon record with a triple car pass. Not to be confused with passing three cars in one swoop, that’s child’s play. There was a string of traffic, six of us or so, who were stuck behind two semi trucks for longer than any of us would have liked to be stuck behind them. Every time we got to a passing area the lead semi would pull on to the shoulder so people behind him would have an easier time passing. The semi behind him would then attempt a pass, he’d get about one third of the way in front of the truck he was trying to pass, run out of horsepower, and eventually fall back in to his second place spot by default. Of course by the time this has happened we’d reached the end of the passing zone. Eventually we hit an extremely long straight, flat, stretch of road and there was no one coming in the on coming lane as far as the eye could see. Lead semi pulled on to the shoulder, semi two attempted a pass, next car back behind semi two just got angry and stayed behind semi one, and the second car back (which was the car in front of me) decided to spread the field and pass both semis while they were passing each other. Being American I’m all about going big or going home and the car in front of me wasn’t going fast enough for me. I one-upped all of them and flew all the way across the road to the opposite side, the on-coming lanes shoulder, and passed all three of them. So, at the apex of the pass we were spread two semi trucks, an SUV and a VW Polo War Wagon mirror to mirror taking up the entire road. I can’t wait to get back home to the U.S. and introduce all these new driving techniques I’m learning to the rest of my fellow countrymen!
The place we’re staying at now is a total party pad and apparently the other group that was staying here canceled at the last minute so we’ve got the entire place to ourselves. Massive rooms, massive bathrooms, closets bigger than my bedroom at home, a bar, swimming pool, and an owner that made us all take a shot of tequila with him as soon as we showed up. It’s going to be a good next four days!
Added a few more pics to the random trip photo album.
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