We stayed in the suburbs of Johannesburg, mainly called Jo’burg, for three days at a little farm guesthouse just 15 minutes from the airport.  The guesthouse was called ‘Airport En Route’ and is run by a couple named David and Marion, who were just a wealth of information an kindness.  For the first day, we thought we were in a town called Baloney, when in fact it is Benoni. 

While we generally speak the same language, there are a ton of words that are different, and the accent can make things more difficult to understand.  We picked up some cheap prepaid cell phones so that we could make arrangements and call each other if we got separated.  Plus, with all the packing, somehow we forgot to bring something that we could tell the time with.

During our stay at the guesthouse we worked on figuring out what our plan would be for the South Africa part of our trip.  We decided on flying to Cape Town to save some time, and then we could drive along the ‘Garden Route’ back to Durban and Richards Bay, where our Safari is.  The Garden Route seemed to be a lot like one of the costal highways in Oregon or perhaps more like the one in California, except with the possibility of Spider Monkeys! 

Jane busted her butt calling  all the different hostels trying to find a room for us, but no one seemed to have room, finally we were told to call a place called Big Blue Backpackers.  Jane called them, and found us a room, and told them we would call back in 10 minutes with our reservations.  During that 10 minutes we got the plane tickets down to Cape Town (on an airline named Kulula, which is known for cheap flights) and quickly called the hostel back to book the room.  The guy said he just sold the last room 3 minutes before we called!  Laughing at our dumb luck, Jane was able to convince him to move some people around to fit us in at their hostel.  On the plane to Cape Town the next day, I sat next to a friendly guy name Colin who was born and raised in Cape Town.  We struck up conversation, and he kindly provided a list of must do’s in Cape Town for us.