Around 1 PM Danny calls to tell there’s no power in Dordrecht and no trains are leaving the city. Danny is our sound engineer on this tour and he and Geert (drums and vocals) live in Dordrecht and they have to get a train to The Hague (where I live), because our plane leaves at 7.25 tonight to Madrid. Well, ‘our plane’, it’s Iberia’s, actually, but we may come along. Right now Danny and Geert are not going anywhere. An hour later I get another phone call. They’re in a train to The Hague and they’ll be there in half an hour. Good. We get to the airport early, beacause we have quite a lot of stuff to check in. Well, you can say that again. We’re 30 kilo’s too heavy. The lady at the counter tells me it’s 49,25 Euros per K. Hang on, that’s 1477,50! But she lets us through, she’s a doll. When we get at the gate it takes us a while before we realise they shut down the airport because of the bad weather. There is no flight, our plane is in Brussels. Eventually we leave at 11. Our flight from Madrid to Johannesburg leaves at 12:25 and the flight from Schiphol to Madrid takes two and a half hours. We are not going to make that flight, that’s for sure. When we arrive in Madrid it’s 1:30 and the airport is deserted. We walk to the info monitors to find out that the flight to Johannesburg is delayed as well and only leaves at 02.25. We are very lucky. But then the quest for the right gate begins. We have to get to gate U74. According to the signs that takes 24 minutes. However, the trains to that gate don’t go from our side and we can’t get to the other side and the few people we see working at the airport ‘no notienke’. Finally we find a women at an info counter and she will take us to the other side. This takes us through corridors and halls ‘normal people’ are never allowed to come. I wonder how they do that during the day with thousands of people running around instead of ten. After some trouble finding out where to get off the train and some last minute jogging, we’re in the plane. The flight is alright. I don’t like flying anyway.
And then we land at Johannesburg where we are picked up by Bill, a huge punkrocker who takes us to his house in Johannesburg. It’s 24 degrees and the sun is shining. During the drive Bill tells us nice statistics and anecdotes. Like the fact that fifty percent of the drivers don’t actually have a drivers license, but bought a fake one. Or the story about the construction workers who did half Bills house and then robbed him. Hmm, nice little facts. At Bills place we meet Leon, the guy who set this whole tour up. We met him last September in Switzerland where he was tourmanaging Hog Hoggidy Hog on their European tour. He will now tourmanage us on our first South African trip. Initially the idea was to follow Leon with the van to his place in Pretoria with one of us driving the van. But they drive left here, it’s getting quite dark and we’ve all had our fair share of alcohol already. Ergo, we stay at Bill’s place.
I wake up early, but I slept well. We have our first show tonight at the Horror Cafe in Johannesburg with the Hogs and Misled. But first I have to find out how I can send the first day of the Dutch version of this diary through to the website I write it for. We do it at Bill’s office, but internet connections here are slightly less developed than in Europe. For some strange reason we can make connection within South Africa, but not outside. This means I can’t get to my Hotmail account. Weird. It gets me a little worried as well, because I have to send a caption every day. Well, we’ll see what happens. Because I have to drive on this tour too and because of the fact that they drive on the left side of the road, it seems wise to me toe get a little practice. So I drive back to Bill’s place. When we get there the Hogs have arrived. It’s really good to see them again after six months. By the way; in Bill’s house there’s this nude magazine lying around called ‘Loslyf’. It’s kind of a South African Penthouse and it’s in Afrikaans, which is a language we can understand because it’s a very old version of Dutch.So, you imagine an assay on anal sex in Shakespear’s language. That’s Loslyf. Well, to us it’s hilarious, anyway.
We have to be at the venue at 5, so around 5:30 we getting ready to leave. The closer we get to the venue, the worse the neighbourhood gets although, according to the Hogs, these aren’t the reall dodgy areas. The Horror Cafe is a bit of and oversized bar with a stage. It’s the kind of place you see a lot in the US. It’s surrounded by empty buildings which are stripped down totally by thieves. But the Horror Cafe looks nice. We do a little soundceck and Leon arranges a buffet of all kinds of meat as supper, which is pretty good. I’m slightly tense before the show because it’s always very important that the first show of the tour goes well. The fact that we have Geert on drums instead of our original drummer Bertus also adds to the excitement. There are about two hundred people, which is really good. Before us it’s Humphrey The Teacup and Misled. Who do a good punk rock set and a pretty impressive hardcore show respectively. Around eleven it’s our turn and by the time we’re halfway our second song there’s already a circle pit. It looks like we convinced our first South African audience. Thank God. The grin on our faces when we leave the stage is there to stay for the rest of the night. And with the aid of a really nice South African red wine that night is highly enjoyed by yours truly. The Hogs nailed down the evening with a solid set. Perfect. As a change of plans it’s decided to go to Pretoria tonight after all. Hogs drummer Mike will drive our van and will follow Leon. During the drive we ding along to the new Darkness album and after about half an hour the gas light starts to flicker. Fuck! For some reason scenes of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre run through my head, but by the time I’m finished with that we’re at a gas station already. I don’t know, but every time we go to a Shell Station in South Africa I have to smile a little. Must be the irony. By the time we get to Leon’s house it’s five in the morning and I go to sleep quickly. It’s been a beautiful day.
Woke up early again, so I on the MSN with home. It’s cold and rainy over there, it’s sunny and warm over here. Live is unfair. When the rest wakes, we’re off for some breakfast. And then South Africa tuns out to be America, ‘cause all we can find in the neighbourhood are fastfood restaurants, oh well. Leon said hewould pick us up at four, so around five we’re getting ready. And then we wait for another half hour for Leon to turn up. Arican Time, I’m afraid we have to get used to it. Today we play in what seems to be a nice and quiet family restaurant. It’s called the Foundry Fly Lounge and has an improvised stage at the back of the room. I walk around while the Hogs set up their gear when a father at a table asks me what kind of music we play. When I answer with ‘Punk rock’ I see mommy turning pale and her lovely kids look at me with fear in their eyes. ‘No blues?’ asks dad. Nope, no blues. I’m starting to get a little worried about tonight, but Leon assures me it’ll be fine. And he’s right, by the time we’ve finished supper the restaurant has turned into a punkrock club. Tonight it’s just HHH and us and we open the night. The vibe is right from note one. Even the waitresses behind the bar do a little dance. Before the show George, (Hogs singer) and I get a weird request from the girls from Olmeca. Olmeca is the tequilla brand that co-sponsored this tour. They want us to say, twice during the who that if you buy five tequilla shots at once you might win a price. ‘Sure’, we both nod. But when I say my line I’m looking right in the face of a fifteen year old girl to whom I reallt want to say: ‘If I see you walking around with tequilla, young lady, I will call your mom!’. But I don’t see anyone walking to the bar anyway. The Hos continue the party after us and finish it gracefully.
The ‘afterparty’ is really cool, but Danny finds out the hard way that smoking weed in this country is a little different from what we’re used to in The Netherlands. Danny and Geert wanted to smoke some weed and, very cleverly, asked a girl with ‘Stoned’ written on her t-shirt if she could get them some dope. ‘Sure’, she said and gives Danny a handfull straight away. And if he wanted more he just had to follow her. Which Danny did, with the weed in his hand for everyone to see. One of the bouncers totally disagrees and grabs Danny, slaps him in the face and throws him out. When Geert goes outside to find out what the hell happened to our sound engineer. The bouncer snaps:’That shit can get yout friend killed in this country!’. Right. Eventually, Leon gets Danny back inside and Danny even gets his picture taken with the bouncer. Alls well, ends well, you should say if it wasn’t for the fact that this happened only halfway the night, ‘cause the party went on till four or so. It’s saturday night and we better believe it. Subsequently it’s five in the morning again when my head hits the pillow.
Up early again, but this I don’t like it, ‘cause I feel like shit. Today we have to play at 5 PM. But I forgot to tell the others. Especially Geert looks shocked. I really thought I told them, honestly. We’re only on tour for three days and we can’t open side door of the van anymore, so the people in the back have to go through the windows ‘Dukes Of Hazard style’ or go crawl over the passengers seat. On our way to Randburg, where we play today, we pass what Leon calls ‘low cost houses’. To us that are sheds. It’s a bit of the South Africa where people sell ‘black bags’ at ‘robots’.
The places we play are getting weirder by the day. Today we play at a place called Tempo’s. To us it looks like the place you can eat the sandwiches you brought with you to Disneyland to eat. A couple of benches, a bar and two stages, all open air. Plus a bar, not open air. On one stage there’s a cover band doing a set when the other stage changes over. We set up our gear during Europe’s Final Countdown. Geert is happy again when he discovers the great sounds from the drumkit on stage. I still feel very, very bad. While yesterday there was a complete make over of audience, today we’re fucked. We do our show in front of a handful of punks and a couple of crying kids. To make it all worse we didn’t make a setlist and halfway through the set we’re all totally blank about what song to play next. ‘Grab’, yells Eddy in total panic. A song we haven’t played at all on this tour. White as a ghost Geert counts in and off we go. It’s not too bad, but my voice clearly has trouble singing and during the gig I decide to take good nights rest. Thank God Bill is there and he likes it. Later on it turns out our slot was way too early, cause only right before HHH’s gig the place fills up a bit. I go lie down in the van to get some rest and have to laugh about the song the cover band is playing. It’s Radar Love by the Golden Earring. They’re from The Hague as well.
Around half past eight we leave the premises to get the German representative of Roadshock to the airport. During the drive I do an interview on the phone with Lenneke of Dutch radio station Kink FM about the tour. After that it’s still an hour and a half to Pretoria. Tomorrow we have to do two acoustic sessions of which one on national television. So I get to bed straight away and hope my voice is better when I wake up.
Everyone has to get up early today, because Leon is picking us up at 11 AM. And that’s no African Time this time, because we’re live on national television today. But first we have to do a pre-recorded session for Tuks FM, so we start off easy. Until we find out the TV show is up first. My nerves are taking me hostage straight away. In the television studio we’re introduced to two 17 year old kids. They appear to be the hosts of the show. Whoa, that’s young. I take a look around the studio and I see a table with boxes of Lego and I ask Leon what’s it for. ‘For the kids to win’, he says. Hang on, how old are these ‘kids’ exactly, Leon? ‘Between seven and eighteen, I told you it’s kids TV.’ Haha, my daughter is ten and I can’t wait to tell her that her dad will be live on the South African Nickelodeon. We go through the schedule. We will be interviewed first by Sky, the girl host and then we will do one song acoustic. Leon tells me to read the questions. I don’t see a reason. ‘Just do it’, he insists. The reason comes clear immediately. Question number one: ‘According to your website you’ve been around for less then a year, how did it all start?’ In reality we’ve been around for almost fifteen years, so I wonder what website they’ve been visiting. Question number two:’Are you guys all originally from New York?’ Actually, we’re Dutch. Leon takes care of it and the interview is kept really simple. That interview goes really well and we’re all pleased and ready for the song. However we suddenly have a twenty minute break, cause there’s a cartoon coming up first. And then finally we can do what we do best; play a song. The set up we use is brilliant in simplicity. I have an acoustic guitar, Geert grabbed an old bongo from Leons place and Eddy uses a mini Marshall amp I bought at the airport in The Netherlands for his bass. Danny took one condensator mike on a stand to record it and the engineers are gobsmacked, cause it sounds so good. We play the song flawless. Only one thing went not so smooth on our television debut. No one told us that we were supposed to wave and say hi to the kiddies at the end of the show. So when the camera turns to us at the end you see three guys all looking at something else, picking their nose or scratching their balls, while they were supposed to look into the camera and wave. Oh well. After us the Hogs do a pre-recorded interview on the same incredibly red couch. Our ‘media day’ is taking form rapidly. ‘How many people watched this show, you gather?’ I ask Leon casualy. ‘One or two million’, he replies as casual. I beg your pardon??!?
Euforic we arrive at the Tuks FM studio in Pretoria to do the pre-recorded acoustic session. But the session is not there, it’s at a recording studio somewhere else. It turns out to be in a beautiful house on a hill in a neighbourhood surrounded by a wall. Something we’re not used to. The studio is run by two brothers called Matthijs and Bernhard and a friend of theirs called Pieter. All very Dutch names, more Duch than ours, in fact. When we enter the recording room we see a complete backline and decide on the spot to do live, full on ‘garage set’. Screw the acoustic crap! The girl from Tuks FM gets a little pale around the nose and softly asks for maybe three acoustic songs, please? Sure, three is fine. So we do three songs the same way we did the one on TV and then we do a complete set on the studio’s backline with three mic’s. Leon and the Tuks FM girl almost fall asleep while there’s seven guys running around the studio on an adrenaline rush. We do all songs in one take, leave all the mistakes and flat notes in and then leave very happy. This was a really, really cool day!
There’s no power this morning which sucks, because we have to do some laundry before we go to the Tings And Times, the place we play tonight. After that we’ll leave for East London straight away. There’s obviously no internet connection so I grab my book and read a bit until the rest wakes up, which is usually a few hours ater me. We decide to walk to the mall at the highway. A ten minute walk at most, but I now understand why everyone in South Africa takes his car for everything. First: it’s really hot, second: You get stared at by everyone as if you’re some kind of freak, third: The pedestrian traffic lights (or robots as the South Africans call them) gives you about a second and a half to cross a four lane highway. But we get there in one piece and we get some breakfast at Steers, a South African McDonalds. When we get back to Leon’s place the powers back on and Julia, the housekeeper has already put our laundry in the washing machine. Fantastic. Then Leon fetches us to go to Tings and Times. This is the only show without the Hogs on this tour. We play with Cassette and Scicoustic. The Tings And Times is yet another restaurant with a stage. The main theme is reggea and dope and consequently everyones very relaxed, eventhough everything takes a little longer. The food is the best we’ve had till now. The people from Cassette are really nice and the band is really good, an emo version of the British band Pulp. Good songs. Everyone stays at their table , but we play really well and the response is really good. Nice one. After us it’s Scicoustic. Where The Levellers meet Ozric Tentacles. Nice lights. After the show we’re off right away for a long drive from Pretoria to East London. The drivers (Leon, Eddy and I) will take turns and Geert and Danny will keep the driver company. I start with sleeping, so I miss the sunrise on the karoo. Luckily Geert took pictures.
When I wake up it’s around seven in the morning, but the sun is shining in my face already. I look outside and I see karoo as far as I can see. It’s beautiful. It’s a long, long drive, but driving in South Africa is great. One of the best things of a band to me is the driving anyway. Everyone asleep and me behind the wheel with my thoughts and the South African landscape. But I let myself go, sorry. East London is at the coast and the first thing we see when we arrive is the sea. There’s nothing better after a twelve hour drive than a dip in the ocean. So, we don’t. But, man, are we tired and do we smell! The venue we play is called Buccaneers and it’s at the beach. As is the backpackers place we sleep. Eddy, Geert and I sleep in a nice wooden shed. HHH arrived much earlier then us, because they didn’t have a show last night. They left Jo-Burg at 17:00 and now they’re all sleeping. We all take it easy. Relax, write, shower a bit or sleep. It’s really hot, by the way. We left all our gear at the venue when we arived, but when we walk up there we find out there is no P.A. yet. More accurately; this hasn’t been arranged at all! Leon and Tim (Hogs manager) take care of it, good tourmanagers as they are. So, I take another walk on the beach. I come back right in time to hear Lee Lips say the legendary words: ‘There is a show.’ Good. Ours’ at ten and we decided to shufle the setlist around a bit. While that turns out not such a bright idea we still grab the audience at the balls. Next up is, surprise surprise, Hog Hoggidy Hog, with what turns out to be their best set of the tour up till now. During their show a black guy is trying his very best to become my new best friend. I have fun with him until he says:’My girlfriend is waiting outside for you.’ Huh? I don’t think that is such a great idea, sir. He immediately turns to Hogs trombonist Ross, probably to ask him the same question. Around two I walk to our shed fall into bed and by the sound of the sea I fall in a deep, deep sleep.
Leon wakes me up and asks for the car keys. Someone broke into the van. Fuck. There was a crate with t-shirts and cd’s on the passengers seat. That’s gone, of course. Tim and Lee take me to the police station to report the theft. This only takes half an hour! If you have to do the same in The Hague it will take you hours and hours. I get a copy of the report and a case number for the insurance. On our way back we go by some pawn shops to see if someone offered a crate with t-shirts and cd’s of one band. Nope. One shop owner does congratulate me with the fact that I just experienced the ‘real South Africa’. Thanks a lot, my friend. Leon looks at the bright side of things: ‘Next time you play East London you will be huge and everyone will be wearing your shirt and sing along with the songs. Ok, let’s get out of here. The drive from East London to Port Elizabeth is long, but beautiful again. And we see monkees in the wild for the first time of our lives. Eddy missed the first bunch, so the first monkey Eddy saw in real live almost ended up on our window, because it crossed the highway without noticing the van with five smelly punks approaching at full speed. We play in a place called Jack Hammers in Port Elizabeth, P.E. and after we unloaded the vans we go to the place we sleep tonight to have diner. It turns out we all sleep in the same room, so I decide on the spot to sleep in the van. I’ve never been a big fan of sleeping at peoples places on tour. You see, there’s a conlict of interest between the band and the host. The band wants to sleep because they’ve been on the road for a while and they have a show tomorrow again, not to mention the long drive to get there. The host or hostess, on the other hand, has nothing to do the next day and wants to get the most out of the fact that they have people over, so they want to party the whole night. We eat spaghetti and have to leave straight away, because it’s almost showtime already again. We set up as soon as we get to Jack Hammers. This only takes us about twenty minutes, so within half an hour Geert counts us into another set on this great trip. The set is fast and the sweat is wet. The crowd loves it and there’s the first stagedive of the night. The lights are fantastic: one red spot pointed on the left side of the stage. It’s so dark that I sometimes have to walk to the oter side of the stage to check the position of my fingers on the neck. But we’ve played so much lately that I almost can play the whole set blind. This is a great show! Sweaty but happy we leave the stage to hand over the stick to HHH for them to finish it off. They do. It’s total chaos. The P.A. is falling apart. Adrian breaks a string and someone steps on his effect processor. I see one of the speakers of the P.A. fall on a girls shoulder, Ouch! She will feel that tomorrow morning. And then it’s all over again. After the show I have a half hour conversation in Afrikaans/Dutch with some people. The nearer we get to Capetown, the better they can understand us. Hogs drummer Mike grew up here and he takes us to huge pier at the beach. After that we need to snack, of course. I have a pepper stake pie and some biltong. That’s about all the ‘real South African food’ we’ve had. I have never had so many burgers in my live and to be honest, I’m sick of it. But we’re almost in Capetown and the Hogs promised us we will get good food there. Now it’s off to bed. Besides me no one sees any conflict of interest anywhere, so they all dive into another party and I make up a nice little bed in the van. I sleep within a minute.
Mike wakes me up at around eight to tell that if I wanted a shower I’d better go now. Which I do. When I enter the room I can’t help but smile. There’s people lying everywhere and by the looks of it the party just ended. Danny even slept in a chair . After the shower we leave for Capetown which is about 800 kilometers. Leon’s driving, I’m in the passengers seat and the rest has a bench each to sleep on. I might have slept well, but I feel like I’ve been partying till eight. Headache, nauseous. So, I fall asleep as well. Poor Leon. We stop at some sort truckstop farm to get some food. There’s a sign that says it’s an internet cafe as well. I have to admit, there’s a computer with a connection. I have to send through my Dutch diary, but the connection is so slow that I leave the pictures out. After that off we go again. I still feel like shit and I try to figure out what might have happened last night. There two possibilities. I don’t drink beer and they didn’t have any wine yesterday, so I had to drink tap water. The second possibility is the pepper steak pie I picked up at the gas station. Anyway it sucks, because I can’t drive now. Instead I sleep most of the trip, which is about twelve hours. On three quarters of the drive we get gas. When we want to drive futher the van has lost all it’s power and it’s leaking diesel. Now what. The gas station calls a fitter and within 45 minutes we’re on our way again. It’s really funny to hear everybody talk about African Time, but when push comes to shove things are taken care off ten times as fast as in The Netherlands. Eddy took over the wheel and drives the last 400 k’s. And then there’s Capetown. The bay, Table Mountain. It’s beautiful. Around eight PM we arrive at the Mercury Live. Twelve hours indeed. We unload the van and go to Lee’s place to get rid of our bags. Lee took over the tourmanagement so Leon can go to his sister and visit his parents who live here as well. We have to go to the venue straight away, cause we have to start in time. That’s what you get with distances like this. You can’t keep a schedule with a 4 o’ clock get in and a soundcheck of an hour and then have diner and then play at ten. You get to the venue, load out and if you’re lucky there’s just enough time to eat a burger before you go on. When we arrive Hoax has already started. I heard them before we went to South Africa and the songs are cool. The show is alright, due to technical problems.
The Mercury Live is the first venue with a P.A. we’re used to, so Danny is really happy. Our show is fine, no complaints. This is the Hogs’ home town and you can tell. Everyone’s singing along with everything, even the new songs. Ross got in two minutes before Hogs’ show time, because he had another gig. Around two Lee gives me the choice either to stay or to come home with him and his girlfriend Rose. I choose the latter, cause tomorrow is the last show and it’s the Knife Fight festival and I consider that an important one. The rest stays to party. Fine, I’ll see the pictures tomorrow. In the car I tell them about the guy in East London who offered me his girlfriend and they tell me that that was not about him offering his girlfriend, he wanted to isolate me and then mugg me. Hmm...interesting. At Rose’s place I get a futon, a real coverlet and a pillow and then the day stops.
I slept like a baby. Lee and Rose take me to a nice place to have breakfast. And, thank God, the burger days are over. French toast, fresh fruit and a good cappucino. With the sun in my face and a comfortable 24 degrees, I’m really glad I chose to sleep early. Capetown is beautiful. To me it’s a combination of New Orleans (the houses) and San Fransico (the hills) as icing on the cake, Capetown has a beach as well. After breakfast Lee and I go to an internet cafe (a real one this time) to send my diary through and after that we meet the rest at some place where they’re having lunch. The pictures are not too bad, although the boys look a little pale around the nose. If it comes to partying the Hogs have yet to meet their equal. But my guys do very well, especially considering the fact that they do it without stimulating chemicals. I’m proud of them. It’s time to get some souvenirs, so we go to the market. This is my market. You can, no you HAVE to negotiate and I love that. ‘What 200 Rand??, Are you nuts? 80, no more! Etcetera. On the market we all of a sudden see a girl with a new Hogs shirt on. Lee asks her where she got it from, because these shirts were made for this tour and she was definitley not at the show yesterday. She mumbles something about a friend. But Lee tells us later that one package of shirts was stolen at the factory. Apparently band merchandise is very popular with thieves. We left our gear at Mercury’s last night and it’s time to pick them up and to go to the Knife Fight Festival. The Knife Fight Festival is the biggest punk show in Capetown and the scenery is a golfclub. That’s right Cooper is playing the rotary, together with a shitload of other punk bands. When we get there there’s already a thousand people. This is the only all ages show we do on this tour and it shows. A lot of fourteen year olds in the latest punk fashion. We watch a couple of bands like Slashdogs and Tonight We Die, which were really good. We sanwiched between Fuzigish and Hog Hoggidy Hog, two of the most popular bands ot the country. And it’s our first time here. This is going to be tough. And it is. This turns out the toughest crowd of the tour. But we get them, we nail them. We even do an encore and I’m pleased. This time the crowd really goes bezerk with the Hogs. Everything jumps and screams and halfway the show there’s no air to breath anymore. After the show we all go to the Mercury Live again, because Ross has another gig. This time with the Ska band the Rudimentals. They’re great! Tonight I decide to party, but at five after three Breezers, I’m fed up with listening to fifteen year old house tracks. I arrange transportation to Rose’s place and leace the premises where I saw my friends turn from failry civilized gentlemen into total morons. And I fear the worst, because apparently the party goes on at George’s place. Twenty minutes later I’m asleep.
When I wake up there’s a phone with a note on the floor. I have to call the number on the note with the phone on the floor. Smart. It’s Lee and he tells me that our planned trip to Table Mountain is off due to bad weather. Oh well, maybe next time. Lee has a show tonight and has to soundcheck, so Rose takes me out for breakfast and in the meantime we try to get a hold of the rest of Cooper. If we do we hear that the party went on till eight again. Not surprisingly. Today we will drive overnight from Capetown to Pretoria, because our plane leaves tomorrow night around ten. We leave at around five with one man extra. Fuzigish’ Ampie drives with us to Jo-Burg. I start driving this time. The van is making a really scary sound. It’s so loud that Geert even needs to put his earplugs in to fall asleep. But the van is still going. At around midnight Leon takes over the wheel. I make myself comfortable on the backbench. About half an hour after Leon took over driving duties the van makes one big bang and then tells us to bugger off. In other words; we’re doomed. The van is wrecked, we’re at the N1 and it’s sunday at midnight. And believe me if I tell you that this is the middle of nowhere. Right now this not just an expression, not just a phrase. This is for real. We call an emergency number but it’s still the day of the Lord, so we shall have to wait till eight tomorrow morning. What better thing to do but sleep? This really sucks. Luckily Ampie is a very funny guy, so about three minutes after we found out that we have to spent the night in the karoo there’s a roar of laughter coming from the white van at the side of the highway. We make ourselves as comfortable as possible and make the best of it. We tell each other some secrets and a life story or two and then eventually we all fall asleep. Lets just hope we catch our plane tomorrow night at 9:40.
Half past six and the sun is already burning on the roof of the van. Everybody is still asleep. It was really cold tonight, but I slept remarkebly well. Still an hour and a half till we can call the tow company. My phone is dead, so all I can do is lay on my back and read a book. The rest wakes up one by one. At eight we immediately make the call and lo and behold they do it again. Within half an hour there’s a towing truck ready to take us to Beaufort West. It’s clear that our van is not going anywhere ever again, so we have to leave it and find another way to get to Pretoria. There’s two options. The first one is to go to George and get a plane to Jo-Burg. But this is expensive and even then we’re not sure we will catch the plane to Madrid. The second option is to rent a new van here and drive to Pretoria. But then we’ll miss our flight for sure. Besides it turns out very, very expensive. And then Leon shows his brilliance by coming up with the idea to take the bus. It’s cheap and it will get us to Pretoria. We won’t make the flight, but one call to The Netherlands changes our flight to the next day. There’s only one thing; the bus leaves at ten PM and it’s ten AM at the moment. Now what? We decide to get a day room in a hotel to get a shower and hang around a bit. Wrong! They won’t give us one room, we have to take five rooms. So we go to the lobby to hang around there. In Leons words: ‘They fucked up, so they have to deal with us.’ They let us stay, not knowing what to do with us. Until the owner comes in and throws us out. We leave to wait at the bus station. But it’s still around five, so we walk in the next hotel we see. The reception is quite different this time. The woman is glad to see us and even opens up the bar for us. We hang around, watch tv and have a fantastic dinner at the hotel restaurant. Before we know it it’s time to leave. The bus drive is not half as bad as I thought it would be and soon enough I’m fast asleep.
After another twelve hours we finally arrive in Pretoria after Ampie got off the bus in Jo-Burg. We will see him again later today, because Leon has to go to work and Ampie will take us to the airport. Leons sister takes us to his place and after we got our stuff Leon drives us to Ampie. Ampie lives in a place called Honey Dew. A beautiful spot just outside Johannesburg. When it’s time Ampie drives us to the airport. I’m a little tense, because of the overweight when we checked in in Amsterdam. But this time everything’s fine and we get on the plane no problem. The flight is great, because I have four seats for myself and I fall asleep right after dinner to wake up just before breakfast. There’s a twenty minute delay in Madrid and then we’re home. No matter how long or how short the tour has been, I’m always glad to be home. And, after one of the nicest tours I ever had, I’m home again.