At 5 am, Julio walked into the dorm room. He didn’t wake us up when he left, but I happened to be up when he came back. 5 am. Remember that. The bush walk was supposed to start at 4:30 and last until 9. At 10, we were going to get our ride to the Nelspruit airport, rent a car, and take Julio to a backpackers hostel in Johannesburg before travelling the rest of the way to the Cradle Lodge in Maropeng. What happened? It seems that Allan took too long getting his stupid old car started and Julio missed his bush walk. Allan blamed it on the park staff, but come on now. This is Kruger Park. They do things right. And Allan has a tremendous history of doing things wrong.
Jeremy and I woke up a bit later and planned the route to Maropeng. Then, at about 9, Allen’s girlfriend woke up and we asked about the extra nights lodging that we had paid for by her mistake. At first, she didn’t want to give it back. Ha! She said something about cancellation fees. It is true that we had originally planned on staying an additional night. But come on now. The dorm was empty except for us and Julio. Hostels typically do not have cancellation policies and she didn’t mention it before when we told her our plan. Basically, she had our money and wanted to keep it. We argued for a bit before she shoved 120 rand into my hands (enough to cover the extra amount that I had paid, but not Jeremy). We asked about the rest and she said that she didn’t have the money. I inquired about an ATM machine and she said that she would have to talk to Allen. Eventually we found out that they would go to an ATM on the way. Jeez. Everything is difficult and frustrating with this place. We also asked about the taxi fare. After some arguing, we got the idea that we might get the money back.
At 10, we loaded into Allan’s car and were on our way. He started the ride off by saying that he had been at the restaurant. He even said that he had taken down a registration number as proof. This really doesn’t count as proof, and it really didn’t matter. We were there and it was his responsibility to find us and give us a ride home. 2 white guys and an Argentinean kind of stand out in South Africa and it is inexcusable that he didn’t find us. I walked him through some figure and explained that he owed each of us 50 rand. I also said that I would be happy if he just paid us the 60 rand for the taxi ride. Eventually, he said that he would give us the 150. This was a lie, and when we arrived at the airport, he handed over Jeremy’s 120 rand and another 50 rand. By this point, we just wanted him to go away forever, and we let it slide.
More problems arose at the car rental booth. It seems that Jeremy’s driver’s license expired earlier in the year, and I didn’t know how to drive stick. We asked about automatic cars, but they were so expensive, that we wouldn’t have been able to afford it. So…we came up with a plan. I won’t talk about it now, but let’s just say that Jeremy and I have been mistaken for twins many times on this trip.
We loaded into the car and were off. We had a bit of trouble finding the Airport Backpackers Hostel that Julio was staying at, but a nice receptionist and some good driving on Jeremy’s behalf took care of the issue.
A few hours later, we arrived at the Cradle Lodge. And let me tell you, this place is nice. The rooms are supposed to cost 750 rand per person per night, but they agreed to let us stay for 350 per night, for a total of 700 rand total for the two nights. When we arrived, we realized why. The place is empty. Still, the staff was incredibly friendly, and the rooms are awesome.
We asked about a place to eat dinner, and experienced our one major complaint with this area. There is absolutely no place to get dinner nearby! We drove around for about an hour before giving up and getting some food at the gas station. Back at the room, we watched some TV episodes on my netbook and then went to bed.
20091218 – Confronting Allan and Driving to Maropeng
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