Thoughts of a Hopeless Wanderer...

In reply to my saying that I was going to drive down to Cape Town on a road trip instead of simply flying down, I am greeted repeatedly by the same question: “But why would you?” This started me thinking on why people were reacting the way that they did to driving the odd 2 000 kilometres across South Africa instead of conveniently logging onto a computer, booking the tickets, and spending two hours getting there instead of two days. I can never really summarise the essence of what a road trip actually is into this short blog post, but for the benefit of the readers as well as trying to process it myself, I am surely going to try.

If you were flying down to Cape Town, you would never experience the sleepy-eyed excitement of waking up at 5 am, still yawning as you get dressed but eager to get going to beat the 6:30 Jo’burg traffic. I quickly down my tea, which is now lukewarm because of my unwillingness to wake up when I actually should have, resulting in only fifteen minutes to get dressed.

The beginning of a road trip with my mom is always some of the most beautiful memories, because when we’re driving on Atterbury, heading towards the highway, there is not a car in sight. The city that supposedly is always awake has dozed off, and we have even beaten the sun to waking up. In these moments, we are the only people in the world, embarking on one of the adventures that I loved to read about as a child. As we merge onto the highway towards Jo’burg, the day starts for everybody else, and eventually their cars begin to clog the roads, but by this time, we are long gone.

If you were flying down to Cape Town, you would not have the opportunity to stop at a garage at Kroonstad Plaza and eat breakfast at a Wimpy. I forgot how good their food can be, but I am quickly reminded when I begin eating my flapjacks. For the first time probably since matric has started, I am completely relaxed. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so much, because my mom and I are crying about jokes that I can’t even remember. We are brought together both by the thoughts of old travels and memories that we are busy making.

Welkom looks like a good place to drive through – we have never been there before – but alas, this was not a good idea, and Welkom is not so welcoming as the name suggests. Adjacent to “God is Great Low Price Store”, there is a large billboard outside the Police Station, with large block letters that state “MURDER RATE IS NOT ACCEPTABLE! STOP VIOLENT ACTS”. Of course we had a good laugh about this, but only once we had hit 80 kilometres per hour back to the highway. There is, however, a reason for everything, and because we had driven this route, the GPS had navigated us from the N1 path to Bloemfontein, onto an alternate route (the R7, which I had never before heard of).

This trip was made even more special by the fact that in August, I received my learner’s licence. It meant that this road trip, for the first time ever, I could help drive too. This added a completely different dynamic to the journey, when I took over the wheel in Bloemfontein and eased out onto the highway, for the first time ever. Imagine my shock… look in the left mirror, look in the right mirror, now the middle one. Okay, we have two lanes travelling this way now. Indicator on, move over to the right, accelerate, overtake. Trucks coming from ahead, and cars trying to overtake you. With all of this happening at 100 kilometres per hour, it’s pretty hectic! To all of my readers who drive, well done, because it is definitely not as easy as I thought it would be.

One lesson to learn in life: people that tell you the Karoo is flat and boring are the same ones who have only ever seen it from their dashboard at 120 kilometres per hour. This place is chock-full of towns riddled with history, places that barely anybody has ever heard of. Theunissen, Brandford, Philippolis – although they may sound like it, these are not breeds of toads… they are all places that I had a chance to become acquainted with, as we made our way to Cape Town. These places have given me a deeper appreciation for the life that I lead, and once or twice, I have found myself guilty of something city folk often do: unintentionally looking down at people that live in the lowveld and dismissing their existences as “cute”. These people live hard lives, and we often forget that making a living is not as easy in small towns. These people live without wifi. But in the end, their quality of life seems to be much higher. Just tonight I was talking to a sheep farmer in the most charming little restaurant in Philippolis (a restaurant that made vegetarian food so good it would put the city to shame, might I add), and he told me that he would not exchange his life for the world. He was born here, and now, at 83 years old, he is still happily living with his wife and family. He is truly an exemplary fellow.

If I had flown down to Cape Town, I would never have pulled over onto a dusty road on the side of the highway to go and stand in a field of sunflowers. The French say it best when they named them Les Tournesols, directly translated as “Turn to the sun”. You could never, ever experience this on a screen. The feeling of dusty Karoo soil underneath your feet, as you are faced with thousands of flower faces towering over you, casting their glances skywards at the sun. I felt small and enormous at the same time, filled with this overwhelming sense of simple being alive. Living is an art that most of us have not yet mastered, and that some of us never will. Whilst you can, do. Don’t have the experience of one day looking back and wishing that you had. Look, then look closer. First, you will see a sunflower, but then, you will realise that there is a little bee polishing his legs on the edge of it. Even closer, his legs are filling up with pollen, and soon he begins to float heavily away. After just a short while into my “social media detox”, I’m coming to realise that these are experiences that you just can’t have online… often, they will simply pass you by if you are too busy looking down at a screen.

We are currently overnighting in Philippolis, almost midway between Pretoria and Cape Town, and tomorrow, we take on the rest of the road. It is as if the world left the Karoo behind when it picked up and advanced into the consumerist society that the city has become. Life does not move so quickly here, and you find yourself slowing down, appreciating the small things, like good company and good coffee.

I’d like to leave you with some thoughts that I had today regarding road tripping and why I love it so much: The further away you go from your home, the closer you will come to journeying towards yourself. The journey is such a big part of the experience for me, and if I’m just going to take a flight there, I’m missing out on a large portion of what makes my holidays so special.