Why would you live in the Free State??

I am back in the office after 5 days off work.... It's not as bad as I thought it would be.

The long weekend started with Thursday night out with a couple boys from work and bouncing from bar to bar, meeting incredibly strange people on the way. On Friday morning I woke up with a cold in full swing, hoping I could quietly die! Saturday, I was feeling better when I woke up before sunrise to go to the airport for my flight on a little 32 seater to Margate. It was quite fun and the scenery from a lower altitude is very pretty.

We landed at Margate to be greeted by people lining the runway, taking photo's of the landing plane. Now I thought Margate was a bit on the boring side, but coming out to watch the flight from JHB arrive?? Turns out there was an air show on.

It was a good holiday. I spent time with my brother and 6 of his friends. We perved a lot over the boys at San Lameer. At least I have an age limit and won’t look at anyone younger than 20! I also met up with a friend and his wife who I haven’t seen in a couple years and caught up over a couple vodkas.

We spent an afternoon drinking vodkas, looking at the beach of Southbroom from a deck. Then we drove to the Crocodile Farm for crocodile burgers and waffles. So all in all... a good break.

But the real fun part was the trip home.

During the trip we kept ourselves entertained by looking at the other motorists… WEIRD people! I took pictures of them. For some reason people don’t like getting their photo taken while driving…? I also think a large number of these people are from the Free State, which would explain quite a lot.

On the drive back to JHB, we were talking tp people who had left earlier and were updating us on the state of the roads and toll plaza's, in particular the Wilge Toll Plaza, where they were striking and the queue was 4kms long.

This led to a detour through the Free State... we turned off the N3 somewhere before Villiers and drove towards Frankfort and Oranjeville and eventually Alberton. It was brown and flat… The road was one lane and straight. (See picture below) I was also the designated navigator… mistake number 1!! I am rather lacking where a sense of direction is concerned. It also didn’t help that the roads we needed to take weren’t numbered on the map, so we took some slight detours through the maizelands. Lets call it the scenic route. We even drove past Sasolburg, through a hijack zone! And we listened to Radio 2000 and OFM (used to be Radio Oranje). Desperate times…. We weren't even on the GPS.

We drove around and over the Vaal Dam, following GP registrations (this is a common navigation tool used by Joburgers!)

Eventually I found a map of the Gauteng Heartland, that had the roads and numbers we needed and eventually got us onto the N12 and home.