Soweto Adventure

Our adventure to Soweto was supposed to be simple...go there...run the race...enjoy the surroundings and quietly go home. Unfortunately, we got the full experience.

The Soweto marathon is an amazing run through the township. I did the 10K and noted two people running barefoot. Being a minority, I felt like I was in an olympic race with some of the most fit people around. The race itself was fun and even some had zulu headwear on with one man even sporting a skirt. Of course they wore all of that while completing the marathon in sub-3 hours while talking to their neighbors as if they were taking a stroll. It is here that the adventure began.

The one thing I have learned about Johannesburg is to never drive with Lesotho license plates and to definitely not park next to your friends. It was like a christmas day to any thief as we gifted them three lovely foreign cars to play with. Fortunately they only decided to leave with one but completely rip apart the starters for the others. We were the lucky ones to have the tools they used in our car still but the dangling wire underneath the wheel gave me the idea that we might be a bit stuck. No place to put a key to start the car, the very nice locksmith taught all of us how to hotwire a car. I felt like 101 in J-berg stealing. It was great!! We were able to get our car running again, but the dangling starter and ripped apart dash gave it a whole new look.

We decided to head back, but since our friends were one car short they asked us to pick them up in Johannesburg. Of course, we start to head in the right direction but immediately got lost...even with two atlases in hand. I think we toured the entire Soweto before finally finding M70 and feeling grateful...(even though we had to do a U turn on it to go back towards J-berg.) The map said we could get to the M1 and we really truly believed it, but alas the two girls (one with daddy as the geographer) amazingly got misplaced again only to get pulled over by the cops.

At this point my heart started to feel a bit more excited and I really felt as though I had just stolen this car and got caught...how the hell was I going to explain this crazy story to the corrupted cops who made me step out of the car. I got smelled up by the woman who blamed me for being "heavy on the wine" (unfortunately mistaking my bad breath for alcohol) while Ntate kept singing "wake up...wake UP". As they went back to the car to get the breathilizer I started to feel a bit at a loss....as thought this was just another addition to our already dysfunctional day. And leave it to me to get pulled over by the cops...it happens everywhere I go.

But after I pouted about our robbery and painted the truth with my just finished Soweto MARATHON they handed me back my passport and showed me the proper way to the freeway. At this point we were now an hour late only to receive the infamous phone call that they don't need our services anymore. It is moments like these that produce tears with your laughter from surrealism of the day. Please tell me, what more could go wrong?!

Well, the drive home was less of a story other than getting lost on the 709 only to end up on some foreign dirt road and running into the most amazing lightning storm following by diagonal rain....

What a journey. I do admit, this will be one to remember.