Bless the clueless Travel Agents

Before I leave you to enjoy the silliness of the post, let me give you some information. My colleague and I was invited to attend a show call Bjorn Again at the Johannesburg Civic Theatre. This post is all about how, being a travel agent doesn't mean you need to find your own directions around your own country.

All excited we get into the car to drive to Joburg, directions in hand on our way. About half way there I manage to miss place and find the directions. All in all a smooth ride.

I was starting feeling relieved when we had the off ramp coming up and the show starting in 15 minutes time. Sort of like:

Right Place - Check
On Time - Check

But then the off ramp wasn't coming up. We could see Gold Reef City in the distance, but then we are ladies, we follow instructions. After a while, I phone best friend's husband - ends up the off ramp from where we could see Gold Reef City was the off ramp to take. The problem at hand was that we were on our way to Soweto!

Now I know Soweto is a major tourist attraction in South Africa and I would love to do a day tour to Soweto some day. But two white girls driving around at 8pm on any day of the week in the middle of Soweto, is not a good idea. In fact it can only be describe as a very bad idea.

As we drive past the Pioneer Museum, J and I start having silly conversation to try and break the tension. As we stand bumper to bumper we go through the ups and downs of being very nervous.

Finally we get to a fork in the road, either we go to Protea and Protea South or we go to Lenasia. Protea? National flower of South Africa Protea or area in Soweto? Lenasia is a suburb known for Indian people residing there. And all I know is, I have been in a traffic jam in Lenasia a couple of years ago - and yes this was with some Indian friends of mine. Then I also know the very obvious - it is somewhere in JNB, goodness know how far from Gold Reef City.

So we take our chances going to Lenasia. A couple of very busy streets without traffic lights working, we manage to cross the street in once piece, to find our TREASURE - a board that tells us where to go to go back to JNB! Best friend smsses us to say the show is half way, aka we have missed it all and we decide to go home.

Bless us, clueless travel agents.

We take the N14 highway to Witbank. Yip, this is the highway that J drives every day to come to work with. Maybe it was all shock from the whole experience, but as we drive, we see a board that says Benoni. (which is on the other side of JNB) Following Benoni was Brakpan and the Springs. And to be fare, we both know were Bora Bora and Port of Spain is. We can also point out the different countries like Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Indonesia. Let me rephrase that we can tell you the different countries in the Middle East - Israel, Iraq, Iran and Saudi. But do not ask us to drive from JNB to Pretoria.

All in all, we ended up in Delmas. Delmas is in Mpumalanga Province, 60km from Pretoria, Jnb is only 75km from Pretoria in the opposite direction. JNB and Pretoria is in Gauteng Province!
Just for the fun, have a look at the following links:

Soweto to Delmas
Delmas to Pretoria
Soweto to Pretoria

In retrospect (looking on the map - we were driving on the N12. J drives the N4 to work)
I will stop there before I seriously harm our reputations.