This courtesy of Rea Vaya bus stations and lanes, one way signs, concrete bollards and boom gates while trying to get to a meeting in Marshalltown.
A colleague and I were to meet the boss and a public relations officer at a homely coffee shop.
Priding ourselves on our green sensibilities, said colleague and I decided to share a vehicle, with colleague at the wheel.
“Do you know the way?” she asked.
“Of course I do,” I replied, as I surreptitiously double-checked Google Maps.
Turns out, I did know the way… In theory, and then partially. My brain simply refused to take take the bus lanes into account.
Thanks to my glaring oversight we were perpetually in the wrong lane; and said wrong lane was usually the aforementioned bus lane.
We also narrowly avoided going the wrong way down a one way lane, relieving the city council of a couple of chevrons, and almost assisting a pedestrian to shuffle off his mortal coil (I thought the glare he directed at us a little excessive, considering the traffic light was red for him).We drove as people should not (but apparently do) drive in town, or anywhere else.
“Street rules, street rules,” we sang as we whizzed past a building at the centre of a march involving blue and yellow T-shirts only a few weeks ago.
Our joy was near complete when a phone call from the boss confirmed we were but a block away from our destination, our path blocked only by a median island, bollards and the Rand Club’s boom gates.
Two more trips around the block (don’t ask), and we got there – half an hour late, but we got there.
There will come a day in the very near future when I shall put on my walking shoes and head into town armed with a Joburg map and a pen, and I shall draw bus stations, bollards and boom gates onto that map.
Never again, Joburg. Never again.
