Day 14 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

VIKKI - FOCUS ON THE HEADREST!

Number of pot holes: a brazilian trillion

Number of hours in the Special Bus: 8

We took the morning off from the Special Bus since we only planned to do a few hours in the afternoon. We all went to the beach and although we went to different beaches, just call us Sunburn R´Us...Weatherman John didn´t even see the need to take his suncream to the beach that day even though the forecast was 30 degrees + :)

Lei and I managed to pur-chase lunch for six people for $R9.

First part of the journey is once again ok and we are happily lulled into a false sens of security. Just about then we hit the 50km long dirt track with pot holes in every which way of every different shape size depth...it was getting dark, there was long grass on either side of the road...I was expectiong men donned with loin cloths to jump out and attack us with spears, Lisa saw a lion (cow) and Amy was mistaking wooden poles for African Voodoo statues!

I am not sure how we went the right way since there were many forks in the road and very few (i.e. none) road signs, even the games weren't helping us this night. We came across a broken down bus...an omen you might think?! Then we got a puncture. Luckily, Lei-the-car-mechanics-for-girls-queen was there to rescue us, although I am not sure she would have been so forthcoming with the aid has the stray dog actually carried out it's threat and peed on the flat tyre we were attempting to change! Imagine, only 6km to go till we get to tarmac! Some ramdom man appeared as if from nowhere to offer his help which we skeptically declined, and the AA van equivalent was totally confused by us when they drove by obviously in search of the coach that had called them..."I thought they said it was a bus"! Fortunately you can't outfox the fox and we were back on the road in no time at all.

Next obstacle...can you guess what it is yet?? That's right we are now on the verge of running out of petrol! This really wouldn't be the place to do it either. We made it to the tarmac and think we have just enough petrol to get us to the town, whether or not that means the petrol station in the town we have no idea! Now is not the time to be wasting petrol, so what do we do? Drive the wrong way down a dead end roadwork site! D'oh.

In the name of saving petrol kit and John get out and go and check if there is anyway through to the town...this could have been directed by Wes Craven himself...it's about 11pm, dark and just as Kit and John disappear over the hill to the left hand side of the bus a strangely out of place figure appears on the horizon to the right of the bus. With four girls left in the car to deal, there is obvious dismay/concern/sheer panic! And this would be the point in the movie when the girl veers off the main well-lit road and into a dark dead end alley...Amy leans into the front to switch the ignition on to close the window and lock the door...at this point we have opted for shutting ourselves in the car and hoping for the best...she gets the window shut and accidentally puts the hazard lights on...HELLO STRANGE MAN, WE ARE OVER HERE!! Just as we compose ourselves and the man is about 50m from the bus, Kit and John start heading back towards the car, they can't see the man, the man can't see them and we are in panic mode once again. They meet in the middle and difuse the situation - turns out he is the roadwork sight night porter and informed us we had indeed gone the wrong way and the town is 9km away.

WILL THE GROUP MAKE THE 9KM TO THE TOWN? WILL THEY RUN OUT OF PETROL BEFORE THEN AND BE STRANDED? WOULD THE CHEAP VODKA BE A GOOD SUBSTITUTE FOR PETROL? TUNE IN NEXT WEEK TO FIND OUT....

(Next week) Heaven sent another angel and we made it to the town, to the petrol station which was looking suspiciously shut until a man appeared from a parked car and gave us some petrol...it was a little expnsive though so we didn;t get very much ;) It is now midnight and we still have nowhere to stay and haven't eaten for another 8 hours. We found a hostel and totally confused the man who was working,musical rooms ensued and we went from having two room swith five beds to three rooms with seven beds and the man was wandering between us looking for 'the one who spoke portuguese', that would be none of us dude! Anyway, since I think he was only expecting 5 of us we got it for $R100, our best price yet!

We went out to find some food (not holding out too much hope), Amy nearly fell down a man hole and a man who was innocently walking along hissed at a cat to scare it and ended up making all of us jump as well! Itacare turned out to be fairly closed but we did manage to find a pizza place which was willing to serve us despite our weary/stinky appearance! We eventually got to bed at 4am...what a day!