Busman's Horror-Day

Travelling by bus in SA is very different from the UK. It's the main form of transport for most people travelling long distances and because of this they make a bit more effort. These are luxury vehicles which bear not the slightest resemblance to the good old National Express back home. The seats recline practically all the way back, there's food and drink served for free and you'll more than likely get a couple of movies thrown in as well. There are, however, other aspects of bus journies over here which are slightly more unnerving. When you embark on the huge monster of a bus you have to give your fingerprint and smile for the video camera which comes round. This, I learnt to my great distress, was in case there's an accident and you're burnt or horrifically injured beyond recognition - a little chilling coming, as it does, at the very start of the journey.

There are two floors on the bus and two prices to pay for each one. Upstairs is a little cheaper and known as semi-cama, but if you've got the money (and trust me, you have) you should go for the mighty cama, located on the ground floor. With bigger seats and an almost complete reclining arc, cama really is the way rock stars would travel - entirely appropriate for me, I thought, when booking a cama seat on one of my recent journies. Unfortunately, after about half an hour, I realised my rock star lifestyle was to be short-lived. The function on my chair was faulty, which meant that every time I reclined the seat it, so slowly as to be almost imperceptible, began rising back into the fully erect position. As this was a night bus I needed to try and get some sleep, but even though I could nod off happily, I would inevitably wake some minutes later sitting bolt upright with my neck dangling at an ungodly angle. I can only imagine what this must have looked like to any passengers not sleeping - me slowly rising, as if from the grave. Very sinister, I'm sure. The result of this was two-fold:

1) I had an angry but ultimately fruitless exchange with the conductor, involving me putting the seat up and down and him shrugging his shoulders.

2) My neck became very sore.

What's the one thing everyone dreads seeing when they're on long distance transport? I'll give you a clue, when a man and a woman are very much in love they have powerful natural urges which usually result in a very loud miracle. Yes, that's it, babies. Why do we put up with it? They're noisy, obnoxious, uneducated at best and ultimately they're slobs. Not really, I love the little nappy-filling swines, I just had an earful of it on this bus. It seems there's just no reasoning with some infants. The parents were whispering soothing incantations and I myself promised not to kill him if he stopped crying, but all in vain. The screaming dribble factory kept us up all night. As if this all wasn't enough, I think the baby had some kind of tag team arrangement with the fat drunk Russian sitting next to me whereby if he stopped screaming old fatski would start snoring, just so there was never any break in the continuous noise. The Russian also took up half of my seat and kept touching me (don't touch me) throughout the whole trip. Still, he seemed to get a good night's kip, so every cloud... I think I'll take the plane to my next stop.

Thanks to Al again - you love it, don't you? Rob and the mysterious anonymous (now known to be Jimbo from work - good lad thee) You all seem to take great pleasure in my discomfort, so hopefully you'll enjoy this posting too. Remember, if I suffer, I do this only for you. Buenos noches.