Thinking like a Leftie

This has been quite a busy week! On Saturday I drove to Rustenberg, South Africa to meet one of the old PAC doctors and buy his car. He has been working in South Africa for the last several months, but could not sell a car from Botswana to a South African without a lot of expensive paperwork. It is a 1998 silver Honda CRV. It was not cheap by American standards (cars are really expensive here because they are all imported), but a good deal by Botswana standards. I got two of the people who work at the clinic, Bashi (right) and Michael (left), (pictured on the left with car in background, more pictures of car to come) to drive with me and we set out early on Saturday morning.

Driving here is very interesting. They drive on the "other" side of the road, which has taken a LOT of getting used to! Luckily for the first 2 weeks I was just a passenger and a pedestrian, so that gave me time to get over the unbelievably scary feeling that people are driving towards you on the wrong side of the road. By the time I actually tried my hand at driving, it wasn't as bad as I thought. Though I still have to keep saying "left, left, left" in my head. And everything is on the opposite side, the turn signal which goes the opposite way (right turn down, left turn up), the gear shift, etc. It has taken some serious reconditioning, but I am getting better. The hardest part is when there are no other cars because my instinct is still to go on the right. And of course on the bigger roads the signs say "keep left, pass right" which takes more getting used to. Luckily the car I bought is an automatic, as I have never driven stick. Learning to drive stick with the gearshift on the left is something I need to do, but can be saved for a day when driving on the left feels more natural.

The drive to Rustenberg took about 3 hrs including the border crossings which are interesting here. You park your car and get out and walk into the Botswana side of the border, fill in some paper work get passport and car transport paper stamped and then drive across to the South African side where the same process is repeated all over again! Driving back across the border with the car I bought was even more challenging as the Botswana registration had expired in May 2009. The person I bought the car from had not bothered to renew it or register it in South Africa, so the border police were not so happy. Luckily Bashi did some fast talking in Setswana and then the policeman said he was in a good mood so we could go today as long as we promised to get it registered first thing in Botswana. Apparently they can impound it at the border and wait for you to bring the proper paperwork, so I was very lucky! The registration has now been sorted. The only things left are changing the ownership and getting car insurance..."one step at a time" is my new motto here!

On Sunday a group of us climbed Kgale Hill which is the tallest hill in Gabarone and maybe even in all of Botswana, as the country is pretty flat. After about an hour of trying to find the trail, we finally found the start. (we asked several locals, but none knew since the idea of hiking is a foreign concept - why walk just to walk when you do plenty of walking on a normal day?) The picture on the left is Steph, Gelane (cheering that we have finally found the path), Agatha, and Kia. The hill is at the edge of town and on the grounds of a granite quarry (picture on right) so when you enter they display the blasting time for the week so you can avoid being on the hill when it shakes ;) Luckily the next blasting time was 3 days away so we were safe. "The path" was pretty much straight up and not really marked, though it was cleared and we were able to follow the footprints of the people before us. The end was basically rock climbing, but it was SO worth it! From the top was a 360 view of Gabarone! Best of all, there was a beautiful cloudless sky ;) This has been the case every day here, at least until rainy season comes...

At the top with the Gabarone Dam in the background

There actually was a family from Botswana at the top!
The father (who is taking the picture - I then took one of all of them together)
carried the little boy and his bottle the whole way.
This was quite a feat, since I need two hands for most of the end of the climb.

Of course, I had to get to the tippy top by climbing the last giant rock.

At the top we found this post with many cities and the distances to each. On the left (dark because it was taken into the sun - sorry) is Agatha, Steph, Kia and Gelane. On the right is me with a close up of the NYC post. 12,541 km (7,794 for those who like miles) from home, and still video chat can make it seem like people are right here!