Today wouldn't be the first time I’ve ended up in a township on
account of my bad sense of direction. I ended up in Khayelitsha today instead of Parow. I’m not sure at what point in my life I
decided I was terrible with directions or what happened to me that put me off
maps. I was never great at geography (I once thought Cape Town was on the way
to Zimbabwe for example) and always found myself with people who did know how
to read a map, so never bothered really. Because of my misfortune regarding my
poor navigation skills it means that I don’t get caught up in those annoying
travel arguments about which road we should take, which route is better, safer,
faster, harder blaa blaa, so that’s great. When I am alone, however this
weakness of mine results in me finding myself in some pretty dodgy situations.
I've had many encounters I could share about, where I've ended up,
how I accidently got there, where I was supposed to be going and where I
actually ended up but I will go on to share just two of these...
After a night out clubbing in Claremont I
attempted to get myself out of the hustle and bustle of the southern suburbs
and back to the Atlantic seaboard. After the usual “I’m going guys, how do I get
outa here” speech, Alice (my lovely and faithful Hyundai Atos at the time) and I
headed home. As always, I started the trip off with some music and began singing
along. After I got to about track 12 or so I realised I should
at least be on the M3 by now? But I wasn't. In fact, I didn’t know what high way
I was on. I had done it again. Lost, lost, lost in the depths of the night with
no one to help me. Or was there? I phoned up one of me ole faithful friends who
OVER THE PHONE managed to direct me out of the mess I was in, at 3 o clock in
the morning. He talked me through the whole thing from where I was to the front
of his house. Devin’s friend package must have come with a ‘personal GPS’ fine
print.
This was bad, but not my worst. After, of course, another
clubbing night out in Woodstock me and some mates hopped into my rentacar to
drive back to where we were staying in Observatory (for my foreign readers,
Woodstock and Observatory are two suburbs RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER only an
idiot could mess up getting between these two places. Well, an idiot and me.) Everything
was going swimmingly. We were actually a few roads away from the house until
someone mentioned Steers. We just couldn’t say no to Steers, so we turned back
to grab some burgers at the Woodstock Steers. After smashing our guts we sped
off into the night with the intention of (once again) going to Observatory. All
we had to do was stay on the upper main road (at that time I didn’t know there
was an upper and lower FYI) “Where the fuck is the street? Are we definitely on
main road?” I asked. “Just keep going, I’m sure we’ll get there.” Mark answers.
Well, we drove and drove and drove and eventually there were less people, less
lights, less buildings and we had reached our unintended destination…fucking Kensington!!
I hadn’t even heard of such a place even after living in Cape Town for 5 years.
“How the vok do we get outa here?!” I ask, stuffing my face with Steers chips
in a confused and alarmed state. “Just keep going, I’m sure we’ll get there.”
Mark answers. Epping, Somerset West, Bellville, the signs of places in the
opposite direction to where we were supposed to be going kept appearing.
AIRPORT!! Finally, after about an hour of driving around we found a turn off we
recognised. I was so excited I completely missed the turn off. Back to Epping
we go then, we circled back around and down and eventually managed to get back
on the right track. I am 99.9% sure I am the ONLY one who has managed to get
lost between two suburbs RIGHT next to each other that are connected by an
obvious main road. They say getting lost is a great way to find yourself or perhaps it’s more like getting lost is a great way to find yourself in crazy
situations.
