mini-bus = crazy-bus

Today I went to church in an area quite a ways from where I am staying.  I took a personal taxi there for about R100 (about$12 USD).  On the way back, I was feeling more adventurous and didn't have any other commitments, so I figured it would be a great time to experiment with transportation.  I asked a woman at my church about mini-buses and how to hail one, where they go, etc.  Keep in mind that her description was about two sentences.  Just as she finished her explanation one drove by, literally hollering out the window.  I waved at them and they pulled over.  I quickly said goodbye to my helper and hopped into the van.

Here is the view from my seat.

I'll be honest, these things are pretty crazy.  Like a crazy-bus instead of a mini-bus.  They drive around zooming through turning lanes and paved road shoulders honking their horn, whistling out the window, and yelling at people to get in their van.  There appear to be two mini-bus jobs, a driver and a yeller.  The driver drives and honks, with occasional yelling. On the other hand, the yeller whistles and yells a lot, opens and closes the van door (sometimes even rides with it open, they are so edgy like that), and collects the money. There is no schedule or route, you just tell them where you want to go and they drive around picking up and dropping off people.  It takes quite a bit longer, but it is kind of exciting and way, way cheaper.  My total for the return trip was R6 (about $.75 USD).

The crazy bus dropped me off at the train station a couple blocks down from my gross hotel (it is growing on me though.  I'm learning that to deal with no a/c you simply must do everything extremely slowly and wear as little as possible).  The train station is right downtown, so I walked over to the building where Nelson Mandela made his first speech after being released from prison and took a couple pictures before meandering back to my room.

On an un-related side note, it is amazing how many fried chicken serving outlets there are here in Cape Town.  There must be some relation to SOUTH Africa and the dirty SOUTH (aka North Carolina).  Also, on my walk home I noticed some dumb pigeons and some smart pigeons.  The dumb ones sit on the hot bricks in the busy square while the smart ones, pictured below, hide in the shade of the ledges above an outdoor eatery. I'd like to think that if I were a pigeon, I would have figured this out too.