Sorry, sweetcake.

Just because everything had been going all too well for lil old first time traveller me yesterday I experienced my first bit of traveller panic. Following an amazing stay at Once in Cape Town, where I felt immediately at home with both the fantastic staff members and my roomies, it was time to move on to Jeffreys Bay. I booked my bus ticket online with Intercape, spent the day being shown around Cape Town by Emily, one of my great roomies, packed my bag and headed off to the bus station to finally make my way to Marike and Lola, my friends from Middelburg and future travel companions with whom I was meant to meet up with in Jeffreys Bay.

I immediately felt very self-aware upon arriving at the bus station during rush hour. Not only as I was the only white person around, but also very obviously the only tourist (massive backpack potentially being the give away). Furthermore, being tapped on the shoulder, smiled at and subsequently followed around by the same guy who had asked me to buy his groceries a few hours earlier didn't really help either. Thus, already on edge, I headed over to the Intercape desk to pick up my tickets where the very helpful lady behind the desk failed to find any of my details. Following 15 minutes of negotiation, showing of email correspondence and 'sorry sweetcake, bus is full, thankyou' I found myself fighting a lost battle. By now the sun had set and I learned my first proper travelling lesson: always carry around a familiar taxi number. After a good 10 minutes of being approached by every possible "taxi driver" (including the guy at the info desk getting out his car keys and insisting on driving me back to my hostel) I finally settled for the most legit possible looking taxi outside the train station. Close to a mini panic attack by now I think I almost died when the taxi driver told me I looked like I probably had lots of friends and that he would search through all the Leonies to find me on Facebook to be my friend too. No friend requests as of yet and I got back Once alive (luckily much to the delight of my new buddies).

Thank god for good hostels is all I can say! After much sympathetic fussing and a quick call to my bank to double check no money had been taken off my card, we cooked a great dinner and then headed out for drinks at a local bar to watch the game. So not all was lost!  Have my bus tickets printed out this time and although I'm sad to leave Once, I'm ready to discover more of SA. As they say, you live and you learn, and my lessons have definitely been learned!!

Next stop: Jefferys Bay (hopefully).

Au revoir, Tiger Laylay xo