The Flores Journey

We got to Cape Town without a hitch and gathered up all of our bags and belongings. Nothing was missing again, Praise Jesus. We got our vehicle that we would be renting for the first week of our stay and began the twenty minute drive to our new home. Driving is tricky in South Africa, most of the vehicles that a person drives are stick and they are on the wrong side of the car. Instead of driving on the left hand side with the stick on the right, I drove on the right hand side with the stick on the left. Not to mention the roads are opposite each other. Instead of driving on the right hand side of the road, I found myself driving the left hand side with cars merging from on ramps on the left. In my hurry to leave the airport, I had forgotten to pull out our maps that we had printed. Now you have to realize that driving in South Africa is a bit different than in the States. The people here seem to be 5 times more aggressive in their driving. Claire took her seat belt off and began turned around to try and locate the map in one of the suitcases in back. I didn’t want to pull over because we were alone and I didn’t know any of the area. It’s different if I had been alone, but because I had Peyton and Claire in the car and it was our first day here I didn’t want to just stop anywhere. Claire was able to pull out the maps and we made the trip without incident.
As we got closer to the area we would be staying we noticed hundreds of the makeshift tin buildings lining the road. I began to wonder to myself if I had gotten a location that would feel safe to us. We found our road and turned in. We traveled into the “Marina De Gama” and found the house that we would be staying at. Different than anything I had known in the past this home had sharp jagged pieces of metal surrounding it’s walls. The neighborhood of the Marina de Gama felt safe, Claire and I drove around it a bit waiting for our rental agent to show up. It was very quite at twelve noon, South African time and we felt a peace to be home. We want to let everyone know that we feel very safe and comfortable living in this area. We know that just down the street, literally a mile to two miles down the street was the township we had just passed. Welcome to the extremes of South Africa. On one block of the street there are makeshift houses built from tin and whatever else can be found and on the next block are modernly built homes with most of the conveniences that Americans have. What extremes!
(Bryan)