Wednesday 11th June 2014

I really don’t know why I go into town, it just ends up a very frustrating experience. But I never learn and today I jumped at the opportunity of a trip to the bustling metropolis of Louis Trichardt.

A typical rural Afrikaans town in which you’d be hard pressed to find any male between the age of 16 and 60 that was not adorned in hunting camouflage from head to toe.

I once, rather naively suggested that I could go there for my leave. My plan was to get a lift with from and to Pafuri Gate with the grocer when he did the food run. This suggestion was met with, first open mouthed bewilderment, then laughter, then a very serious, “No James, you really shouldn’t do that, they don’t like outsiders there”.

The main reason for my visit was to send off my Dangerous Game Log books to FGASA for approval ahead of my “Trails Guide” practical assessment. This was relatively painless by South African standards but still frustrating. My teller, or should I say my grump teller, really didn’t want to be there and barely raised a smile despite my cheery disposition. She didn’t even crackl a smile at anyone of the many text messages that she received, but these were clearly more important than my custom,

Then there was the usual pointless toing and froing. I explained that I needed an envelope and that I’d like to send my package recorded delivery. Needless to say I was sent away to fill out a form, then on my return I was sent away again to fill out the envelope only to return to the counter for her to stick the first form over the address that I’d just written on the envelope.

It’s all done now, fingers crossed it gets there. I do however love the Post Office’s business model of being so incompetent, the world over I must add, that they actually get you to pay more to the improve the chances of your package being delivered.

Jomi was having his own battle, actually it wasn’t much of a battle, he went to Home Affairs to sort out his Visa only to be told straight away that they can’t help foreigners and pointed to a sign saying just that.

Once back we got stuck into some fitness, the chaps have been pushing me to up the weights that I use in between each run. This immediately made my work out much harder and therefore less fun.

The evening we had a few glasses of the wine we’d picked up in Louis Trichardt, it was the Blanc de Noir and Boschen Blanc, two wines that Amy and I had tried and enjoyed on our visit to Boschendal back in January.