Driving

Up until a few days ago my wife and I have been relying on public transportation.  The cheapest way we found to move around town was by using what people call cabs.  These cabs are very different from the cabs Americans might picture when someone says "I took a cab."  These cabs operate more like buses, but with a little more hustle.  They have a route,  with semi-regular stops, but instead of keeping to a schedule, a team of people try to cram as many people in the cab as possible.  The team is made up of two people, a driver and a cashier of sorts.  The driver's job is to drive as fast as possible down the route, honk the horn to attract passengers, and stop when the cashier tells him too.  The driver also seems to have the job of angering and competing with other cabs with his driving.  The cashier obviously takes people's money, but also facilitates more business.  During stops, he whistles and runs around looking for passengers.  If a passenger is on the other side of the street he might jump in the middle of traffic and stop it so that passenger can safely j-walk across the street.  The cab might even wait for more passengers to fill the cab, which is quite annoying if you're in a hurry.  While they are driving, the cashier spends his time yelling out the side of the cab "Kip Taun" or something like that.  After a few days we realized that he was saying "Cape Town", which is the last stop on the route.  I was told that most of these people who run the cabs are from the Cape Flats area of Cape Town and that they have a very distinct accent.  These guys must be the hardest working people in Cape Town.  The best part of this whole experience is that the cabs are little Volkswagen Micro-buses and they often stuff sixteen passengers or more in the thing.  Including the two operators that is eighteen people who have been working up a sweat running around town.  Needless to say it gets a bit smelly in those things.

A few days ago we got access to a car, a nice little Mercedes-Benz hatchback.  I'm not going to say that I will miss riding in the cabs, but I will say that it was a worthwhile experience.  We've only taken the car out twice, once to the grocery store and once to the gym. We're kind of afraid to drive on the wrong side of the road in crazy traffic.  I can't wait to see more of Cape Town with the freedom of a car.  Since cab route maps were not available we only used one route.  Now we can go wherever we want.