Bye-Bye Maputo

Saturday night was my last night in Maputo. It was a little anti-climactic to be quite honest. Kevin, Gabe, and I went out after work for some grub. By 8pm we were back home and exhausted. One by one we retreated to a couch or a bed and “rested our eyes” for a bit. I finished packing up my stuff for the long bus ride tomorrow. By 12am everyone was fast asleep so I let sleeping dogs sleep and I too went to bed to enjoy my last hours in Maputo asleep, how exciting (sigh).

I set my first alarm for 5:57am, and my second alarm for 6:27am which would have given me just enough time to shower, grab my things and take a taxi to the bus pick-up location about 10 minutes away.

I naturally woke out of sleep and rolled over to take a look at my cellphone to read the time, 7am. Shooooot. I was late. I was supposed to be at the bus station at 7am so that I could register, get my bags checked and packed so that the bus could leave promptly at 7:30am. Needless to say my last minutes in Maputo were frantic. I dashed around our flat trying to remember everything I had to pickup.

Well, I’ll tell you that I made it to the bus station at 7:30am just in time to be registered and hurried onto the InterCape bus to depart for Johannesberg at 7:35am. Perfect.

It’s a good thing I was so exhausted from a week long going away celebration because the bus ride was quite long. The bus arrived in Johannesberg at 4:30pm – 9 hours later – and I’m pretty sure I slept for all but 1 of those hours. So it was an uneventful journey as far as I was concerned. Although I hear the bathrooms were atrocious after hour 4 and the border crossing took over an hour.

I arrived in Johannesberg with just enough credit on my phone to send one last SMS to my roommate to notify him I arrived safely. Bye-bye Maputo, hello Johannesberg.