Shopping in Newtown and the Taxi Nightmare

Monday, July 12, 2010

Early this morning we wanted to try to do a little shopping before taking a tour of Soweto in Johannesburg. We went to an area called Newtown, which didn't look so new. A taxi driver from the hostel named Sam dropped us off near a mall called Oriental Plaza, and he gave us his cell phone number in case we could not find another taxi to bring us back.

The Oriental Plaza had a lot of the World Cup items we had been looking for, such as shirts and scarves and vuvuzelas. And the prices were amazing since the World Cup was now finished. One T-shirt cost us 50 Rand, which is less than $8.00! Also, they offered us coffee while we shopped in their stores. Again, the people in this country are so welcoming and happy to have visitors from around the world.

We finished our shopping with what we thought was plenty of time to find a taxi and get back to the hostel for our tour. The problem is that taxis are very difficult to find in this city. Eventually, we called Sam, the driver who brought us, and asked him to pick us up in the same location. He said he would be there in 10 minutes, but South Africans seem to have a different sense of time than we do. We gave up on Sam after 20 minutes and started walking to a place that seemed busier and would have more taxis. We asked a security guard to help us, and he called his friend and said he would arrive soon. We waited almost 45 minutes, and this friend never showed. Eventually, Sam arrived after getting directions on the phone from the security guard. The tour group from the hostel had left without us, but one of the hostel employees said he would set us up with the same tour from a different company later in the day.