Starting Off
We arrived in Johannesburg at about 7:00 in the morning. Well, four of us, anyway. Heidi, Brad, Curtis, and I had flown together from Atlanta; Kendall and Emily had arrived somewhat earlier and were so kind as to meet us at the gate. Very much under the influence of the standard battery of Johannesburg horror stories, and determined to get out of the city before falling victim to the violent crime we were convinced awaited us at every corner, we hurriedly changed some money and hired a shuttle to the train station (for which, by the way, we paid entirely too much).

As a group, we were nothing if not diverse.

Heidi was a nursing student, and, hence would bear the unenviable responsibility of dealing with our varied and sundry medical misfortune for the next several weeks.

Brad, meanwhile, was an international law and diplomacy major from Louisiana, who, therefore, had the equally unenviable lot of tolerating several weeks worth of our atrocious attempts at speaking in a Southern accent.

Curtis was my oldest friend from my time in Portugal, a brainy and likeable, though somewhat eccentric fellow with an incongruous background in drama and major in Psychology.

Emily had just graduated with a degree in American Studies and was her class valedictorian, but, hailing from Idaho, was nevertheless doomed to endure countless potato jokes in addition to those otherwise incident to our already puerile and inane sense of humor.

Kendall was another of my friends from Portugal, a veritable genius in spite of his love for mathematics. Our commonalities consisted primarily of our desire to visit Mozambique and our all having lived in Portugal or Brazil for year or two.

At the train station we were met with the gloomy realization that we had not come at all prepared for the rigors of Joburg’s climate. The temperature, which had been chilly in the parking lot, was absolutely frigid within the station’s cavernous interior. That the station was neither heated nor closed to the outside elements served only to exacerbate our discomfort and drooping spirits as we contemplated the seven hour wait we were to endure before our train’s departure. Worse still, there were no restaurants to be found unless you interpreted the term very loosely, defied the gastrointestinal powers that be, and ate at the Wimpy or Chicken Licken.

I declined to do either, opting instead to trust my nutritional well-being to my ample cache of granola bars. Some of my less prudent colleagues (whose names shall remain undisclosed), succumbed to what I considered very dubious temptation indeed, and were to curse Chicken Licken’s aptly named Power Sauce ever after.

We eventually settled in one of the vestibule’s less populated corners and set about occupying our idle time complaining and desperately trying freezing to death. None of us had warm clothes immediately accessible, which meant having to improvise as best we could and ending up huddled together in a miserable lump, teeth chattering, and feeling every bit as stupid as we looked. Our only reason to smile for the next several hours was a rotund little girl who wandered away from her mother to laugh her head off at me. I couldn’t blame her; I was dressed in shorts, a T-shirt, and sandals, and, as I thought how embarrassing it would be to die of hypothermia in South Africa, thought myself just as ridiculous as she did.

I believe I can say with some degree of security that by the time our train started boarding we were among the six grumpiest people in Africa, if not the southern hemisphere. We all felt better, though, as we boarded the train, found our compartment and left the train station far, far behind.

After the interminable and cramped hours on the airplane and our far-from-pleasant wait at the station, the train represented the very essence of comfort and relaxation. Our second class compartment had a bunk for each of us, and, though quite a test of our meager talent for spacial relationships, we managed to find room for all of our luggage, too. All of us were at some stage or other of utter exhaustion, so after Curtis and I had satisfied our curiosity about the rest of the train and taken pictures of each other hanging out the windows, we called it a day. Most everyone, under the combined effects of fatigue and the car’s gentle rocking, was fast asleep.

I was the one exception; my feet were against the outer car’s outer wall, and therefore uncomfortably chilly, although my excitement was such that I’m not at all certain I’d have been able to sleep anyway. Instead, I spent most of the evening admiring the spectacular, moonlit scenery as we sped on to Komattipoort.