Day 26 - On the Road Again

This morning was super early as we packed our bags into the car somewhere around 5:45 AM and hit the road by 6 ish. It is freezing cold with frost all over the ground an our new bus driver, Robbie, was loading the bus with Owen. Robbie is kind of an interesting annoying fellow because he makes really snide comments sometimes which really makes being around him difficult. Here is a good example when Mark asked if we were ready to go and if everything was packed up:

"I guess I put all your stuff in the van ..."

You guess? Ok, so can you get out and check? No, of course not. Your entirely to lazy so you just sit there in the van with the heat blasting on you and make Mark go check. Cool dude, way to do your job.

So since our van is quite cold this morning as mentioned, at our gas fill up/restroom break, I ask Robbie if when he turns the van on if he could crank the heat up because it was cold. He said I was a typical American and mocked the way I asked him to turn the heat like 3 times. Ok buddy not off to a good start here, I am a typical person along with everyone else in this vehicle who is cold. No one else asks because they don't want to face the wrath of Robbie freak face up front. Grrr .... mean people stink.

He's now removed his coat because he is too hot.






Notice the winter coat up front? Aarrrgh! Sorry for venting, I just miss Owen ... as does everyone else. He was a cool dude, and Robbie knows that we all liked Owen a lot. It'll be cool though.

Anyhow, today we are off to a place called the big hole. It is supposed to be one of the biggest man made holes in the country which was strictly used for diamond mining. This should be interesting because there is a lot of talk about blood diamonds having come from this place which make me curious as to how people were impacted to make those decisions. Should be interesting.







This is a picture of the front of the mine tour entrance. It was pretty neat to walk around and see all the parts of what made this mine possible. They mined over 14,000 carats of diamonds from it's opening back in the 1860's. They ceased operation August 1914 because of World War I.

Look it up online, I am sure you could see a ton of information there :)


- With all my thanks :)

Location:Harrismith to Bethlehem