By 9.30am I was in town trying desperately to fill my time. I went into every shop possible, including furniture shops and electronic shops. I tried on a number of shoes that honestly I would probably never buy, but it was better than doing nothing. Marginally. After doing this for what seemed like a few hours I walked across town to the local restaurant to sit for the remainder of the day. Unfortunately “a few hours” of shopping was actually just over an hour. Damn. Five drinks, two meals and entire book later, when I only had 3hrs to get back to camp, I called the panel beater. He said something along the lines of “well, the load box is still off so you’ll stay tonight, you can stay at my sister’s place out of town. She must drive anyway so no need to worry about transport”. Admittedly it seemed a little dodgy. This was a guy I hadn’t met prior to that morning and I had never met his sister. I also didn’t know what “sister’s place” or “out of town” really meant. But it was either that, or walk back into town. The town option involved walking through dodgy areas and trying to find a hotel with an empty room which was likely to run upwards of $70AUD. Also, I had no car. No car means no way to get to dinner. So off I drove with the panel beater’s sister and her young boys who seemed enamoured with me, the weird talking foreigner (as they spoke Afrikaans). “Out of town” meant about 40km out which turned out to be an uncomfortable ride - no-one could speak much English, which I realised after a few failed attempts at conversation. Asking “so how long have you lived in this area” ended up with the lady looking absolutely horrified saying “No, no! This is industry we live away”. It appears that she thought that I was asking her if she lived close to where we were driving through - a dirty, almost abandoned looking industrial area. I tried once more at a conversation but gave up, thankful for my second book. What was more uncomfortable was that I was constantly stared at by her sons. They’d actually given up on staring at me from the back seat and were standing up only centimetres from my face. Not only creepy, it was also a worry - we were driving at about 100km/hr and most oncoming traffic was doing about 140km/hr. I later discovered that their father is a police officer – clearly the law doesn’t start at home here! It was fortunate that they couldn’t speak (or read) English because I fear that the content of my book – a forensic pathology book about rather brutal murders – was perhaps a little above their ages which I guessed at 7 and 9 respectively.