Village Advantage

Last week's main event was taking the Landy in for servicing. I had phoned Ryan at MountainTop Rovers and worked out a swap-he really wanted the ARB diff-air locks on our Landy, and chances are that we would never use them. Counted it as a gem tucked away for preserving the Landy. In exchange, he gives me the 2^nd hand price for them as service, which should last me for a couple years!

Left early Monday morning planning to spend the night as it was going to be a two day deal. At first I was thinking of asking Willem to drive with me down to bring me back, and then pick me up again the second day. However, the cost (and time) of driving down there twice would be as much as a night at a B&B.

Willem and Linda told me about a friend of theirs in Ladybrand that had a café, so after dropping off the Landy, and Ryan lending me the garage's Freeland, and thought to first check out the place two blocks away that supposedly had great cheesecake. Turns out, it belonged to the friends of Willem and Linda! It was a little pricier than what I was anticipating, but felt like I should stay there. On the second day, late in the afternoon, Nicol and I finally got to chat. On my way to get the Landy, which I was sure would be ready, they said I could stay a second night, no charge, if I needed to. Got to the garage at 6pm, and the diff swap was done, but not the rest of the servicing! So, I went back to LivingLife for night #2, and had another great breakfast in the morning.

My room at Living Life.  I didn't use the tub!

Garden/playground-next time we service the Landy, I'm bring the family,
we'll have lunch and Shiloh can play on the cool swing.

I getting to the title of this post now . . . this morning I was thinking about the differences between life here and in the US (someone at tennis yesterday asked me why we came back to South Africa, most whites don't understand). I thought if I had been in the US, I would have stayed at a cheaper hotel while on a similar type of errand, and they wouldn't have been understanding of my situation and I would have had to pay for a second night. Down at Rosa, most locals have an account. Micah can go down for free wifi, and have her mochacinno, and we don't have worry about having cash on hand. When business is done on a person-to-person basis, it seems like a better world.