Greyhound, the apologetic bus.

image from:www.southafrica.to/.../Greyhound-bus.php5

Imagine yourself getting ready to go back home after a long time. All excited you pack your bags, bus ticket and get ready to go, just when you are about to leave the hotel, or BnB your phones beeps and its an sms from the bus customer service saying: “Greyhound regrets to inform you of an unfortunate accident on our CPT-Kimberly-JHB service. Coach is running behind schedule. We apologies for any convenience caused. Many thanks”. Adamant to go home, you stop for a second, take a deep breath and pray, they mean the bus will be an and hour late, hence you go to the bus station. You take a cab to the station with a smile on your face, then you arrive at the station and an intercom says you should report at the counter to check in. while you wait you receive a cup of coffee from the ever smiling waitress while you make new friends to entertain you along the 18 hour journey.


As you sip you hot coffee reminiscing on your is visit to Cape Town and the activities that you took part in, the intercom goes on again with a woman telling you that the bus has been delayed due to a traffic jam. That does not sound good at all; they tell you that your bus has been delayed by five hours. They give you a choice to rebook the bus for the next day or to wait. What do you do in that situation? Do you go back to the hotel after you checked out and spend more money? On the other hand, do you wait and hope for a miracle?

Well, I decided to wait and that was the longest five hours of my life. I sat at the Greyhound station from 12pm to 18:30 waiting for the bus to go to Johannesburg. Well me and a couple of other people who had faith in Greyhound. As we waited our phones kept on beeping with an sms from their customer service apologising for the inconvenience and adding more minutes to the five hours, from bus being delayed my five hours to five hours and forty minutes and on and on it went. After the long dreadful wait, the bus arrived at 18:00 and we finally departed at 18:45. The bus which was supposed to come at half 12 was late, and to make matters worse the six o’clock one was late. We didn’t care about that, all wanted to get the hell out of there, so the bust left and the passengers were complaining about how the bus inconvenienced their plans and wasted their money.

I mean sitting at the bus station for five hours requires you to eat hence more and more spending of money you had other plans for. To make matters worse they played some dumb noisy DVD, which I found rather upsetting. So I got on the bus and prayed that no one sits next to me. I covered my face with my jacket and slept until the next stop, where we found others waiting for a bus and they did not look happy at all. Along the way, the bus attendant kept apologising for the delay and blah blah, which triggered people’s emotions. Like wdf? The attended kept on waking me up and asked if I wanted coffee or tea, like really now, doesn’t the fact that I covered my face mean I don’t want to be disturbed?



When we finally arrived in Johannesburg Me and a few others swore to never, ever travel with Greyhound. Ok so Greyhound might be better than others in terms of luxury and blah blah, but a delay by five hours is inexcusable. Moreover, the excuse was there was an accident, ok at first I bought it, but then the people who got on the bus from Wooster told us that the attendant told them that the reason for the delay was that we had an accident. Like really, the real reason for the delay was due to their incompatibility. Anybody who has travelled with Greyhound would tell you that the service is apologetic. Even Road links also known as the killer bus is much better, better service and you arrive one time, dead or alive!