On driving and running out of gas in the middle of the night in a strange continent:

So driving is a past time of Matt's in the states, Matt loves to go and have a nice trip into the country and enjoy God's creation. Here it is a little different. As we said before, we practiced the Saturday we went for a hike and did ok for our first times. Matt drove in the hills and in Franschhoek and Leslie drove in Stellenbosch. We took our time and just got the feel of it with no particular place to go.
Then came Monday. We were told that we had to go to Stellenbosch by ourselves, in traffic and be there early in the morning. We were flung on the unsuspecting victims of the South African roadways. Luckily there were no casualties but one woman did lose a hand bag and we gained a hood ornament. Just kidding, but we have had some very interesting experiences in the cars here.
We ran out of gas two nights ago going up hill at 11:40 PM on our way home before curfew at midnight! We tried to turn around and start to coast back down the hill but didn't make it and had to stop in the middle of the down hill lane before we hit a ditch. Quickly we jumped out of the car to try and push it away from the ditch but because of the way the turn was banked, we couldn't make it budge.
Cars were zooming by us and we were blocking a lane of oncoming traffic. We had to act fast. So Matthew, using his super human strength lifted the back of the van and set it down facing the way we had come. Or we just kind of turned a little more and missed the ditch. Either way, we started back down the hill.
It was about 5 miles of coasting, 10 minutes of prayer and more then a couple of deep sighs before we reached a gas station within our coasting distance. It was a close call but not as close as the one we had today.

But it is late here and we want to keep you reading our blog so we will save that for another update.

Goodbye for today and God bless,


Matt and Leslie