Day 12 part 1 - The Accidental Bribe

We left Swaziland early the next morning in a thick fog. It didn't help that we were going to have to go up over the mountains to get to the North Eastern part of South Africa. In some places the fog was so thick, we couldn't even see a foot in front of the car, so it was pretty slow going at first.
Once we came out of the fog and neared the border, we were ready to make up some time. We started picking up speed on the South African side of the border, when all of a sudden we noticed blue lights in the rear view mirror. Oh, no! Not again. This time it was a police woman. She nicely explained that we were speeding and with a smile on her face said she was going to have to give us a ticket. We tried to talk our way out of it, but it was obvious that that wasn't going to work this time. She told us that we would have to take the ticket to the police station in the tiny town we were in and pay the fine there. But we were on a time schedule and already behind, so we asked if we could just pay it in Johannesburg. The police woman told us that it had to be paid there in the town where the ticket was written, and either we could take it up there or she could take it for us. At this point all of us realized, from previous stories about the corruption with law enforcement in this country, that this police woman was asking for a bribe - All of us except Mom, that is. So without knowing it, Mom asked the cop if we could just pay her (a clear bribe). The police woman of course obliged and made up some story about how she will write 2 copies of the ticket and staple the money to the copy she will take to the police station, and she will keep the other copy. It was all a lie of course, because she never gave us a copy! But Mom didn't see it that way at the time. She had just taken over the negotiation to help us get back on the road faster. Once we were back on the road, we explained to her what she had just done and she was horrified. She had just been saying earlier how terrible it was that people gave bribes to policemen and here she was doing it herself! It was actually quite a hilarious situation and we laughed about it for a while on the way to our first stop on the Panorama Route.