To fly or not to fly…

I travel a lot. Once a month at least. And lately it’s been out of the province: Pemba Island, Zanzibar, Eastern Cape, Free State, Lesotho. And it’s doing my conscience in.

For the last two trips, in the Eastern Cape, I chose the Baz Bus instead of that great big carbon-emitting bird in the sky or my own private vroom-vroom. It takes longer, sure, and you have to share your cabin with other sweaty, pushy travellers, and you can’t stop where you want to stop. Yes, there are the downsides.

But, besides saving on petrol and ugly emissions, I found those ‘downsides’ to be perks on an otherwise ordinary trip. With my free hands I could enjoy the journey, chatting to foreigners (and putting my sunglasses on when I’d had enough), seeing the crashing waves and other sites on the coast that I wouldn’t from a plane.

According to Planetgreen.discovery.com, (http://planetgreen.discovery.com/food-health/flight-vegetarian-year.html) skipping one cross-country flight = going vegetarian for a year, regards CO2 Emissions. Well, I’ve been off read meat for seven years and fish and chicken for about two, so I guess I can feel a little less guilt getting on a plane to my next destination: Port Elizabeth.