Epic Spring Break Adventure Part 2

Sorry again for the delay. I am currently procrastinating writing my journal for service learning...but technically it is not due until Thursday morning at 9 am...so I have time right? Right. Anyways I left off the spring break adventure after we split from the AIFS group on Friday morning. We picked up our rental cars and hit the road. Our first stop was a small beach town called Kenton-on-Sea where we had lunch at a local pizza place overlooking the ocean. After lunch we drove to Port Alfred to catch Eli's (a fellow AIFS member) boat race. He is on the rowing team here at Stellenbosch for the semester and their big race was the same week as our Garden Route tour, so he missed that. However since the town the race was in was close to where we were, we stopped by and got to see his boat win that race! It was pretty cool especially since I have never seen a rowing competition before. After the race we talked with Eli for about 5 minutes and then got back on the road for the long drive up to Hogsback. We were following a road called R345 when all of a sudden, after a small town called Peddie, it turns into a dirt road going through a nature reserve. I'm not sure how we managed to stay on this road the whole time but we did, getting out occasionally to take obnoxious pictures and just look at the views all around us. We couldn't believe that we were just somewhere in the middle of the South Eastern part of South Africa. It was really amazing. With the help of our awesome navigator Brooke and our drivers, we got to our hostel in Hogsback called "Away with the Faries". Let me start by saying that Hogsback is a mountain range and we were nestled right up in the middle of it. Everything in the town of Hogsback has to do with magical things...for example the restaurant where we had dinner was called the enchanted cafe, and we were staying at away with the faries, and there was a magical treehouse on the property. Needless to say we had a great time at dinner and then spent some quality time with the fantastic people staying at this hostel. They placed all eight of us in the same dorm room and we proceeded to try and all sleep in one bunk. After we had gone to sleep the owner came in asking us if we wanted to come back and play more, but we all kind of just grumbled at him to go away. The next morning we went for a hike in the local mountains looking for a giant tree and a waterfall. As a sidenote: we have learned that every good hostel has a great dog. At this place, the dog, named Flo, joined us on our hike. She literally came with us for a good 4k hike to the waterfall and back and then joined us when a man who worked at Away with the Fairies saw us walking back and offered us a ride. Once back at the hostel we showered and packed up the cars to head to our next destination.

We drove to a place called Chintsa which is located on the Wild Coast (just a name for that part of the coast). Some friends recommended that we stay in a hostel called Buccaneers which was right on the Indian ocean and had beautiful views. Right when we got there we found a few guys who were our age and we went down to the beach to play soccer with them. One was South African but studied in London and he had brought three of his British friends to South Africa with him on holiday. We spent the afternoon playing soccer and playing in the warm Indian ocean. After we had a delicious dinner at the backpackers with some free wine and then we joined our friends at the hostel bar for the evening. We taught them how to play kings and they showed us some of their card games. The vibe at Buccaneers was very chill and so much fun. It was a very different atmosphere than Away with the Fairies, but that was the best part of the whole trip! Each night was very different from the previous night. We woke up the next morning and made the long drive to our destination of Bulungula. This place was SO COOL. We had heard about it through some friends and decided that we would have to spend a night there. Although I would not call it a hostel, it is still advertised as one. It is located on the coast, completely isolated from anything modern, in the middle of a Xhosa village. In order to get there we had to drive for hours along dirt roads through tons of smaller villages. We parked our cars in a special lot and then get picked up by a man from Bulungula in a 4x4 for another 45 minutes of crazy off-road driving down to the shore wherer the hostel was. We stayed in traditional Xhosa huts painted a bright teal color with thatched roofs and lit by candles. Bulungula was designed as an eco-tourism location where visitors not only experience what it is like to live in a Xhosa village but the entire place is completely sustainable and environment friendly (Josh you would have loved this place!). The toilets were compost toilets where you had to pour cups of dirt into them after using them (and there was one that had cool glow in the dark paint and was lit up by a blacklight at night...I really liked that one). Bulungula collects rainwater for drinking, washing, and bathing in these massive containers hidden behind the main house. The showers were the most interesting I have ever seen. They are called "rocket showers". What you do when you are ready to shower is take the small teapot from your shower and fill it up with paraffin from a giant container in the bathroom. You pour the paraffin into the small opening at the bottom of a giant metal pole that connects to the water spout. After adding the wax, you wrap some toilet paper around your hand and then stuff it in the hole with the wax, leaving a small amount sticking out. Next...you light the toilet paper on FIRE. You turn the hot water tap on all the way and as the fire shoots out of the small hole (hence, rocket) it heats your water, and you have a hot shower for about 7-8 minutes. I showered twice while I was there just so I could play with it. It was a really interesting experience! We had a traditional Xhosa meal at the hostel and went for a long walk along the isolated beach before the sunset. We then snuggled up in one of the rooms of the main house and played Cranuim with a local for a few hours before heading off to our huts to sleep. We woke up before 6 the next morning and I joined the Quinn and Jon to watch the sun rise over the ocean. We walked about ten minutes down the beach to where there was a HUGE sand dune, and we hiked up it and sat down just in time to see the sun starting to peek over the ocean. It was beautiful! The sun made its way up into the sky and as it did, we noticed that there were literally, hundreds, of dolphins in the water! They would wait for the waves and then jump through them as if they were surfing. We couldn't believe that there were so many dolphins; everything just seemed surreal at that point. We stayed for about an hour and then pushed each other down the dune and headed back to sleep for a few more hours. Once we woke up some of us went canoeing, some went to the local village for the day to follow the life of a Xhosa woman, and Amber and I were supposed to go fishing but it was too windy. So we spent the day reading and being lazy and enjoyign the gorgeous place we were in. Around 4pm we got back into the 4x4 and left Bulungula. We got into our cars for what would be our most epic drive through the back roads of South Africa EVER on our way to Coffee Bay. It was getting dark fast and we did not know the correct road to take because there was so much construction going on (all for the World Cup if you can believe it...even in the back roads!) so we relied on asking locals "Coffee Bay?" and then we would follow the road they pointed to. We came to a stop when we were supposed to cross a small dried up river bed with HUGE rocks in it...the bridge was no longer in existance apparently. We asked the people who were near it how to get to Coffee Bay and sure enough they pointed across the river and up this steep hill that curved to the right at the top. This was not an easy task in our tiny, manual, rental cars. So we got out, checked the rocks, and decided we had no choice but to press on so we got back in the cars, buckled up and went for us. Bridget (the blue car I was in) went first. She made it through the rocks with a few dents and scratches but then we gunned it up the hill, struggled a bit at the turn, but Jon is amazing and got us up to the top of the hill safely. Patrick (the green car) bottomed out on the rocks, but was able to make it through and came up behind us. We celebrated briefly that we made it through and continued on to Coffee Bay. Once we finally arrived at our hostel, called the Coffee Shack, we were ready for some dinner and drinks. We knew we would like this place because as we walked in the door they give you a free beer! Cool! Anwyays we split up into groups of 4 and settled into our accomodations. Since it was September 14th we decided to celebrate my birthday that night at midnight, so we all got a little dressed up and ready for some fun. We had a delicious dinner and got to meet tons of new people (this backpackers was much more of a college-aged tourist destination than Bulungula was; the contrasts between our places of stay were so cool! it really made our trip more interesting). I was just beginning my dinner when I see Kate, Jon and Heather all come up with vile looking birthday shots for me to take. Thanks guys. But anyways we spent the night hanging out and spending some quality time in a really cool hammock (that was basically a giant tarp hanging from the trees...so cool!). Once midnight rolled around they brought me into the bar and the barista pulled me behind the counter and sang happy birthday to me in Xhosa, then in English, and then people from the crowd sang it in German and then French! It was probably the coolest birthday ever. And I got a free bottle of house champagne that I split with my friends. They really made the night great and I couldn't have asked for better :)

The next morning was a bit of a struggle for me, but we had a long drive ahead of us so I planned on sleeping in the car. In the morning Quinn and I explored the beach area which was really rocky in comparison to the places we had been. On the drive we stopped at a placed called Hole-in-the-Wall which is a giant rock formation with a huge hole in it that the ocean shoots through. After this we drove straight through to the Drakensberg mountains which are in the north western part of the country, in Kwa-Zulu Natal. We got to our hostel around dinner time and proceeded to make our own family dinner of pasta, salad, and garlic bread because we had a full kitchen to ourselves. We spent the night relaxing, drinking birthday champagne, and playing scrabble. It was a nice ending to my 20th birthday and I even got to talk to my Mom! We headed to bed pretty early and got ready for the next day's adventure. We woke up around 9 and had breakfast before setting out with our guide Phillip en route to Lesotho. We piled into a 4x4 and made our way up the Sani Pass in the Drakensbergs. We stopped at border control and then again at the Lesotho border and I had my passport stamped a few more times. The pass was terrifying to drive up, but it had the most amazing views I had ever seen. The Drakensberg mountain range is enormous and there was even some snow at the top. The turns are treacherous and the drive was long, but Phillip got us there with no problem. We drove to a lodge in Lesotho where we would be picking up our horses. That's right...we went on a pony trek to a village in Lesotho where we would be spending the night. Now, if you know me, I am not a fan of horses. So I sucked it up and got on that horse for our 2 and a half hour trek through the mountains. Once we got to the village I was quite relieved, although during the trip Kimmy made me feel better because it was her first time on a horse and I'm pretty sure she just laughed the entire two hours. The moment we got off our horses at the village we saw a sheep get castrated. That was interesting, and graphic. We immediately realized that we were in a very different place than Stellenbosch and that this is what life is like here. We had a delicious dinner of pap and chicken and cabbage and gravy made in a traditional way and we ate by candlelight. After dinner we went to the local store and got some beers and sat talking with Phillip for a few hours before heading off to bed. We woke up the next morning and explore more of the village and played with the children who were very interested in us. In Lesotho the people often wear these thick woolen blankets fastened over them to keep them warm. Seeing these dark figures in the distance with their blankets blowing behind them gave me an eerie almost surreal feeling. It was like something you see out of a movie; it was almost haunting but without the negative connotation. These are the villages you read about in story and history books, but it was right in front of my eyes. After breakfast and tea we spent some time playing with the lambs (who were the cutest things I have ever seen) and then climbed back on our horses (with sore bums) and headed back to the lodge where our 4x4 was. We drove back to the Sani Pass, but along the way we stopped at the highest pub in all of Africa for a taste of the only Lesotho beer. We spent some time looking around and enjoying the view before making our descent down the Pass. Once we got back to our cars we piled in once again and drove to our final destination: Durban.

One the drive to Durban it was extremely foggy so we took our time. Unfortunately some other driver didn't and they hit and killed a cow...which we saw on the side of the road. Anyways we made it to Durban and after some confusion finally found our hostel for the night. We all showered off the tons of Lesotho dirt from the dust storm we experienced on the pony ride back to the base lodge, and headed out to dinner. We ended up in a place that was similar to sea world and found a restaurant that was still open at 9 pm. We had a delicious dinner and hung out for a little while back at the hostel (called the Happy Hippo) before falling asleep. The next day we spent exploring the city and the Indian market. Durban has a huge Indian population (and really good Indian food!) so we thought it would be best to check out the markets and local food places. We realized after the fact that we were probably in the sketchiest parts of town, but it was quite an experience and everyone made it out alive and well. We got some bunny chow as a late lunch (a traditional Durban-Indian dish of curry in a bread bowl) and then made our way back to our last hostel which was right near Florida street, the popular going out spot in Durban. We settled in and got dressed for the night. One of my friends from Saint Mike's is studying in Durban for the semester so we had arranged plans to meet up on Florida street for a drink or two. Our whole group went out and I found Morgan (which was so strange but so awesome: to see someone you recognize from home in the middle of a foreign country is a very interesting experience!). I spent a few hours with Morgan and her friends while everyone else got dinner and had their own taxi fail experience (I still don't know what happened there guys). But anyways I met up with Heather, Kimmy, and Quinn later on and left Morgan. We spent the night exploring Florida street and dancing before finally coming home exhausted at about 4 am. We slept in a bit the next morning before packing up to leave. We went down to the beach and had breakfast at a restaruant that is literally in the sand. We played in the water and reminisced about our trip that was sadly coming to an end. It was a beautiful day and the last thing we wanted was to get on that plane to come back to Stellenbosch. After breakfast we got the rental cars washed (which did not help make them look any less beat up unfortunately...) and filled up the tanks before heading to the airport. We boarded our bright orange Mango plane and endured the two hour flight back to Cape Town. Being back in the Bosch was sad after such an amazing two weeks, but it was nice to be able to get back into a routine as well. That was the conclusion of our amazing vacation! I will update again soon with more adventures :)

Totsiens,
Megan