Ay ay ay! It’s
been too long since I’ve posted!
Just so you know though, it wasn’t because I haven’t wanted to! I haven’t had my laptop with me for the
last week because I was traveling along the Garden Route with my friends and
every time I sit down to write I realize I have about 599 things to say (which
is why this post is so long). But
have no fear- you’re in for an exciting and long (shocker) post!!!
Before I begin my epic tale, I think I should state that I
actually am a student here. Classes don’t start until Monday (Feb 11)
so it has basically been a 3-week vacation thus far. I’m not complaining about that at all. But don’t worry. I’ll be in a classroom soon.
Well, I guess the best place to start is at the very
beginning, so here we go! This
adventure began last Saturday morning.
I got up at 6 am because I’d failed to pack the day before. Our plan (“our” refers to Ali, Hannah,
Jesse, and I) was to meet at 8 and take a cab to the airport where we’d be
picking up our rental car. Our
first stop was Swellendam, about two and a half hours away. Here we were going to Up the Creek, a
music festival IN A CREEK. I shall
repeat that for dramatic emphasis – a music festival IN A CREEK (explanation to
come later).
We met to leave and I realized that I’d forgotten to print
out the tickets for our first destination (oops). Luckily, we found out the pharmacy prints things so we got
that sorted out quickly. It could
have gotten pretty awkward if we had driven there with no tickets to get in
with. Anyhoo, after gathering our
2357207 belongings, we got into the cab on our way to the airport. It would have been a lackluster cab ride
if Hannah hadn’t gotten a bloody nose on the way, so thank goodness for that
little bit of morning excitement!
Regardless, we arrived to our handy dandy white Nissan at Europcar
looking like fools (see picture below)
but so excited to get this show on the road
(literally). The combination of
luggage, food, beachie things (towels, bathing suits, floaties), and classy
drinks in hand (aka boxed mojitos and wine) really made us look like a
promising bunch.
Looking (and feeling) like a million bucks, we packed into
the car that we quite literally would be living out of for the next week and
headed out. I was the first one to
drive (not too surprising) and was both excited and a little nervous to drive
on the other side of the road. It
took about an hour to get used to, but I’d say it went pretty smoothly! It was strange getting used to the road
rules here. Cars tend to make
their own lane on the shoulder and will drive there for miles (aka kilometers)
to let cars behind them pass.
Passing is expected – If you think you’re going to go the whole way in
front and behind the same cars, you are wrong. Also, there’s a wide range of speeds. I like to think of it as “create your
own speed” (thinking that I should not have been using) because on the freeway
one car will be going about 50 km/hr while the one behind it is going 135
km/hr. In this particular situation
it’s also very fishy because most likely there hasn’t been a speed sign for
about 15 minutes so you actually have no idea what speed you should be going
and the flow of traffic is basically create your own.
I’m not gonna lie – I was pretty proud of my driving
abilities. Agathe knows how much I
love a driving challenge. Well Ag,
THIS WAS THE ULTIMATE DRIVING CHALLENGE AND YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN SO PROUD TO BE
MY PASSENGER (I hope you read this Ag).
By the time we got to our destination, I had learned the ins and outs of
how to pass cars on one-lane highways and how to let others pass me. My biggest pride and joy though was
picking up on the fact that when a car passes you, it’s common courtesy to
flash your emergency lights as a “thank you” - and then actually doing it and thinking I was born to conquer South
African roads. Okay, a little
cocky, I know. But I just felt SO
COOL navigating South Africa via rental car. It’s the little things in life, right?
Enough of me getting excited about driving. Back to the story. So after about two hours of driving on
the highway, our random/questionable directions told us to turn onto a dirt
road in the middle of nowhere. You’re
probably thinking, “why were the directions so questionable? Any sane person would just plug in the
address to a GPS and it would know what to do!” Well this logic is false. Apparently, addresses here are not a thing. So for about 70% of our destinations
there was no address to plug into the GPS! This seemed really annoying and strange at first, but then
we realized that we were actually in the middle of nowhere. Why would anyone even have an address
there? We learned to go by
longitude and latitude coordinates though, so it all worked out.
So after we had turned onto this long, virtually nameless
dirt road in the middle of a desertish looking area where we were driving all
by ourselves, a car came behind us extremely
quickly and naturally passed me.
The speed on that road (yes, there was a speed sign at the beginning)
was 80 km/hr, but I was going 60 and that still
seemed excessive seeing as how we were bouncing around everywhere on this
incredibly bumpy road. So this car
coming around us really fast was a tad bit alarming, but it was whatever. It passed me and we continued on.
Within about 5 minutes of this, we turned a curve only to
see this car that had sped past us about 5 minutes before completely overturned
on the side of the road. The front
windshield was shattered in one piece a few yards from the car, a woman was
lying on the side of the road about 5 yards from the car, and her friend
(sister?) was frantically pacing next to her.
As the first ones to the scene, we were all pretty
stunned. It took a minute to
register that this was legitimately a life or death situation. Once we realized the severity of what
was going on, it also took a minute to figure out what to do. I mean, here we are in the middle of
South Africa on a deserted dirt road knowing no one and coming across a woman
who is screaming in pain on the ground.
It was against everything my dad has ever told me (aka getting out of
the car in the middle of the road where we were all alone, talking to
strangers, being in an overall vulnerable situation), but it was necessary for
us to get out of the car so we could help. Jesse called the equivalent of 911 and somehow they got an
idea as to where we were. (From
this point on in the trip, I made mental notes along our drive so that if there
was some type of emergency I knew how I could describe it. Things are difficult when you can’t
just throw out an address or landmark and you’re the only one on the
road!). The injured woman was
still breathing and shortly more cars arrived and started helping shade her and
calm her down until help came. Her
arm was clearly dislocated so everyone knew not to move her in case there were
potential spinal injuries.
Meanwhile her sister/friend was being absolutely no help and was
searching for her purse in the upside down car so she could “get her license”
(unnecessary seeing as how you have no car to drive) but really so she could
get her cigarettes. Not an ideal
situation.
It was a pretty traumatic situation, but it all worked out
okay. Once medical attention
arrived (in the form of what looked like a river rafting safety guard), we
decided to head out. There wasn’t
much we could do at that point and we knew she was in good hands. We weren’t sure if they’d need to talk
to the first witnesses, but we weren’t getting the vibes that that would be
necessary. Also there were very
clear tire marks from where the car had slid off the road and if they looked
into that (I sort of doubt they did), the tire marks in the dirt basically told
the whole story.
After this unexpected delay, we were reluctant and a little
bit shaken, but well on our way again.
It took us another 30 minutes or so, but we finally arrived at Up the
Creek. Just to paint the picture
for you, we’d been driving in this HOT, dry, unexciting area for miles, had
just witnessed a terrible car accident, and were quite thrown off guard by the
lack of directions we were given to get to the festival. Oh yeah, and there was absolutely no
water in sight. We were going to a
festival at a creek! How could
there be no water? A little bit
disheveled and confused, we stumbled upon a gemstone. In the middle of nowhere, we were suddenly surrounded by
hundreds of cars and tents. We
pulled up to two tents where we were enthusiastically welcomed, given the show
lineup, and our lovely hot pink wristbands proving that we were, in fact, at Up
the Creek. We got out of the car
and met up with a friend who showed us the campsite where other CIEE students
had already set up their tents.
Things got even more unreal when we actually saw the
creek.
The stage was
literally IN THE CREEK and hundreds of
people were laying on rafts, drinking, enjoying the sun, hanging out with
friends, and enjoying the music.
IT WAS LITERALLY THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD.
It also was just such an ordeal to get
there and was so unexpected that the amazingness of this concert was amplified
to even higher levels.
I must say
that floating on our rafts with our classy boxed mojitos in hand, while
listening to live South African bands was quite possibly the greatest thing
ever.
It’s one of those things
that sounds great when you describe it and looks awesome in pictures, but
you’ll never quite understand until you go.
I recommend that all of you come to South Africa if only to
go to Up the Creek.
Here's a video so you can get an idea of what this festival is. It's pretty ridiculous, but was such a great time. (Side note: if there is bad language in this video, I apologize. I watched it without sound.)
We basically spent the day in the creek, but eventually we
moved back to our campsite and changed into warm, dry clothes. At night, the venue changed to a stage
on solid ground and had a little different vibe. While the day was chill and quite literally “fun in the
sun,” the night was cozy and relaxing with a lot of dujja going around (dujja
meaning weed). Since I don’t smoke (it’s more illegal
in South Africa than it is back home) and my friends here don’t either, it was
mostly just fun to enjoy the music, the relaxed vibe, and the overall
environment.
One of the musicians we heard was named Jeremy Loops. I’m not too sure how to describe what
he does, but I’ll try. Basically
he’s a one-man band. He starts by
playing some tune on his harmonica and presses a pedal with his foot that
repeats that tune. He layers on
different instruments and different tunes until he has literally created his
own song. It was really cool to
watch and we all really liked his music!
Seeing as how we had no cds in the car (my bad) and the radio was mostly
static, Jesse decided to buy one of Jeremy Loops’ cds. Only after he got it did we find out
that it was 5 songs long, but we were still excited to have something to listen
to. Loops stuck around with us
throughout the rest of our Garden Route trip and I’m guessing we listened to
that cd 30+ times. It was good
about the first 5 times, then it was kind of a joke, kind of a savior from the
static radio. I think we secretly
became Jeremy Loops’ biggest fans this trip – we found out he’s playing in
Kirstenbosch Gardens (near Cape Town) and we have big plans to go to his
concert at the beginning of March.
So after listening to quite a few different bands, we
decided we were getting tired so it was time to go to sleep. We had rented 2 two-man tents and a
sleeping bag through a travel company out here (the company that was working
with all the CIEE students). When
we had gotten there earlier, the guy who was in charge of setting things up
said he’d set up our tent later in the day. So we just went on with the day hoping that we’d have
somewhere to sleep by night. Once
we decided to go back for the night, we could only find 1 two-man tent at our
site that was open. We didn’t
really know what to do seeing as how there were 4 of us, but I decided I wasn’t
into trying to fit 4 people into a 2-man tent. So I said I’d sleep right outside the tent on a raft, while
the other 3 struggled to fit into that tent. They sort of got settled (with three pairs of feet sticking
out the front of the tent) and I tried to fall asleep using my towel as a
blanket. This whole sleeping under
the stars thing wasn’t as nice as it had always sounded seeing as how we were
exhausted, bands were still playing (and continued literally until sunlight),
and people were coming in and out of the campsite yelling and acting like it
was 2 in the afternoon. After
awhile, one of the guys that had been hired by the travel company (he is a
friend of the owners and they basically gave him and another guy free tickets
to the festival if they’d go set up tents for everyone and do the work) was on
the site so I went up to him asking if there were any more tents. He pointed to one and said he had set
up 2 for us. I looked inside and
it had a backpack, but nothing else.
So I claimed that territory asap and Jesse came over to my tent so we could
potentially try to get some sleep through all the blaring music and noisy
campers. I successfully fit my
raft into the tent to sleep on and continued to use my towel as a blanket. I’d say it worked somewhat
decently. The night would not have
been complete if I didn’t get sick (undecided if it was from using the
portapotty water from the sink to brush my teeth or from something I ate) and
have to crawl over Jesse and get out of the zipper maze two different
times. It’s been over a week and
I’m still not 100%, but oh well.
After the ordeal of my sickness somewhat passing (aka I was writhing in
nausea in the tent, but just wanting to sleep), we heard a knock on the tent
and someone asking if there were people in his
tent. Uh oh…. After an awkward encounter of us
realizing that was his backpack in the tent and him trying to fit in the tent,
but all of us not fitting, he left to find somewhere else to sleep. He was not happy at all. (Also
this wasn’t some random person. It
was another guy on this abroad program who we know.) As we heard him complaining to his friend in the tent next
to us later (his friend had a tent to himself so it’s not like he needed a tent
to himself too, right?). I really
did feel bad about us tent-jacking, but in all honesty, I had to sleep
somewhere!! And I told him I would
move anywhere if there was somewhere else. I guess it just made more sense for him to share a tent with
his
best friend than it me to share a tent with his best friend. Crisis averted, but he was not happy.
I potentially dozed off for about 3 hours. Unclear. We had no sense of time, all I know is the music was playing
until sunrise. Probably around 3am
it started raining (luckily we had a cover over our tent) so it was getting
pretty chilly. When we officially
got up the next morning, it was still raining and we realized we really had to
get on the road to make it to our next stop in Oudtshoorn. Jesse went over to Hannah and Ali’s
tent only to realize they weren’t there.
Unclear of where they were, we started getting our things ready and
packed so we could leave. The tent
they had been in was almost 100% collapsed and soaking wet, but we had no idea
where else they could have gone.
Within about 10 minutes, Ali was peeking her head out of a big tent
where one of the guys who was in charge had been staying. The guys are our age (just locals) so
it wasn’t totally random and strange.
Apparently, in the middle of the night Ali and Hannah had gotten so cold
and wet (they didn’t have a cover from the rain), that they went to him and he
said they could sleep in there. It
was hilarious seeing themselves all peek their head out from this tent though. Mostly because the sleeping
arrangements were overall such a joke that we were delirious and laughing at
the ridiculousness of the night.
It was one of those things that you could either get really upset about
or just laugh until it hurt. We
chose the second option.
We gathered up our belongings, got some breakfast (while
listening to more live music) and headed out. It was time to get to our next destination in Oudtshoorn
where we were hoping to ride ostriches and go on a tour of the Cango
Caves. It was a 3-hour drive and I
was driving in the pouring rain.
Not ideal. After the GPS
tried to take us the wrong way, we were able to find our way and make it to
Outdshoorn in one piece. Ali drove
the second half of the way and we arrived at the ostrich farm (after Jesse had
secretly tried to get us killed by taking us to some privately owned ostrich
farm instead of a real tourist location).
Unfortunately, because of the rain we couldn’t ride or feed the
ostriches L It was sad. We decided that since we couldn’t feed or ride the
ostriches, we’d have to go somewhere for dinner that served ostrich. Anything to touch an ostrich.
We got lunch at some random place that had camel
rides (which we didn’t do because of the rain) then left for our cave tour at
3:30. The cave tour was at the
Cango Caves up in the hills. Of
all 15 people in our tour group, we ran into 4 friends from CIEE, which was
both unexpected and fun. We signed
up for the “adventure tour” aka the fit into small crevices and crawl through
awkwardly shaped openings tour. I
was a tad bit concerned I’d get claustrophobic, but I was totally fine and it
was a lot of fun!!
I should also mention that I spent the first 3 days of this
trip thinking that I’d lost my camera so I was relying heavily on Ali and
Jesse. Luckily it was right were I
had put it – inside a sock in my bag.
I kept hiding things so nothing would get stolen, but I hid them so well
that I couldn’t find them when I wanted them! It was an ongoing problem throughout the trip.
After our cave tour, we stayed in a nice hostel that night
called Backpacker’s Paradise and got a room to ourselves, woohoo!! We had a SUPER YUMMY dinner at a
restaurant on the main road (can’t remember the name, but it started with a “k”
and was really swanky). The caviar
pancakes were recommended so we tried those. I guess if you’re into crepes with salty eggs that pop in
your mouth when you eat them then this dish is for you. Apparently I don’t think I’m into that
though. We also really enjoyed our
ostrich-kabobs. A must the next
time you’re in Outdshoorn for dinner.
9pm seemed like it was 2 in the morning so we quickly made our way to
bed. We were getting up at 6am for
the next day’s adventure anyway!
Ok. At this
point in my story, I realize that you all probably are getting tired of reading
so much and the other 50% of people reading this have given up and resorted to
wasting time on Facebook. So for
the strong who are powering through this tale, I hope it’s somewhat
enjoyable. To everyone else who
read the first paragraph then called it a day, you’re probably not reading this
anyway. I’ve had to write this
post in many different sections because it is SO LONG. I feel like quite the novelist right
now. (Deep breath). Alrighty, back to the story.
So we got up bright and early the next morning because we
had 11am appointments at the highest
bungee jump in the world. When
I say we, I mean everyone else besides me. You’re probably thinking “wow, Colette. You’re so lame. How could you
go with them and not jump? Do you
regret it? Didn’t you miss out?
YOLO! Wimp” or something to that
extent. Well to be honest,
nope. I don’t regret it at all. I don’t like free-falling. It’s just not my thing. And I’m not really an adrenaline
seeker. So I was totally fine
taking pictures, watching (they have a tv set up to watch it live up close),
and taking selfies (see picture below).
After they’d all succeeded, I thought it was only fair if I
got my own adrenaline rush. I figured the best way to do this would
be to go 93 km/hr instead of 80 km/hr and get pulled over to get a speeding
ticket!
I think everyone else felt really left out in my fun. Also, my first ticket ever – in South
Africa! What could be better? Now I really feel like a local! There is no better way to immerse
yourself in a country than to get in trouble by law enforcement. Thank goodness I accepted this
challenge! In all honesty though,
it was a pretty funny incident.
I’m not making an excuse here – just an explanation. In general, the speed is really
inconsistent. At home you usually
can guess the speed based on where you’re driving. Aka a freeway vs. neighborhood vs. street with
stoplights. That consistency isn’t
a thing here. One minute the speed
would be 120 km/hr and the next it’d be 80 km/hr on the same road for no
apparent reason (that I could figure out). I wasn’t using the whole create your own speed mentality at
this point either, so it really was just unfortunate timing. I really was trying to watch the speed,
but I guess I wasn’t watching close enough. Well, I will now suffer the consequences aka a R200 fee,
which is about the same as $27.
Lesson learned – go the speed limit. Once again, I could have laughed or cried. I prefer laughing so that became the
joke of the trip. They still let
me continue driving seemingly without hesitation. Maybe they just wanted to laugh when I got another? Who knows.
After my own personal adrenaline rush that wasn’t a jump off
of Bloukran’s Bridge, we arrived in Plettenberg Bay where we went to The Table
to get some awesome pizza. Plett bay is beautiful! It reminds me a lot of Laguna
Beach. There are lots of cute
shops by the water and there is a fun, lively and energetic vibe. We shopped around for a bit, then made
it to our next stop – Plettenberg Game Reserve. Once again, we got lost and ended up in the middle of a
residential community very confused as to where we’d be seeing live animals
here. Somehow we found the
reserve. It was yet again in the
middle of nowhere. Another
reminder as to why addresses are a lost cause for these places. After driving down another dirty, bumpy
road, we came across a gate. We
went in only to be driving alongside a whole zoo of animals! But not a zoo. They were actually living on the grass
we were driving next to – zebras, springbok, ostriches, etc. No fences between our car and theirs
and they were only yards away.
Very surreal. We were
following signs that said “reception” and alas! We found this mysterious reception in the middle of nowhere. Here we hopped into an Indiana Jones
style vehicle (with no seatbelts because it’s more fun with more risk) to begin
this real life Disneyland ride in a real life zoo with no cages. Safety first!
It was really neat.
We saw tons of zebras, springbok, bontebok, buffalo, and ostriches. We also saw giraffes, lions, hippos,
rhinos, and alligators. We had a
guide that told us all about them as we went. They also gave us some super warm blankets that we could
snuggle with during the ride because it got a bit windy. My favorite parts were seeing the lions
up close and seeing the baby zebras!
The youngest zebra we saw was 2 weeks old. As Ali said, we’d been in Africa longer than it had been in
the world! I was into it. Also decided that if I ever live in
zebra friendly territory, I will buy a pet zebra.
By the time our tour had ended, we were ready for dinner. Hannah was the travel guide aka she’d
read us all the recommended restaurants in our travel books and we’d go from
there. We decided on a place
called The Lookout, which had seafood and was on the water. It was a really good choice! We got some tasty pina coladas and
shrimp as we sat on the beach deck overlooking the water.
Unfortunately, by the time we were done, it was dark and we
still had to find our hostel for the night. It was about a 30 minute drive down a one-lane highway with
no lights. Then we turned off onto
another dirt road in the middle of
nowhere again. Ugh. Why. It was actually pretty scary. We kept the doors locked (duh), but it was a little
unnerving having to figure out where we were going in pitch dark. Our goal the whole trip had been not to
drive at night and we thought that it would have been better to eat then drive
back because had we gone to the hostel first, we would have been driving to and from dinner in the dark. There wasn’t much we could do about it
so we went with it.
Somehow, we found our destination – The Wild Spirit Hostel. As you can probably infer from this
name, it was the coolest hippie location known to man. I’ll include some pictures below so you
can get an idea, but basically we were in heaven and didn’t want to leave. We hung out by the fire with some other
CIEE friends and also made friends with some South Africans and British
people.
The next morning we decided to get some casual exercise
in. And by casual exercise, I mean
we walked a cheetah. On a leash. It would have been boring if we didn’t
get lost again, so we thought we’d check out someone’s residential farm on the
way. Good thing we locked our
doors too because we had an awkward run in with someone who tried to get into
our car? It was strange. But it was okay (clearly we’re still
alive and thriving) because, as I said, the doors were locked and I was driving
so I just drove away really quickly.
Back to the cheetah walk.
It was hilarious and super cool! The best part was basically that we were getting walked by the cheetahs. If the cheetah wanted to run, we had to let go of the
leash. It is probably the only
time in my life I’ll hear anyone say “Cheetah coming through!” in complete seriousness. Our cheetah was named Duma and the
other cheetah being walked was named Zeus. Duma is about 6 years old and so cute! I’d say we had a pretty successful
morning.
After our morning stroll, we headed back to Wild Spirit
where we had a nice breakfast and then went on a short little hike to a
creek/waterfall. The water was
freezing, but it was beautiful!
Here’s a picture of Hannah the mermaid enjoying the waterfall.
As much as we wanted to stay in Nature’s Valley where our
lovely hostel was, we decided to press on to Jeffrey’s Bay. This little beachie town reminds me a
lot of a much smaller Huntington Beach.
There were tons of surf shops of brands we have at home (RVCA,
Billabong, Roxy, Ripcurl, etc.), which was pretty cool. One of the stores had a great sale –
virtually buy 1 of anything and get another free. I stupidly only brought 1 bathing suit here so this seemed
like a good opportunity to get a bathing suit and free pair (R1) of shorts.
We spent the rest of the day relaxing/napping on the beach,
which was really nice. Our hostel
was really neat. It was right on
the water! Also, it was a fun
place to be because a tour group of about 40 CIEE students just so happened to
be staying there that night. After
dinner, we all ended up buying drinks and hanging out/being ridiculous. It was a fun night! Also was nice to just hang out because we'd been so busy!
We were really excited to sleep in the next morning since
we’d been on the go since Saturday.
After a relaxing morning and a super tasty breakfast in town, we headed
out to a creek/waterfall/zipline. I’d say this was my favorite part of this whole trip. Although it was super simple, it was
unexpected and incredibly fun and relaxing. We weren’t here for too long, but long enough to enjoy
ourselves for sure.
Once again, it was time to pack up and head to our next and
final destination in Knysna. We
had talked about going to an elephant park the whole trip, but weren’t sure if
it would fit into our schedule. We
figured we’d head over there once we got to Knysna for the off chance that they
would have a tour open for 4 of us.
Luck was on our side and we got in right in time to join the 4pm
elephant tour.
We were able to feed, touch, and walk with the
elephants. It was very up close and personal. Last time I was here, I rode an elephant
with my family, but this experience was a lot different from the last. It was really nice just being able to
tag along with the elephants instead of them taking us on an actual tour.
They are the sweetest animals!
Marley, I thought about you the whole time.
Our trip was quickly coming to an end. We headed down to the water for a nice
dinner. I thought it seemed like a
good place to try an oyster, but I was wrong. Mostly because I learned that no place is a good place to
try an oyster seeing as how I apparently really don’t like oysters. At least I can say I tried it. The fact that people actually enjoy
eating those baffles me.
We stayed in another Island Vibe where, once again, our
favorite guys were also staying.
(This was the 3rd time we had ran into them without planning
during our trip). It was really
sad that this was our last night!
The trip had been too fun and there were still so many things we wanted
to do. Also none of us were really
prepared for classes to be starting on Monday. This whole “fake life” where you can hang out all day and
travel and do what you want when you want is wayyyy too much fun.
Before the long drive home the next morning, we had a great
breakfast at Mon Petit Pain and shopped around at some really cute stores. I got SO MUCH pinspiration (for those
of you who don’t know what that is, I’m referring to Pinterest which is a
website where you can post really pretty pictures) for my future home. It’s never too early to start designing
where you want to live right? We
also wanted to go to the beach one last time before heading back, but got
semi-lost trying to find it.
Somehow, we managed to find our own private beach and enjoy the relaxing
morning.
We had one final stop before our long trek back to Cape Town
– we were stopping to see Neels and Ronell in George! Our GPS pulled through (thankfully because if not we would
have been frighteningly lost) and we arrived at their home on the golf course
in Fancourt. It was great spending
some time with them and they are so welcoming and thoughtful! I’m sure I’ll be seeing them again
before this semester is over.
Ronell has kindly introduced me to a neighbor of hers who goes to UCT,
so I’m really looking forward to getting to know her, too! PS: Gigi and Papa if you’re reading
this, Neels and Ronell really miss you and want you to come stay with them!
After a lovely afternoon and some tasty Rooibos tea, we
headed back to Cape Town. About 6
hours later, we arrived at the rental car drop off with 45 minutes to
spare. We managed to do a TON,
stay safe, not get in too much trouble, have fun, and really get the experience
of learning about South Africa on our own. We all were really proud of the fact that we navigated on
our own and made the trip what we wanted of it. There was a lot of learning involved, but I’d do it again in
a heartbeat! We still have so many
places we want to go, so I’m sure this won’t be the last time we travel around
the country. As for now, I have started classes. Today was the first day and although I feel like the biggest
fresher (freshman) of all time, it’s been really exciting. I’m trying to get all my courses
pre-approved by GW for now, so that’s a whole different project. Currently I’m signed up for Intro to
Earth/Geology, African Dance, South African History to 1900, a seminar on
living and learning in Cape Town, and Intro to Marketing. As long as GW approves these courses
I’ll be taking these for the rest of the semester! I will admit I’m a dork/nerd so I’m looking forward to these
classes a lot. Also, I really
don’t like science, but this Geology class sounds like it has some neat field
trips! Alrighty, well that’s all
for today. If you read the whole
thing, thanks for keeping up with my travels!
