Friday, 29 August 2014

Holiday times!

Saturday 23/8/2014

Well me and Sarah have gone on holiday again! I say this like our last South African Holiday wasn't over 18 months ago...

This time we've gone to Wild Spirit backpackers in Natures Valley, only just down the road from where we went last time. It is beautifully serene and laid back with seemingly nothing around for miles. We aim to go on lots of walks as well as maybe a kayak and Sarah wants  to go on a horse ride...last time I was on a horse I was about 8/9 on the Scilly Isles and the horse was called Nettle. I didn't like nettles.

ANYWAY! We had the usual hectic travel here, both complaining that neither of us could drive. We had to get an 8 hour bus at 6.30am from Cape Town which all went smoothly. We knew what our stop in Plettenberg Bay looked like after spending 4 hours waiting there last trip! But I'd never been to Wild Spirit before and Sarah's only ever driven there with other people, so once in Plett, we hadn't a clue. We wandered into Plett to get a mini-bus taxi, an idea the nervous control freak inside me wasn't particularly happy with but hey, as it turned out all the taxi's we needed had stopped running what with it being a Saturday. So we ended up getting a private taxi into the middle of nowhere then the backpackers shuttle the last leg. I've reminded myself how much I'm NOT a fan of travelling, but now we're here, everything is lovely and calm and peaceful...plus there's a Kudu potjie dinner followed by a drum circle round the fire so I'm happy now!

Also, one of the resident cats seems to be living in our dorm and we have bats in the walls!
The drive to the backpackers!

Sunday 24/8/2014

It's our first full day here and it's been fantastically chill. I had a massive headache last night so I went to bed a lot earlier than everyone else-around 10.30pm, but I still got to have some of that awesome potjie and take part in the drum circle.

Today we went on a fairly relaxed walk into the pine forest in search of Sun Rock. We didn't find it, but the walk was really nice and I got a wonderful vegetable pasty from the local farm shop.

In the evening, Sarah and I did some crafting with the craft man. Sarah made a really cool dream catcher complete with beads and feathers. I got to make a ring! It looks like looping 8s-actually I'll post a picture, easier to show than describe.

And supper was roast beef with potato wedges, home-made hummus, cous cous and salad, mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!
At the farm shop. The problem with being on a 2 person holiday is that all the pictures are selfies of both of us, or just one of us on our own.
The gorge we walked round on our search for Sun Rock

The locals
The ring I made!
Monday 25/8/2014

Today we went on a MASSIVE hike. It wasn't actually that big, only 4-5 hours but it felt epic! We had to do it backwards to avoid the tide, which we thought was fine until we got to the very end, but I'll get to that.

We were dropped off in Tsitsikamma National Park to go and wander down a narrow path surrounded by high walls of fynbos and carpenter beetles buzzing overhead. All was fine and great, it was very hot but the fynbos was so high, the path was in shade. The path changed pretty quickly into forest and the route got quite steep and rocky. Shoes we'd taken off at the beginning had to be put back on. Once we'd found the right path (after only 1 or 2 wrong turns) and made it out of the relatively dark forest, it felt like we'd been birthed out onto a beach. All of a sudden the forest ended and we were wandering, squint-eyed, on the incredibly bright, hot sand under the sun.

After a beautifully endless walk down almost the entire length of the beach, sans shoes, which was completely empty save the sea snails, we had a quick jaunt up the R102 (a fairly main road) next to a lagoon before we popped our shoes back on and plunged back into the bowels of the forest. This time we were following a dry river bed almost all the way until we couldn't and had to clamber up an almost vertical bank.

From there things seemed to go from great to ghastly, all of a sudden it felt like we were climbing the hard slopes of Table Mountain. It was a string of endless steps some of which were as high as my knees. We'd get to a bit that was slightly more level, and every time our hopes would rise in the thought the damn steps had ended until we rounded the next bend only to see them continue. Yoh, it was exhausting!

Once we finally got to the top, it was a pretty straightforward trip back to the road. From there we were told it would be fantastically easy to hitch back to the backpackers but after being rejected by 5 cars, we called Wild Spirit and got them to fetch us.
Fynbos path

Blissfully unaware of the horrors to come!
A birds eye view of the beach we walked along.
More selfies, from cliff tops!
Another HUGE local.
The beautiful lagoon...also where we went kayaking.
"Quick, take a picture, this isn't so hard!"
The view from the top of 'mount pain'
Tuesday 26/8/2014

Today was the day for the kayak. We got a shuttle down to the lagoon and pulled out 2 of the backpackers canoes. We happily paddled as far inland as we could, with the wind and tide behind us. When we got to a road bridge supported on a bank of rocks blocking our way, Sarah hopped out of her canoe to see if there was water on the other side. I decided this was an ideal time to see whether it was feasible to paddle with 2 canoes tied together. It is! I cheerfully floated away from the bank with Sarah's canoe, leaving her stranded with her oar. I thought it was hysterical...Sarah, not so much! Other than that it was a fairly uneventful trip, we saw lots of birds and even 2 bush bok who stayed round of about 5 minutes!

Friday, 15 August 2014

Life for the last month....

It has been quite some time since I posted anything, or maybe it hasn't and I just feel like a lot has happened! The internet is down again (it's beyond irritating) so I don't actually know what the last post I did was about, I think it was the drumming at UCT. So what's happened after that?

So Sarah arrived the day after which was great, her plane was delayed about an hour and we arrived at the airport about 4 hours before her flight landed because we had to drop 2 volunteers off who were going to Botswana and there wasn't much point driving back and forth, so that was the longest wait of my life! But she arrived safe and well. It was very weird at first having her back because I'd gotten so used to life here without her around, I'd become very close with two of the project trust group (one of who was one of the ones that went to Botswana so she missed the first week of Sarah being here). It did take some getting used to, but we're all settled now so everything's good, we're back to spending our days playing endless games of cards in the kitchen.

Jasmine and Katie made friends with some of the drummers from Mecassar, so a week or two after UCT they went to the drum circle at Mecassar, and the week after I went with! It was great fun, quite a small group and held in the pottery workshop which was quite a small room with a tiled floor and plain brick or concrete walls and ceiling so it got very loud. It was very different to the Durbanville circle, a lot more relaxed and chilled out. Durbs is almost formal, everybody takes it quite seriously and it reminds me more of a professional rehearsal whereas Mecassar had more of a jam session feel to it, it was nice.

And Mecassar led to me, Jazz, Katie and Sarah going to Strand the next day to meet up with two of the drummers. We had a really nice day spent wandering on the beach, Jasmine spending most of her time with one of the guys, Katie ending up with the other guy and me and Sarah being absolute children and playing with all the hermit crabs that were everywhere and the starfish and coral! Then we got a little bit stuck in Strand when our train was late, then stopped in Erste River, so we got a little bit stranded and 4 white girls on public transport is a sight here, but we managed to persuade a mini-bus taxi driver to take us back to Durbanville so all was fine in the end!

Oh and I went to Mzoli's for the first time! Mzoli's is a township braai/party that goes down every Sunday. Actually it apparently is open every day of the week but it's huge on Sundays. I'd never been interested in going before because whenever volunteers come back they're usually so drunk they're useless, but Jasmine being the beauty she is, managed to sell it to me without either of us really realising it, so I went along one week and had a great time! One of the guys we hung out with decided he really liked me and kept kissing my cheek however many times I told him no, which was great fun, and has resulted in lots of pictures of me and him that I'm pulling a face in to say 'stop taking damn pictures and help me tell him I'm not interested!' but Jasmine and Katie found it too funny. In the end we wandered off and when we came back he seemed to have found another girl he liked...I think he took my rejection hard!!

Unfortunately Jasmine, Katie, Rachael and Anna all left on Sunday. We did spend an awesome last weekend together (me, Jazz, Katie and Sarah), we took Jazz and Katie to neighbourgoods market on Saturday as neither of them had been before (shock horror!), then we went into Cape Town so they could drum on long market street one last time and they'd arranged to meet up with some of the guys they'd met at Mzoli's and Mecassar to say bye. And on Saturday evening we went to the Rabbit Hole (local tiny club/bar thing) because there we'd seen a poster for an instrumentalist playing and we wanted to have one last drink together (Me, Jazz and Katie). The instrumentalist by the way was called Wild Lettuce and was incredible...we only actually saw him do one piece because we didn't get there until 11pm as the other two were packing, but he was playing a combination of guitar, electric drum kit, electric cello (!) and didgeridoo!!!! He had the whole thing set up to record and play in loops so we heard him do the game of thrones theme song all by himself (and included a didgeridoo) and it was incredible...I just don't have words. Had I had enough money, I would have bought his album right then and there...as it is, I've found his website (wild lettuce music) and as soon as the internet lets me I plan on downloading any or all of his albums depending on how expensive they are!

On Sunday we had to take them all to the airport, so I was just an emotional wreck. I was fine until I had to say bye to Jazz, who I've been roomies with for the last 6 months. She started crying, so I was crying, then one of the other volunteers who came with to drop off insisted we watch them go through security then walk past the window to the gates. When they saw we were still there, Katie and Anna came up to the window doing whatever leprechaun snake dance it is that they do and I just broke down...it was a bit awkward actually. They don't actually fly home until tomorrow, they're in J'burg at the moment as a kind of debrief thing with project trust (me and Sarah were supposed to go on it last year but we refused and stayed at our project for the few extra days). So that was very rough. But I also moved rooms so I've not had the pain of having to stay in mine and Jazz's room without her. I now have a tiny room to myself in the babies house, I've put pictures up (if the internet has let me).

And that's about all for now...

Little add on: The internet has been so bad recently that I've just cancelled my internet from the children's home but Sarah found this amazing little cafe just 2 minutes away from the Home that has AMAZING coffee and free wifi, so I plan on living here :) It's a shame the other volunteers are also beginning to find it cause it's nice to find a German free spot, and we don't want the other volunteers taking advantage!

But onwards and upwards, have all my pictures!

Me with all the (now old) project trust folk, l-r, Anna, Jazz, Katie and Rachael.

On our way to Mzoli's

The face that screams 'stop taking pictures and help me!'

Mzoli's

Travelling South African style!

Getting my face painted at Moyos


Sarah and I on the Udu drum at Mecassar

Children on the beach in Strand


I would like to clarify, we did know (and like) this guy!