Life in Marvin--Roadtripping in South Africa
This morning we were supposed to leave at 6am to get to the Nomad Camp, but the person driving us was LATE. It was so annoying. Why did we wake up this early and then have to wait. Oh and I woke up to one of the dogs licking my face. Slobbery. Again all of us had sleeping issues (jet lag strugz!) We will go to bed early and then wake up fully recharged at like 1AM. Then go back to sleep and not want to wake up! But once we get going we are all good. The fact that we are in South Africa makes it a lot easier to get up! Although we left later then planned we still made it on time to meet the safari company to start our 20 day tour! I can already tell this tour is going to be amazing. We loaded our new “home” for the next 20 days- Marvin (the name of our giant bus). We all got lockers which we had to squeeze our bag into. We met our tour guides. One is named Cardi- She introduced herself as “My name is Cardi. Like Bacardi, without the Ba.” The next guide who is also the driver is named Boyd. The other guide is named Daniel.
We drove and drove ALL DAY. A total of driving about 10 hours. Along the way we made some stops though and the ride was scenic once we got out of Jo'burg. Our first stop of the day was to a mall where we had a few minutes to get out and grab what we needed. We hit up the liquor store first for the first of our South African Wine. We all tried a different kind. Once we got our wine we went to a store that sold blankets. Camping in the winter= a must. The lady who we bought the blankets from was the first person so far in S. Africa that wasn’t nice. Kaede Ray asked her if she had a favorite place to eat in the mall ( basically something she could recommend to us), but she quickly gave us a face and said “no.” in a mean way. Allllrrriiigghhhtt then.. We just went to Wimpy’s to grab food. The ladies there were very friendly. They even wanted to come to the US to visit. The food was pretty good. I had a chicken sandwich with chips (AKA fries). It had a LOT of mayo on it though. We all jumped back on the bus after our quick stop. It was a pretty bumpy ride from here on out (reminds me of mom’s driving in Ireland since they drive on the left side of the road as well).
Our next stop was God’s Window. It was too foggy to actually see what it looked like. So we kept saying God’s Window is closed today. It was still a beautiful area though. There were paths you could walk on made of stone and we were just happy to get off the bus to stretch a bit. As we were on our way back to the bus we spotted a couple monkeys. We all slowly approached them to take pictures. They kind of hid in the bush more, but then some more of them appeared. One ran out to ME. Specifically me.. no one else. And I started getting nervous.. Is he gonna climb on me? Poop on me?? What is he gonna do?? But he just ran up touched my foot and ran back into the bush. Maybe he could sense I was scared. Or maybe we have a connection!
Our next stop was Burke’s Luck Potholes.
SOO gorgeous. Apparently they were named after a man who kept digging to find gold, but wasnt lucky. It reminded me a lot of the Grand Canyon. We had to rush to the next location from here, because like I said before it gets dark at 5pm! So we wanted to catch the next spot before it got dark. Our next and last stop before we made our way to set up camp was Blyde’s River Canyon. I thought it couldnt get better from the potholes, but apparently it can. The canyon looked like something out of Nat Geo.
I climbed to the “don’t go beyond this point” sign and climbed on the edge like the badass I am. YOLO. No worries I didnt fall! We took tons of pictures then we were off to our campsite- Timbavati. Once we arrived to the campsite it was already pitch black. It was so hard to put up our tents in the dark, but we managed. The tents reeked of mildew too.. blah! The bathrooms in the campsite were little stalls with no lights made of bamboo and sticks. I didn’t even venture to see what the showers looked like because it was too dark to see them. I didn’t want an animal to pop up when I was in the dark taking a shower! Also, I was freaked out because one of the managers at the camp said there was a leopard in the campsite a couple days ago and that it ate his jack russell terrier! WHAT?? We are sleeping out with the leopards? We were all freaked out. Once we got all the tents set up we went to a room, which was an outside room where we ate a delicious dinner with potato salad, steak, and a unique icecream. It is so weird to think we are camping out in the woods and then we walk a couple feet and there is this nice lodge area where they feed us steak. As we were eating some traditional African dancers came out and danced around the fire and sang. “Ya-la-ah-la!” The dancers all looked super young. It was cool to see their traditional outfits. Following this we sat around the campfire and talked about many different things about the US and S. Africa with Cardi. She talked to us about HIV and other S. African problems. She was asking about the US too. After this chit chat around the fire we moved to another fire. Here Khuma, one of the workers, joined us as we played “Would you Rather?” Which was so fun. haha. It was funny teaching them how to play because they had never heard of the game before! After a while of playing the game and fingers dropping, Khuma randomly asked us about our experience in S. Africa so far. He told us that many people are ignorant about S. Africa, which I do agree with. I mean when I think Africa the first thing that comes to mind is safari, animals, and desert. I don’t think of cities, which is wrong on my part. Unfortunately most people think of Africa in this way. However he did mention that some people have closed minds, especially those who travel just to see animals in Africa. I don’t agree with this. People who travel in my opinion travel to open their minds and see stuff they don’t normally see. They wish to expand their mind, not stay in that bubble. I want to break stereotypes when I travel. Now after being in S. Africa for only 2 days, I can see all the stereotypes (for the most part) are wrong.
xoxo,
Em