Chunder Dragon

This week has been our first 7 days of Cape Town, and we’ve seen though some great (and also not so great) times.
If I’m perfectly honest we’ve all been living for the night, we have established our local watering holes and some people have created names for themselves.

Our favourite places on the not-so-long-street that is known as Longstreet are; Bob’s, a club run by an English man, it is a firm favourite because they give out free shots for karaoke singing and pole dancing. The Dubliner, unfortunately is quite expensive, but it is an Irish bar with live music so the atmosphere is really great! Stones; a club/pool and snooker house, (for all you Darlington residents, I believe it is probably like Riley's). Last but not least comes The Food Inn; who undoubtedly fed the 30+ Project Trust volunteers for the 10 days on cheap Indian food, and never failed to provide chicken tikka sandwiches stuffed with chips after many a great night out.
A more classy area to Cape Town is The Waterfront; there’s a large shopping mall, outdoor amphitheatre, canal boats on the river and fancy restaurants... Among all of this is a Scottish Ale House that goes by the name of Mitchell's, and over our stay in Cape Town I can safely say that we all became rather fond of the place. I’ll miss the times we spent there listening to the lads shouting obscene football chants at the South Africans after watching a game; “I bet they’ve never even BEEN to England, and they support MANCHESTER UNITED?! They’re just glory hunters, that’s all they are!” 

Longstreet is great for teenagers on holiday as there’s everything you need right on your doorstep; however it has to be one of the most dangerous places I’ve come across since I’ve been in Africa. It is a hotspot for petty crime, pick pocketing, muggings and people with fraudulent tendencies. You have to have your wits about you every second of every day which can get tiring after a while, but if you do look out for yourself and your things you can have a brilliant time! Luckily I managed to have a fantastic stay on Longstreet and didn’t become the target of crime but other volunteers weren’t so fortunate; we experienced stolen bags, money swiped from people’s hands on the street, stolen phones, tricks at the ATM’s, laptops stolen from backpackers and muggings. But despite all that everyone carried on in true British style, picked themselves up, borrowed money and went out to hit it on the night and forget about their problems!

Christmas Day was spent in a cave on table mountain; our backpackers organised the trip and we all paid E200 (£14) for the privilege of joining them on Christmas day with food, drinks and 70 odd bottles of champagne. Unfortunately to get to where the party was at we had to complete a short hike from where the truck dropped us off (at the bottom of a shale slope) up to the cave. This doesn’t sound so bad until you add in all the variables which made it hell. Firstly it was midday and scorching hot, we all had to pitch in with carrying the food and drinks up to the cave (I was stuck with a large pudding in a metal bowl, which heated up in the sun and caused the pudding to melt into some sort of slop which did not want to stay in the bowl), and to top it off we were all hung over due to our Christmas Eve partying the night before.
It was all worth it; the views from that cave were spectacular, we had food drinks and music and all looked very festive in our free Santa hats from Bob’s the previous night. Unfortunately it didn’t feel like Christmas Day, but it was a really lovely Tuesday! Plus, how many other people can say they’ve spent Christmas Day on one of the (newly appointed) seven natural wonders of the world?

Me, Sam and Sam (the Botswana boys) and Ashley

This week I decided to experience some African culture; a few of us went to the District 6 museum to broaden our knowledge on the whole subject – unfortunately the museum wasn’t really in a logical order, so I’m not an expert on it but we did learn some interesting things. The same day we went to see the Hobbit at the cinema, which was AWESOME and made much more sense than the District 6 museum.

This week also saw my brother turn 17, which is crazy; I can’t believe he’s so old! We had a little Skype session on the morning of the 28^th and then Ashley, Sam, Georgia and I went for a Mexican meal at ‘The Mexican’ (which was great and really filling, damn I love Mexican food) and all the volunteers headed out for a flat party! Two of the Cape Town volunteers had us all round for the night, apparently it was a good party – unfortunately for me I can’t remember, however a few embarrassing photos have given me the jist of how my night went. Said photos have also given me the nickname ‘Chunder Dragon’, and I will now always be remembered as the girl who drank too much vodka, chundred everywhere and star-fished in the freezing cold out on the balcony. What a legacy I have left behind me.

Before I made a fool of myself, having a nice time with everyone... why Kate why?!

The next morning I was positive of how my night had gone, I had the second worst hangover of my life (those of you who were at my 18^th house party will know that was the first worst hangover of my life, so you can gauge just how bad I was here), and I was still at the flat. Not at my backpackers. There were 4 of us who had stayed behind, and it took us all well into the afternoon before we could move far enough to get a taxi back to Longstreet. I was hungover and shoeless (don’t ask why) and there were 7 of us in a 5 person taxi... this isn’t even counting the driver. I spend the rest of the day in bed. It was a rubbish day.

The day after I’m still feeling pretty rough, but it’s getting to the point now where we’ve been in Cape Town for a week and not really done any sightseeing, so we’re all feeling a bit guilty for wasting our time... We make a desperate decision and head to Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope with some German volunteers that we had been bumping into on our travels all along the coast. We see some African penguins, climb to a lighthouse to overlook the massive expansion of ocean (at some point you can see the joining of the two oceans (Indian and Atlantic), and have a scramble on some rocks at the Cape of Good Hope. They really are beautiful places and I felt a bit happier for actually seeing more of Cape Town than Longstreet.

Cape Point 

Cape Point - somewhere out there is the Indian and Atlantic oceans joining together.
How cool is that?!

View back to the mainland

Myself, Lauren, Yolanda and Ashley
(Two out of the four girls from the Outward Bound project in Sedgefield, South Africa)

Nice little view from our scrambling adventures up the rock face :)

These holidays are going too fast, I can’t believe they’re nearly over!

Until next time, Merry Christmas (for this week) and a Happy New Year <3

Kate xx  

Fear is Temporary, Regret is Forever

When you’re stood in a shower alternately washing yourself with shower gel and 3 pairs of pants with soap powder, you get the sudden realisation that you should make an attempt to wash your clothes before you run out completely.

So, we’ve hit the Baz Bus’s compulsory stop over destination – Port Elizabeth. Apparently there’s not really anything special to see here, so we only spent the night before moving onto somewhere more exciting. However in our backpackers we met another Project Trust volunteer; Gabriel, from York and he’s on a township project. So the planned early night went straight out of the window and we stayed up until 4:30 chatting about our projects and travels – we felt sorry for Gabriel who had to get up for the Baz Bus at 7:00am, but we had a great night.

Jeffries Bay

We make our own way to J-bay on public kombi’s because the Baz Bus are rip-off merchants and don’t have any room for us. Even though we paid extortionate amounts of money for our tickets and we called them up to book our places MUCH earlier than the advertised ‘72 hours in advance so you’re not disappointed’. We hate the Baz Bus.
Anyway, Baz Bus hating aside Jeffries Bay is amazing! Our backpackers ‘Cristal Cove’ is right on the beach and there are loads of surfers walking around. It’s exactly like the Boardmasters Festival at Cornwall... apart from the weather is much better!
We have a very mature 45 minute stroll along the beach for some calamari, and on the way back we have a swim in the once again warm ocean. I don’t know what happened between Coffee Bay and Jeffries Bay, but the water at East London was FREEZING – Indian Ocean, waddup wid dat?

Turns out the Polokwane girls and Gabriel are also in J-bay, so we walk to their backpackers and meet up with them for the evening. We head to this place called ‘The Mexican’ for a live music night; it takes me a good 45 minutes to get served at the bar because the place is so packed. I make the logical decision of stocking up on drink and buy myself a few bottles so I don’t have to go back to the bar for a while. You wait so long to get served you actually sober up in between drinks! It’s probably a smart ploy to make money, everyone has to drink more than usual to get drunk. Touché.

Storms River

Turned out to be an unplanned stop! Because Baz Bus are rubbish (we hate the Baz Bus), they didn’t have room to take us the last 40km from Storms River to our backpackers, Wild Spirit Lodge in The Crags. Therefore we were thrown off the Baz Bus into the heat, dirt and unknown... backpacks and all. Alright, maybe I’m exaggerating, we were dropped off at Dijembe backpackers in Storms River. The staff were all really lovely, gave us free tea and coffee and kindly let us stay the night.

Is this the prime place to chill, or is this the prime place to chill?

We bump into the Polokwane girls AGAIN, this time is does come as a surprise because we knew that they were staying in Plettenburg Bay (which is further down the coast from Storms River). We decided to go tubing and heard familiar screams on our way down to the river... Turns out the Baz Bus royally screwed them over and they couldn’t get on it at all, so they had to hire a car to continue their travelling. So with their new found freedom they travelled back up the coast to Storms River to do the very popular activity that is tubing! Tubing is great fun, you basically sit in a sturdy rubber ring and travel down a river going over rapids, floating calmly and climbing up rock faces to jump into deep pools. It was exhausting work on my arms as we were on the river for a good 3 hours or so, but it was definitely worth it.

Our instructors told us that the last cliff jump was 12m high, and that only 14 girls had ever done it, so obviously I was well up for increasing that total. I’d done coasteering in Newquay, Cornwall before and had jumped from higher places so I was a little bit overconfident.
On the way down all the jumps that we did were a little bit hairy, the 8m jump was set back into the cliff so you had to jump at least 1m forwards to clear the rocks below and land safely in the water. This was a little nerve wracking, however I didn’t expect the 12m to be quite as dangerous! I am telling you, the ‘jumps’ that we did on that river would never be health and safety accepted in the UK, if you put one foot wrong or didn’t push off hard enough you would have kissed rock-face.

I’m not going to lie, standing on that tiny outcrop I was s****ing my pants, I’ve never been so scared in my life. Even when I get scared it’s not normally from doing activities like this, I love this stuff! I couldn’t work out what was happening to me, every time I pushed forwards to jump my foot wouldn’t move, it was frozen to the rock. My heart was pounding and I was looking sceptically at the 2m rock outcrop that I would need to clear in order to survive the jump. My hands were shaking, my voice was shaking and I’ve been told that I was stood there for half an hour.
I didn’t jump. Excuse the language, but all that can be said is that I pussied out. Big time. I’ve never been angrier at myself for not doing something. Now I was just an unknown statistic on the side of the girls who didn’t have the guts to do the jump.
The worst thing was that Ashley screamed like a little girl on the 8m, but she still managed to jump the 12m, now 15 girls are mental enough to hurl themselves off that cliff – good on Ashley!

The Crags 

We finally get to Wild Spirit backpackers and it is again, beautiful. So far for me this backpackers and Amapondo Backpackers at Port St John’s are in tied 1^st position when it comes to the most amazing locations! The views are gorgeous, we are surrounded by thick forest and the mountains fade out on the horizon as far as the eye can see. Looking out over our balcony from our dorm room there’s a sea of green below us, and within 20 minutes you can walk in either of 3 directions to get to a waterfall, the magical forest or the ‘Big Tree’.

Climbing a big tree, before 'The' Big Tree!

Friday 21^st December brings the dreaded Apocalypse, so I go to reception before breakfast and book myself in for a bungee jump at 5pm. Why not.
All 4 of us go on the short hike it takes to get to the waterfall and find ourselves in a place written about in story books; we cross the rickety wooden bridge over a glimmering plunge pool and climb up to where the waterfall is cascading down the rocks. The water is freezing cold, but it’s too stunning to not swim in!
After the waterfall we walk to a farm stall for lunch and find the best deal ever; fresh milk for E5.50 per litre, that’s about 40p. Fresh milk in Africa is a rarity for us as we get given UHT milk, nasty long life rubbish. So we empty out our 1litre bottle of drinking water onto the ground and fill it up with the fresh, non-UHT, organic and cooled milk. Words cannot describe how much we loved that milk, however we did have to buy another litre before leaving!

THE BUNGEE

There’s only one word for it, it was SICKKKK! Driving to Bloukrans Bridge I was pretty nervous, but as soon as I was there and had on my harness I was ready to go. The guy harnessing me up even asked me how many bungee jumps I had done before, and when I told him this was my first one he seemed surprised and commented on how calm and chilled I seemed to be – so at least I wasn’t a nervous trembling wreck like I had been on the cliff jump the day before.
Once my group got to the bridge it was even better; we walked along a covered grate walk over the valley (so there were some amazing views) to the middle of the bridge, I thought I had just walked into a club. Obviously it wasn’t dark dingy and foggy but there was blaring music and all the guys who worked there were dancing about all over; firstly they were clubbing and secondly they were working at a bungee site. It was such a good atmosphere and got you pumped up and ready to go! Unfortunately I didn’t jump to a brilliant tune, but that didn’t take away from the experience.

After my freak out on the cliff jump I wasn’t too sure how I would feel once I got to the edge of the bridge... Luckily the guys give you a pretty swift count down so you barely have time to think about what you’re doing! ‘5,4,3,2,1 BUNGEE’ gets you to jump pretty quickly, and if you don’t jump they push you, so I knew that one way or another I was going headfirst off that bridge.
I don’t recall bending my legs and pushing off at all, but I definitely jumped... The first split second that I was in the air I felt my body spasm and try to pull back, I think it was a reflex that was telling me ‘no, don’t do this, what the hell are you doing?!’, and then it was over and I was falling. I watched the valley pass me by upside down, and saw the river below getting closer and closer... and then came the bounce back up.
When I watched other people jump the bounce back up looked quite violent, their bodies were jerked at strange angles and the warning of ‘retina displacement’ was fresh in my mind... but I didn’t feel it at all. The most amazing part of the whole experience was after the bounce when my body was free in the air, it feels like you’re flying (instead of plummeting headfirst to the earth) and it is the calmest and most peaceful I have ever felt in my life. A calm, peaceful bungee jump, a little bit contradictory I know, but that’s how it was for me!

Mossel Bay

Saturday 22^nd December, everyone is still alive. I am so surprised.
We Baz Bus to Mossel Bay and again meet up with the Polokwane girls and Gabriel at their backpackers. We have a lovely meal together and then hit the bar; Daisy and Ashley ask for free shots and get given something that is an absolute killer – this then leads to some hilarious events including cartwheels on the beach and unhappy beach wardens.

The next day we’re due to head to Cape Town! Baz Bus isn’t due until early evening so Ashley, Daisy, Sam and I decide to go sea kayaking. We’re doing doubles and Daisy and I are terrible; we can’t go in a straight line and we zigzag our way along the coast by heading directly to shore, then out to sea then back again towards the shore. I’m pretty sure we kayaked twice as far as Ashley and Sam, but we were about 40m behind them all the time! 
Then the inevitable happens... the Baz Bus is early. Normally it’s late, in fact it’s rarely ON TIME, but today it’s early. We’re fresh out of the sea and not even at our own backpackers! Luckily we packed that morning so the driver lets us jump on as he was stopping by our backpackers anyway and we manage to make it... just. We’re in swimming gear and wet, but we’re on the Bus and on our way to CAPE TOWN!

Thank you Baz Buz express service, we just caught you in time and now you’re on your way STRAIGHT to Cape Town... Baz Bus, I think you may have redeemed yourselves in my eyes just a little bit. Express service means that we get to Cape Town around 9:00pm instead of in the middle of the night and we meet some of the South African volunteers and go out on Longstreet!

It’s going to be a LEGEN-wait-for-it-DARY 10 days!

Kate xx

P.S. The title of this blog is a poster I saw at the Face Adrenalin bungee jump, rather motivational don’t you think?

“One five minutes, one five!”

Sadly it is time to leave the beautiful Amapondo backpackers in Port St. John’s and move on... I will surely miss the thick jungle and amazing views.
So it is back to the Shell Ultra City (a petrol station where we have been spending quite a lot of time due to the Baz Bus shuttles) and then we move on to Coffee Bay! We were all excited at the prospect of spending some time in Coffee Bay as it has had a great reputation among the past Project Trust volunteers, so we were about to find out for ourselves why it was so amazing.

Coffee Bay
We arrive and it is beautiful, it is a tiny little place with a couple of beaches and hills that you have to wade to across a rivers’ mouth to reach, and the landscape is pretty much untouched. We had a walk to the ‘main part’ of the town which is home to; two backpackers (Coffee Shack and Bomvu), Kaleidoscope Kafe (a little hippy shop and cafe, who also sell the most amazing homemade passion fruit ice-cream!), a pizza place on the top of a ridiculous hill, an Indian run family store (who have all of their products behind what looks like prison wire, so they’re clearly conscientious about safety) and... well, that’s pretty much it.
I’m lying, that’s almost it; I’ve nearly forgotten about the jewellery ladies! As you hop across stepping stones over a little river to reach this area the grass banks are lined with ladies sat on blankets selling their handmade jewellery. Unlike stall owners in Swaziland these ladies don’t sit quietly and hope you will buy something...
As we passed by what must have been 15 stalls all selling the same thing we had 15 ladies all introducing themselves to us, telling us we must buy from them and saying that we must remember them and come again tomorrow. I smiled apologetically and said that I had no money and carried on walking, Ashley however stopped to have a look at one stall and that was the end of her. As soon as she was stationary all the ladies grabbed pieces of jewellery, sprinted from their stalls and threw themselves onto Ashley; within seconds she was laden with necklaces, bracelets and anklets, and she was surrounded by women so desperate to sell that their approaches to customers were more intimidating than friendly. In the end she paid for pretty much everything that had been attached to her body as it was the only logical option for escape!
This happened to us every time we walked past, which was a few times a day. I took on the inspiring motto of “if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball” and zigzagged my way through the danger zone with my reflective aviators on so that no one could catch my eye.  

Arriving, it's a tad cold, but the weather will soon pick up!

Our accommodation at Sugar Loaf backpackers! Finally I get to stay in an African hut!

 Tuesday morning starts with disaster, we booked a surf lesson for 7:30 in the morning and set an alarm so that we could get up and walk to Coffee Shack in enough time. Unluckily for us Ashley’s alarm decides to not go off and we get a call from the backpackers at 7:20 asking where we are and the answer is in bed. We all jump up that second (it is the quickest we have ever moved on a morning), throw on some clothes, grab our swimming gear and run to Coffee Shack which is about a 10 minute walk away. At 7:25 in the morning you do not want to be running for your life in flip flops on a dirt track wearing nothing but a bikini and a top. We made the surf lesson though and it was pretty fun! The water in Coffee Bay is as warm as a bath because it is the Indian Ocean, lovely.

We spend the day sunbathing and swimming on the beach and then head off for some pizza and ice-cream, I love holidays. 

Nothing says "Welcome to Africa" quite like cows on the beach...

Me not having a poo on Coffee Bay beach, just unfortunate timing!

Mmmm! Sun sea and sand <3

That night we decide to get in touch with some African culture and we head to Bomvu backpackers for the free drum lessons around the campfire! Considering I am the most unmusical person in the world I really enjoyed the drum circle, the guy lead us with some simple beats and we just copied him, when there’s about 20 people all playing in time on the dijembe drums it sounds quite impressive (even for a bunch of amateurs).

Dijembe Drums

Looking sunburned and sweaty, sums up my time perfectly really!

 The next day is hell, Ashley and I contracted third degree burns from the beach (the boys weren’t as bad), but none of us can move very far. My lips have blistered (which has never happened before in my life, and I’m very familiar with sunburn) and my face is so red and shiny I look like a prematurely born baby. Ashley looks like she has skin disease because she sun-creamed in patches before getting bored and presumably giving up. We took advantage of the aloe-vera plants growing in pots around the backpackers and cut off big leaves to take to the bathroom, there we spent half an hour covering ourselves in think, green sticky (but amazingly cooling) goo.

East London
LANDAN BABY! We head off to East London from Coffee Bay, and on the way back to our favourite petrol station (Shell Ultra City) we pass buy Nelson Mandela’s house and old village! WE SEE HIS REAL HOUSE, WHERE HE LIVES! And just like the Queen when he is home a flag flies from the rooftop, but when we passed there was no flag, because he is in hospital.

The Big Man's house.

We bump into the Polokwane girls at the Shell Ultra City; they’re getting off the Baz Bus to head to Coffee Bay. It’s so strange seeing them again after all this time, they visited us within our first 3 or 4 weeks into our stay in Swaziland, but when I see them again it doesn’t even feel like we’ve been apart for very long!

Our stay in East London was quite a long one, so we took advantage of the time and fitted in some activities. We went sand boarding on our first full day; sand boarding for those who don’t know is basically snowboarding on a sand dune. What we didn’t think about when we booked it was that in order to sand board DOWN the dune, you had to climb up it first. Unlike snowboarding there aren’t any lifts to the top; so in 30 degree heat and bare foot on scolding hot sand we were jogging up this sand dune, carrying our boards and struggling against the constant sand avalanches which hindered our progress.
Physical exhaustion (and embarrassment about how unfit I have become) aside I had a great time! Ashley, the Sam’s and myself bit the dust, literally, many times but before the end of our 2 hour lesson we all managed to make one full run down to the bottom! Sam Rutherford was so hardcore by the end he managed to snap his board in half, good effort my friend.

The next day we set off for a family friendly animal park; not the normal choice of destination for a group of 18 year olds but there was one good reason we were heading there... lion cubs. Need I say more?
For 30 rand (£2.15) you had access to view all the animals at the park (tigers, lions, crocodiles, cheetahs, rabbits and some of the biggest tortoises you will ever lay eyes on), and the opportunity to play with lion cubs! Money well spent.
It was a pretty funny day; I managed to electrocute myself on the cheetah enclosure (which is also on video because Sam permanently has his camera on to document everything that happens) and we found a llama that looked exactly like Ruth (a woman who worked at Kaleidoscope Kafe in Coffee Bay). Therefore we entertained ourselves for a good 30 minutes doing voice-overs to the llamas in a posh Johannesburg accent; it was almost like Ruth was with us.   

Howzit Ruth?

It's not everyday you get mauled my a Lion Cub :D

So, that’s it for this week! I’ve seen some more beautiful places and I’m definitely catching the travelling bug. 

Kate xx

P.S. The title of this post is dedicated to the one and only Petros, the best Baz Bus driver South Africa has to offer.

Petros: “Ok guys, we have fifteen minute stop, yes? Everyone back here in one five minutes... one five, one five!”

We love Petros.

Sockpoi at Amapondo Backpackers

Next time I will be playing with FIREEE, trust me.

FANTA GRAPE

Time to explore further than the borders of Swaziland! On Monday we hopped on a kombi to Manzini full of excitement for our holiday travels; we then reached Manzini and sat in the Durban kombi for over 2 hours while they waited for it to fill up. Angry, cramped and annoyed we finally set off – so 4 ½ hours after departing from Big Bend we found ourselves passing the exact spot we got the kombi from that morning... Damn Swaziland and its one tar road!
The excitement started kicking in again and I’m pretty sure we might have been those annoying people at the back of buses who make more noise than is actually necessary... oh well.
We had a lovely surprise at the border gate; a man with the world’s longest and dirtiest fingernails came to stand at our open kombi door asking for money. The front of his jeans was also non-existent; they might as well have been crotch-less chaps so we had a lovely view of everything hanging out. We all failed spectacularly when it came to keeping a straight face, so we left pretty promptly to walk to the border gate to hand over our passports to be scrutinised and questioned.

Entering South Africa wasn’t what we expected at all; the kombi was getting pummelled by torrential rain and thunderstorms, visibility must have been down to about 20% and we were getting nowhere fast... which is very surprising for a kombi!
Due to the slow going we were due to hit Durban at night... in the dark... not knowing where our backpackers was... with no alternate transport. F**k. Living in Swaziland we’ve been quite sheltered, but we’d been told that South Africa was much more dangerous, so we weren’t looking forward to wandering around Durban at night carrying everything that had any importance to us on our backs.
Luckily there was a couple on the kombi from Durban and they offered us a lift with them – thank god! The four of us crammed in the back of their truck with our massive backpacks and watched the Durban city lights pass us by. I felt like a fish out of water in the city; after being in Big Bend for 3 months the bright lights and large buildings felt overpowering and daunting. We drove past a huge casino complex that was lit up with LED lights and looked like it had been brought straight from Las Vegas, this felt more like America than Africa!
The couple entertained us on our travels with comforting anecdotes about living in Durban; “Yeah, I’ve been mugged twice, once with a knife to my throat and once with a gun in my face”, “Damn this area is risky, s**t, I don’t have my pepper spray either...” Great first impression of Durban.

We hit uShaka Marine World for the first tourist day of our holidays; dolphin shows, seal shows, the biggest aquarium EVER and a water park. uShaka boasts the tallest water slide in the Southern Hemisphere, so we were all buzzing for that! It was pretty high as well; you shoot over the edge at what I swear to be a 90 degree angle and by the time you reach the bottom you need surgical assistance to remove your bikini bottoms from unknown places.
That night we bought meat, rolls and ingredients to make a kick ass potato salad, and we set about having a braii on the roof of our backpackers. It was awesome. We had some spectacular views of the Durban lights, a few drinks, braii and some intelligent conversation with Jacob, a Canadian and the fifth person in our five person dorm.

Unfortunately for the next 3 days Ashley fell really ill and we had to cancel our plans to carry on down the coast and stay in Durban until she recovered; we took her to a private city hospital and after waiting for 4 hours we finally walked away with 5 bags of drugs that would hopefully pull her back around to reality!
Thankfully the medicine did its job and Ashley felt well enough to travel, so we each begrudgingly parted with E2500 (£180) for a Baz Bus ticket, and we set off for Port St John’s on Saturday morning.

Getting on the kombi was eventful in itself; Ashley and the Sam’s were already on the bus and I was trying to sort out a ticket problem with the driver outside. Then an actual kombi driver comes over and starts grabbing the Baz Bus drivers’ clip board, starts pushing him and is shouting for him to move the bus. “You need to learn how to respect another person” the Baz Bus driver keeps yelling, he wants to stand there and sort the tickets out before we set off... but this is getting pretty serious. There’s now an audience of people on the backpacker balcony watching the scene unfold below and I do not want to be involved in a street brawl between two fully grown African male kombi drivers. I politely tell them both to calm down, stop pushing each other and get the Baz Bus driver back on the bus to sort out the ticket problem when we have driven away.  Good call.

Port St John’s is beautiful and Amapondo backpackers has to be the most amazing backpackers in the world. Port St John’s itself looks like Brazil rather than Africa; large hills covered in dense jungle foliage make up 95% of your view, and just on the coast is a perfect bay with crystal blue waters. The backpackers itself is perched on the side of mountain, and you can see small homesteads everywhere, they look like Brazilian flavelas or small villages from a Pirates of the Caribbean film.  

That night we eat an amazing homemade Thai green curry, which turns out to be free because Sam Rutherford gets chatting to a guy at the bar and because Sam is Scottish he offers to pay for our meal!
Later on that night two ladies light up the firepoi and there’s a mesmerising impromptu fire show; it’s possibly the coolest thing I’ve ever seen so we all decide to have a bash at it! Not with the fire obviously, just with the practice ‘sockpoi’. Sam Thomas picks it up straight way and makes us really jealous with his skills; this infuriates me even further because I’m so uncoordinated and my left arm and hand are pretty much useless. Everyone goes to bed and I’m still stood there failing spectacularly but not willing to be defeated by these sock balls on string, it finally takes a flaming sambuca burn to the hand and I can’t carry on – so I call it a night and go to bed. 

Sunday brings English weather, so we hitch-hike into town to buy some food, and yet again have another KFC. I’ve eaten more takeaway food in Africa than I ever have in England – who would have thought.
Back at Amapondo I finally crack the sockpoi and my skills are on par with Sam’s, so I’m pretty chuffed with myself. We can’t do much though as a crazy thunderstorm lights up the whole valley, rain comes down in sheets and the power goes out. So we chill in the darkness and listen to the phenomena outside.

One week into travelling and I’ve seen some of the most beautiful places I may ever see in my life. Can’t wait to see some more!

Love Kate xx

(P.S. The way Ashley says fanta grape is really funny, so us impersonating her is now a running joke we have. So that’s the title for you. It’s not funny if you’re not here, sorry!) 

Strikes Ruin Everything

I don’t think I have ever had a busier week in my life. Ever. In fact, I don’t think anyone has ever had a busier week. 

There’s so much to write I’m just going to bullet point day by day, try to give you an idea of what it’s like having run a preschool having its first graduation, on top of trying to feed and clothe 60 children and also preparing Christmas presents for children of another preschool! That’s not even mentioning the fact that everything you want to do comes up against a problem preventing you from doing it! Gah.

Monday 26^th November

·         Sort out clothes and toys left by missionaries and wrap up into parcels for all of the children at Moriah Centre.

·         Injabulo graduation practice – trying to organise 35 children into their groups and have a full run through ALL in English because Nelsiwe decided she didn’t fancy coming to preschool today!

·         Big Bend Prison – try to find out if they have a large tent/gazebo we could borrow for graduation. Big Bend Prison is terrifying, the prisoners wander around doing odd jobs like gardening and they just sit in groups and chill together – it’s not like they’re in prison at all! Safe to say Ashley and I were crapping ourselves as we were driving through the prison grounds and all the prisoners were staring at us in the truck cab. They’re not even minor criminals!

·         Hit Matata and PEP again – this is becoming a pretty regular pattern! We put loads more shoes aside for soup kitchen, but the bank wasn’t working so I couldn’t withdraw money to pay, we’ll be going back there again tomorrow to pay.

·         Cafe 1985 with Mike and his brothers to chill with them for the last time in 6 weeks!

Tuesday 27^th November

·         Graduation practice at Injabulo again, it’s looking pretty good so we’ve got high hopes for the big day!

·         Matata – PEP to buy the shoes for soup kitchen and lunchbox/juice bottle combos because most of the children don’t have anything to put their food in apart from old dirty lids. Some even have to share bowls, and when we give out seconds they come to you with their bare hands. Spar for cake ingredients for Injabulo Christmas party.

·         PANIC AT HOSTEL – we thought that the soup kitchen tub had gone missing with all the food in, so Ashley and I were running around all over like crazy ladies. Turns out the Aunties had cooked it for us and it was sat nicely simmering away on the stove, phew.

·         Claire (an American and our friend from the church we attend on Sundays), Aunty Winnie and her child and four grade 11’s from Sisekelo all piled into the bucky to come with us to soup kitchen. We handed out the shoes we had bought, and make a list of the people’s names and sizes who didn’t get any.

Wednesday 28^th November

·         Again with the graduation practice, I think the kids are getting a bit bored of running through the whole thing again and again but they don’t seem to understand the concept of STAYING IN YOUR LINE. Once they learn how to stay in between the person in front and the person behind I think I’ll pass out with shock.

·         Matata for shopping for graduation food! Possibly the largest food shop of my entire life, we had 3 trollies full of food, about 40 dead chickens and an overfriendly floor worker who was prepared to do anything for Ashley’s phone number. We spent E3515 (£250) and gained a E50 (£3.50) voucher at the till, ooo the savings! Thanks Spar, I’ll definitely be back with my E50 voucher, I wonder how I am going to spend it ALL, how nice of you to splash out on me after I spent s**tloads of money in your shop.

·         Back at hostel we spent 4 hours in the sauna of a kitchen, the main activity was sweating and the secondary activity was making cakes and sandwiches for soup kitchen. We must have baked about 300 cupcakes before giving up and chucking the rest of the cake mixture into a tray and making one massive tray bake!

Thursday 29^th November

·         Final Injabulo practice, ran it by myself as Ashley was off with the parents collecting firewood in the bush for cooking at graduation. Turns out they walked for an hour over a massive hill carrying saws, axes, babies and Ashley carted 10 litres of water in the blazing sun... Then to proceed to hack down some trees before paying off some guy to bring them and all the wood back in a truck. They were gone for 4 ½ hours! I would have died in that sun.

·         While they were all away contributing to deforestation of the world I realised that the truck tyre had another puncture. WHY WHY WHY. Our truck hates us, and Richard was going to hate us even more! In desperation I racked my mind for my car maintenance knowledge and jacked up the truck from the ground and attached the pump to the engine to blow up the tyre so we could drive home on it. The Mothers of the children at Injabulo had stayed at the preschool to clean it while the others were collecting firewood; I now think that they think Ashley and I are crazy. Ashley was out in the bush collecting firewood and I was crawling under a truck with my face in the dirt jacking it up off the floor... Definitely normal behaviour.

·         To top off our bad situation we had to pick up 250 glass bottles of soft drinks for graduation on the way back to Sisekelo, all that extra weight squished down the tyre even more and we were pretty nervous about what Richard was going to say. Luckily it was fine and he managed to get it sorted no problem.

·         BOTSWANA BOYS ARRIVE! Sam and Sam are here, they indicate (almost) the start of our Christmas travelling, buzzinggg.

·         Kathy rings us and says that the Ubombo Illovo workers are having strikes on the gates to the village, so we can’t go to soup kitchen. This is gutting because we have all the clothes, shoes, toys, nice food and even toothbrushes and toothpaste for them! We also have over 100kg of samp, rice, oil, tinned fish etc for Aunty Vina so she has supplies to feed the children at soup kitchen while we are away over Christmas. Swaziland it really making our lives difficult today.

·         Alternative plan is that we go to the club and have a swim, chatting with the Botswana Boys is really interesting – finding out what is similar in our countries but also realising that the culture is completely different in other aspects!

Friday 30^th November

·         EARLY START. Pick up the boys from Kathy and Richards; head to Nelsiwe’s house to drop off the bottles of soft drink. Head to Matata to do the shopping for the fresh food for Injabulo graduation.

·         Head back with Nelsiwe for Moriah Graduation! Quickly run back to hostel to change clotes and pick up the tray bake that we iced that morning, run back to Moriah Centre. The kids looked so cute in their gowns and hats, but Ashley and I didn’t realise that the teachers did a dance too, so we had to get up and dance along with the Moriah teachers – thanks for telling us!

·         We’re allowed to go to soup kitchen today if we break through the strike times; we hand out more clothes, shoes, toys the toothpaste and brushes and we have party food! Give Aunty Vina her Christmas supplies and we spend lots of time playing with the children – it’s really lovely. The kids warm up to Sam and Sam so by the end they’re getting loads of cuddles, cute.

·         Head to the club with the boys to meet Ayanda and Nelo; we have a braii, play some pool and get caught in torrential rain.

Saturday 1^st December

·         EARLY, LONG AND STRESSFUL DAY.

·         Matata for MASSIVE cakes for Injabulo graduation, use the E50 voucher to get it out of our faces because it is quite frankly an OFFENCE after how much we spent!

·         Arrive at graduation and the Mothers cooking say that they need other food that we didn’t buy – it wasn’t on the list so that’s why we didn’t buy it. I drive BACK to Matata to buy more food for them, and it turns out we have to pay the electricity meter for the lady who’s house we running electricity from. This turns into a problem at the post office because we can’t just pay E50 for the electricity we want to use ourselves, we have to pay off all of the ladies electricity debts BEFORE we can get our E50 – brilliant. She’d better pay us back!

·         Once I get back with the truck Ashley and Sam head off to the Royal Crawl for more chairs, unfortunately they get stuck in the mud so have to free themselves and head back without the chairs... Sam’s feet actually smell like poo from being in the mud.

·         Graduation goes amazing! The kids don’t get shy and they speak well, they have lots of energy and dance and sing, plus they look super cute in their all whites and their traditional dress! The Mothers did an amazing job with the food and everyone is well fed. 

Ummiso Cultural Dance

We had also been so excited for weeks about giving the kids their presents and finally the time was here! It was lovely seeing all their reactions to their presents, unfortunately someone had to ruin it and they stole the bags that we had put aside for the absent children for next year. What a disgrace, I don’t think Ashley or myself have been angrier since we got here. We also gave Nelsiwe her present, she knew it was coming though because she’d constantly been saying “Have you bought me a present yet?” and totally ruining the whole thing! I think she thought we weren’t getting her one so she kept going on about it, but we had and it got a bit annoying after a while because she should know that we’re not going to leave her out.

·         After graduation we have a mad rush back to hostel for a shower and change and then we run up to the kombi park and luckily catch the last kombi to Manzini for the Sisekelo Matrics after party, the big AP. It’s dead when we arrive as they’re all still at prom so we hit Nando’s up first.

·         When prom end the club hosting the AP gets pretty busy and we all have a really good time, THIS IS THE START OF THE HOLIDAYS! We hadn’t arranged any accommodation to stay in so we were planning on pulling an all-nighter and catching the first kombi back to Big Bend at 5am. By 4:30 we’re all pretty much passed out on the table because we’ve been up for 23 hours straight and we splash out on a taxi to get us back.

Sunday 2^nd December

·         Wake up at 2pm, chill, eat, chill. Go to Cafe 1985 for dinner and walk back to Kathy and Richards; on the way I manage so stand on a broken bit of wood in the dark and have a chunk of wood lodged in the side of my foot! Ew. Sam has to piggy back me to Kathy and Richards where Kathy wants to call the doctor to come and surgically remove it, but Richard decides his pliers will do the job. OH MY GOD, having that piece of wood yanked out of my foot fecking HURT. Brilliant timing Kate, how you going to carry your massive backpack if you can’t even walk properly...

So that was my week. No big deal, not much happened ;) But now it is officially time to do what Frankie says and R-E-L-A-X

DURBAN TOMORROW AYYYYYYYYYYYE!

Love to you all ma hunz,

Kate xx