“SHUT UP. Justin Beiber’s DEAD?!”

First things first, let’s talk about New Years Eve!

During the day about 20 of us decided to head down to the beach at Camps Bay; unluckily for us there was a strong wind blowing over the ocean, and it was crashing angrily into the sandstorm of a beach... no sunbathing and swimming for us then. We decided to go to a nice restaurant for a pizza and cocktails instead, it was a little pricey for our backpacker budgets but it was NYE, so I didn’t feel guilty indulging myself on the culinary delights.

That evening we pre-drank in the backpackers to save some money when we were out; our usual pubs and clubs had put door fees on for the event, so we were going to be a little more strapped for cash than usual. Pre-drinking quickly turned into a massive game of ‘Never Have I Ever in Africa’, which was basically an opportunity for everyone to reveal things about their partners to the rest of the volunteers, which is both hilarious and embarrassing! 

I headed straight out of the backpackers and straight into Bob’s; as it turned out that was where I spent the whole evening, it was mental. Free giveaways on the door (not so free when you realise you’re paying to get it) included a plastic whistle, a colourful wristband and a chupachup, those whistles were blown all night long by every person in that club... The noise was still ringing in my ears 2 days later; it was so bad I was pretty damn sure that I had tinnitus. 

My two highlights of the night are as follows; (the first) I was dying of heat and possibly dehydration but the bar man refused to serve me anything other than alcohol, so he decided that the way to cure my problem was to dump a jug full of iced water over my head – what can I say, it did help! The second highlight, and possibly my favourite includes the free whistles, drunk volunteers, Maccy D’s and everyone’s undoubted love for Gangnam Style. After Bob’s we were feeling pretty hungry, so about 7 of us headed up to McDonald’s at the other end of Longstreet; we suddenly realised that once you walked a few buildings away from Bob’s no one had whistles, so we took advantage of that fact. We whistled the tune to Gangnam Style whilst proceeding to do the Gangnam Style dance up the middle of the busy (but traffic jammed, so perfectly safe) road. A few drivers and passengers were probably harassed on the way, and we received some dirty looks from the classier establishments that we passed... but it’s New Years Eve! CELEBRATE IN STYLE PEOPLE. More precisely... CELEBRATE IN GANGNAM STYLE.

2013 baaaby!

The last day and night in Cape Town were spent in the beloved Mitchell’s Scottish Ale house, and a rare early night was taken due to the fact that Ashley and I had to be up at 4:45am (along with the Outward Bound girls and two of the Polokwane girls) to catch the Intercape bus to Sedgefield... we were going to visit their OB project!
Nicola and Amelia (Polokwane) slept in and we had to ask the bus to wait for them, Intercape leaves at 6am on the dot and they woke up at 5:45 in their backpackers. After running to the bus station with 100 litre backpacks on not only had they just completed some kind of impossible physical feat due to adrenalin, they managed to make the bus. Close call.

Sedgefield

Due to last minute plans Ashley and I didn’t actually have a place to stay in Sedgefield, we thought that it should be fine if we tagged along with Nicola and Amelia to their backpackers hoping that there were some free beds or sofas that we could crash on. Typical that the one backpackers we don’t book into has the most unhelpful and unfriendly manager EVER. Since travelling in Africa I have realised one thing, backpackers are awesome and the people who work in them are normally pretty cool and laid back. If you walk in and there are no beds they ALWAYS sort you out, and don’t treat you any differently from those who booked a place.
This woman was a different story. Oh no, we were the biggest inconvenience in the WORLD. The annoying thing is that she had one bed, so the only issue was that there was one extra person. Ashley and I offered to share the bed but both pay the full price (pretty good deal for her I’d say), but noooooooo, we can’t share a bed, if we do it everyone will want to do it. Really? Even if they did want to it would mean she’d be making twice as much money on the same amount of beds, idiot. Not a great business mind in my opinion.
Anyway, after a lot of huffing and puffing she agreed to put out a mattress in one of the dorms (hallelujah), but we could only stay for 2 nights, on Friday morning she wanted us out. She put it just about as nicely as that too. For the two days she treat us like we were the plague, granted she did eventually get around to any queries we had, but it was with a face that looked like a baboons arse.

Then again the backpackers had jacuzzi's on the roof... So all was well. 

We head to La Piazza on our first night in Sedgefield to meet up with the OB girls for dinner; they’re really close with the owner, Gary, who is a little bit of a legend but keeps buying us shots all night even though we’re on our Cape-Town-Come-Down. This is what I’ve decided is the best way to describe the feeling when you’ve stopped partying and your body has gone into some sort of shock from the lower levels of drink ingested. You start to feel tired early on in the night, your throat hurts and you are blocked up from your toes to your brain – pressure centred in the nose area.
We all down the shots and decide it’s time to head home. Everyone apart from Ashley. She’s been on the Jager all night and isn’t ready to go anywhere, so she stays at the restaurant herself and parties with Gary and his staff. In the morning I discover her hungover in her dorm wearing a Jagermeister t-shirt, cap and lanyard with another top strewn on her bed. The story is that she was dropped off at the backpackers at 4am after being bought free drinks all night. I don’t know how she does it, she’s a machine. I was almost sleeping on the table in La Piazza at 10:30.
The amazing thing is she’s up for it again our second night there! We wind up playing beer pong with some guys from our dorm in the backpackers, and she doesn’t seem fazed by the hangover at all. I have to admit, I didn’t really feel like drinking that much but beer pong is awesome! I will definitely be cracking that one out a parties when I return – so be ready everyone, cause I am goooooooood. Well, I’m okay but Ashley and I both managed to throw the ball at such an angle and speed that it span around the inside of the target cup before plopping into the drink, I wish more people had seen it, it was pure skill. Remember those charity machines in supermarkets when we were younger; where you pushed the pound coin in and it span around and around in circles before dropping down into the hole at the bottom? IT WAS LIKE THAT.

The girl’s Outward Bound base is gorgeous, there’s a lake surrounded by rolling hills and paragliders are always floating just above the hilltops. I was a tiiiiiiiiny bit jealous because I had been really interested in Outward Bound, but I love my project too much to be envious of it! We had a lovely swim in the lake to Reeds Campsite (our accommodation for the night since that morning we had been made backpackerless), and emerged from the lake looking like Chewbacca because all of the mud and dirt in the water sticks to the fine hairs all over your body. Sexy sight! 

The Chewbacca lake!

After swimming we decide to set up camp early so that we’re not wrestling with poles and guide ropes in the dark; on our walk down to the campsite we get a lovely surprise in the form of a completely naked old couple driving their car in what they clearly expected to be a very rural area, the smiles on their faces indicated what they had been up to, and they clearly hadn’t been expecting any company! The part that ‘topped it off’ (hahaha, you’ll get this in a minute) for me was that we all saw the lady lean over to her (I presume) husband who was driving and strategically place a basketball cap over his ‘man-parts’, that’s right lady we all saw you! What makes this story even better is that once we got to the campsite there was another car, two people were already inside and the third was stood outside of the car finishing off dressing themselves... what can I say, there are a lot of randy pensioners in sleepy Sedgefield! You DOGGERS.

Our spot at Reeds Campsite!

Despite having two 2 man tents Ashley, Lucy, Lauren and myself (the happy campers) decided that we could all squash into one. This was lovely and cosy when we first got there and it was freezing cold, however as the night and film we were watching progressed the layers started coming off and our small tent turned into a sweat box. I had a cramped and restless night’s sleep, I could not find an angle where the tent was long enough for my body and getting out of that tent into the cold night to go to the empty one was not an option.

Sedgefield is a beautiful little town on the Garden Route and is home to the fantastic Wild Oats Farmer’s Market, seriously the food there is to die for and there are hundreds of little stalls with jewellery, bracelets and crafts – so as girls we were all in heaven.
It didn’t really feel like we were in Africa though, it’s very Westernised and there were so many white people! Most of the population is white, which was really strange for us compared to Big Bend. It felt more like a little town in the Lake District (but with better weather of course) than South Africa.

In Transit

Intercape, we meet again. As we’re lining up we realise that it’s assigned seating, damn, we’re going to get a really rubbish place. Or are we? The one in a million happens, the lottery win of coach seats, the creme-de-la-creme of over-night travelling... we score top deck front seats! Not only is this the prime road viewing position, but we have at least twice as much legroom as anyone else on the bus. I could not be happier. This lasts until my iPod runs out of battery... 30 minutes in.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Intercape company, please allow me fill you in on a few facts. Intercape are a company with STRONG Christian beliefs, beliefs that they don’t keep to themselves. They pray before we set off travelling, and they pray once we have reached our destination. But that’s quite nice, I respect that, it’s just everything in the middle that drives me crazy. All of the content that is fed over the speakers or shown on the TV is Christian; Christian songs, Christian cartoons, films with plots that are biblical and the very worst are the short VT’s of American farmers from the deep south giving their views on passages from the Bible. First the accent then the opinions – it’s enough to make me throw myself straight out of that top deck front window. By all means keep your beliefs to yourself; just don’t use cheap travel as a way of trying to convert people.
To escape this I did the only thing left to do, I slept. We arrived in Johannesburg at 7:50am Sunday morning; I had not been looking forward to this part of our travelling as we have heard our fair share of horror stories about J’burg. Unless you’re in the very rich areas you have quite a high chance of being axed to death in the car-park of Shoprite (true story, this year’s J’burg volunteers saw this happen with their own eyes). We were in Park Station, not a rich area and not a white area, I’m not going to lie, I was very apprehensive about getting off that coach.

Thankfully our Christian coach conductor found us ‘a guy’ and he walked us safely through Park Station to where the Swaziland bound kombi’s were parked. All was well and we made it back to Swaziland in two pieces, one named Ashley and the other named Kate.

Swaziland

J’burg was NOT what I needed to be worried about! Getting off the kombi in Big Bend felt like I had just been happy slapped by a bag of burning hot coals. The heat was immense; I have never felt anything hotter in my life. 47 degrees Celsius, whaaaaaat?! I should be the hottest thing around here ;) Not like that though, I mean body temperature. Anything over body temperature should not be allowed. Ashley and I almost died walking from the kombi park to Sisekelo laden like donkeys with our large backpacks on the back, small backpacks on the front, and two shopping bags in each hand... the only positive thing was that we were excellently counter balanced.
24 hours of travelling later and 48 hours of not sleeping in a proper bed meant that we both crashed out almost instantaneously.

South Africa, you were brilliant. But it’s good to be home.

Kate xx

P.S. The title of this blog is yet another quote from Ashley. A few people were discussing some news that a paparazzi guy had been hit by a car and died while trying to photograph Justin Beiber. Upon only hearing part of this story Ashley jumped up from her seat and screamed the words “SHUT UP. Justin Beiber’s DEAD?!” No Ashley, calm down. She is rather a fan, her trauma was visible. It was pretty funny and deserved some recognition, so here it is.