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!
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| 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.
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| 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.
