Saturday September 25, 2010
Genius me hit the snooze on my phone and fell back asleep when i was supposed to be up at 7am because the bus was picking us up outside at 7:30am... at 7:36 my phone started buzzing again and when I put two and two together I had to fly out of bed, throw everything in a bag and run downstairs where the bus driver and everyone else was waiting on my roommate and I.. Woops!! She overslept as well so it wasn't just me haha. After we got situated we started driving for about an hour and then we got to the Genandendal museum. It was really a cool place still set up from the early `1700s and it was a beautiful day outside! We learned about Genandendal in our Core Class so it was cool to see. After the museum tour they took us outside and we got in these little huts.. pretty cool! After the tour over they took us into the adorable little town of Greyton where we had a speedy lunch because we had to get back on the bus asap to get to Hermanus to go Kayaking!! WOW Hermanus was beautiful! I couldn’t bring my camera with me down to the water because I didn’t want it to get ruined from the water while we were Kayaking! Luckily Arcadia paid a professional photographer to take our photos while we were kayaking so the problem of no pics avoided!! Since I woke up in a frenzy this morning I completely forgot to put a change of clothes in my bag so I thought I was going to have to be soaked the whole way home after kayaking, but thankfully the nice people there had an extra pair of board shorts that they let me borrow... and boy were they stylish haha!! KIDDING! But the Kayaking was so cooL! I have never done it before so it was neat to have my first time in the middle of the ocean with Whales!! We saw about 3 different whales for the hour that we were on the water! WOW were they beautiful & HUGE!!! We couldn’t get very close, but still close enough to see them come out of the water a bit! I was in the front of the kayak doing all the work… just kidding, my partner Reza was in the back doing equally as much work. I’d say we were a good team, did not flip once thank goodness because the water was pretty chilly! When some of the waves would come over the top of the kayak it was a nice little wake up splash haha. All in all the kayaking was really fun & Hermanus was awesome! We walked around the little market after we got out of the water while the second group went out. All of us were pretty tired so we went back to the bus and napped until the other group finished & then we headed back home! What a cool way to spend a Saturday in Cape Town!!
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Spring Break: YOU MARRY ME!!!
Okay guys SO sorry for the lack of updates on this thing!! Mid-terms came up & then we were on break for 10days and then this week I had my first exam & a paper due! But im all finished now YAY! I think my first test went really well too!! Brace yourselves because our VAC (spring break in America ;) ) was definitely unexpected but still had a blast!!! Here goes…..
Friday 9/3/10
OH my word, the 4:30am cab came so quick, considering I had been up all night finishing a paper that was due in a few hours! Luckily a friend of mine turned it in for me! But I finished writing around 3am and skyped mom, gary, britt & lisa & daniel on a conference call and it was so fun! After talking with them for a bit, I jumped in the shower, grabbed my backs and hopped in the cab with the six boys downstairs! The plane took off at 6:30am and luckily I slept most of the two hours to Joburg, but I was still so exhausted from no sleep the night before! After the cab driver took his Jolly time picking us up from the airport in Joburg, we finally made it to Joburg Backpackers around 11am. We met Leya and Kaitlyn who got in the night before. The rest of the group went on a tour of Soweto and the 3 of us girls took a cab to Nelson Mandela square in the city. Joburg was beautiful and modern!! It seems like a really rich part of South Africa too because we saw a sick black lamb and silver rolls Royce parked outside of this gorgeous hotel by the shopping center!! Sadly I was feeling awful so we went back to the backpackers hostel and I took a nap until like 7:30. I woke up still feeling lousy but I emt my friends upstairs for pizza and hung out for a bit! Everyone went to go out to the bars but my throat felt like it was going to explode so I stayed in hoping it would be better in the morning with a full nights sleep.
Saturday 9/4/10
No luck :/ I woke up at 6:45am feeling like I swallowed rocks all night sweating to death. Not the perfect start to vac! The Baz bus was there to pick us up at 7:45 to take us to Swaziland, so I sucked it up, took some advil and hopped in the bus! I slept a lot and drank lots of water and poweraide on the way there. I started to feel a little better thankfully after a while. At 4:30pm we made it to the Swaziland/South African border & got our new stamps yay & then headed to Lidwala Backpackers where we were staying for the night. The place was so cute and I saw my first MONKEY!! Haha After we put our stuff up in our rooms we started walking down the road to the restaurant that the lady at the front desk told us about. A police car pulled over and picked us up because he said it was too dangerous for us to be walking at night :/ should have been a warning sign!! The restaurant we ate at was delicious though and they had the sharks rugby game on so we had a good time! After dinner our waiter called us taxis and we went back to the hostel and chilled for a bit then went to bed. First night in Swaziland was pretty good…
Sunday 9/5/10
I was feeling a little better when I woke up, but it was absolutely gorgeous outside so I took some more advil and tried not to think about it haha. We packed up our stuff and left it at the front while we went on a tour of Lobamba Village. It was pretty cool, our tour guide actually lived in the village so he first took us by the stadium, and then to the King’s museum where we actually learned some cool history about Swaziland! They are one of the few monarchies left in the world! The village was neat to see thought because we just observed people living their normal lives and at the end we went to watch a guy who started this non profit organization in the village teaching kids how to play the guitar and art skills. Him and his female partner played us a few of their songs and it was really great! I took some cool videos! After the tour finished we went back to the stadium and caught the second half of the Ghana vs. Swaziland soccer game! So cool to see Ghana play because I remember watching them in the world cup when they knocked the US out!!! After the game was over and we went to leave, the guards blocked off the exit because the king and his wives were driving their ballin cars out of the stadium!! HE totally waved us too! So cool!! We took a mini bus to from the game back to Lidwala and grabbed our stuff then took the little bus to Sondzela Backpackers in the Milwani Wildlife Sancuary. It was night time when we got there so we couldn’t really see the scenery but the hostel was so cool! We all put our stuff up, claimed bunks and then hung out for a little bit downstairs by the pool and ping pong table, then went up stairs and went to bed.
Monday 9/6/10
WOW.. I cant even put in words how beautiful the view was that we woke up too over looking the whole wildlife sanctuary and mountains!! Breath taking! We hopped on the 7:30am shuttle to go to the grocery store and get a few things! We came back and paid for the horse back riding and right when we were about to leave, Kaitlyn realized that the little bag she had her passport and all her money in was missing :/ At first we thought that there was no way it could be gone, just must be in a different pocket of her backpack. We had to leave because we were going to be late for the horses, so Leya and Kaitlyn stayed behind to keep looking for the passport! In the mean time we walked through the trail from our hostel through the sanctuary… it was amazing! There were wild animals running all around us, (deer looking) not sure their specific names and more monkeys!! So adorable! The horse back riding was absolutely indescribeable!! When we first got there we had to get helmets and then they took us to the place where they had the horses and picked them out for us. The guide gave me Sabuka which means the tiny one in the Swazi language lol he told me this was the perfect horse for me! She was a sweet heart! I haven’t rode a horse since I was so young and even then I think I just rode our pony haha .. But they took us all the way to the mountains and through the fields on the horses and it was so cool!! Saw lots of cool animals, herds of wildabeasts and zebras and enyallas, and much more I just have no clue the names.. but more importantly I have tons of pictures!! The zebras were my favorite to see though! Ah such beautiful creatures!! We rode the horses for about two hours and then went ate lunch at the restaurant they had there which was overlooking the lake where there were HIPPOS with in 5feet of us! So cool!!!! We got to see them eat and then go in the water and hang out haha. Sadly after lunch we heard from the girls and they had no luck with the passport and were still waiting at the police station. Even more bad luck… Today was Swaziland independence day so the Swazi embacy was closed and to make it worse it was also Labor day in the States so the US embacy was also closed so there was absolutely nothing we could do :/ not good!! Once they got back we tried to make the best of the situation and went on a walk through the sanctuary & it was perfect timing because the sun was setting over the mountain and it seriously was one of the top 5 most beautiful things I have ever seen! I got some really cool pictures too!! On the walk we saw more zebras too!! When we got back from our walk we made pbjs for dinner and re-planned what we were going to do until Thursday when the next bus was coming because since kaitlyn didn’t have her passport we couldn’t leave in the morning like we were supposed to, to get back into South Africa. I decided that I was going to stay with her because I know that if that was me, she would have stayed and I would have not wanted to be there alone. Sadly, only Leya felt the same and the others decided that they were going to leave. That night there was a traditional Swazi dance performance going on at the main camp so we took the shuttle to go see it. It was pretty cool to see, very different style of dancing but the drums were way cool! After that we just went home and went to sleep early because there really isn’t anything to do in Swaziland at night.. its exactly the safest place. In the day it’s fine if you are with people, but night time is another story.
Tuesday 9/7/10
Unfortunately the rest of the group thought that it would be okay to leave three girls in Swaziland by them selves so they left in the morning while we stayed behind. :/ As our bad luck continued, we were in a miss understanding with our program director back in the states because when Kaitlyn spoke with here the day before, she was under the impression that the situation was being taken care of and that they would call us when they made her a new passport. So instead of going to the embacy first thing in the morning like we should have, we took the shuttle to the market and then a minibus to the city of Manzini with one of employees from Sondzela. She was really helpful in finding us the right bus to transfer to because there were SO many people and minibuses everywhere, it was actually overwhelming and a bit scary because us three girls were the only white people there, at all. Please, know I am not racist at ALL… it was just a bit uncomfortable having everyone staring at us like what in the world are you doing here… Once we got on the right bus we headed to the Hlane National Park where we booked a Safari!! The bus took about 20 minutes to get there, not a bad ride, I sat next to this adorable little boy who found a digital camera fascinating! He loved looking at my pictures.. it was so sweet! Continuing with our bad luck, we didn’t check the weather before we left so we had on shorts and tanktops and it was probably low 60s .. thankfully the people at the front destk were nice and let us borrow sweatshirts for the drive. The safari was SO COOL!! Right away we saw an ostrich that walked right up to our truck & then a few minutes later we saw a mom and baby rhino!! They were too cool! In total we saw probably 6 different rhinos and tons of enyallas and more of the deer looking animals! We also saw some wildabeasts and wart hogs!! After the first hour, they took us back to the lion section and we drove up on 3 different elephant families!! AHH it was too neat to see the difference in the way the wild elephants act compared to the traied ones that I saw at the park where we rode them on our garden route trip! The last family of elephants we came upon had a tiny little 2week old baby elephant standing next to its mom. OH it was so precious.. hard to get pictures of because it was so small and in the bush a little ways. But our driver told the family in the back to hold onto their kids because he said the mom looked mad. & Boy was he right, about a minute after she got behind our truck and started getting closer and our driver just yelled for us to hold on and he floored it with the mom elephant stampeding behind the truck! AHH it was the coolest thing ever!! At first we were laughing because we were omg this is not happening, but then we were like holy cow we better hold on because if he hits a pot hole we are done for haha!! We got away safely with the elephant on our tail for a good 30 seconds!! What an experience!! After the elephants we saw three female lions chasing something.. we only saw them for a few seconds because they ran off when they heard the truck!! It was way cool to see them though!! Only thing we didn’t see that I was a little bummed about were giraffes.. but it was still an awesome Safari for only $40.!! So im def not complaining!! After the Safari, we ate lunch in the middle of the game park right next to three sleeping rhinos! After lunch we walked back out to the main road to get the next passing bus. We started walking in the direction where the busses were heading and planned to grab it on the way. We came up upon a police road block where the passing cars have to pull over and the police check all the passengers belongings to make sure there isn’t any illegal smuggling going on. As we were walking up to the stopped bus, one of the Swazi police officers asked to see our ids and asked where we were going. We told him and as he looked at our ids his exact words were.. “Oh you girls are American, I’ve always wanted to go to America… Will you marry me?”… No joke with a serious face… REALLY? Ah culture shock begun!! We took our ids said no and walked on the bus and rode thirty minutes back to Manzini where we had to get on a mini bus back to the market where the shuttle from Sondzela was to pick us up! Well ill say this next part was my first real taste of the Africa that people are scared of… Because so far in South Africa we have been spoiled to their modern way of life. COMPLETELY different in Swaziland… As we got of the bus in the middle of the crazy market in Manzini we weren’t exactly sure which of the 200 different minibuses to get on so we stayed close together and started walking in the middle of the chaos of people… once again we were the only white people so the stares were already intact, and then the grabbing of the arms started and the shouting at us when we would ignore them and keep walking.. It was so hard to keep our emotions on ease, one because we were scared to death and two because we just wanted to get home and not deal with this and make the situation worse! I kept it cool until the 10th Swazi man pointed from about a foot in front of me yelling “YOU, MARRY ME?!!” at that point I had no other option but to yell NO GET AWAY FROM ME! And then started crying… so did Kaitlyn (im not the only baby lol) Leya took charge and stayed calm and grabed us closer as we kept walking into the mass of swazi proposers! FINally a nice older man came up to us and asked if we needed help and then showed us to the right bus… Thank God for him. It was so intense and like something from a movie that just didn’t seem real. I don’t know if this sounds a lot worse than it actually was, but to say the least nothing bad happened and as much as I wanted to be angry with the situations its one of those things where you have to remember that you are not in Kansas anymore & you are in a different country where in their culture women are not viewed the same as they are where we are from and having someone yell marry me is common, I guess. Culture shock in full force! We cried for a good 2 minutes on the bus, sucked it up and made it to the market safely! We bought some pasta for dinner and went back to Sondzela and cooked it then sat in the living room and talked with these nice Dutch girls who were med students in the Netherlands just on vacation. We went to sleep really early because after we spoke with our program director we found out that we needed to get to the Embassy first thing in the morning when it opened so we could try to get Kaitlyn a new passport.
Wednesday 9/8/10
All three of us woke up at 5:30am and ate a little breakfast while we waited for the cab driver to pick us up and take us to Mbane the city that was 45minutes away where the American Embassy was located. We first had to go to this photo shop where Kaitlyn had to get a passport sized photo and then get to the embassy. As our wonderful luck continued the passport pictures were the wrong size so we had to go back to the photo place and get different sizes. Being so frustrated and upset because we had no clue when we were going to be able to leave the country we asked a Swazi police car to take us to the photo shop because after waiting five minutes we didn’t see any cabs. It was really nice of him to take us though. After we got the right sized pictures we went back to the embassy and waited in the waiting room until we received any news. The woman told us that these things can take either a few hours or days just depending on how it was handled. We cried again and then all fell asleep in the waiting room chairs. Then three hours later we received the best news and the lady woke us up saying, “Kaitlyn, we got it!!!!” One of the happiest moments of my life! We all cried again, then hugged and Kaitlyn got her new passport and walked outside to grab a cab back to Sondzela. After the rude driver dropped us off at the wrong entrance and demanded us to pay him more money we had to walk about a mile back to Sondzela. As pissed as we were about having to walk, at least we had the privilege to walk through the beautiful sanctuary where we saw three more zebras just eating grass peacefully right by the fence. We were so close to them too! Ah they are so beautiful! We all got back home, took showers then hopped into our bunks and napped until 4:30 because the weather was rainy and crummy so there wasn’t anything to do outside. For a late lunch we made pbj +banana sandwiches and sat by the fire and watched tv for hours. When dinner time came we refried our pasta from the night before and borrowed a little bit of pasta sauce from the fridge and ate by the fire talking to these really nice English people and the Dutch girls from the night before. Staying in hostels is such a great way to meet people from all over the world! IT’s neat to hear all of their traveling stories and about them in general. That night we all went to sleep so happy because we knew that at 7:30 am we were peacing out of Swaziland for good!!
Thursday 9/9/10
We said goodbye to our Sondzela family and then hopped on the Baz bus at 7:45 and enjoyed the hour drive to the border. By 9am we had hugged, RAN across the border, and high fived like 10 times because we were FINALLY back in South Africa!!!! YAY so exciting! We saw giraffes on the the drive too because we drove by a game park a few miles after crossing the border! SO COOL :D our luck at least seemed like it was turning around! By 2:30pm we made it to St. Lucia where the bus picked up the rest of our group that left us while we were in Swaziland. We made it to Durban at 5:45pm and the three of us booked a separate hostel than the rest of the group because we weren’t really excited to hang out with them. We stayed at this really cool hostel called Tekweni. We all showered and got ready and then met some friends that we met in Cape Town who were in Durban on their Vac too at the Hooters in Umlanga. Funny story, one of the guys we met actually lives next door to Gary’s family! Small world hey. While at Hooters I realized that I forgot to take my malaria medications so genius me thought it would be okay to take it with the margarita I was driniking… Bad choice! It was worse than the feeling you get when you take a vitamin on an empty stomach ahha thankfully I didn’t get sick though, just felt like it for a good 3minutes! After hooters we all went to a nearby club called Clapham Gold and had a fun night and then went back to Tekweni and passed out from being so exhausted.
Friday 9/10/10
From our previous days of waking up at the crack of dawn, it was impossible to sleep in. At 7:45am I was wide awake. Thankfully Kaitlyn and Leya were up too so we got dressed and walked to the nearby café and had breakfast. Then weather was so beautiful so we ate outside and enjoyed it. After breakfast Leslie and Ruth (Gary’s sister and mom) picked us up in Umlanga and brought us back to their house. It was so unbelievably nice of them to let us stay with them for the night instead of in another hostel. After we put our swimsuits on and we met the boys next door and they took us to the beach in Belito where we chilled and made sand creatures for two hours. After Belito beach we went to the beach that was close to their house called Westbrook which was equally a beautiful with Huge waves! It was a little bit windy but we enjoyed relaxing in the sun and not being stuck in Swaziland. After another hour we went back to the boys house and they cooked us lunch and we watched the OC for a bit and then went back to Greg and Leslie’s to shower and get ready. They took us to a cocktail party with them, which was so fun. After that Brett took us to a few different bars and we all hung out for a bit then called it an early night because the girls had to be at the airport at 5am.
Saturday 9/11/10
After a long week it was finally time to go back home to Cape Town. Kaitlyn and Leya’s plane left at 6:45am but mine and the rest of the groups’ left at 9am. Leslie made me toast for breakfast and then brought me to the airport and the plane took off right on time. We got back to Capetown around 12:30 and Lauren picked me up and brought me back to my flat! I love their family, they are all so sweet and were so helpful over the break! I honestly can’t thank them enough for all of their hospitality. Once we were back to the flat the security alarms were all going off because we had all been gone for so long that the maid did something with the alarm code and when we opened any of the doors the annoyingly loud alarm just blared. Thankfully it only took about 5minutes of constant EEEHHHHEHHHEHHHHHH before our program director called us with the right code and we fixed it. A few of us girls decided that a trip to camps bay beach was in order so we all put our swim suits on and took a minibus for about 30 minutes to the beach. The weather was so perfect!! We hung out for about two hours then got back on the minibuses and headed to the Rugby game that we got tickets for before we left! It was pretty cool to see the game in the stadium! First time I have seen a game in person! After the game a few of us girls went to dinner and then went back to our flats and got ready to go out. Only three of us ended up going out but we had a great time because the rugby team that we saw playing earlier that day was at the same club we were at. They all had on these matching long sleeved polo shirts so our friend sarah asked why in the world a group of like 20 guys would wear matching outfits out and then they told us they were all on the professional rugby team. Haha they were all fun to hang out with though for the night!
It was a nice way to end our unexpected spring break to say the least! Even though it wasn’t the vac we planned, we still had a great time and everyone came home safely so no complaints! Sorry that was a novel and hopefully ill update these things more often!! Still loving Cape Town as much as ever, especially now that the weather is starting to warm up!!
Friday 9/3/10
OH my word, the 4:30am cab came so quick, considering I had been up all night finishing a paper that was due in a few hours! Luckily a friend of mine turned it in for me! But I finished writing around 3am and skyped mom, gary, britt & lisa & daniel on a conference call and it was so fun! After talking with them for a bit, I jumped in the shower, grabbed my backs and hopped in the cab with the six boys downstairs! The plane took off at 6:30am and luckily I slept most of the two hours to Joburg, but I was still so exhausted from no sleep the night before! After the cab driver took his Jolly time picking us up from the airport in Joburg, we finally made it to Joburg Backpackers around 11am. We met Leya and Kaitlyn who got in the night before. The rest of the group went on a tour of Soweto and the 3 of us girls took a cab to Nelson Mandela square in the city. Joburg was beautiful and modern!! It seems like a really rich part of South Africa too because we saw a sick black lamb and silver rolls Royce parked outside of this gorgeous hotel by the shopping center!! Sadly I was feeling awful so we went back to the backpackers hostel and I took a nap until like 7:30. I woke up still feeling lousy but I emt my friends upstairs for pizza and hung out for a bit! Everyone went to go out to the bars but my throat felt like it was going to explode so I stayed in hoping it would be better in the morning with a full nights sleep.
Saturday 9/4/10
No luck :/ I woke up at 6:45am feeling like I swallowed rocks all night sweating to death. Not the perfect start to vac! The Baz bus was there to pick us up at 7:45 to take us to Swaziland, so I sucked it up, took some advil and hopped in the bus! I slept a lot and drank lots of water and poweraide on the way there. I started to feel a little better thankfully after a while. At 4:30pm we made it to the Swaziland/South African border & got our new stamps yay & then headed to Lidwala Backpackers where we were staying for the night. The place was so cute and I saw my first MONKEY!! Haha After we put our stuff up in our rooms we started walking down the road to the restaurant that the lady at the front desk told us about. A police car pulled over and picked us up because he said it was too dangerous for us to be walking at night :/ should have been a warning sign!! The restaurant we ate at was delicious though and they had the sharks rugby game on so we had a good time! After dinner our waiter called us taxis and we went back to the hostel and chilled for a bit then went to bed. First night in Swaziland was pretty good…
Sunday 9/5/10
I was feeling a little better when I woke up, but it was absolutely gorgeous outside so I took some more advil and tried not to think about it haha. We packed up our stuff and left it at the front while we went on a tour of Lobamba Village. It was pretty cool, our tour guide actually lived in the village so he first took us by the stadium, and then to the King’s museum where we actually learned some cool history about Swaziland! They are one of the few monarchies left in the world! The village was neat to see thought because we just observed people living their normal lives and at the end we went to watch a guy who started this non profit organization in the village teaching kids how to play the guitar and art skills. Him and his female partner played us a few of their songs and it was really great! I took some cool videos! After the tour finished we went back to the stadium and caught the second half of the Ghana vs. Swaziland soccer game! So cool to see Ghana play because I remember watching them in the world cup when they knocked the US out!!! After the game was over and we went to leave, the guards blocked off the exit because the king and his wives were driving their ballin cars out of the stadium!! HE totally waved us too! So cool!! We took a mini bus to from the game back to Lidwala and grabbed our stuff then took the little bus to Sondzela Backpackers in the Milwani Wildlife Sancuary. It was night time when we got there so we couldn’t really see the scenery but the hostel was so cool! We all put our stuff up, claimed bunks and then hung out for a little bit downstairs by the pool and ping pong table, then went up stairs and went to bed.
Monday 9/6/10
WOW.. I cant even put in words how beautiful the view was that we woke up too over looking the whole wildlife sanctuary and mountains!! Breath taking! We hopped on the 7:30am shuttle to go to the grocery store and get a few things! We came back and paid for the horse back riding and right when we were about to leave, Kaitlyn realized that the little bag she had her passport and all her money in was missing :/ At first we thought that there was no way it could be gone, just must be in a different pocket of her backpack. We had to leave because we were going to be late for the horses, so Leya and Kaitlyn stayed behind to keep looking for the passport! In the mean time we walked through the trail from our hostel through the sanctuary… it was amazing! There were wild animals running all around us, (deer looking) not sure their specific names and more monkeys!! So adorable! The horse back riding was absolutely indescribeable!! When we first got there we had to get helmets and then they took us to the place where they had the horses and picked them out for us. The guide gave me Sabuka which means the tiny one in the Swazi language lol he told me this was the perfect horse for me! She was a sweet heart! I haven’t rode a horse since I was so young and even then I think I just rode our pony haha .. But they took us all the way to the mountains and through the fields on the horses and it was so cool!! Saw lots of cool animals, herds of wildabeasts and zebras and enyallas, and much more I just have no clue the names.. but more importantly I have tons of pictures!! The zebras were my favorite to see though! Ah such beautiful creatures!! We rode the horses for about two hours and then went ate lunch at the restaurant they had there which was overlooking the lake where there were HIPPOS with in 5feet of us! So cool!!!! We got to see them eat and then go in the water and hang out haha. Sadly after lunch we heard from the girls and they had no luck with the passport and were still waiting at the police station. Even more bad luck… Today was Swaziland independence day so the Swazi embacy was closed and to make it worse it was also Labor day in the States so the US embacy was also closed so there was absolutely nothing we could do :/ not good!! Once they got back we tried to make the best of the situation and went on a walk through the sanctuary & it was perfect timing because the sun was setting over the mountain and it seriously was one of the top 5 most beautiful things I have ever seen! I got some really cool pictures too!! On the walk we saw more zebras too!! When we got back from our walk we made pbjs for dinner and re-planned what we were going to do until Thursday when the next bus was coming because since kaitlyn didn’t have her passport we couldn’t leave in the morning like we were supposed to, to get back into South Africa. I decided that I was going to stay with her because I know that if that was me, she would have stayed and I would have not wanted to be there alone. Sadly, only Leya felt the same and the others decided that they were going to leave. That night there was a traditional Swazi dance performance going on at the main camp so we took the shuttle to go see it. It was pretty cool to see, very different style of dancing but the drums were way cool! After that we just went home and went to sleep early because there really isn’t anything to do in Swaziland at night.. its exactly the safest place. In the day it’s fine if you are with people, but night time is another story.
Tuesday 9/7/10
Unfortunately the rest of the group thought that it would be okay to leave three girls in Swaziland by them selves so they left in the morning while we stayed behind. :/ As our bad luck continued, we were in a miss understanding with our program director back in the states because when Kaitlyn spoke with here the day before, she was under the impression that the situation was being taken care of and that they would call us when they made her a new passport. So instead of going to the embacy first thing in the morning like we should have, we took the shuttle to the market and then a minibus to the city of Manzini with one of employees from Sondzela. She was really helpful in finding us the right bus to transfer to because there were SO many people and minibuses everywhere, it was actually overwhelming and a bit scary because us three girls were the only white people there, at all. Please, know I am not racist at ALL… it was just a bit uncomfortable having everyone staring at us like what in the world are you doing here… Once we got on the right bus we headed to the Hlane National Park where we booked a Safari!! The bus took about 20 minutes to get there, not a bad ride, I sat next to this adorable little boy who found a digital camera fascinating! He loved looking at my pictures.. it was so sweet! Continuing with our bad luck, we didn’t check the weather before we left so we had on shorts and tanktops and it was probably low 60s .. thankfully the people at the front destk were nice and let us borrow sweatshirts for the drive. The safari was SO COOL!! Right away we saw an ostrich that walked right up to our truck & then a few minutes later we saw a mom and baby rhino!! They were too cool! In total we saw probably 6 different rhinos and tons of enyallas and more of the deer looking animals! We also saw some wildabeasts and wart hogs!! After the first hour, they took us back to the lion section and we drove up on 3 different elephant families!! AHH it was too neat to see the difference in the way the wild elephants act compared to the traied ones that I saw at the park where we rode them on our garden route trip! The last family of elephants we came upon had a tiny little 2week old baby elephant standing next to its mom. OH it was so precious.. hard to get pictures of because it was so small and in the bush a little ways. But our driver told the family in the back to hold onto their kids because he said the mom looked mad. & Boy was he right, about a minute after she got behind our truck and started getting closer and our driver just yelled for us to hold on and he floored it with the mom elephant stampeding behind the truck! AHH it was the coolest thing ever!! At first we were laughing because we were omg this is not happening, but then we were like holy cow we better hold on because if he hits a pot hole we are done for haha!! We got away safely with the elephant on our tail for a good 30 seconds!! What an experience!! After the elephants we saw three female lions chasing something.. we only saw them for a few seconds because they ran off when they heard the truck!! It was way cool to see them though!! Only thing we didn’t see that I was a little bummed about were giraffes.. but it was still an awesome Safari for only $40.!! So im def not complaining!! After the Safari, we ate lunch in the middle of the game park right next to three sleeping rhinos! After lunch we walked back out to the main road to get the next passing bus. We started walking in the direction where the busses were heading and planned to grab it on the way. We came up upon a police road block where the passing cars have to pull over and the police check all the passengers belongings to make sure there isn’t any illegal smuggling going on. As we were walking up to the stopped bus, one of the Swazi police officers asked to see our ids and asked where we were going. We told him and as he looked at our ids his exact words were.. “Oh you girls are American, I’ve always wanted to go to America… Will you marry me?”… No joke with a serious face… REALLY? Ah culture shock begun!! We took our ids said no and walked on the bus and rode thirty minutes back to Manzini where we had to get on a mini bus back to the market where the shuttle from Sondzela was to pick us up! Well ill say this next part was my first real taste of the Africa that people are scared of… Because so far in South Africa we have been spoiled to their modern way of life. COMPLETELY different in Swaziland… As we got of the bus in the middle of the crazy market in Manzini we weren’t exactly sure which of the 200 different minibuses to get on so we stayed close together and started walking in the middle of the chaos of people… once again we were the only white people so the stares were already intact, and then the grabbing of the arms started and the shouting at us when we would ignore them and keep walking.. It was so hard to keep our emotions on ease, one because we were scared to death and two because we just wanted to get home and not deal with this and make the situation worse! I kept it cool until the 10th Swazi man pointed from about a foot in front of me yelling “YOU, MARRY ME?!!” at that point I had no other option but to yell NO GET AWAY FROM ME! And then started crying… so did Kaitlyn (im not the only baby lol) Leya took charge and stayed calm and grabed us closer as we kept walking into the mass of swazi proposers! FINally a nice older man came up to us and asked if we needed help and then showed us to the right bus… Thank God for him. It was so intense and like something from a movie that just didn’t seem real. I don’t know if this sounds a lot worse than it actually was, but to say the least nothing bad happened and as much as I wanted to be angry with the situations its one of those things where you have to remember that you are not in Kansas anymore & you are in a different country where in their culture women are not viewed the same as they are where we are from and having someone yell marry me is common, I guess. Culture shock in full force! We cried for a good 2 minutes on the bus, sucked it up and made it to the market safely! We bought some pasta for dinner and went back to Sondzela and cooked it then sat in the living room and talked with these nice Dutch girls who were med students in the Netherlands just on vacation. We went to sleep really early because after we spoke with our program director we found out that we needed to get to the Embassy first thing in the morning when it opened so we could try to get Kaitlyn a new passport.
Wednesday 9/8/10
All three of us woke up at 5:30am and ate a little breakfast while we waited for the cab driver to pick us up and take us to Mbane the city that was 45minutes away where the American Embassy was located. We first had to go to this photo shop where Kaitlyn had to get a passport sized photo and then get to the embassy. As our wonderful luck continued the passport pictures were the wrong size so we had to go back to the photo place and get different sizes. Being so frustrated and upset because we had no clue when we were going to be able to leave the country we asked a Swazi police car to take us to the photo shop because after waiting five minutes we didn’t see any cabs. It was really nice of him to take us though. After we got the right sized pictures we went back to the embassy and waited in the waiting room until we received any news. The woman told us that these things can take either a few hours or days just depending on how it was handled. We cried again and then all fell asleep in the waiting room chairs. Then three hours later we received the best news and the lady woke us up saying, “Kaitlyn, we got it!!!!” One of the happiest moments of my life! We all cried again, then hugged and Kaitlyn got her new passport and walked outside to grab a cab back to Sondzela. After the rude driver dropped us off at the wrong entrance and demanded us to pay him more money we had to walk about a mile back to Sondzela. As pissed as we were about having to walk, at least we had the privilege to walk through the beautiful sanctuary where we saw three more zebras just eating grass peacefully right by the fence. We were so close to them too! Ah they are so beautiful! We all got back home, took showers then hopped into our bunks and napped until 4:30 because the weather was rainy and crummy so there wasn’t anything to do outside. For a late lunch we made pbj +banana sandwiches and sat by the fire and watched tv for hours. When dinner time came we refried our pasta from the night before and borrowed a little bit of pasta sauce from the fridge and ate by the fire talking to these really nice English people and the Dutch girls from the night before. Staying in hostels is such a great way to meet people from all over the world! IT’s neat to hear all of their traveling stories and about them in general. That night we all went to sleep so happy because we knew that at 7:30 am we were peacing out of Swaziland for good!!
Thursday 9/9/10
We said goodbye to our Sondzela family and then hopped on the Baz bus at 7:45 and enjoyed the hour drive to the border. By 9am we had hugged, RAN across the border, and high fived like 10 times because we were FINALLY back in South Africa!!!! YAY so exciting! We saw giraffes on the the drive too because we drove by a game park a few miles after crossing the border! SO COOL :D our luck at least seemed like it was turning around! By 2:30pm we made it to St. Lucia where the bus picked up the rest of our group that left us while we were in Swaziland. We made it to Durban at 5:45pm and the three of us booked a separate hostel than the rest of the group because we weren’t really excited to hang out with them. We stayed at this really cool hostel called Tekweni. We all showered and got ready and then met some friends that we met in Cape Town who were in Durban on their Vac too at the Hooters in Umlanga. Funny story, one of the guys we met actually lives next door to Gary’s family! Small world hey. While at Hooters I realized that I forgot to take my malaria medications so genius me thought it would be okay to take it with the margarita I was driniking… Bad choice! It was worse than the feeling you get when you take a vitamin on an empty stomach ahha thankfully I didn’t get sick though, just felt like it for a good 3minutes! After hooters we all went to a nearby club called Clapham Gold and had a fun night and then went back to Tekweni and passed out from being so exhausted.
Friday 9/10/10
From our previous days of waking up at the crack of dawn, it was impossible to sleep in. At 7:45am I was wide awake. Thankfully Kaitlyn and Leya were up too so we got dressed and walked to the nearby café and had breakfast. Then weather was so beautiful so we ate outside and enjoyed it. After breakfast Leslie and Ruth (Gary’s sister and mom) picked us up in Umlanga and brought us back to their house. It was so unbelievably nice of them to let us stay with them for the night instead of in another hostel. After we put our swimsuits on and we met the boys next door and they took us to the beach in Belito where we chilled and made sand creatures for two hours. After Belito beach we went to the beach that was close to their house called Westbrook which was equally a beautiful with Huge waves! It was a little bit windy but we enjoyed relaxing in the sun and not being stuck in Swaziland. After another hour we went back to the boys house and they cooked us lunch and we watched the OC for a bit and then went back to Greg and Leslie’s to shower and get ready. They took us to a cocktail party with them, which was so fun. After that Brett took us to a few different bars and we all hung out for a bit then called it an early night because the girls had to be at the airport at 5am.
Saturday 9/11/10
After a long week it was finally time to go back home to Cape Town. Kaitlyn and Leya’s plane left at 6:45am but mine and the rest of the groups’ left at 9am. Leslie made me toast for breakfast and then brought me to the airport and the plane took off right on time. We got back to Capetown around 12:30 and Lauren picked me up and brought me back to my flat! I love their family, they are all so sweet and were so helpful over the break! I honestly can’t thank them enough for all of their hospitality. Once we were back to the flat the security alarms were all going off because we had all been gone for so long that the maid did something with the alarm code and when we opened any of the doors the annoyingly loud alarm just blared. Thankfully it only took about 5minutes of constant EEEHHHHEHHHEHHHHHH before our program director called us with the right code and we fixed it. A few of us girls decided that a trip to camps bay beach was in order so we all put our swim suits on and took a minibus for about 30 minutes to the beach. The weather was so perfect!! We hung out for about two hours then got back on the minibuses and headed to the Rugby game that we got tickets for before we left! It was pretty cool to see the game in the stadium! First time I have seen a game in person! After the game a few of us girls went to dinner and then went back to our flats and got ready to go out. Only three of us ended up going out but we had a great time because the rugby team that we saw playing earlier that day was at the same club we were at. They all had on these matching long sleeved polo shirts so our friend sarah asked why in the world a group of like 20 guys would wear matching outfits out and then they told us they were all on the professional rugby team. Haha they were all fun to hang out with though for the night!
It was a nice way to end our unexpected spring break to say the least! Even though it wasn’t the vac we planned, we still had a great time and everyone came home safely so no complaints! Sorry that was a novel and hopefully ill update these things more often!! Still loving Cape Town as much as ever, especially now that the weather is starting to warm up!!
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