The Rest of Vacation

After Cintsa, we went to Port St. Johns, where we stayed at Amapondo, a great backpackers on the beach which had a very relaxed atmosphere. Every day they do some sort of excursion, and on Christmas Eve we went on their "Mystery Hike." First we went to the Blow Hole, a natural phenomenon where waves crashing against rocks look like a whale's blow hole. To get to the Blow Hole, you must first walk down a steep, rocky path; then climb down a ladder; then climb across a narrow ladder; then up another ladder to another cliff; then finally down from the cliff to a slightly smaller cliff next to it. Before doing this, they show you the memorial stones of people who have died there and tell you stories about tourists who met their end at the Blow Hole in the last few years. Since it was also an incredibly windy day and even from the top I felt like I was going to be blown away, I decided not to go so far as to venture any the ladders and therefore, survived. The view was still pretty great.

Next we went to a traditional Xhosa spa, for lack of a better name. They covered us in clay and then mud (there are pictures on the Picasa album). It's supposed to be very good for the skin. Getting to each part--the clay cave, the mud pool, etc.--involved climbing barefoot up a steep, rocky wall, but yet again I narrowly avoided death. The next stop was a restaurant for lunch, where we were exiled to the porch seating so that we didn't shed clay all over the indoor seating. Finally, we had to jump in the river--the day was so windy that we were forbidden from going into the ocean--to get off the clay so that the backpackers' drainage system wasn't permanently ruined by the clay. That evening there was a seven course dinner to celebrate the holiday.

We spent the rest of the time in Port St Johns going to the beach and other idyllic places with great views. Afterwards I made my way to Coffee Bay to meet up with some other PCVs. Coffee isn't the prettiest beach I'd been to in South Africa, but it probably had the best swimming. One day we went on the hike from Coffee Bay to the Hole in the Wall, about 10k. It had a lot of climbing and a lot of steep precipices, plus I wasn't wearing the right kind of shoes, but I managed to complete it by going barefoot for about half the hike. The gorgeous pictures from the hike that are posted on Picasa are courtesy of Kim, who borrowed my camera for the occasion. It was the best of all worlds, as I don't particularly enjoy taking pictures but I do like having them afterwards.

On New Year's Eve we had a game marathon that included rummy, Balderdash, telephone pictionary, and 30 Seconds (kind of like Catchphrase--but the South African edition). We'd met some PCVs from Mozambique by then, so they joined our motley crew and I think I might have played enough board games to satisfy me for the next year or so. The last day there, I took a surfing lesson. No, really. The water was pretty choppy and it was definitely pretty tough on me, but also a lot of fun. It was early in the morning, so I spent the rest of the day lying down, aching from being tossed about by the waves.

Getting back was about as painless as you can expect from two solid days of travel, including an overnight bus. I kept falling asleep in the taxis at inappropriate moments, but I made it back, to the welcome of my village and my family.

And, I've done several loads of laundry now, so I am very settled in. I start back at the office on the 15th. Happy post-holidays, everyone!

Five Weeks In One Backpack: Week Three

I am home. I have also awoken from my sleeping coma and gone grocery shopping, though I have a nightmarish quantity of laundry still ahead of me to do before I can really consider myself settled back in. As always, returning home was wonderful and I have to resist the urge to start immediately writing about my return rather than my time away.

After LST and GTOT, I took an overnight bus to Durban to meet Josh, who flew in to visit me for a couple of weeks. The bus ride was uneventful, or at least would have been, except that it began to rain, which is when the driver discovered that the windshield wipers weren't working and so pulled over and called a mechanic to come fix them. I was sleeping soundly and probably would have slept through the entire incident (one of my hidden talents is the ability to sleep in all circumstances), except that there was a white family seated next across the aisle from me who were very unhappy and very vocal about it. They expressed their frustration by being incredibly rude to the Black Greyhound employees. Finally, another white woman on board essentially told them to shut up, which seemed to give everyone else on board the courage to say the same. Other than other Greyhound trips, I haven't really had to confront too many racially loaded incidents like this one as Giyani is fairly monoethnic. However, out in other parts of the country, there is the constant haunting reminder of South Africa's tumultuous past and the PCV's inevitable uncomfortable role somewhere in between.

Arrived into Durban safely and still far too early in the morning, just happy to be somewhere where I could take a hot shower. Josh and I had a great time in Durban. We didn't spend too much time at the beach, which has unfortunately become much more polluted and crime-ridden than it was when dubbed the "Golden Mile." We visited uShaka Marine World, a Sea World-like place with dolphin shows and penguin feedings, plus a very cool aquarium. We toured the Kwa Muhle Museum, Durban's tiny apartheid museum, where we learned, amongst other things, the history of bunny chow, a meal consisting of curry inside a loaf of bread, a dish unique to South Africa. Evidently, under apartheid, Indian restaurants weren't allowed to seat black customers and the styrofoam take away container had yet to be invented, and so bunny chow became the first form of take out food. We went to Victoria Street Market in the Indian District, and I imagine that we wandered around more malls than Josh was expecting. Sorry, no Durban pictures, I was paranoid about carrying around my camera.

Next stop was Cintsa, a beautiful, sparsely populated area far south along the Wild Coast. The backpackers was a bit noisy, but the beach was beautiful. We spent a couple days just vegging on the beach and by the pool before going to Inkwenkwezi Nature Reserve, which contains all of the big five (according to it--we saw no cheetahs).

Inkwenkwezi was a nice happy medium between going to a zoo and going to the massive Kruger National Park. The Reserve did game drives, so it knew just where to take us. They also had only a few specimens of each animal, so there weren't too many surprises to be found--we pretty much just drove with some other vehicles, for example, to the place where the rhinos were grazing that day. The lions were kept in a separate enclosure (presumably to prevent them from eating precious zebras), which we got to see, but unfortunately we weren't able to go inside as four of the lions were lying in wait at the entrance, ready to attack. We did however get some great pictures of lions hunting tourists. Last stop at Inkwenkwezi was the separate elephant reserve with tame elephants. Tame is not so exciting at first glance, but it did mean that we got to feed and pet them!

Next entry: Port St. John's