So I am completely unsure of when I last blogged or what has happened exactly since then but I know it was before my birthday so I will start there.

On the 5th of November it was my 21st birthday. I had a very good birthday with many celebrations. I started off with a party with the kids at Kindawo. That was a lot of fun, bring cake and junk food to little kids and they get very excited. I got sung happy birthday in English and Zulu which was lovely. I brought cake to bible study and after bible study was over we chatted over cake which was lovely.

On Thursday for my actual birthday I worked, Klaske came to Swapo that day and we had a lovely day taking photos, painting the container, getting sunburnt (opps) playing with the children and then eating cake with the children in the container. In the afternoon after work I went shopping with Klaske for a present for Martine for her baby shower, baby shopping so much fun! Then when I arrived home, I was quickly blindfolded and lead into the living room where upon revelling was decorated with streamers and balloons and the table was set beautifully for a 3 course meal. I felt very special. Mona, being the darling she is, stayed home all day preparing food and the house to make me feel extra special. She is amazing! So that evening I celebrated with the house, we played silly games that were very fun, I got sung happy birthday in English, Dutch, German and French and we finished the evening with some terrible karaoke which provided more laughs.

I had an actually birthday party with people I invited on the Saturday for an afternoon tea. I bake a lot, a lot of things and got a little frustrated when I pulled out the over tray with my non tea towelled hand in a hurry and burnt myself making my dying minutes before the party started very unproductive. But it was a success and I think everyone had fun. I did so that was great.

The house was very busy for that entire week, the new couple from Holland arrived in the middle of my party, I felt a little bad for making their arrival so busy, however considering they were meant to arrive 3 days earlier I couldn’t really plan around their changing timetable so I didn’t beat myself up too much.

So when I had to get ready to leave on Sunday for Brittan and my’s ultimate road trip, I was more than ready for a holiday, except I also wasn’t because new couple meant moving out of my room just before my party into a room where there are pretty much no cupboards. So Sunday, I was frantically sorting out my new shared room and attempting to pack to be ready to leave.

So you may be asking who is Brittan and what is this ultimate road trip Marita is talking about. Well great question.

Brittan is a volunteer with a different organisation called Thandinani which is just down the road. She is volunteering there by herself and also lives by herself. So her organisation and mine (NGO’s here are pretty tight nit) linked up to give her some friends, namely us at the YDC! As pathetic as that sounds, she is super cool/tizzight/awesome/hip, yo (as typed by current subject). Brittan is from the US, California namely, went to Harvard and has just finished up her degree. She got a fellowship from her Uni to come over here for a year to work with non government organisations. Since Sarah has left it has been lovely to have another native English speaker as a friend who I can use extravagant English with, speak fast and know that she’ll understand, well until we start arguing over pronunciation. Tom-a-toes, Toma-toes etc.

The Ultimate Road Trip – is just the title of this particular road trip, because it is both of our first real road trips as we headed all the way down to Cape Town from Durban along the coast.

So our first night we stayed in Durban, we travelled by the Baz Bus which is a backpackers bus in which you can pay for a 7day ticket and hop on or off anywhere they stop (which is most towns). So we overnighted in Durban being boring people and not partying but going to bed early as we were both wrecked (seemingly to set a trend for the rest of our trip).

Next stop was Coffee Bay. Wow! Located on the wild coast (named so because it is still pretty wild and fairly undeveloped) Coffee Bay was beautiful! A lovely relaxed beach / surfy vibe, a stones throw away from the beach the backpackers there was awesome! The best one of the entire trip. We took R40 ($6) surf lessons, bargain! We got a tour through a Xhosa (x is a click in Xhosa so very difficult to pronounce, click like you would a horse to giddy up and then say hosa and you have the pronunciation) village, visited a Sangoma and had a traditional lunch. We went on the sundowners (as in the guide to a speci spot to see the sunset) twice, once on a cliff watching whales jump in the distance as the sun sunk over the grassy hills. We hiked to Hole in the Wall (a cliff in the ocean with a hole in the middle), this was a 3.5hr hike on a goat track along the cliff face over the undulating hills sharing our track with sheep, goats and cow and local villages. So beautiful!!!! We met backpackers from all over the world, made some new friends (Brit found an enemy (a ex Yale student, Harvard’s biggest rival)) had interesting conversations.

We stayed 3 nights in Coffee Bay before continuing on to PE (Port Elizabeth). It was strange coming from such a rural spot into a city that could have been Melbourne. We didn’t actually spend much time in PE as we paid for a game tour of Addo Elephant Park and a private Game reserve called Schotia. Addo was incredible for Elephants, I saw hundreds, including a baby only a couple of days old, so cute! So many photos! Schotia was also amazing, we saw Lions!!! We had a massive lunch and dinner there and got to see Zebra, lions, rhino, buffalo, giraffes, mongoose, warthog, impala and so many others, but the lions were the most exciting. We got so close, within a couple of metres of a big male and a female and her cubs. So many more photos!!! Such a good day!

From PE we went to Storms river, where Brit did the biggest bungy jump in the world (213m). I wanted to but thought that since I have already bungyed in NZ that to pay the money just to say that I’d done the highest wasn’t a good enough reason. Very proud of my self control that day. I did however do a flying fox across to the bridge with Brit which was very beautiful and high!! That night after paying for accommodation in a backpackers that turned out to be more like a lodge (as there were only older people there and it missed the backpacking vibe we’d grown to love) we decided not to waste a night sleeping in one place then waste our day getting the bus to Cape Town.

So we took an overnight bus to Cape Town instead, arriving at 6am when everything was still shut. After resting in some chairs in the bus station for a couple of hours we hitched up our packs and walked to long street where we tried to find the backpackers we’d read about with a free dinner that evening. We eventually got let in after sitting on the curb for half an hour. The backpacker was on Long St, which is a very touristy street with lots of cute, quirky cafes and restaurants and designer shops.

In Cape Town we met some more international tourists (as you do) however we really like these ones (not to say we didn’t like the ones we’d met previously). So we heard that our new friends were hiking up Table Mountain the following day, so we asked if we could tag along. The next morning early, we left the backpackers walking towards the mountain to save the taxi fee. An hour later we arrived at the base of the mountain. Stupidly we decided not to take the stairs up a 2.5hr route because we reasoned that it would hurt our leg muscles more. So we opted for the 4.5hr track that meanders up the back of the mountain apparently a lot less stairs. I’m sure that track would have been lovely but being the adventures we were we took a side path off this track and ended up scaling in-between the mountain cliffs up a steep raven, often climbing up the little river / waterfall falling below. It was a little stupid decision for sure but the views were spectacular!! 4hrs later when we arrived at the top the view over Cape Town felt especially well deserved and was even more speci. The swarms of tourist that had taken the cable car up, we felt didn’t deserve the view and probably didn’t appreciate it as much as us. However I have heard that the line for the cable car up can be hours long and therefore maybe some of them did deserve to see the beautiful view God had created below us. We took the cable car back down, knowing our already shaky legs would not survive the descent down the mountain. A few of us window shopped Long St that afternoon which was fun.

The next day Brit and I hired a car and drove to Stellenbosch (the wine region). Wow that was pretty spectacular too. We stopped a winery and had lunch and wine tasted (yum) we saw some cheetahs too, there was a cheetah education / rehabilitation centre there. After wineing and dining, we jumped back in the car and drove up through the rest of the wine region, up through some spectacular mountains. We went over the mountains and driving down towards the coast felt like we were on a car advert. The road meanders around the mountain side, with wild flowers and golden grass on our left and right. Cruising through those mountains was a lot of fun! After a short freak out when Brit had a bee hit her neck and die on impact causing a lot of screaming and jumping in the back seat, very amusing, we continued down to Hermanus. This is the region famous for whales and it is currently whale season. Unfortunately due to car rental trouble that morning causing us to leave a couple of hours after our original departure time we were a little late for the whales and didn’t know where to find them. The drive back to Cape Town we saw a spectacular sunset which was a lovely end to a real road trip day.

The next day we went with our friends down to Cape Point. We stopped to see the penguins, then drove to the point only to get blown away by the wind (not joking I nearly fell over because of that wind so many times). It was a lot of fun standing at the point, wind making your hair stand straight up (dress not the best choice of clothing!) watching people battle to get the view. We drove round to Cape of Good Hope, the most south westerly point of Africa and crashed a wedding. Random, yes! There was a Korean couple getting married on the point and we were invited to join in some wedding photos, drink Champaign with them. It was very funny and really lovely! The wedding photos with the sign were quite classic with a massive rock having to be put on the dress to stop it flying away. We then drove along, apparently one of the world’s top ten prettiest drives along the coast. It was pretty amazing, the road cut into the cliff and the view were stunning. After battling with the wind to get the doors open we took some pics and went for a very late lunch / dinner at Mariners Wharf were we had heard had the best fish and chips. Well it was expensive but soo soo worth it! I wouldn’t say the chips were the best but the fish melted in your mouth. So delicious. We then ran back to the car, running in all directions attempting to avoid the sand burning our skin from the wind, very funny, and drove back into Cape Town. Spectacular day!

That was about all our adventures in Cape Town. It was very strange to be in a city again. I felt like I was back in Melbourne, just with a big mountain watching the city in the background. It felt like home (which was nice) but I felt distant at the same time. It felt too clean, like it was all a ‘face’. A little culture shock I’m sure, something I’m not looking forward too back in Melbourne, but that I’m sure I will have. I find it nice sometimes when I feel so disconnected with and repulsed by the pride of the rich. But I’m rich too, so I supposed when I am repulsed by my own actions and non thought in my spending it sort of evens out.

So I’m back home in PMB now. It really felt like I was home when I came back, as much as I wish I could have had longer in Cape Town it’s nice to be back. The house is very busy with 9 people living here now. The new couple are working at Swapo as well, they are getting used to the Africa timing and general different way things work here, which can be understandably frustrating a times.

I had a waterfight with the boys from the shelter on Sunday, so so much fun! Brit took photos, so beautiful. The boys are so different and come from such heartbreaking backgrounds but are so beautiful in so many ways. I so want to take some of them home!

So I have not long to go here now 16 days as Blair informed me this morning. I’m looking forward so much to seeing all my friends and family again, but at the same time dreading leaving all my friends and foster family here. I’ve been planning my last trip which will be hiking in the Drakensburg which I’m looking forward to immensely. This weekend all the YDC are going down to Shelly Beach. Should be a fun weekend.

So until I blog next, God bless and much love. Xox Marita.

*Halala means congratulations in Zulu – referring to my birthday in this use.

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