This past Tuesday was National Women’s Day in South Africa and we had school off, so naturally I skipped class on Monday and took a road trip. The road trip we took is called the Garden Route. It follows up the east coast of South Africa including any stops on the way. We left from Cape Town and went all the way up to Tsitsikamma (below Port Elizabeth on the map, its not the red line). There were 16 of us, 4 cars.
The weekend began early on Saturday morning. I woke up to a filthy “after friday night party” house, cleaned a little and then went to the rental car company in downtown cape town. My roommate, Emily, reserved an automatic car for the whole weekend. Turns out she couldn’t be the driver for the car, so I had to sign the papers as the primary driver. When I found this out I’m pretty sure my face went white. I’m a great driver in the states, on the right side of the road, but I was not prepared for the left side especially in Cape Town. I reluctantly pulled out of the parking lot, turned a corner, and immediately scratched the hub cap on the curb. whoops! Emily took the wheel for most of the driving and I was perfectly fine with that :)
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| left side of the road baby! |
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| ag lands |
The drive was beautiful and showed all sides of South Africa. From miles of native vegetation, agricultural land, suburbs, and settlements. We pit-stopped a couple times in towns were English was defiantly the second language, with Afrikaans being dominant. We drove for maybe 5 hours and finally made it to Mossel Bay stopped for dinner, and then onward to Wilderness. Yes, Wilderness is a town not a description.
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| view from Wilderness Hostel |
Wilderness was amazing!! I had an image of what a hostel in Africa would be, and it was blown out of the water. This place was perfect. Right on the beach with a bar, fire pit, and breakfast ready for us in the morning. The day started out great, we walked to down the railroad tracks. I felt like a hooligan, but the train wasn’t running anymore so it wasn’t that cool. We walked through a tunnel and came out the other side to a cave/house/craft fair. There is a man that lives in a abandoned cave where a restaurant used to be when the train did run. He now collects things and decorates his cave. He homes home less people for the night and runs off tourist donations. We were lucky to see this place because it isn’t the kind of place that is published in tour books. We walked back to the ocean views of whales waving in the water. It was a beautiful morning.
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| walking on the railroad tracks |
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| whale waving at us :) |
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| the cave We reluctantly drove away from the beautiful hostel and made our way to Knynsa where we met our elephant friends. The park rescued orphaned elephants that have been found in the area. We were able to feed, hug, and KISS the elephants :) I loved one of the baby elephants a little too much and to tusked me in the stomach lightly, I think it was over taking pictures with me. This was my favorite activity of the weekend by far!   Sally and I The next day the group split up. Half jumped off a 215 meter bridge, and the other half did a canopy zip line tour. I’m was not mentally prepared for jumping of a bridge so I went with the latter. On our way there we stopped in Nature’s Valley (like the bar haha) and ran in the Indian ocean! The water wasn’t too cold and the beach was deserted and beautiful! The canopy was really fun and a lot of the ticket cost goes to good causes like feeding local school children, HIV/Aids support, and local employment initiatives. I love when there are simple ways to give back here. At times I feel stupid being a tourist here when there are so many people who live in extreme poverty and can’t even enjoy the beauty in their own country because they spend their time working hard for their family.  Indian Ocean!  Canopy Tour Our trip was coming to a close, all we had left was to “caress” cheetahs. We couldn’t take the main road to get to the park because it was closed, so we had to be inventive. We ended up driving 2 hours on a dirt road. This was the most pristine nature area I’ve seen so far, the only visible human impact was the one lane dirt road we were taking. It looked like a scene of Jurassic Park, I was just waiting for a dinosaur to pop up from behind a bush.  car after the dirt road We finally made it to the Cheetah park and took a tour. I was a pretty disturbed of how they kept the animals here. The animals were held in small areas in relation to their size and most are bred in captivity. It was basically a zoo that specialized in African animals. The tour guides also was pretty strange, there seemed to be a goal of making the visitors scared of the animals. As if we should be glad they are caged or else they would attack us. In a way justifying how they keep these amazing animals caged all their lives. Even when we went to pet the cheetahs, they pointed at a small hill with rocks around it and joked it was where an old visitor was buried. As an environmental/ecology major I have a lot of guilt for supporting this place. But its true I was amazing to be able to pet a cheetah while in Africa. If I could do it again I probably would want to go to a more wildlife friendly place and accept the fact that it’s not a normal thing to pet a wild animal.  It was an amazing weekend and I’m glad I didn’t wait any longer to get out of Cape Town and see more of Africa. I am now looking into spring break trips (seasons are opposite here) to Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe.  Driving back to Cape Town |
