I drove a difficult stick shift with no power steering on the left side of the road for the past week. Christa and Jo don't drive manual, so it was all me, all the time. Driving in Africa can be utter insanity. In big towns, people just wander the streets, there don't seem to be any jaywalking laws or anything along those lines, so you have to watch for traffic and people everywhere. On the highway, there are animals all over the place. I had to stop for cows and geese and sheep, and there were a lot of goats around and occasionally some horses. Sometimes there were people with them, mostly not. On the roads, people pass all over, all the time, and protocol is to drive on the shoulder while they pass you.
I actually got pulled over - although it was more like waved over (my first time, in any country) for overtaking - I started my overtake in the legal zone but then it stopped being legal in the middle of my passing and the cops saw me. They didn't have a good way to ticket me since I am American and basically just asked for a bribe. "Just give me something - a cold drink, just a little something, we'll let it go. What do you say?" I only gave him R20 - about $2.50 and he let me go. The ticket would have been R2000, or $250.
We stayed in backpackers (hostels) R70-90 a night, so around $10. It was weird to drive through Africa, most places we didn't see ANY white people, and then suddenly, a backpackers, in the middle of nowhere, or right next to/in a village, and all the 20-something white people would be there with their tans, their dreads, their surfboards, their Chaco sandals, their books or journals, their big packs, usually holding a drink.
As far as activities:
Coffee Bay:
Surfing was cool - we had an hour lesson on a soft board, I got up about 8 times, so I felt pretty good about myself. Surfing was followed by toasties on the beach - toasties are something they make all the time here: A grilled sandwich of cheese, tomato, and onion.
Horseback riding: kind of scary because my saddle wasn't on tight and my stirrups were too long so I couldn't really keep my feet in them very well. Our guide asked if we wanted to go fast - his English wasn't that great - and we thought we would be trotting, but we took off at a fast canter. That happened twice, and the third time he didn't even ask, he just started galloping across this field. Yes, I have galloped a horse through the Transkei...
Dinner in a Xhosa village: we were taken to the headman's hut (about 10-15 of us) and our guide was also Xhosa, but from another village. He was quite a character - about 18 years old, he translated everything for us, and you could tell he was adding things on all the time. So it started where the headmaster served up some Xhosa beer - maize beer. He poured it into large yogurt containers and we passed them around until they were gone, then, to our dismay, he would fill them up again.
Our guide, Joseph, explained the process of making maize beer and then: "So, once the beer is ready, word gets around the village: 'Joseph has one of the best batches of beer ever made!' and then everyone in the village comes over, they all try the beer, and we drink and get drunk." He said that a lot: "We drink and get drunk." Every time he passed the yogurt container to me or Christa (we were sitting next to him) he would say, "Get in there." Another girl bought a drink from the ones Joseph brought from the backpackers, and he said "A Hunter's for - the Tessa one...Get in there, Tessa."
After we started drinking the beer, "the Mamas" came in and sang and danced for a long time. Joseph kept saying "SHAKE that body!" and he would occasionally get up and dance behind the Mamas, where the kids were sitting, and sometimes dancing.
After the dancing, we ate pumpkin and maize mixed together, then maize and sweet beans mixed together. Both were tasty, not particularly interesting. During dinner we asked questions through Joseph and the Mamas and the headmaster would answer. Then they asked where we were from and our names, so Joseph asked us and told them, one of us at a time. There were a lot of Americans, and every time he said one of us, he said we were from Bush or from "Mr. George", and of course we all kept protesting that we don't like Bush, but he always introduced us that way anyway. I was last, so I had time to prepare, and I said I study in PE, which made me sound a little better.
After dinner they had us get up and dance once with the Mamas, and that was embarrassing for us. Then we hiked back to our minibus and rode back to the backpackers.
The Drakensburg mountains:
Took a Land Rover up the Sani Pass into Lesotho with a crazy guide named Rudy - these tour guides are all a little odd. It was fun.
Lesotho was strange - a totally different culture from what we had been seeing in South Africa. They wear blankets and boots, and herd sheep or goats. We had some bread and maize beer in a woman's hut and our guide told us about their lifestyle.
Lesotho is a little country inside SA, they have their own government - a monarchy. Lesotho (Say Leh-soo-too) is the country, a Mesotho is one person, Besotho is many people, and Sesotho is the language.
A Masotho shepherd sat smiling at me and said "I love you" when Jo and I were eating our lunches, so I considered staying in Lesotho and becoming a shepherd's wife, but before he said that he asked me for money, and afterwards he said he was hungry, so I think he was a gold-digger. Plus I'm probably worth 30 cows in Lesotho, given my level of education, and I don't even think he had that many sheep. We gave him a juice box - it was all we had left from lunch, and we aren't supposed to encourage begging.
We did tip the young man who had created a guitar from some metal and plastic, and played it impressively (I have an 8 second video).
Then we went to the highest pub in Africa and had a drink, but it was cold, so we had hot chocolate after that.
The next day we did a 6 hour hike, it was beautiful, of course. We didn't see a soul the whole time, swam in some COLD water, and forded a river a few times. And we got a little lost apparently, because we came out on the road about 8 km from our backpackers (it was supposed to be 2.5 km away). We walked for a while, until it became clear we had a ways to go, and the road was under construction, and then a truck went by and I jokingly stuck my thumb out, but they saw and backed up, so we got in the back of this couple's pickup and got dropped off a few minutes later.
Then we washed up and had dinner at a nice coffee shop/deli called "The Lemon Tree" in Underberg, about 20 minutes away from where we stayed.
Buccaneers at Chintsa (say sin-sah):
Took out kayaks and went upriver for a few hours. Neither Jo nor I had ever kayaked before, but Christa had, so she took one alone, and Jo and I laughed a lot in ours and got really wet. Jo doesn't know how to steer, but she got in the back, I was trying to teach her how to steer, so we zigzagged up the river. I got hit in the back of the head with her paddle at least three times. There were jumping fish in this river, which we discovered when one jumped into my lap. That was exciting.
We got back and went down to the beach to swim and read all day - I finished a book for our literature class (it was more like a romance novel though - gross).
Both nights at Buccaneers, Jo and I drank cider and giggled for a few hours, which was fun. We had some good talks, and some that we probably shouldn't have had, but it was nice to reconnect one-on-one, away from the stress of the flat and school and all that.
And then the drive home: we had to pull off the road at one point to avoid head-on collision, because someone was overtaking and there was no room for them to get back into their lane. Then they pulled off too, so we went on again... and then I got pulled over, as described above, and we made it back to PE all in one piece.
If you read all that... wow. I'm honored. Don't tell anyone, though, they'll find out you have no social life, and as Joseph would say, "So, sorry for you!"
