DAY 161: "Erik, you're still here?" Joan from housekeeping asked me. She had bid me farewell four days before during her last shift at The Backpack since she expected me to be gone by next shift.

"Yeah, I'm still here. But I'm leaving right now."

David from Manchester walked in on me in the kitchen with a smug stare which said, "Ha ha, you're still here."

"I'm finally leaving this time," I told him.

"Ready to go?" Eve the Frenchie at the tour desk asked me.

"No, I think I'm going to hang out another week," I joked with her before having her call me a taxi.

IT COULDN'T HAVE BEEN A MORE PERFECT DAY to leave Cape Town. Unlike the day before -- the perfect day for abseiling down Table Mountain -- it was cold and cloudy with a prediction of rain. Table Mountain was covered in a thick fog. I supposed it was poetic justice: I left Cape Town just the way I found it.

My ticket out of Cape Town was stolen but that was okay because I still had a reference number. That reference number got me on the Intercape bus -- even if my name on the roster was misspelled "E. Qrinidad" -- bound for Windhoek (pronounced vindhook), capital city of Namibia, twenty and a half hours away by road north of Cape Town. I had received mixed reviews of the Intercape bus experience. Some said the ride was bumpy with no chance of sleep; others said it was a comfortable ride. Either way, it was my cheapest option to get to my destination -- plus it covered the cost of an accommodation since it rode through the night.

THE BUS RIDE WASN'T TOO THRILLING nor as bumpy as some predicted; it was merely a twenty and a half hour ride in a luxury double-decker (picture above) with reclining seats (but with no leg room) and video screenings (which blacked out every time the tracking was bad). The conducter Justin was a friendly guy on the P.A. system who served us tea and coffee and played Bean and The Legend of Bagger Vance on the monitors. (I figured the latter movie was played for all the South African Charlize Theron fans since she was on about every magazine cover in the newsstands since her Best Lead Actress Oscar.) The bus stopped in small towns en route to pick up scheduled passengers and let the current passengers stretch their legs and buy snacks, meat pies and samoosas (deep fried, triangle-shaped meat and vegetable dumplings) from gas station shops. In between stops and video screenings I either slept, had small talk with my Namibian row-mate Dave or read Artemis Fowl trilogy author Eoin Colfer's latest book The Wish List, which I started and finished before I checked into my Windhoek hostel.

The border crossing was timely -- we hit South Africa's exit post at exactly 8:00 and Namibia's entrance at 9:00 -- but not too exciting. The only thing worth mentioning was putting up with the non-stop chatter at the border and on the bus ride from the South African and Namibian college students who read poetry out loud and spent hours trying to figure out the name of "that movie with Antonio Banderas and Angelina Jolie in it." (The answer was Original Sin, which I never really saw except for its awesome unrated sex scene.)

We drove through the Namibian and northwestern South African desert hills all day and all night, and by 6:30 a.m. the next morning we arrived in Windhoek in some big parking lot in the center of town where all the buses, car pick-ups and taxis drivers looking for early morning fares convened. The hostel I made a reservation at, Chameleon Backpackers, already had a transport waiting for me and three others, which took us to our new accommodations.

Exciting day, yes -- about as exciting as watching a baseball game sober, I know. But at least I finally got the hell out of Cape Town before I started to lose my mind. Man, nothing could have been more exciting that day than that.