Cindy and John’s Adventures

I really should just concentrate on one thing at a time, but of course that doesn’t happen…

Anyway, we took the highly efficient commuter train from Stellenbosch to Cape Town.   It was pretty much like any commuter train in the states.  We arrived at the train station and walked to our next hostel, Zebra Crossing.  It was kind of out of town a bit (like every hostel in a major city so far) but nearby groceries and restaurants.  We really liked it there though.  Really chill and everyone staying there was super nice. 

We actually had pretty decent food here (we decided to knock off the self-catering deal a bit because we figured we wouldn’t get chinese/thai food for a while).  A long while. 

Our first tourist activity was to take the train to Simon’s Town which is south of Capetown going down the Cape of Good Hope.  From there we walked a few kilometers to the coolest thing – Penguins!  Woohoo!  There was this boardwalk type thing with a short fence and you could see tons of penguins nesting and having babies.  It’s a good thing we saw Happy Feet on the way over the Atlantic!  I’m talking way cute.  I know, I know, whatever, it’s a chick thing.

Over the next couple of days we visited Bo-Kaap, the Muslim area (totally kickin’ colored houses – kind of like those row houses in San Francisco), the VA Waterfront – the totally touristy area of Cape Town – and of course, Table Mountain.  Which quite literally, looks like a flat table on the top of it.  Of course, being the unlucky people that we are, we pick the one day out of our stay there to do it and it’s totally rainy and cold.  Oh, and did I mention, windy?  I mean, we’re talking oh my gosh I’m going to get blown off this mountain windy.  Okay, maybe not, but it felt like it.  So we get to the top and see nothing but when we’re coming back down we could see the skyline of the city.  It was kind of funny because the whole trip including the hour it took to walk to the trailhead and the hour back was like 5 hrs.  We met this girl at the hostel that took 5 hrs one way.  I mean granted she said she was out of shape, but she didn’t look too terribly out of shape.  But I guess looks can be deceiving. 

Anyway, Cape Town was a nice end to our South Africa journey.  And we were almost on to our next destination, Namibia!  Which coincidentally used to be part of South Africa until like 10 years ago. 

Hello all!  Internet has been few and far between as we head north and probably will be fewer and even farther between.  I even bought a notebook to do a handwritten journal since I’m not sure when we’ll be able to get on!

Anyway, Stellenbosch was awesome!  I mean, really, where can you go wrong with wine and decent food?  It’s a small town like an hour by train outside of Cape Town and there’s like 120 some-odd wineries.  And then there’s all the neighboring towns that have a gazillion more. 

So we went on this hop-on hop-off bus winery deal.  First off, it’s kind of weird because they charge for tasting.  Hello, isn’t the point of the try and buy?  Anyway, we learned that some of the wines we get in the states are done by several wineries combining their product together until they find a palatable combination and then marketing it under a different name.  So, we were looking for a particular winery but the winery didn’t actually exist.  Kind of lame but just to get their product overseas a lot of the wineries are too small.

Anyway, we tried several different kinds of wine, and had quite a few glasses of wine.  And it was quite ironic that we stayed at a hostel called the Stumble Inn.  But we really did stumble home one night!

Our next stop was Hogsback. Fellow travellers Ross & Michelle who we met in the N Drakensburgs recommended this lovely place. And we literally would have had no intention of going there.

Unfortunately, to go to Hogsback coming from the East you had to spend the night in East London. Their shuttle ran once a day and it was in the morning and we didn’t get there until the afternoon (there’s only 1 run from Umtata to E London/day on the bus). Not that E London was that bad – but we chose the loudest place – E London Backpackers – and they had a school group there. Need I say more? No sleep for John and Cindy.

The next day we got the shuttle to Hogsback. To Away with the Fairies. Unbelievably gorgeous view of the Hogs 1-3 (they kind of looked like those pigs that have been stuffed with the apple in the mouth except for they have those little ridges on their backs – hence the name hogsback instead of pigsback). And for 2 nights we had this little bungalow all to ourselves with our own kitchenette and bathroom (another couple came on the 3rd night)! Score! It was called, yes, I kid you not, The Hobbit. Someone was an amazing artist because they had painted darn near all the interior rooms with fairy themes – though fortunately not overkill – supposedly it may have been the inspiration for the Tolkien series…no idea.

The first full day we were there we decided to conquer Hog 1. Unfortunately, we, like in Costa Rica, were following a beloved cartoon map. We were okay for the first several miles. We followed the yellow footprints (they were marking the path). And then the path came to a forest road. And there was this giant yellow footprint that marked going up. So we bushwhacked this part. To the next forestry road. We literally ended up on our hands and knees crawling through the brush. Which, of course, we found out was unnecessary. But more to that later. We headed down this road and finding no more of our helpful yellow footprints we finally ran into this gentleman that was able to show us point us the right way. Unfortunately, thinking we were going to have to crawl through the brush again and it had taken us quite a bit longer than we thought, we decided not to summit the hog. So we took lunch at the bottom of the hog and headed back. On the way back was this lovely little well-marked trail that had a huge yellow fotprint that led us to trail back to our hostel. I’m not sure if the yellow footprint guy was smoking some good stuff when he decided to mark our bushwhacking trail or if the rock just happened to be handy and he had extra yellow paint. Alas, had we known we could have gone to the top, but better safe than sorry – after all, we are in Africa, not Seattle.

The next day we had another day of hiking without mishap. And we got back in time for John to watch a soccer match between Man U and someone else. while I chatted with some travellers in the common area. We had already watched another match and I wasn’t inclined to sit there and watch 2. I’m just not a double-header kind of girl.

So that ends our hiking in S Africa (I think!)…Hogsback was definitely more tree-ey than the N Drakensburgs – and much more lovely as far as I’m concerned. And the hostel people were much nicer – and that can make most of the difference in the world…off to Stellenbosch (after a long night on a bus!)…the S African capital of wines…yummy…

So we travelled for most of the morning and into the afternoon to get to Umtata, which is where we were to pick up the shuttle to Coffee Bay. We travelled on Greyhound and it totally kicks the American Greyhound to the curb. They serve tea and coffee…air conditioning…an actual cabin attendant…

Anyway, we then hopped into a mini-bus with 2 others – a Brit who was also starting his RTW trip and a French-Canadian woman who was travelling for a couple of months. Everyone we have met is like either on a really long trip or travelling for “just a short time” – meaning 2 months. Hello, 2 months in the states is a long time on vacation! – anyway, the mini-bus driver was not the usual one because he had just gotten into an accident that morning and was in the hospital with a broken collarbone. Apparently there are plenty of mini-bus accidents. And considering there’s like 25 people in a standard mini-bus on a road with cow, goat, and other vehicles…stands to reason! After a couple of hours we got to coffee bay.

It was like paradise. Except for the mosquitos. And no coffee. In coffee bay. Well, they had the usual instant stuff you find everyone around here but no coffee. It’s really sad because, capitalists that we are, we automatically think of how they could capitalize on this by branding a coffee from coffee bay and develop a co-op for the people of the region. Which I’m sure would really happen. Especially since I doubt this is even a region where coffee can even be produced.

During our stay we hiked to the hole in the wall. On our own. Instead of with a tour. I don’t get this whole tour thing. Everything’s on a tour. Like you need a guide to walk along the coastline. And it’s not like you could miss this huge hole in this huge rock. But we picked a guide up along unintentionally anyway. His name was Bonita and he was 13ish. John loves talking to all the kids and introducing himself to them and this one stuck and showed us almost to the big hole. He showed us a waterfall and the “little hole in the wall”. He didn’t take us all the way there because I think there’s an unspoken rule that when you get to this beach near the big hole in the wall that the kids on the beach get access to tourists too. Because then they can guide you the rest of the way. Which is like 2 feet away. Oh well, everyone’s out to make a buck. On the way back we took the road and we were like the pied piper. All these kids wanted to either sell us water (literally, they would find a used bottle and fill it up partway with some nasty water) or wanted to be our friends. We will be your friends for 2 Rand. Oh my gosh, if we wanted to be all your friends we’d have to go home early – we’d have no cash.

Anyway, we spent the rest of the time lazing around, lying on the beach…I know, it’s a hard life for a traveller…

I think it’s funny that everyone we ran into before Durban warned us about how Durban was really awful and all that.  But then we end up staying at this cute little place called the Hippo Hide.  I mean, I guess they can’t really call a place “Don’t even think about leaving this hostel because you’re going to die” Hostel.  Probably bad for business.

Anyway, we landed in Durban in the evening at the Hippo Hide which is in a place called Berea, just a bit outside of Durban.  We got there in the dark.  And after all the warnings we received and the warning from the lady that checked us in to not take anything except for a bit of cash with us we decided to just stay in and wait until it was light out. 

The next morning things seemed not as ominous.  It was light.  We followed the directions to get something to eat and to the mall.  To a westernized mall.  With a Woolworths.  Not sure if they’re related to the department store that went out of business in the states a while back but if so, they’re raring to go in S Africa!  Anyway, apparently this area is fine to bop around in.  And we ate at this awesome Indian restaurant that night.  John was in heaven. 

While here we went downtown and went to a Hindu temple where you had to wash your feet and hands before you went walking around.  But major oops.  This woman gave John some “sweets”.  Which he took a bite out of.  I guess I forgot to mention to him that you’re supposed to give offerings to the various gods (I’m assuming it’s the same as a Buddhist temple) and he didn’t realize that the “sweets” were supposed to go onto the altars.  But we left a few rand too so hopefully we didn’t offend the powers to be too badly…at least he didn’t eat anything off the altar!

We also went to the Victoria Market which is this Indian market – kind of reminds me of those Mexican markets but, well, you know, Indian instead.  Tons of little stalls with handicrafts, food, etc. etc.  John bought some curry powder and then turns to me and says “how do I prepare it?”  Hello, do I look like the Joy of Cooking is sitting next to me?  So he went and asked the woman who sold it to him and she told him what to buy.  He made a curry over ramen noodles that night (without the ramen spice packet) – it was pretty darn good!  Woohoo!

We also talked a lot to some fellow travellers.  One British couple was just finishing a 13 month round the world trip.  On their trip they went to the US.  They bought a 90 day Greyhound bus pass.  Oh my gosh, I have to give them credit.  They went all over the midwest and the eastern seaboard and travelled from the east to LA.  Oh my gosh, I can’t even imagine.  They finished off the west coast with planes though. 

Another British guy decided to move to Africa so he had shipped a Land Rover to Durban and was waiting for it and he had met this other girl from NYC on Lonely Planet and they were going to travel all over the place. 

And last but not least we met this family of Afrikaans.  John got into this friendly, but heated discussion of politics.  For hours.  Unfortunately, I was sitting at the table trying to avoid this discussion and this woman was feeding her toddler.  She starts talking to this other woman sitting there and starts going off about how the black people were bringing down the educational system and that they didn’t have the mind-power for higher education.  She started citing examples of how whites were having to compensate the blacks in South Africa…at this point I was like, I’m so out of here before I wanted to pull out my knife and hack at her.  So I dragged John out of there and we went out to grab the strangest Chinese food I’ve ever eaten.

Anyway, next destination….Coffee Bay…    

So we land in Johannesburg, South Africa to tons of fanfare! Balloons! Whistles!

Okay, actually, the most lackadaisacal (sp.) customs I’ve ever been through. Stamp stamp. That’s it.

We were then met by a lovely shuttle that bopped us up to Pretoria straight to North South Backpackers. We, well, mostly I, decided to stay up here in the burbs because of all the horror stories about Joburg. Really nice place with really friendly managers. Met some really great travellers that gave us their impressions of other parts of Africa.

Had some nice, cheap wine. Even SA box wines are pretty good! Castle, the local lager, tastes, I know, such a shock, like Bud. But cheaper than Bud. So what more can you ask for?
And the food – pretty darn good, although we’re kind of cheap with food – the burgers and chicken are really good with great sauces (can you say HOT!)

So the only thing we did besides relax, eat, go to the internet for a couple of days is we went to the Voortrekker monument. Really, quite a cool place, but it’s kind of like building a monument in the states of how the settlers stole land from the Native Americans. Kind of the same thing – where the Boers stole land from the Zulu.

Anyway, wasn’t this an exciting post? I just felt I should say something about doing nothing!

Cin

Okay, so I got ahead of myself – isn’t that shocking?  And I apologize in advance for bad grammar – this keyboard sucks…
So, I can’t really remember where I left off – oh well, we made it to DC…drove to this cute little area called Adams Morgan NW of “the mall”…only to find out that isn’t where we’re going to be staying.   Apparently they had a fire a few months back and were rebuilding so we were supposed to be contacted to let us know where the new place was and, well, you know how that goes…so the place is called the Washington International Student Centre and we actually stayed in an area called Columbia Heights which was around a mile East of where we thought we were staying.  We stayed in a 6-bed dorm since, well, we’re on a budget and DC is not the cheapest place…the only thing I wish about places like this is they should post etiquette – plastic bags rustling and lights on at 2 am are just not cool!  But, that’s not the hostels problem – I mean, we knew what we were getting into and the hostel workers were pretty cool…
So we did the usual thing – walked the memorials, got rained on and thank goodness for the warm clothes – random, not so common things – went to the building museum, went to this Scottish Rite Freemason deal (we were randomly wandering towards the monument area and saw this cool building that had Egyptian statues in front of it) – you know, the movie National Treasures?  Kind of interesting…it’s kind of funny, I’ve always been interested in the Templars and all that from the da Vinci code stuff – but I can honestly say after taking the tour and skimming through a Dummies for Freemasons book in Books a Million (I guess the E Coast answer to Barnes) – I have absolutely no idea what the Freemasons are all about.

Anyway, we also went to Alexandria, this cute little town outside of DC…cute! Oh and they had the George Washington Masonic Temple there – it was this huge cool temple dealie – it’s supposed to resemble one of the 7 Wonders of the World…which they don’t actually have pictures of, so really, it could have looked like the Space Needle for all we know…

Oh, and random thing of the trip that I can’t seem to keep thinking about…John is convinced this woman in our dorm room was a transsexual – he says that a man peeing in the bathroom is a lot different sounding than a woman and we had a bathroom connected to our room…hmmm, inquiring minds…
Anyway, I’m updated!  Except for John’s pics which is going to take forever and 1 day.  The internet is kind of slow…

See ya soon!

Just a quick note – we’re finally out of the US! And it’s finally warm! Not scalding hot, but like “San Diego warm” (hi Jean!)

It was so crazy, we get to Washington Dulles and SA Airways says, oh no, you have a one-way ticket, how are you leaving South Africa? We say, well, we were intending to buy a bus ticket to Namibia when we get to Cape Town…they say nope, we can’t let you get on the plane until you buy an outbound ticket since South Africa requires proof of onward travel out of their country – so we buy refundable tickets to Nairobi – after, of course, John completely melted down (which you can hardly blame him since we looked into this and as far as we could tell, this was not a requirement for US Citizens) – we go through security, hit an internet cafe, buy bus tickets from Capetown to Windhoek which is in Namibia and then head to the gate where our tickets were to be waiting – after seeing our proof of onward travel they say they would void the tickets and refund the money – hopefully that will happen – never can tell with these things…otherwise we have to do the whole dispute the credit card thing…fun times!

Anyway, the flight was great – non-stop – little tv sets at each seat – huge airplane – we had to be shuttled to the plane in a little bus thing – we watched Happy Feet and Stranger than Fiction – anyway we get to South Africa – they OF COURSE didn’t ask for any proof of onward travel – just totally typical…

We’re now at our hostel North South Backpackers in Hatfield which is near Pretoria – which is a suburb north of Johannesburg – doing nothing today…will update on DC and more later…just had to get our crazy airline experience out there! Geez Louise!

So I finally leave Seattle…it was cold there…now I’m in DC and have been to S Carolina and Florida and it’s been cold. Oh well!

Anyway, began the trip from Seattle at 3:30 am on April 1st – thanks mom and dad – yes, I know, kind of early – got to Atlanta and then preceded to need 3 planes to get to Charlotte – the plane I was supposed to get onto had to be towed in because of the landing gear, the 2nd one had mechanical problems and I finally left about an hour late on a 3rd plane. Wow, Delta, thinking you need to upgrade! Finally saw John after 2 weeks and he brought me flowers (aughhh – isn’t that special!) and saw his mom again!…drove from there to Camden, SC!

We spent a few days there – not a ton to Camden, but it’s a nice little town – it’s kind of funny how you get a better understanding of someone once you see where they grew up – not something specific, but just stuff…Anyway, finally met some of his fam and remet some others…I don’t know what John was talking about, they all seemed pretty nice 🙂

After a few days we took the train to Jacksonville to see my brother and Kerry. We were, of course, late. I think this will be a theme since we’ll be getting into “Africa time” soon. Jacksonville is pretty nice – well, where they live anywhere which is not really in Jacksonville, but closer to the beach and more north. After pretty much relaxing that day away, we went to Savannah the next day. John fell in love. With taking pictures of Savannah (okay, he never had any problems with taking pictures, but Savannah – he must have taken a ton). I think my brother’s definition of it being kind of Eugenish (OR) is pretty accurate.

The next day we went to Daytona where we stayed the night at the Hawaiian Inn. Apparently there’s a bunch of history of his mom and dad staying there back in the day. It was pretty nice. Unfortunately because it was friggin’ cold out the water park that was supposed to be open was shut down. So John was denied again. He’s been trying to go to a water park for like a gazillion years now but this is like the 3rd or 4th time something has happened. Anyway, Daytona was way bigger than I thought – it’s more like a Waikiki than anything but more sleazy.

The next day after that we went to St Augustine. Cute town! Cute dolphins that live in the bay there! Just cute! If there had been more puppies walking around it would have been perfect. I really liked it there but it seemed kind of planned to me. Anyway, that was our last day in Florida. I want to go back and go farther south. And west. Who am I kidding – I just want to go everywhere…

The next part of our journey took us up to Washington DC. But we leave for S Africa tomorrow so that’ll have to wait until later! Will post pics later!

Ahhh – 1 more week until I leave to go to a foreign place! Okay, not like a foreign, foreign place, but someplace I’ve never been. S Carolina! I’m actually looking forward to leaving Seattle and getting on with this trip.

I gave notice last Monday. It was not nearly as painful as I thought (although I still shed a tear – I can’t help it – I’m ridiculous). Anyway, my boss told me he was kind of expecting it since I was being much too proactive about things and I usually wait until the very last moment to do stuff. Hmmmm, guess working together for almost 8 years kind of does that to ya…

Another thing I’ve been doing is packing and purging and purging and packing (don’t worry, not the stomach variety – I’ve never had that ability to be able to get myself to upchuck on command – I think it’s a genetic skill). I think John and I were anticipating our bags to be quite a bit lighter than they’re ending up (like in the 25 lb range instead of the 30+ range). But we kind of figure if we have the room for that extra bottle of sunscreen and bug spray we might as well keep them ’cause we’ll be using lots of it at our first stop! Africa!

Anyway, that’s about it…seeing a few friends for one last time…then on Sunday – whoosh! Seatac>Atlanta>Charlotte>Camden! (wish those transporter things like in Startrek work – man, that sounds kind of like a long day)…