The One for Elley. Part 1.

A lot has happened and changed since I last wrote you guys. In my last post I wrote “I go everywhere to dive”. It turns out that wasn’t exactly true. I also said “here I go again on my own”. That too didn’t exactly work out. It would seem that my DNA had some faults in it (thanks mom and dad), it turns out I had a minor heart condition, which isn’t a problem at all, but apparently is not very safe to dive with. Remember the time I almost died on a volcano in Panama? Turns out it was more than just coincidence.

Sooooooooo no biggie, they fixed me up and now I’m all good to dive again. BUT I did have to cancel my IDC in Mozambique and was stranded at home. Suddenly. Potentially panicking I’d never dive again. This eventually led to my crazy friend, let’s call her Elley, and I making a plan to go to South Africa. Things got out of hand really quickly and we ended up planning a 2 month trip to South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. On land. TWO MONTHS ON LAND IN ONE CAR. Phew, talk about a challenge.

A small head’s up: be prepared for a LOT of words and a LOT of pictures. There might also be a few Harry Potter references in there. Just sayin …

South Africa

So Elley left about 3 weeks before I did to go spend time with “family” (it’s complicated), and I arrived in Joburg around the end of March. After spending my first night in South Africa at the airport hotel, I picked up our rental car and headed out to the Nelspruit-area, where Elley was staying. Things started out GREAT (no sarcasm here!). Ruth and Wouter, the people Ellen had been staying with, were downright AMAZING and made me feel at home within seconds of walking into their house.

On our first night out, Ellen decided she wanted to get used to our new car, and so she’s drive us to the restaurant. Our car, a.k.a. Kevin, or Kekke, was very white and shiny. She got into the car, turned the key, put it in “reverse”, and drove straight into one of Wouters’s carts. I’ll be honest guys. Kevin did NOT look good. He was all bruised and the front was roughed up. BUT nothing a little soap and sponge, or a good nudge can’t fix. Pfieuw, thanks for the save, Ruth.

And so the adventure started. We headed a little North for a few days and went South straight after that. Take a look at our route. We ended up driving 5365 km in total. Not bad for a bunch of rookies, right?

Panorama Route

So, the Panorama Route is a scenic route to the North of Nelspruit. On our way there, we picked up some LOVELY biltong, just to annoy Ellen with it’s amazing smell. The Route consists of multiple stop with scenic views. Honestly, we weren’t impressed by all of them, but it was still good fun. And HEY, Elley didn’t drive into anything on the way there, OR on the way back, so yay for that!

Somewhere along the route, we ran into a “pass”, called Casper’s Neck pass, and thought is was a good idea to see what it was. We shouldn’t have done that. The words “drive it like a rental”, really found their meaning in that trip. It comes down to the fact that we did a 4×4 pass, with a car that’s NOT a 4×4. Poor Kevin almost broke. And almost had a few flat tires. And we almost got stuck. Lots of almosts, but we made it out alive. We all did. Luckily.

To the North of the Panorama Route, there’s an animal rehab center, called Moholoholo Rehad Center, which we decided to visit. It’s a great initiative, because they treat animals and release them back into the wild. They have a few “permanent guests”, who were unable to be released back into the wild. These animals are the only ones aloud to have visitors, and they don’t want the wild ones to get used to people. Because let’s face it, people are awful.

Guys, meet Stoffel, one of Moholoholo’s permanent animals. This is the world’s funniest honeybadger. He likes to escape, in any way possible. Check out this hilarious video of Stoffel breaking out below:

Anyway, they asked the group for some volunteers, without actually saying what these volunteers had to do, and obviously, I signed us up. Turns out we had to feed some vultures. Oops.

Drakensberg

We drove back down to Ruth and Wouter for a night. Knowing where the cart was, Ellen managed not to drive into anything while we were visiting them. Let’s give her a small round of applause. After a good night’s sleep, we set out into the big unknown that is South Africa in the morning. .

So we headed South, and found a campsite just outside of Golden Gate National Park. We spent two nights here, as we went for a hike in Drakensberg. And not just any hike. We did the famous Chainladder hike aka the Sentinel Peak Hike. It took us 2 hours to get from our campsite to Drakensberg, we hiked for 8 hours and then drove back.

WHAT. A. DAY.

So we’d been hiking and sweating for a few hours, in the sun, hiking UP, only UP, when we come across a big board with the following words:

You can imagine that after a few hours of sweating and hiking and puffing and very red faces, we were not happy to come across this sign. Especially because there was no sign at the bottom, nobody had told us about this, and we couldn’t find anything on this online. Let me add that the gully looked like this:

Yes, we climbed it. We did it. It only took us 3 hours and 5 heart attacks. Man, that was not a nice climb. But you know what Hannah Montana said:

“Life’s a climb, but the view’s great”.

And yes, the view was great:

For those interested by Hannah Montana, here’s a link to her song: “The Climb”:

Lesotho and Kokstad

After our glorious hike, we went back to our glorious bunny-filled campsite, and slept like babies. The next day a new adventure awaited: Lesotho. After hearing haunting stories about Lesotho (thanks Bir), we decided to just drive through, and not spend the night. We were just amazed by how different it was than South Africa. It was a beautiful place, full of cows, donkeys and sheep.

To drive back into South Africa, we took the Sani Pass. Again the words “drive it like a rental”, really gained a lot of meaning. The Sani Pass is made for 4×4’s. You’re aloud to go down it if your car is high enough (like Kevin was), but not aloud to drive UP it, if your car is anything less than a 4×4. So we went down. And down. And down. And man, it was STEEP. There was a lot of breaking involved, and lots of very narrow turns, and lots of doubting ourselves and our Kevin, and a lot of hoping we wouldn’t fall off the edge.

Near the bottom, there’s a little stream. If you drive through it, your brakes will steam (hey, that rhymes!). Siriusly though, our brakes were HOT HOT HOT, which is why it was so nice to be back in South Africa, with a few extra stamps in our passports, and head to our hostel.

At the hostel, people kept asking us if we were going to Splashy Fen. Except for the fact that it sounds like a disease, we had no idea what they were talking about. It turns out it’s a festival. And for OBVIOUS reasons, we just HAD to go. So we did. And it was downright amazing. Splashy Fen is a tiny festival, but for South African standards it’s huge. There’s hairdressers and hay to sit on. There’s a costume contest and delicious pizza cones to have as a snack. It was one of the best decisions ever to go there. the decision to have our hair done though, not such a good one.

Yes, we had our hair done. Yes, it looked awful. Yes, we do know. No, we don’t care. So the day after Splashy Fen, it was Easter, and we were invited to spend it with Aunt Koetie, Ruth’s aunt. We felt kind of bad, as we were still covered in glitters and looked half dead, but Aunt Koetie welcomed us with open arms. We spent the day having an amazing home cooked meal, fishing with the grand-kids and sleeping in actual beds. Francis showed us how to separate cream and milk, and we got a huge tub of home-made butter to go. I’m a farmer now. Can’t you tell?

The Coast

After seeing Aunt Koetie and Francis, we drove down to the coast and spent a few days exploring everything between Umdumbi and George. Some places were great, others not so much. We ended up in a hostel in Umdumbi, which looked great on the internet, but turned out to be a shithole in reality. The shower was a “rocket shower”, of which they were very proud, and was apparently used in WW 2. I’ve never seen anything so dangerous. The owner had to “light” the shower, because of the chemicals used in the process. It was downright weird. I ended up poring out my entire water bottle over the bed, so ended up sleeping in a gross, wet bed, and not being amused about it. Ellen was, I wasn’t.

So happy to leave this hellhole, we went on to Coffee Bay, Lubanzi and Hogsback. All three of these places were amazing. Not hard to be better than Umdumbi, but still, it was great. We took surf lessons, went to see Hole In The Wall, did a wine tasting and got up at 4 am to bake bread.

In Hogsback there’s a hostel called “Away With The Fairies”, where I had the worst night of my entire life. Elley is one of those people who can sleep anywhere, through anything. So this one night, while she’s dreaming of pink unicorns, it turns out there’s a leak in my mattress. So I get up, shove her aside (her mattress is higher than mine, so I’m literally sandwiched between her mattress and the tent wall), and try to blow up my mattress. It works, I lay back down, and I end up on the forest floor. AGAIN. And so I restart the process, only to end up on that STUPID forest floor every time. This went on for a few hours, until Elley wakes up, turns around and says: “aaaaaah, good morning! Did you sleep well?”. She said it one of those really cheery voices too, the voice of a person who sleeps through anything. Oh, had I mentioned it STORMED that night? For those of you who know me, imagine the look I gave her. Not even the resting bitch face. The “I hate you with every cell in my body” face. I do apologize, Elley. It wasn’t personal. It’s just that your face brings out the worst in me sometimes.

Anyway, this place is famous for it’s cliff bath. It’s a bath. On the edge of a cliff. It’s great. We spent an hour looking at the amazing views, trying to find where the leak in my mattress was, by shoving it into the water and chatting about how we don’t really like our “friend” Jana. Jana is the worst. Which is why we left er behind. You hear that, Jana? We don’t like you. WE LOVE YOU, PLEASE NEVER LEAVE US.

We ended up meeting a German traveler, by the name of Jonas, who we kept in contact with for a long time after we parted ways. Jonas wanted to draw a penis on our cooler, because we met him while we were decorating it (not with penises though). We went for a walk, I fell on my face, we saw a waterfall and we had a lot of laughs.

The best part about a roadtrip is that you can do anything you want. You meet people along the way who tell you where to go, what to do and what to see. You share stories and experiences.

One of the “storytellers” we met on our journey, told us to visit Addo Elephant Park. And so, that’s exactly what we did. There was a LOT of elephants. And a LOT of elephant asses. Don’t believe me? See for yourself. That zebra was NOT impressed by us. He gave us the stink-eye. We ran away, crying.

The sheer randomness of the events that happened next, still amazes me. We met a guy on tinder, named Alex, in Knysna. OH MAH GAWD, YES, WE WERE ON TINDER. So, anyway. In his profile it said he would take us out to go wake boarding. We simply asked when he had time. He had time. That day. We met Alex, he took us wake boarding in freezing cold water, and we had a great time. He told us what to see, where to go and most importantly: where to eat.  He ended up joining us on a hike a few days later, and we kept in contact for while after that. Alex, if you’re reading this: thanks so much for that day. Let us know what you’re up to. If you’re ever in Europe, come and see us.

The ass on the right there, is Duke’s, Alex’s dog. We tried to convince him to give Duke to us. We’re nice people. We like dogs. Duke would get along so well with our teacup pig, Baron. But Alex wasn’t convinced. For some reason he wanted to keep his dog. Weird.

After Knysna, we went to Wilderness, Oudtshoorn and Hermanus. I could tell you all about these places and what we did there, but if you’re still with me at this point, I don’t want to bore you out of your mind and lose you. There’s so many stories to tell, yet so little time and words to tell them in.

BUT one very important story happened in Tsitsikamma. Yes, that is a place. No, it’s not in my head. Yes, you can google it. There’s a bridge in Tsitsikamma. It’s a high bridge. It’s known for the highest bungee jump in the world. So obviously I didn’t jump. But Ellen did. Man, you should’ve seen her. She had to pee every 5 minutes because of the stress. She was like a restless chicken, it was hilarious. Of course this is all really easy for me to say, as I chickened out from the start, but still. When they called her name, she started her walk to the platform, and I took a seat across the bridge, with my binoculars.

So she jumped. And she screamed. Oh my word, the scream. It still haunts my dreams. It was so loud, the world stopped for a second and everyone just looked up. Exactly like in the movies. I was kind of going “I don’t know her ….” in the process.

It’s not the best picture in the world, I know. There’s a slight chance I didn’t check the battery of my camera, and it MAY have died a few seconds before she jumped. Oops. I had to use my phone. And in combination with the binoculars, this is what you get. My bad.

Does anyone know what you do after you jump off a bridge? Exactly, you hug a tree.

Wine Region

Before we headed to “Destination: Cape Town”, we stopped over in Franschhoek, also known as wine paradise. The reason this place has it’s own title, is because it is epic. It’s as simple as that.

The first night in Franschhoek we MAY have done something really dumb. The day before we arrived, we MAY have found a “2 Rand store”, and we MIGHT have bought some purple hair dye, and we MAY have dip-dyed our hair. Not one of our better ideas, I’ll admit, as it MIGHT have looked ridicus (#harrypotterreference). Oops.

Being known for wine is one thing, but using that to attract crazy tourists (like ourselves), is a whole other thing. You see, in Franschhoek, there’s a WINETRAM. It’s exactly as fun and crazy as you think it is. There’s different tramlines, that take you to different wine castles, to go taste wine!!! Who wouldn’t want to do that? The tram drops you off, and an hour later it picks you up to bring you to the next castle. Every castle has something different to offer. Some of them offer food pairings. Different wines get paired with different versions of a food. I did a biltong pairing, and Elley did a chocolate pairing. If we hadn’t been stuffed at that point, we could have tried the pizza pairing, but unfortunately lunch had done it’s job. It’s a day of fun. It’s day of wine. Read: wine = fun.

The winetram is even more fun when you see it as the Hogwarts Express. It takes you to Hogwarts Castle (= wine castle), and you get sorted into different colors ( = tram lines). I may have made a GREAT snapchat story to support this vision. For those of you who don’t have me on snapchat, here a few sneaks into my years at Hogwarts. Please enjoy this slideshow as much as I loved making it.

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Cape Town

OUR FINAL DESTINATION. In SA at least, there’s more to come, don’t worry. We’re not done yet. I’ve got loooooads to tell you guys, and you’ve got loooooads to read.

We’d heard so much of Cape Town. So many people had told us what a great place it is, and that we just HAD to go there, and so we listened. We decided to go there for a week, which was a lot of time compared to how long we’d stayed in all of the other places (usually only one or two nights). At first, I thought a week would be too long. I wanted to see as much of SA as I could, and staying in one place for a whole week didn’t fit into that plan. Or at least, that’s what I thought.

Cape Town is like a different world, compared to the rest of SA. It has so many things to offer. There’s something for everyone. We started out our visit with a good old “free walking tour”, and not just any walking tour. It was a food tour. A local guy showed us all of his favorite places to eat, drink coffee, or have a beer. He told us about Brownies & Downies, we went to a coffee shop IN a church, and had some great food.

Cape Town is a great place to walk around and explore. So we parked Kevin somewhere, and set out to explore the unknown. We came across an ice cream shop Ruth had told us about, and walked by a midget golf course. No, not golf with midgets, but small golf. Obviously we stayed and played a round of putput. Man, Elley, you suck. I don’t know what to say, except that I won. By a LOT. And you know it.

On the walking tour I mentioned earlier, we met a fellow traveler, named Anna. Anna had just spent 8 months in Namibia, and was on her way home. We ended up spending a few days together. Let me tell you something about Anna: she’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. We ended up going out for a drink on Long Street. The upside to Long Street: there’s a lot of places to go and have drinks. The downside: you have to pay an entrance fee EVERYWHERE. So when a random guy gave us a free entrance card, we didn’t think twice to head to that bar. What we hadn’t noticed though, is that the card said “dresscode: casual chique”. If you think our hiking boots and jeans are considered casual chique, you’d be wrong. But they let us in anyway. We had a few drinks, with SUGAR, and ended up going to bed late. Too late. WAAAAAY to late, as we’d agreed to climb Table Mountain the next day.

Climbing Table Mountain with a hangover: not something I’d recommend. Guys, there’s a cablecar. If you have a hangover, take the cablecar. We almost died on the way up. Multiple times. There was no shade and the path only went UP. At a sudden moment, we sat down to have a rest (and to throw up a little), and Elley kept saying “it was okay if I wanted to head back down and take the cablecar up”. That “she would go with me to keep me company”. SHE WAS THE ONE THAT WANTED TO HEAD BACK DOWN!! See what she did there, sneaky little bastad. We made it. Barely, but we did make it in the end.

We went to Die Strandloper, a place Ruth and Wouter recommended. It’s a place to eat. And if you don’t want to eat, you eat. And if you’re thirsty, you eat. Oh, and if you want to read a book with a Tequila Sunrise by the pool, you eat. There’s sooooo much food. It’s a 10-course menu, and you sit on the beach for a few hours, while the courses come and go, and you just enjoy and eat as much as you possibly can. And if you think you’ve had enough, you eat a little more.

To end our South Africa trip, we HAD to go see Cape of Good Hope. The trip was great. We went to see the penguins, and people who don’t understand why penguins are the funniest animals, I can’t help you, I’m sorry. Everything about the trip was great, except for the actual Cape of Good Hope-part. JUST LOOK AT THAT PICTURE. We were good tourists, and stood in line to have our picture taken at that STUPID sign. This obnoxious mother and her ugly kid walk in, and decide to ruin everything. They wouldn’t leave either, pretending like the had a right to be there. Let me tell you, THEY DID NOT! They ruined my picture and I couldn’t even post it on Instagram. I wasn’t happy.

After that sad picture was taken, it finally RAINED in Cape Town, so our last day was spent inside. We went to have Kevin washed, he looked filthy after a month, and went to give him back to the foster system. We were DONE with this kid. No, we really loved Kevin and the time we spent with him. Throughout this entire trip, there were a LOT of car lunches, car tea sessions, car snacks and other car activities. Everything happened in the car. From brushing teeth to packing our bags to leave for Namibia. Just a few pictures to give you an idea of our Kevin life below. I would like to take the time to thank Kevin for everything he did for us. I still think about you every day, Kekke. I bet your new renters weren’t as good for you as we were. Love you, Kekke. Always.

Namibia and Botswana will have to wait for a new post, as I’ve been writing for a week and words seem to keep coming out. Hope to see you guys soon, as more Africa adventures are about to written down. And I don’t just mean Namibia and Botswana …..

Don’t forget to check out our favorite road trip song in the menu!