Bloemfontein to Blacksburg

The past couple weeks have been extremely busy with travel. I was assigned a roommate for two weeks; Lien from Belgium. Her student house had a break-in and she wanted to live on campus for her last two weeks, so she bunked up with me. Her program didn’t allow her time to travel, so I said I wouldn’t let her leave Africa without having traveled to Lesotho. So we organized a trip in two days and Lien, Andrew, Katie, Francois, and I packed into Andrew’s 2-door purple Uno. We traveled to the town of Semonkong; it’s only 120 kilometers farther than Malealea, but took us 3 extra hours. We had to hop out of the Uno to get up a few of those mountains. It was a great trip and we actually witnessed snow in Africa… who knew. They call Lesotho the Kingdom in the Sky and it’s true. We took an “all day” pony trek that only lasted 2 hours for us because we didn’t believe the warnings about the cold and didn’t prepare properly. Then we drank tea and coffee, leaned against the stone to dry our wet and cold clothes, and even microwaved our socks. I returned Tuesday for my Wednesday morning exam and then left Wednesday afternoon with Dustin for Kruger National Park. Dustin and I stayed there for 2 nights and drove around searching for wild animals. We didn’t see the big cats, but we were charged by two elephants, our car was circled by a hyena, and saw wild dogs, zebras, buffalo, baboons, wildabeast, hippos, giraffes, velvet monkeys, rhinos, and tons more. We went on a night game drive with a guide hoping to see lions, cheetahs, and/or leopards, but were disappointed. We did however see a Wild African Cat, which to me and Dustin looked like a house cat that was unfortunate enough to get lost in the wild. It was another really great trip. One of the nights we slept in a tent and heard the hyenas barking in the morning. Eerie. I still have two more final exams, but also a couple more trips. I’m going to my friend Luke’s farm tomorrow night and then going horse back riding and braaing on my friend Lynette’s farm on Saturday. This has been a fast semester, but I wouldn’t have traded for the world. Thanks again Mom and Dad for letting me be here. See you soon!

Woohoo, I’m stepping up my game and will be the only person to post something in forever again.

I just got back from another pretty long journey. I was traveling for three weeks. For me, my time here is almost over. I have a little more than two weeks left in this place and I’m kind of looking forward to getting back. I’ve done pretty much everything that I wanted to do on this continent for now and although there’s still so much more to see and do, I’ve had enough and am mostly ready to leave. I’ve met a lot of cool people and I think I’ll miss them when I go, but now I’m missing my home more.

I started in Kruger National Park, which is supposed to be the greatest park in all of South Africa. I was mostly alone this time and I mostly didn’t have anyone to help me get from one place to the next. A friend gave me a ride from Bloemfontein to his house in Pretoria and from there I rode the bus to Nelspruit. At Nelspruit, I was supposed to pick up a rental car and drive into Kruger from there since there is no public transportation in Kruger. Unfortunately, the bus was late so I missed the rental car reservation and I couldn’t find another one. Instead of driving myself, I went on a guided tour, which was excessively expensive, but infinitely simpler to arrange. It was very nice and relaxing. Nothing crazy happened and all I did was ride around in a safari mobile and look at crazy animals for four days. It is illegal to walk in Kruger without an armed ranger because there is a good chance you could be eaten or attacked by some wild animal, so the only thing you can really do there is drive places. I saw more crazy animals in the wild then I could ever want to see for the rest of my life over those few days because we spent all day for three of the four days driving around and looking at animals.

My experience of Kruger is actually very similar to my experience of night clubs. The longer you stay in a night club the more songs you’ll hear. Some you’ll be really excited to hear because they sound new and different or you haven’t heard them in a while, and others you’ve heard so much you want to tear your ears off. However, it doesn’t really matter how long you spent in the night club because in the end all you’ve done is spent an enormous amount of time dancing and getting drunk. Kruger was like that for me and the monotony of it started to bother me after a while. It doesn’t matter how long you stay in Kruger because in the end all there is to do is drive around and look at animals, so if there aren’t any specific animals that you want to see then you could spend an hour there and be perfectly satisfied. I think some people base the entire success of their Kruger experience on how many animals they see and what kind of animals they see, but I was just happy to be there. I prefer my outdoor recreation activities to be a little more active and challenging though. However, I’m very glad that I went and it was completely worth doing, but I don’t feel the need to do it again for a very long time. Maybe, it would be nicer to do it with friends or family the next time around.

After Kruger, I left for Gaborone, Botswana. Seeing Kruger was the last thing that I felt like I needed to see in South Africa, so I was ready to see what its neighbors had to offer. Gaborone was pretty cool for me because my mom has a law school friend with friends in Gaborone. I got in contact with them and they let me stay in their house for a little while. They showed me around Gaborone and taught me about traditional Tswana culture. We also had mostly traditional Tswana food for dinner every night, which was quite delicious. One night they served fried caterpillars called pane worms, which definitely satisfied my desire to eat random crazy foods. They tasted like generic fried salty crunchiness, so their flavor wasn’t very unique and I’m sure you’ve eaten something that tastes like fried caterpillars before. By the way, I never got around to eating a sheep’s head and it doesn’t seem like it will happen now, but it will be really awesome if we eat some tongue when I get back. I’m also in the process of getting someone to arrange the opportunity for me to eat chicken feet, but this was a person I randomly met in the airport, so I don’t think it’s likely she’ll contact me. Anyways, the Botswana family also took me to their farm and I got to pick corn and play with their cattle. The people I met in Botswana seemed like they were way more in to traditional African culture than the people I’ve met in South Africa, so it was really interesting to talk to them and learn about stuff. I stayed there for about four days.

From Gaborone, I went to Kasane, which is located in Botswana on the only place where the Botswana and Zambian boarder meet and is pretty much on the opposite side of the country from Gaborone. It was an eleven hour bus ride that ran through the night to get there. This was kind of disappointing because although I’ve traveled the length of Botswana, I didn’t really get to see it since it was night when I was traveling. Kasane was a really cool place though. It’s a very small city surrounded by Chobe National Park. There are no fences around this park, so frequently animals will wonder off the park to walk down the streets of the city. I stayed in the house of a friend of the family that I met in Gaborone. He said that every now and then he would get elephants wondering in his back yard. His neighborhood was located in on top of this really cool hill that overlooked the freshwater marsh that formed the majority of the park.

I stayed there for only one night because I wanted to get to Victoria Falls the next day. All I did in Kasane was go on a boat cruise for a few hours in Chobe National Park, which was a lot like the drives in Kruger except it was on a big boat and it was only three hours rather than all day for three days in a row. I saw more crazy animals, but nothing that I hadn’t already seen in Kruger. It was just a different environment so it had a different feel to it.

I went to Livingstone, Zambia the next day to see a gigantic waterfall. Victoria Falls is in both Zambia and Zimbabwe. The town on the Zimbabwe side of the falls is called Victoria Falls and the town on the Zambian side of the falls is Livingstone. I avoided Zimbabwe because there is political unrest there and although I probably would have been alright, I didn’t want to go since I was alone. Seeing the Zambian side of the falls was more than perfect enough anyways. Victoria Falls is, of course, one of the most amazing things in the world for anyone to ever see and I feel very lucky to have gotten to see it. There is so much water always coming over the falls that it ends up shooting up this huge cloud of mist that looks like smoke from a distance. Everywhere around the river is flat savannah land, but the falls just drops out of nowhere. All the mist that water fall creates makes it like it never stops raining for the plants in the gorge immediately below the waterfall, so they end up looking very different from the rest of the plants in the area. Once you are in the mist, there is a rainbow everywhere you look and it is amazing. Sometimes the mist makes it difficult to see the falls in places and it also makes you very wet when you get close, but I feel very satisfied with my experience of the waterfall and I saw as much of it as I could ever want to see.

My only problem with the Victoria Falls is that I got there pretty early in the morning and the park around the falls was pretty small so I was finished walking around it by mid-day and I had no idea what else to do there. I still had a week left almost, which was not enough time to go anywhere that was farther away from Bloemfontein, but it was way too much time to sit around and do nothing. I was at a loss about what I was supposed to do, so I solved this problem by going white water rafting on the Zambezi River. Then the day after I went rafting they let me go kayaking down the same section, which made me very happy because that was the last thing I wanted to do before I left Africa. Before that, it had been a very long time since I’d been. It is a lot like drugs though because being away from it for so long did a lot of good with me getting over my urges to do nothing but go kayaking, but now I’ve had a relapse and all I really want to do when I get back to Richmond is go kayaking. I think I’m going to try to do it every day if I can manage to pull that off.

On the last day that I intended to stay in Livingstone, I paid a street vender to take me around town and into the poorer parts of the neighborhood. With this, I think I finally got to experience what Zambia was really like because before then I only did touristy stuff and it was hard to get a grasp on the way the people of that country lived. I don’t think the guy really understood what I wanted out of the walk though because all the destinations that he took me had a very clear purpose, which I wasn’t really interested in. First he took me to a place with a bunch of people selling souvenirs, but I didn’t want to buy any because I don’t like owning things I don’t need. Then, he took me to a distillery with a bunch of drunk guys asking me to buy them liquor. The distillery was just a giant rusty oil drum over a fire with a pipe coming out of the top that dripped the liquor into a plastic tub. Supposedly the stuff had a much higher percentage than anything you could buy in a bottle. After the distillery, he took me to a shebeen, which is a place where they brew bootleg beer. I heard sometimes there are prostitutes in shebeens, but there weren’t any here. Real African beer is nothing like the stuff you get in the US. It has sort of a milky gritty texture to it. It still is kind of fizzy and it has a similar odder, but it is much thicker. I wasn’t really interested in buying any beer or liquor, so the guy took me behind a shed to buy some pot, but I wasn’t really interested in that either. Finally, I just asked him to take me somewhere that I could get some food, so he took me to a small restaurant that was in a shed away from all the tourist areas where we at some maize meal porridge, some green stuff, beans, and chicken. We ate with our hands since they didn’t give us utensils and it felt very African, so it was nice.

Later that night, I went back to Victoria Falls because there was a full moon and I wanted to see the lunar rainbow formed by the mist and the light in the falls. My bus left at two the next morning to go back to Gaborone, so I needed something to do to stay awake since I didn’t want to pay to spend another night at the hostel. I went to the waterfall with a rafting guide who said he had kayaked the section immediately below the falls, which is some of the most intense white water in the world that anyone has ever done. It was kind of cool standing next to the waterfall while he was talking about that. He was also really drunk because I met him at the bar in the hostel I where I was staying and it was kind of late when we decided to leave for the falls. I found it pretty funny to see a drunk Zambian interacting with all the tourists.

This was the night that I got mugged. After the falls, I went back to my hostel with the Zambian rafting guide to hang out with his friends at the bar. I needed something to do while I waited for my bus to come that night and I was hoping that I could get them to walk with me to the bus station. The bus company wasn’t very specific with me about what time the bus was supposed to be there. When I called them, they said I should be waiting there for them between one and three in the morning. I left the bar around twelve to walk with the people I’d been hanging out with to some night clubs that were kind of close to the bus station. Around one, I left them at the night club to go wait for my bus. I was alone, it was dark, and it was definitely a very bad situation for me to be in. I should have done something to avoid it, but at the time I thought that it was my best option. There are only two buses per week that go all the way from Livingstone to Gaborone and if I missed this bus I would have been late for the exam I was supposed to take on Friday.

Two guys came up and talked to me while I was waiting. One was old and drunk and the other was younger and didn’t really say anything. The old guy sat next to me and told me that he had heard about this white guy alone at the bus station and he was wondering if I could help him get to the United States. The other guy sat a little farther away from me and eventually got up and made his way behind me. I knew this was a pretty bad situation and I should have left as soon as I the guys came up and talked to me, but my hope that nothing bad would happen messed with my judgment. The older guy asked me what time it was and when I looked down at my phone to see, the younger guy hit me in the head with a rock, or at least that’s what I think happened. My memory is that great from that point on. I didn’t get knocked unconscious. I remember yelling at them and I remember some type of struggle, but mostly all I remember is blurred vision and my brain swimming in my skull.

When everything cleared up, I found myself about half a block away from the station with all of my stuff except for my cell phone, which I dropped because I was holding it in my hand when they hit me. I was covered in blood and I was making my way to a nearby night club because it was the closest place with lots of people. Outside the club, there was a guy who worked at the hostel I’d been staying in who drove me to the hospital. I tried to tell corny jokes and make random small talk with him while I was bleeding all over his car, but he didn’t seem too interested. I also tried to do this with the doctor while he was sewing up the big gash on my head because I felt like there aren’t many situations when you can say whatever the hell you want and I wanted to take advantage of it while I could. I started to go into shock from blood loss and it got a little difficult to keep talking while I was shaking so much, so I gave up eventually.

I spent the rest of that morning, the next night, and the next afternoon in the hospital. I got out on Monday around six. The only place where I was hurt was a small scrape on my arm and my head. I have two large cuts on the top of my head. One is four centimeters and the other is eight. I also have a crack in my skull and sometime this week I’ll have to get a CT scan to find out whether or not there is blood dripping in my brain, but I should be fine since everything is working the way it should. The hospital was really nice. I got my own room and the food they gave me was delicious. The care I received was as good as I could ever expect to get, but if I were in the US, I probably would have gotten the X-ray sooner and I probably already would have gotten the CT scan. They didn’t really have good access to these things in that hospital.

Basically, I should be dead, but I’m not. It would have made more since for the guys I met at the bus station to kill me so they could take everything, but I have no idea how I got away from them because my memory of what happened after they hit me isn’t really there. I’m actually having a little bit of trouble accepting that it happened because I don’t remember it happening. After I got out of the hospital, I stayed a couple more nights in Livingstone because I needed to do some stuff to work out paying the hospital bill and the doctor wasn’t entirely sure that I should be traveling again sooner. This time, instead of the taking the bus, I just flew from Livingstone to Johannesburg to make simple. From there, I took the bus back Bloemfontein to arrive back in my dorm on Thursday morning about 4 am.

I feel fine now. My head still hurts just a little bit, but it’s not bad at all considering what happened. This week I get the stitches removed and the scan to make sure everything is where it’s supposed to be. All I have left to do in this country is take my exams. I have five to take and they will be spread out pretty evenly between now and when I leave. I don’t really plan on doing anything else exciting because like I said early, I’ve already seen and done everything that I want to do on this continent for now, so I am perfectly satisfied with leaving.

Jeff

Haha, I’ve written somthing, finally. This is because I was lazy when I had all my companions writing stuff for me. Now, I’ve done great things with no one but myself to bare wittness, if that’s not to arrogant to say, so here it is.

Four weeks ago I left Bloemfontein to go to Cape Town. I left around mid night and rode the bus for about 12 hours. I went with Ashley, Kaity and Heather the Canadian. I couldn’t tell when I got there because it was extremely foggy, but Cape Town is the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen. The city is ensnared between perfect blue ocean on one side and huge treeless mountains on the other.

The first day we were there we visited Robben island, which was the place where the imprisoned Nelson Mandela and a bunch of other political prisoners during the years of apartheid. It was an intense place, like Alcatraz except a billion times more historically significant for South Africans. It was a big reminder of how inhumane people can be to each other. On a lighter note, on the boat ride back I saw a bunch of seals.

The next day we hiked up Table Mountain, which is this huge flat mountain that shoots out of one side of the city. It’s the area’s most significant topographic feature. It was really cool because it was a somewhat natural area and you could see all the really cool native vegetation that grows in the area. Also on top you could see all of Cape Town plus the Indian and Atlantic Ocean at the same time. We left the summit right at sunset and it was one of the best ones I’ve ever seen. We hiked to the top of the mountain, but took a tram down, which had this crazy rotating floor so you could get a view of everything around Cape Town.

After the mountain we went to this crazy fort that was built by Dutch settlers who thought they were going to war against the British. I kind of want to live there because it looked like a castle and I would feel pretty kingly, but I don’t think South Africa would be very happy about it. After the castle, we went to an awesome aquarium, which doesn’t seem that unique since there are aquariums everywhere, but it was still really great. The entire place had the really serene feeling to it because you were surrounded by all these sea creatures and plants that swayed weightlessly back in fourth through the water. It induced a very meditative feeling like fire our waterfalls and I probably could have been happy spending the rest wandering around from one tank to the next and thinking.

After castle and aquarium, we went down to Cape Point, which is the place where Vasco de Gama sailed while looking for an all water route to southeast Asia and decided the this was the place where it would be possible. On the way down we went to a place to see African penguins which was very touristy but still kind of cool. I think the point was one of the most amazing that I’ve been. It was a very pretty and somewhat desolate place that was covered in low bushy scrub. The wind never stopped blowing and at times it blew so hard that it almost knocked me over. People keep telling me that I won’t be able to leave Africa without getting mugged at least once, but the closest I’ve come was here on Cape Point. Once we finished hiking around we were all sitting in our car waiting to leave when a baboon opened our car door and I had to yank the door out of its hands. We all then pushed down the locks and drove away as fast as we could.

Our last day in Cape Town, we went on a tour of the nearby township. This was the place where all of the Afrikaans people forced all the black and colored people to live during Apartheid. Colored isn’t an offensive term here. It’s just the people who are of mixed black and white descent. This place really showed how much inequality there was in this country. There were a lot of houses with five to six rooms in them and each room had one to four families living in them. These rooms were usually smaller than a dorm room a Tech. This happened this way because men before apartheid were only allowed to live in these houses so they could work and send money home to their families. After apartheid, their families were allowed to move in with them and now they are very cramped. Also on the tour, we saw squatter camps, which are huge areas of very small corrugated iron shacks. We also went to a bar in this area where the women brewed beer out of oil drums and we passed around a bucket of this really gritty mildly alcoholic beer-like substance that didn’t really taste like beer that much. The bar was also small corrugated iron shack. We also saw a street vendor who was selling sheep’s heads and I wanted to buy one and eat it but since we were on a tour I didn’t have time to wait around for someone to cook it. However, I’ve made amends to my lost opportunity to eat a sheep’s head because I have some friends who will get one for me and cook it. I think I might get one this week and I’m pretty excited.

After Cape Town we drove to Stellenbosch, which is the main wine growing center of South Africa. One of the girls who went with us really wanted to go on a wine tour, but I was not interested since I do not drink and it was somewhat expensive. Instead, I found a place to walk around for the day, which happened to be a vineyard since they are everywhere. This was only somewhat cool, but there were lots of free snacks along the way (grapes).

From Stellenbosch we went to Knysna, which is east of Cape Town and southeast of Stellenbosch. Our sole purpose for going to Knysna was that the next day we were going north to Oudtshoorn to be picked up by our ecology class to go on an eight day field trip. It was also only two hours away from the highest commercial bungee jumping bridge in the world. So I jumped off a bridge and it was awesome.

We ditched our Canadian friend in Knysna because she wasn’t in our ecology class and she wanted to go back to Bloemfontein to do other things and go other places. We went to Oudtshoorn after Knysna to go on a field trip for my Marine Ecology class. The field trip was a lot of work and we didn’t sleep much because we had to stay up every night to prepare a presentation we had at the end of the week, but in the end it was still amazing since we were in such a beautiful place and I got to know all the people in my class so much better.

After the field trip, I ditched all traveling companions to head out on my own. I wanted to experience what it was like to be completely self-sufficient and have all my actions be a result of something that I wanted to do. Instead of going all the way back to Bloemfontein, I had the field trip bus drop me off in Swellendam, which is in between Knysna and Cape Town. From Swellendam, my plan was to take a hop-on-hop-off bus along the south and east coast to Durban and that’s what I did.

I got dropped off in Swellendam at five in the morning in some random hotel where I wasn’t completely sure of my exact location. From there, I walked in the dark to find the hostel where the bus would pick me up. The bus I was taking is designed to cater low budget vacationers like me so it would only drop people off at certain backpacker hostels. Finding the hostel I needed to find in Swellendam was kind of scary because it usually isn’t safe to walk alone at night anywhere in this country and I wasn’t sure where I was going, but I didn’t get lost and found the place I needed to be in the end. After the sun came up, I just spent a little time hiking around in a nature reserve by the hostel while I was waiting for my bus, which was going to take me to town called Wilderness.

The reason I went to Wilderness was pretty much the same as all the places I got off. This reason was that I thought there would be cool places to go hiking, but in the end I always found something else everywhere I went. Wilderness was an especially cool experience because on the bus from Swellendam I met a girl who had a vacation home in Wilderness. She invited me to come have a barbeque with her brother and dad that night, which was particularly good for me since that night I was planning on spending my night alone eating an avocado, dry cereal, and the remainder of my peanut butter. Instead, I had some delicious stakes and side items along with some very interesting people to have a conversation with. Afterward, the girl and her brother went back to my hostel with me so the brother could have some drinks and the girl and I could play pool. One of the best things they told me was about this crazy hippy that lived in a cave that the girl and her brother agreed to come with me the next day.

So the next day, I got up early to hike around Wilderness National Park, which was what I came to Wilderness for, while I waited for them to call me about the crazy hippie. The park really wasn’t a wilderness in the same way that people in the US think of a wilderness because it was a pretty heavily used area with a board walk for most of the trail. However, I did get up early enough to getto the waterfall before all the other tourists got there and I think that was the best part of that park.

Unfortunately, on my way back from the waterfall the girl called me and told me she couldn’t join me to see the crazy hippie. This was because the night before, at the hostel, the brother had too much to drink and the girl didn’t know how to drive so they got in an accident. The road between my hostel and there was really windy and sketchy and I really wish I could have done something because I was expecting something like this to happen, but it’s too late now. Fortunately, they did not get hurt though, they were just in too much shock to do anything the next day.

However, I still got to go see the crazy hippie because the night before they gave me good enough directions for me to find him on my own. So after I got out of the park, I walked down these unused railroad tracks for a couple miles to see a crazy hippie living in a cave. His cave was pretty amazing. He had all these crazy decoration and wall to decorate the cave. There were tons of shells hanging from the ceiling with all the random sheets boards and stuff to make walls within the cave. He also had a bunch stuff that he found on the beach for additional decoration. When first got there, I couldn’t tell whether or not he was there, but it was a beautiful place so I waited around a little and eventually he came out and I got to talk to him. I sat and talked to him for a couple hours and then I went on a hike around his domain. He seemed like a very sincere person who lived his life exactly the way he wanted. He called himself James the Rail Walker.

After meeting the crazy hippie, I went to Storms River so I could see Tsitsikama National Park. The entire last third of my break was a constant cycle of being alone, being lonely, and having people to be with. At Tsitsikama, I was alone, but not lonely. Initially, when I got to Tsitsikama National Park I was somewhat disappointed because the trail that were marked on the park map were not long enough to satisfy the full day of hiking that I desired. There were only a few kilometers of trail in either direction and I was expecting to finish up early and spend the rest of the day board and with nothing to do. Because of this, I was overjoyed when I actually found additional trail that extended beyond the trail officially marked on the map. I later found out that this section of trail was not actually part of the park, but at the time, it definitely looked very official. It had all sorts of trail structures like water bars, check dams, and steps, so it was definitely intentionally built trail or most of it was at least. There was one slight sketchier section that diverged from the built section and led to the coast. I had a little trouble finding my way back to the trail again, but in the end it was an experience.

The next place I went was Jeffreys Bay, but I can’t say much about it though. The reason I went was because it was one of the biggest surfing capitals in the world and I wanted to go body surfing. I only went for about thirty minutes though because the water felt like Antarctica, so I was left with nothing to do for the first time in two and a half weeks. The result of this was that I slept for a very long time because the constant moving and doing stuff finally caught up to me. Since I was camping, I didn’t have a bed and I had already taken my tarp down because the bus was picking me up that night, so I found myself curled up in my sleeping bag passed out on the lawn of my hostel with all these random people walking by. Eventually, a friend that I had met while traveling offered to let me sleep in her room and I was obliged to accept.

From Jeffreys Bay, I went to Port Elizabeth. I didn’t do anything here and I just got off because it was a mandatory stop where I spent the night. It also marks the end of the Garden Route area, which is European and touristy, and the beginning of the Wild Coast, which is African and awesome. From Port Elizabeth, I went to Cintsa, which was nice. My hostel had free canoes, but the paddles were nonexistent. So, I found myself paddling with my hands down a calm quiet estuary for part of the way and pushing myself with a big stick for the rest.

From Cintsa, I went to Coffee Bay, which was one of my most awesome stops. I had to get a shuttle off the main bus route to get there and because of this, I stayed here for two nights. Other than the area immediately surrounding my hostel, it was completely undeveloped from a western standpoint. Outside the area immediately surrounding my hostel were a bunch of self sufficient farmers living in small mud huts like the ones I saw before in Lesotho. My first day there I wondered around looking for a place called Hole in the Wall, which was basically a giant hole in a giant wall of rock. I didn’t find it though because I wasn’t concerned enough about finding it to ask directions. Instead, I just wandered around the villages, which was pretty cool.

The next day, I went on a village tour, which was kind of the same as the day before except I had a bunch of young kids to lead me around and show me cool stuff. They also brought me to see a Sangoma, who is a traditional African healer. He was a really old guy wearing a skirt and a bunch of shells. I sat on the floor and talked to him with the kids as my translator while he smoked the biggest joint that I had ever seen in my life. It had to be about six inches long. It was insane. He only spoke Xhosa and he couldn’t hear very well. Originally, I had all these questions that I wanted to ask him, but as soon as I was sitting in front of him I forgot. My only problem with Coffee bay was that the locals wouldn’t stop asking me if I wanted to buy drugs. Without failing, every single local I talked to that didn’t work at the hostel asked me if I wanted to buy mushrooms or ganja.

From Coffee Bay, I went straight to Durban to catch the bus to Bloemfontein. All I did in Durban was get slightly stressed out about my difficulties in getting a bus ticket and I saw some cool monkeys. Other than that, I did meet some really cool people. One was a professional surfer and freelance journalist who had dreadlocks. There was also an German girl and two Irish guys, both named Connor, who I spent the whole night talking to. One of the Irish guys I think would do almost anything to have a conversation with someone and invited everyone he saw to sit down and have a drink with him. I should follow his example next time I try to give up something for lent. The Irish guys invited me to come visit them in Johannesburg, but they have to contact me about it first.

Now, I’m back in Bloemfontein trying to adjust to not doing awesome stuff everyday and waiting to go traveling again. It’s kind of boring and stressful because now I have all this work to do when I haven’t done anything academic in almost a month, so one can see that writing this blog is much more enjoyable.

Woohoo,
Jeff

I apologize for taking so long for this entry; who would have thought school would have gotten in the way of my travels and telling you all about it :) A few weeks ago Danie took me to the market and then the Pretty Gardens in Bloemfontein, which is a plant nursery with other really cool stores also. I got to play with a kitten, pet a capuchin monkey, hold a baby bunny, and touch and get licked by a 70 kg Burmese python. The python was huge and gave me chills when she licked my arm.  Two Saturdays ago we traveled to Kimberley to see The Big Hole. It’s the second largest in the world; it started as a volcano, was dug further for mining diamonds, and is now partially filled with soil and partially filled with acidic water. It’s a gorgeous site! And the town itself has historic buildings and an antique theme. It needs to be said that we only made it there because of Francois’ excellent navigational expertise!

Last Sunday, Danie took Dutin, Jeff, Katie and I to his lake house on Rustfontein Lake. We got to tube and knee board behind the boat. He couldn’t knock Katie and me off the tube! And of course we found time to Braai while we were out there. 

We made sure to celebrate the American tradition of Saint Patrick’s Day! We went dancing since nearly no one here has heard of the holiday.

This past weekend we went to Koranna Berg. We arrived Friday night, braaied, and went on a night drive. We saw zebras, small kangaroo-rabbit animals, and large South African elk. We stayed all on one room with two sets of three layered bunkbeds; Jeff and Francois were the lucky ones to get the third levels.

On Saturday morning we started our hike up to the cave. What should have taken four hours ended up taking six because we were lost in the middle of South African nowhere.

This is what happens when four Americans and four French decide to go camping together. It was a blast though and I have scratches from the bushes to prove it. It was like a treasure hunt looking for the path makers; Pierre, Jeff, and Katie were pretty good at spotting them. But we were not informed that there was more than one trail being marked, so we went up and down an unnecessary mountain. We slept in the cave which had a waterfall going down part of it; Katie and I got to experience the freezing waters. The next morning we were driven back and got to see Baboons; they were pretty upset at us for driving over their territory.

Today, Dustin and some of the Europeans left for a trip to Botswana! They’ll be there for about ten days. Katie, Jeff, Heather, and I leave Thursday night for a trip to Capetown for about eight days. Then Katie, Jeff, and I are going to De Hoop National Reserve Park for a class excursion.

This past weekend, nine of us took a trip to Lesotho (the country within South African).  It was a gorgeous drive there; we passed multiple sunflower fields and listened to Africaans music the entire way.  Not to our surprise, the border was not that stringent on regulations, so it wasn’t difficult to get into Lesotho.  Most of our drive in Lesotho was on dirt roads with herds of livestock walking beside and sometimes on the highway.  We went to Malealea Lodge and that night stayed there two or three to a hut.  Saturday morning we started our 6 1/2 hour horse trail to the village by the waterfall.  By the time we got there, our bodies, especially our butts, were complaining but we managed to make it through our hike up to the waterfall. The water was freezing, but it felt really nice on the intense sunburn I earned from not reaching my entire back.   We hiked back partially in the dark, which led to a few falls and scraps and Jeff made us all spagetti for dinner upon our return.  We used the light of cell phones and tiny flashlights to serve and eat the food.  We slept all nine in one hut.  5:15 AM the next day we were woken by the rooster who lived right outside our door.  :)  Our guides re-captured our horses and we were on our way back to Malealea.  The children from every village we passed on our return were fascinated by our large group of foreigners and followed us a good ways.    They gave us wild peaches that grew on the side of the trail and asked us for money and/or sweets.  We didn’t have anything to offer, but Jeff played some songs on his harmonic which seemed to be just as good to them.  It took us 4 1/2 hours horseback riding to return and we galloped the last stretch; my mare was the fastest.  Danie, our South African friend, drove one of the rental car there and half of the way back, but I got to drive some of the return; driving on the left/wrong side of the road was pretty fun!  Lesotho was such an amazing experience and one of the prettiest places I’ve ever seen.  When I first drove in to Lesotho, I felt sorry for the way those people lived in poverty, but once you see how beautiful Lesotho is you’ll understand their pride for their country.

Lastly, I just want to say HAPPY 80th BIRTHDAY GRANDMA!!!  I hope you’re having a wonderful day!  I miss and love you!

Ash

Hey guys, I just went to Clarens, Free State this weekend, and it was awesome!! Unfortunately there was only one spot left in the car so I was the only American on the trip. I traveled with the two Frenchmen, Pierre and Francois, as well as five other Afrikanner people who were friends of friends. It was a great opportunity to meet people from South Africa and experience their culture.

We had a brai both nights and it was truly amazing food. There is a traditional SA food called pop (it sounds like that, but I am truly lost with the spelling of it), and it resembled very closely to our gritz we have in the south except it was much drier and a sauce was poured over it. We left Friday afternoon by car and it was about a 3 hour trip so the drive was not bad at all. The place we stayed at was small cottage over looking the plains and mountains of the Free State. The area of the cottages used to be a farm, and when the couple retired from farm life, they built small cottages for renting. They were three bedroom houses and very nice inside.

We went to the local bar to watch the big Rugby match with Bloemfontein’s Cheetahs playing. The Cheetahs lost, but me and Pierre won the bet of them losing so we didn’t have to make breakfast in the morning. Saturday we just hung out and played some soccer, and I also played my first rugby game. It was only touch rugby, but i feel like I am understanding the game better (now if I can just understand cricket…haha). Later Saturday we went on a hike through the mountains behind the cottage. We climbed one mountain and at the top was a cross. It was truly amazing to see South Africa from the height we were standing, and the cross showed how it was His creation. We called it a early night for Saturday, and ended up just playing some poker. It was a 50 Rand buy in, and yes the American won, hahaha. We had to get to bed early though because we had to be out of the cottage by 7:15am to get to the white water rafting area by 8:00. Once there, we were separated into 3 boats. I was on a boat with one of the guys from the trip and a couple from Jo-burg, and most of the gang was on another boat. This was better because we were able to get into "raft fights" where we would splash the other boats with the 5 degree Celsius water, and also pull other people into the water off their boats. This was only done on the calm parts, but the rapids were a rush as well. It was my first time doing it, and I would love to try out the ones in West Virginia now! I was only pulled into the water once by Pierre, but never fell out during the rapids. Our raft guide was the best of the three and called our raft the Pirate Boat, so we would jump onto other’s rafts and push them into the water. He pulled Francois into the water two times, and it was really funny. Pictures should be online from the rafting site, so hopefully they will post them in a relatively good time, and we also ordered a DVD of the trip. We were on the water from 8:00-2:00, so there was plenty of rafting time! I must admit the weekend was very long and eventful, and I think I am still tired from it. One thing is for sure is that I got burnt to a crisp. This Africa sun is very bad, I even put sun screen on 3 different times, and still got burnt. Other then the sun burn, this weekend was great, and I can’t wait till the Lesotho trip we are planning for this weekend. Horse back riding in Lesotho seems very fun.

Yesterday will be one of the highlights of this entire trip! Professor Izac Groenewald and his wife took us, me, Katie, Heather, Dustin, Jeff, and Francoise, to Olivia Game Park. We played with a tiger cub named Dosie; he ran around under the tables after the dog while we ate lunch. We saw springboks, elks, giraffes, a camel (named Patricia), an ostriche, tigers (Dosie’s parents), lions, panthers, cheetahs, dingos, and more. I have a little mark where the baby tiger grabbed at my hand; he’s a pretty strong two month old! The dog, Lassie, was our first tour guide.  She ran ahead of us for the entire trip and excited all of the animals.  And the male cheetah licked my hand; his tongue was rough like a house cat, but a whole lot bigger :) The view was gorgeous out there too and the rain held out until we were at the end of our trek.  I wish you all could have experienced it for yourselvesbut these pictures will have to do for now!  We are planning on making an "American dinner" for the Groenewalds to thank them for driving us out there and paying for our food and trip!

Ash

Hello everyone!  I’m making my first post to the blog after a week in Bloemfontein.  I’ve had a very busy and interesting week and found the people here to be very warm and interesting to talk to.  My roommates are a blast and I’m living in a little apartment called “Eagle’s Nest.”  It’s a bit like summer camp with a bunk bed, a little kitchen and lovely warm weather outside.  It’s next door to a hostel (South African for dorm) called JBM where a bunch of guys live who play techno music at all hours of the night and early morning.  We also have a friendly local rooster who frequently enjoys a 6am wake up call.  I’m living with three girls here, Ashley who came from VT, a Canadian named Heather, and a Cameroon girl named Tulis.  Tulis is so much fun and really took us under her wing in our first days here when we didn’t know anything.  We started our classes on Monday and it was a bit more hectic than at Virginia Tech.  They’re all in English though the accent is very strongly Afrikaans.  Some of us are planning to take an Afrikaans class in the evenings just for fun – if only because many of the campus buildings (gebou) are labeled in Afrikaans.  For anyone that doesn’t know Afrikaans is very much like Dutch.  The campus is really beautiful with many trees and flowers and a fountain.  The warm weather tempts me outdoors and away from my studies.  I have a feeling that I will be regretting my neglected analytical chem. Assignment later tonight, haha.  The sidewalks and parking lots are bricks and pavers giving the campus a much more interesting feel.

I am meeting so many interesting people. On Thursday, we had a "brai" which is South African for bbq on Thursday for our roommate Tulis’s birthday. Brai’s are very, very popular here and people have them on any day of the week and will make any excuse to have one. Frequently, people have a Bring n’ Brai so everyone brings drinks and food to cook and eat and share.

On Saturday afternoon I slept in until noon (that’s what happens when  you come home at 3:30 AM!).  Last night we went to a nightclub called Second Avenue and danced the entire night.  Nightclubs are very popular here and each one has its own personality .  There is definitely a different crowd of people and different music at each club.  We went with our neighbors and danced the night away.  For those of you who enjoy the occasional beer or mixed drink they are much less expensive here.  Also, there is a cider here called Savannah Dry which I’ve come to really like.

Classes went okay this week.  The campus here is much more confusing than at Virginia Tech.  The room numbers on the doors are random and don’t necessarily match the floor (i.e. 301 = 1st floor).  Each class I
was in was moved to a different venue at the last minute (as a result
I’ve accidentally missed two lectures).  I think that my classes this semester should be very interesting as well as challenging.  I’m
taking Analytical Chemistry, soil physics, statistics, and Marine and Freshwater ecology.  The ecology class should be really very interesting.  One of the books we were assigned is a colorful field guide of South African sea life including sharks.  We’re taking an 8 day excursion to  De Hoop (pronounced "De Woop") naturereserve on the coast with the Ecology class.  It is home to many endemic plant and animal species and has incredible diversity of plants and wildlife.  Also, we’ll be able to use the class trip as a jumping off point for a tour of the South African coastline and a trip to Cape Town. 

I’m going to take some pictures of the campus soon so that you can seehow lovely it is.  We’ve been so busy here just figuring out classes and having a good time (and standing in queues, South Africa has more
queues than anywhere I’ve ever been) that I’ve barely spent any time on my computer at all.

This afternoon we’re going to a farm that has lions, leopards, and cheetahs and they let you play with the cubs!  I’ll definitely have
some good pictures from that.  Also, we’re planning a trip to the kingdom of Lesotho (an entire country within a country!) in a couple of weeks.  I am having so much fun here that it is going to be difficult to come home!
Well, I’m going to get ready to see the Cheetahs!  Good bye and take care!

South Africa is a great place so far. I haven’t had the chance to leave Bloemfontein yet because I’ve been busy with the registration process, which is much more complicated than Tech’s. However,all the people I’ve met are really interesting and nice. Along with South Africans, I’ve got to meet people from all over the world who are also exchange students at the university. They are from places like Germany, France, Cameroon, Canada, Zimbabwe, and Holland.

I was told that Free State, which is the province where I am staying, is a lot like Texas because the landscape is similar, the people are all farmers or descendants of farmers, and everyone here is fairly conservative. Racism is still a problem in South Africa. My dorm is segregated between the the Afrikaners, who are the white descendants of the Dutch who were the first European settlers, and the blacks. Despite the fact that whites and blacks live in the same dorm, all the doors connecting the white section and the black section are locked and you have to walk outside to get from one to the other. I live in the black section of the dorm.

My birthday was kind of crazy because in the daze of jet lag and being thrown into a new country, I barely remembered that I had it that day. Fortunately, I didn’t keep it a secret, so my travel companions helped me remembering it.

We went on tour of Bloemfontein on Saturday and we got to see the huge contrast in the economic status of all the different people. We saw gigantic multistory mansions in what our tour guide called the “posh” part of town. We also saw one room shacks made out of corrugated steel that weren’t much bigger than a dorm room. Bloemfontein is about the size of Charlottesville, but I might be underestimating it.

Today was was my first day of classes. I had one at 8:00 in the morning, but I missed it because I didn’t have the room number. Other than that, all I’ve done today is sleep because today and yesterday were the first times I’ve actually been able to sleep since being here. All the other times, I was either thrown off by jet lag, too excited, or going to night clubs with crazy Europeans.

I look forward to adventures to come.

Since it took us a few days to get the internet up and running, there’s a good bit to catch you all up on!  The journey over here was long and involved.  Mom and Dad drove me from Yorktown to Dulles Monday morning.  We spent the morning together and went to a diner for lunch before they had to drop me off at the airport.  They handled my departure a lot better than I thought they would; I did not witness them using the tissues they packed in the car.  I met Jeff, Dustin, and Katie at the airport.  I had only met them once before during the interviewing and picture taking process, so we really were starting from the beginning.  I didn’t quite know what to expect, but they really are a fun group to be around and made the roughly twenty hour flight-layover-flight combo fun.  We’re all pretty different, but we all like to laugh so it works.  Oh, and the food on the fifteen hour flight was surprisingly good.
Our welcome to Bloemfontein, on Tuesday night since we moved seven hours ahead, was much more than I had expected.  Before Katie informed me, I didn’t even know someone from the University of the Free State was picking us up from the airport (which is even smaller than the Roanoke Airport).  When we got there Miss Louise, Professor Isaac, and two of the UF students who work for international office met us there.  Professor Isaac took us out to a nice dinner at Spurs, which was decorated with Native Americans and, as Katie stated, was a lot like our Outback Steak houses.  The language barrier was first really evident at the restaurant.  The waiter had a difficult time understanding us and I was amazed how easily they switch from English to Afrikaans.  There are eleven official languages here! 
We were able to phone our parents that night and then we were taken back to our hostels (dorms).  Jeff and Dustin are roommates in a different dorm; the boys and girls have different buildings.  Katie and I are sharing a room and Tulis, from Cameroon, lives two doors down.  We have a common kitchen and living area.  Tulis is one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met and even made us a little decoration for our door that night, while we got our much needed showers and rest.
Wednesday, which just so happened to be Jeff’s 22nd birthday, we met with Louise and Tharina for an 8:30am breakfast.  Afterwards they took us for an interview with the university’s radio station. 
Professor Isaac then spent most of the day helping us work through our class schedules.  Prof Isaac then chauffeured us to another mall to get plug adaptors, trashcans, and hampers. 
Wednesday night Heather, the exchange student from Canada/our fourth roommate, arrived.  Tulis’ French exchange student friends Pierre, Charlotte, and Julie and her South African friend came over to our hostel.  We all went to get pizza and celebrate Jeff’s 22nd!  We all talked about our different cultures and politics.  Tulis’ tried explaining the government situation here; the president of nine years recently stepped down/was fired because of some scandal.  There is a position holder right now, but South Africa should be having a presidential election while we are here!  From what I understand, they have one governing political party and then numerous smaller ones.  But they were as interested in American politics as we were in South African. 

Hey yall, we have been in Bloem for a week and i must say its a really cool place and the people are pretty nice. We have met some Kovsies that were at VT last semester so it is nice to have someone else know about the Hokie Nation. We all have made friends with other international people as well: 4 frence, 2 German, 1 Italian, and a Dutch girl as well. We have already planned some excursions that I am pretty excited to go on. Details on that will be post later (cliff hanger?). The first day of classes were cool, because they usually try and work w/ the students to have a nice schedule and the teachers change the time and place at will (they also HATE friday classes!!). Sorry for the long hiatus of posting, we had some mix up w/ internet registration. Hope all is good home!!!

It’s only a few days till I jump on the airplane that will take me to a new country.  I have really never been out of the country before and am excited to be in a new place.  I have everything ready here in my room, the only thing left is to pack it all up (also, to convense my mom that I dont need to bring EVERYTHING).  I have said my good byes to my Hokie friends, and have just been relaxing the past week or two.  It still seems pretty surreal that this time next week, I will be half way around the world.  I hope to see some stuff in DC before I go, so I can get that last taste of America.  I heard the Museum of Natural History reopened, so I will try and hit that up, plus it seems like a good idea to say hello big Lincoln at the mall.  Right now I am praying for a safe passage, and that I can find enough things to do to keep my mind stimulated on the airplane (i hope my computer and Ipod battery stay charged long enough!).  Talk to yall soon…your Pungo Pal, Dustin…

I have five days before my flight departs from Washington, D.C.  I started packing yesterday, but it’s proven to be a little difficult to decide which clothes are absolutely necessary and which are not.  I’ve been trying to spend as much time with my parents and friends before I have to say goodbye.  I spent most of the winter break in Georgia visiting with my grandparents and other family.  Today Cate, one of my best friends, and I went to sushi for lunch.  I’m not exactly sure what types of food are served in South Africa, so I wanted to make sure I got some of my favorites in before leaving.  I think we’re going to be getting some Mexican and Thai sometime this week as well.  “A multicultural feast for your tummy,“ - Cate Carlsen.  I’ve already had to say goodbye to all my friends back at Virginia Tech and, come Monday, I’ll be saying my last farewells to everyone else.  It’s going to be an adjustment because I’m used to talking to my family on the phone everyday, but my dad bought me a webcam so I’ll still be able to see everyone.  My dad and Cate are having to help me with it though because I’m technologically inept. My next blog will most likely be when I’m settled at the University of the Free State. Until then, I hope you are all well and I love you!
Ashley Burris