South African travels

Max and I traveled to South Africa in order to renew our Ethiopian visas. Mission accomplished and we’ve since returned to Gondar. South Africa was wonderful, I highly recommend it to anyone considering a visit.

We flew directly from Addis to Johannesburg where we stayed overnight before taking a small 9 seater plane to Sabi Sands’ private landing strip. We spent 3 nights and 4 days on safari at Earth Lodge. Early wake up calls at 5:30am for morning safari. We’d have coffee and a muffin and leave for a three hour ride into the bush. We saw elephant, giraffe, water buffalo, kudu and springbok. One night we followed a pride of lions walking through the brush. Since it is a private game reserve our driver, Andrew, took us off road in order to follow them on their way. We watched them for quite a while before they crossed over the border into Kruger National Park where it is off limits to off road. The Land Rover Defender that they drove us around in is quite an impressive vehicle, trees couldn’t even stop us. That night ended with a major rain and thunderstorm as we made our way back to the lodge. Max and I have never laughed so hard as we hung on tightly in the last row of seats being bounced around as Andrew sped us to safety. We were completely soaked and there was nothing we could do but laugh. The food was incredible and never ending. Snacks in the morning, tea and coffee on the ride, breakfast upon our return…lunch in the afternoon, a cocktail on the evening ride and then dinner! On our final evening the resort arranged for us to have dinner in their wine cellar. It was a nice surprise and very romantic.

We departed the resort and headed to Johannesburg for another night.

We stayed at a really great hotel, The Westcliffe. It had a beautiful restaurant and fun little bar with a horse and jockey theme overlooking an enormous pool that overlooked the entire city. We didn’t spend much time there as we wanted to see more of Johannesburg. Max and I paid our taxi driver to take us through Soweto where we visited Nelson Mandela’s home and the Apartheid museum and then stopped by the soccer stadium that hosted the World Cup in 2010.

It is a very industrial city, I think we saw enough but I’m sure we could have kept ourselves busy for longer. The traffic there is worse than DC.

Now, finally to Cape Town. It is unlike the rest of Africa, everyone speaks English (and Afrikaans), sidewalk cafes line the streets, nightclubs pump loud music to all hours of the night, runners and hikers everywhere, a lot of tourists and bronzed beach babes. The food

was delicious and endless; we ate a lot of seafood and sushi.

Beautiful sunsets that we watched from all over town. Max and arrived and stayed at the 12 Apostles hotel. It is named for the mountain range that the popular Table Mountain is a part of. It was set back in the hills with a great view of the ocean, a really beautiful hotel, decorations reminded me of Palm Beach. Max surprised me with a sunset massage in a private cabana overlooking the ocean, it was the best! We continued the birthday celebration with dinner at a restaurant called The Test Kitchen. Tasting menu was the best we’ve had yet and we had a great view of the action in the kitchen. Thanks to Max, I have to say, my 27th birthday was incredibly memorable and special! The second day we were there we went on an adventure and traveled to Gansbaii where we set off into the chilly waters (50˚ F) of the Atlantic Ocean to cage dive with sharks. We met some funky people on the ride out there who offered some good suggestions for nightlife. Everyone seemed to bond once we were on the boat. The seas were rough that day, my friend, but we only traveled 15 minutes offshore to the place where they set the cage in the water. We dressed in our wetsuits which were totally necessary for the cold water and far too tight from our eating extravaganza. 5 people to the cage and we pulled ourselves under only when the captain yelled “shark”. It was very cool. The sharks were very timid, not nearly as wild as you see on Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. We were, however, only a few kilometers from seal island where most of Shark Week is filmed due to the high number of seals. It was off-season though and within minutes there was a shark circling the boat. The deck hands threw tuna heads as bait and dragged it in front of the cage for the best viewing. We found that the best sight was actually from the boat. When we were done with our turn we sat on top of the boat and watched the action from the top. Max rented an underwater camera and we snapped away. We both went in 3 times although it seemed to get colder and colder. Quite the exciting day.

We had a 2 hour ride back to the hotel and ate the most delicious seafood platter at Azure, the hotel’s restaurant. Needless to say, we slept really well that night.

Our second hotel while in Cape Town was the Cape Grace, recommended by The Dylan Sandler herself. On the V&A waterfront (Queen Victoria & Alfred, her son, not her husband) it was in a great location. We walked to and from the waterfront easily and enjoyed testing all the restaurants, having a drink at the watering hole, Mitchell’s, and shopping in the very nice and surprisingly large mall there. The hotel was great. There is a small bar downstairs called The Bascule where you can sit on the docks and watch the enormous yachts park for the evening and it’s great for seal spotting, they come and rest on the ends of the dock. The buffet breakfast every morning was incredible too, clearly worth a mention. We did the hop on hop off bus the day we arrived there so that we could get a better idea of our surroundings.

We sat on top for the best view and hopped off at the cable car for Table Mountain and were able to get to the top without a wait. We spent some time up there, it’s completely flat! Great views in every direction. We saw the “tablecloth” of clouds that encroaches on the summit. We hopped back on the bus and traveled all the way down to Camps Bay and back around to the waterfront. We knew we wanted to return to Camps Bay after catching a glimpse. Lots of beach, lots of sun and looked like lots of fun. Needless to say, we were sunburned by the end of this day.

After our stay at the Cape Grace, we checked into the Adderley hotel which is where our extended stay began. It was surprisingly very nice, great budget hotel right off of Long Street in the Central Business District. We took a day trip to wine country, Stellenbosch and Franschhoek. It was beautiful, we drove through Paarl mainly for the Dutch architecture, stopped for lunch at La Petit Ferme with a great view of the valley, tasted wine at Delaire, also stunning and finally had dinner at Tokara. It was a wonderful day full of great scenery and delicious wine. Max and I started drinking white because it was so hot and became fans instantly. We brought a few bottles back with us since bringing your own bottle to dinner and paying a corkage fee is very common throughout the Cape.

We rented chairs and umbrellas and sat on the beach one day. We visited the Gardens where a street fair took place leading up to Christmas. We stopped into a few museums, the Holocaust one was particularly special, done very nicely. We discovered The Bay Hotel’s Sandy B pool club with large floating chairs in their pool. We did this a couple of times and met a very nice woman, Danielle and her mom, who had some more great suggestions for us. Danielle invited us to join her on a car ride up to Chapman’s peak, an incredible drive, twisting and turning through the mountains. We stopped in Llandudno to check out the beach, Chapman’s Peak to check out the view and Simons Town to see the penguins at Boulder Beach. We were very lucky to have met her, she was great and it was a fun day of sightseeing. The beaches on Boxing Day were packed to the brim, you couldn’t see sand anywhere, just umbrella after towel after beach chair after body. The traffic was crazy so we didn’t stop in the smaller towns but we got a flavor for them. We climbed lion’s head mountain one evening with Danielle and her mom and a few others we had met at The Bay Hotel.

Many people had suggested it, they said it was an hour drive and an incredible view of the sunset. We were not expecting that kind of physical activity and huffed and puffed our way up the darn thing.

Some parts were only passable by chain or ladder! Very relieved to make it to the top and very worth the sunset. We were sore for three days after.

We had an incredible time in South Africa. I have a huge list of recommendations for anyone interested. It was a long day of traveling back to Ethiopia but we are happy to be back. We started teaching on Wednesday and everyone greeted us with “Welcome to Gondar” as though we had never been, but we soon realized that they meant “welcome back”. It was good to see our students and all the teachers, really, everyone said they missed us and were happy to see us. One teacher said, “I homesick you” which we also figured meant “I missed you”. Our good teacher friend, Habtamu, won’t stop telling us “You are fat!” which we know is a compliment here and although I tried explaining to him, “It’s actually an insult to Americans” he says, “No, but really, you are FAT!” Figures, we ate reallllly well while we were away for 3 weeks! We have some walking to do and we’ve already started. It’s very chilly in the mornings and at night nowadays but people assure us it gets very hot after Timket/Epiphany which is January 19.

I return to Gondar with more determination and a clearer understanding of my purpose and mission. I needed to step away to realize that what I am doing is not easy and it is okay to struggle at times but that overall, I am only here for one year, I want to make as much of a difference as I can, affect change in as many people as possible and maybe most importantly, in myself.