Going Abroad While Abroad...

If I had known how many amazing photo ops I would see during my Easter (not spring, since it’s fall here) Break, I would have bought one of those fancy SLR cameras before coming. Lucky for me that two of my travel buddies brought fancy-cams and are going to give me all of their pictures before I go home. My vacation was amazing. It had 3 stages: rafting through Blyde River Canyon, safari-ing in Kruger National Park, and lounging on the beaches of Tofo, Mozambique. I was most excited about part three—mostly because I would get to see my friend Anna, who is in the Peace Corps nearby, but also for the passport stamp. Our group consisted of Carolyn (housemate, goes to Cal but I didn’t know her there, one of my best friends here), Maurie (Princeton, roommate, other best friend here), Kai (Carolyn’s South African boyfriend who she dumped the first day of the trip), Pat (Wisconsin, kind of ADD, very friendly, lives down the street), and Ryan (UCSB, housemate, really nice but all of us were excited to get to know him more), and me. We split into 2 sedan rental cars, which Carolyn, Pat, and Kai took turns driving (I don’t know stick, Ryan’s license is expired, and Maurie isn’t old enough to rent).

We started out flying from Cape Town to Johannesburg, where we stayed just long enough to eat a pizza, sleep, and rent cars for the rest of our trip. Then, we drove to Blyde River Canyon, where we first spent a day looking at waterfalls, cliffs, and amazing views.

Since we didn’t know if the water here was drinkable, we decided to boil some to fill up out waterbottles for the next day. When I was pouring the water into a pitcher to freeze overnight, however, the pitcher shattered, covering my stomach and leg with 2nd degree burns. The night before rafting. I woke up with 2-inch blisters all over my stomach, and just hoped that my tank-top and life jacket would be enough to kind of protect myself. In actuality, my stomach was skinned the first time I fell overboard. If we weren’t in the most beautiful place I had ever seen, I might have cared. I had the raft-guide bandage me, but that also fell off quickly.

We were split into 3 2-person rafts, and my partner was Ryan. The guides wouldn’t let the Carolyn and Maurie raft together, and made them each pair with a guy. In addition, there was one main guide, who was in a small canoe thing, and four other assistants. Later, we found out that normally a group of 6 would only have 2-3 guides, but that a few of ours were in training that day. It ended up being great for us, because if one of our rafts tipped, one of the guides picked us up within 30 seconds. This was especially nice because Blyde River has Class 3 and 4 rapids (we walked around the 5’s), and several of us didn’t have rafting experience. We spent all day rafting, with two breaks to eat and relax. Then, the owner of the company met us all at the end of the river with a big, flat, motorboat (pretty much a wooden board with a motor) that had a cooler full of drinks and all of our sweatshirts. On the peaceful ride home, we stopped to watch a herd of hippos in the water. I had know idea just how dangerous hippos are—they kill more people than lions, buffalo, leopard, rhino, and elephant combined. So it was actually quite scary being on an open raft in rhino waters, but it was very cool to hear them calling to each other.

The owner saw my burn, and became very worried that it was the result of the rafting trip. That night, he came to my room, bandaged me, and offered to make me a list of supplies to take to the pharmacy. We stayed in a row of 2-person bedrooms in our own private building, that had a fire outside and a patio with a dining room table, sink, and refrigerator stocked with drinks. It was great! The owner sat with us around the fire and cooked us a feast of chicken and lamb. When we woke up in the morning, the table was set with fruit, eggs, bacon, cereal, and yogurt for breakfast. The tourguide hung out with us late into the night, and then helped us take out our broken car headlight in the morning. He and his girlfriend live very close to the camp, and were some of the nicest people I have ever met. He also took photos of us rafting, and loaded them onto a flash drive for us.

That day, we pretty much just ran errands. We went to the grocery store, found the pharmacy, and had the headlight changed. I ended up spending $60 on medical supplies (antibiotics, tape, bandages, ointment) for the burn, which was looking worse than ever. This filled a grocery bag, that I carried with me the rest of the trip. The pharmacist said she was really nervous about me going to Kruger and Mozambique.

That night, we stayed in a cute backpackers lodge on the way to Kruger, where each room was its own little hut. We split into girls and boys, and the girl room didn’t have any lights. Halfway through cooking our dinner of potatoes and beans, the only other guests popped in the kitchen and invited us to a local bar. We said we might meet them, but they were back with friends before we got the chance. I started chatting with one of the friends while everyone else was outside. He is a native who worked at the local rehabilitation center, and invited us to come the next day. He said he would give us a discount and take us on a special tour after the regular tour, offering to let us pet lion cubs. I spent most of the time talking to him about the center and Kruger, which he said has become overpopulated since South Africa outlawed killing animals to maintain the population levels. Soon, he said, there will be too many elephants, and they will all die because there will be nothing left to eat. He also said that local farmers hate wild animals and kill them right away, and that the center is working to spread awareness so that farmers will call the center instead of killing them on their own.

So we went to the center, and there was no discount. But after my friend, Oscar, saw us sitting in the audience, he went and told the door guy to give us ½ the money back, which he did. The tour was great, and we got to see lots of animals up close, and even pet baby rhinos. Some of us also got to feed some of the big birds (I don’t know bird names), and play with the honey badger, which was almost every guide’s favorite animal. After the tour, Oscar took us to the lions cage. He said that if there wasn’t a special event going on, he would have also taken us into the cheetah cage.

We walked to the lion cub cage, and the animals were soooo much bigger than we had imagined. There were not cute little hold-in-your-arms baby cats. They were 250-lbs, bigger than golden retrievers. When we got to the lion cage, Carolyn took off her jacket and put it on the ground. Quickly, the two lions pounced on it, wrestling with it. By the time Oscar got it back from them (10 minutes later), the $120 LuluLemon jacket had rips all over it. But Carolyn was stoked, saying that made it cooler. I was scared to play with them after they had been riled up in the jacket fight, but it ended up being okay. They really liked me, and really liked my hair (which, by the end, was covered in lion drool…how cool does that sound?). I sat on the ground and the two climbed all over me, playing with my hair and letting me hug/wrestle/pet them. This was the highlight of the trip, by far.

Then we drove to Kruger, which wasn’t too far. The first camp we went to was called Olifance. We drove around the first afternoon, trying to find any animals. We were really excited to see a couple of impala, which it turns out are the most ubiquitous animal in the park. Then, we saw an elephant, and thought we struck gold. That night, we went on a late night drive, and saw a couple of hippos walking down the side of the road. The driver/guide told us they do this because the road is warm, and that hippos will only attack you if you are in between them and the water. Otherwise, they’ll leave you alone. We also saw a million impala and a couple of birds. Then we got home at midnight, freezing and tired, and set our alarms for the 5 am morning walk.

The walk was also awesome. On the drive there, we saw a herd of lions. Then, as the son rose, we saw several giraffes and more elephant. Then we got out of the car and started walking. The two guides each had a huge gun strapped to his back, and told us to walk in a perfectly straight line behind them and to not talk. Soon, the guide looked down to the ground: “Rhino tracks. These are fresh. Let’s follow them. Everyone stay quiet.” So we followed, and he continued to point out clues: “Here is a stick where the rhino scratches itself, see how it’s smoothed down?;” “Here, the rhino poops to mark its territory. If someone wants to take the territory from him, he stamps in it and tracks it all over, and the rhino follows the tracks until he meets the challenger;” “Ahhh, you can see that here, another rhino met our friend. They are both headed in this direction.” It felt like a detective show. Sure enough, we found the two rhino after about 30 minutes. He told us to all to stand behind the tree, because they might try to attack us but can’t see very well. We all got really really close, and could see them smell us.

Later that afternoon, we drove a couple of hours to Skukuza, the home of YouTube’s “Battle at Kruger.” We saw wildebeests and buffalo, a million zebras, elephants, impala, giraffes, etc. It was to the point that we saw so many they weren't even exciting anymore. We also passed a bilbao tree, which is too hard to describe but very cool. I slept in a tent with the boys, and Carolyn and Maurie slept in a bungalow (the only 2 housing options they had left). The next day, we drove to Lower Sabie, still wanting to see a leopard (the only animal in the Big 5 that we hadn’t seen yet). We passed a couple of lakes where we got really close to crocodiles, and saw a lot more animals on the way. At Lower Sabie, we had a morning drive scheduled for the next day. We also knew that we had a 12-hour drive ahead of us to Tofo, Mozambique, including crossing the border. We went on the morning drive, wondering if it would cost us a night in Tofo. It did.

We were at the border for several hours, and hit traffic in Maputo. We tried to speed to gain distance, but quickly got a speeding ticket in one of many speed traps. It was for Mts1000 or R300 (about $30…everywhere in Mozambique accepted SA or Mozambique currency), and if we didn’t have the money, we would all go to prison. We had it, and drove the (way too slow) speed limit the rest of the way. It became dark before we were halfway to Tofo, and knew that we should stop because of all the potholes in the road. Plus, there were no street lights, and people walked home along the dark road. It was honestly scary how many people we could have easily hit. We decided to stop in Xai-xai, a beach town in between Maputo and Tofo.

We finally found a big hotel on the beach, that looked great from the outside. They only had two rooms left, and each one was really expensive. We figured we could sneak/cram 3 people into each room, even when the front desk lady warned me several times not to do that. This hotel is the creepiest place ive ever been. Besides having holes in the sheets and rats in the halls, the front desk lady and one of the maids watched us constantly. The maid literally stayed in the hall outside our room during out entire stay, making up reasons to come into our rooms and sticking her head in each time the door was cracked open. I asked for towels, which the room didn’t have out, and she only brought one. And the shower leaked from the bathroom into the middle of our floor, creating a 2-inch puddle. By the time we were all inside (and she knew it, too), a weird, loud music started blasting outside our room, as if our window looked out into a disco.

We were so happy to leave in the morning, and I was so nervous they would call the police on us or do something else crazy. We finally got to Tofo later that afternoon, and it was paradise. The beach was sooo warm and completely empty, and the hostel was great. Also, some of our friends from CT were staying in the same place, so it was nice to have more people around (especially after the drama-filled breakup). We went to a local market, where all of us bought clothes and crafts for much cheaper than in South Africa. Then, we watched the moon rise over the ocean, and went for a late-night swim.

The next day, we went for an ocean safari, where we snorkeled with a shark whale and a herd of 4 dolphin. It was so much un, even though the waves made me queezy and I was that awkward girl who couldn’t get into the boat without help. Still, it was really fun. We spent the rest of the day napping on the beach and went back to the market. The next morning (our last day in Moz), we woke up early to watch the sun rise over the ocean (I had only seen it set on the ocean before). Then, we headed out. The trip home went much faster, even though we still spent a couple of hours at the border. We stayed in a guesthouse in Nelspruit, arguably the friendliest town I’ve ever visited. Then in the morning, we went to the airport and flew home.

The trip was definitely amazing, and I wouldn’t have chosen to go anywhere else. We saw so many different kinds of climate: lush and green in Blyde River, dry in Kruger, and beachy in Moz. It was also interesting seeing how people lived in each place. There were rura huts sprinkled throughout the hills our entire trip, but Mozambique brought poverty to a whole new level. Everyone lived completely on subsistence, mostly by selling food on the side of the rode. People walked everywhere, and we saw the same people in the same places when we drove home. We also saw two albino people, which was really interesting. Children kept running up to us asking for sweets, and people in each town looked at us as we passé through. Also, small shacks everywhere were painted with the Vodacom logo, probably because Voda did it for free. The whole place was so simple, peaceful, and weirdly beautiful. It also gave me an appreciation for a new kind of poverty, making CT’s townships look far from bad. The urban poverty of Cape Town was nothing compared to the huts everywhere in Mozambique. Sometimes we would also pass really nice buildings from when Portugal controlled the country, but they were blanketed in filth from being neglected after Portugal left. I wish we got to spend a day in Maputo, because friends say this is most clear here.

Going to Mozambique definitely makes me excited to travel more. Hopefully I find the time before I go home this summer!