Hey bru’s!
Lots to update on! As predicted, I continue to get worse about updating this, but oh well.
So for fall break, (I kept saying spring break and the South African’s always got annoyed and corrected me) I went with 9 others to Namibia! It was myself, plus 8 of my housemates and another friend who is taking a gap year in South African. It was definitely one of the best experiences of my life and I already miss Nam.
I was expecting the worse with the van we ordered, but it actually turned out to be great. It was a 14 seater, so there was actually plenty of room for our backpacks, food, tent, sleeping bags, pillows and 2 guitars. We quickly named it, Nababeep after a town that we passed at the beginning of our trip. It was a stick shift, so the 4 boys drove the whole way, while the girls navigated. Most of Namibia was dirt roads and I was actually proud of my navigation skills and I feel like after Namibia I could roadtrip anwhere, no problem.
We left on Satuday morning and the hardest part of driving for the day was leaving Cape Town. It took us an hour and half to get out of the city. We drove to Springbok, South Africa that day which is a couple hours from the Namibia border and about 6 hours from Cape Town. We got to the campsite and they told us we could take any site we wanted. This was because we were the only people there, this was our first taste of how isolated we would be on our trip. Springbok is a tiny town, so we walked around for a bit and had dinner at a restaurant in town.
We left early the next morning (every night we went to around 10:30 and woke up around 7, crazy spring break I know) and crossed the border into Namibia. Border control gave us a pretty hard time about crossing. They didn’t understand how we were students who wanted to go into Namibia simply just to drive around and camp. I guess I could understand though, because when they asked us where we were going none of us could give a good answer. Nonetheless, they finally let us in! We drove to Fishriver Canyon, which was just another couple hours in. We got to our campsite and quickly took over the pool there. We spent an hour just floating in the whirlpool that we had created.
We then went to the park which has the Fishriver Canyon. It’s the second biggest canyon in the world, next to the Grand Canyon. We were the only one’s there, so we just hung out there for a few hours and watched the sunset. It was very different from the Grand Canyon because there were no other tourists. After the sunset, we went back to our campsite to make dinner. We really could never drive at night in Namibia because it is far too dangerous. There are animals constantly running across the road and the roads are super curvy and not smooth at all. We made spaghetti over the fire for dinner. The second batch was accidently dropped in the fire pit, but being starving college students naturally we put sauce on and dug in anyway. We star gazed the rest of the night and I have never seen so many shooting stars or just stars in general. A weird thing about being in South Africa is that there are different constellations here, which I didn’t think about coming here. All of Namibia had great stargazing, but Fishriver Canyon was the best.
We woke up the next morning to baboons raiding our campsite. We had left some food out (rookie campers at that point), so the baboons ate a lot of our oats. Camping in the U.S., we were always warned about hiding food from bears, so it was funny because I never even thought about hiding it from monkeys. We also woke up to a flat tire on Nababeep, but luckily some expert South African campers next to us changed our tire in about 2 minutes.
We headed to Keepmanshoop after the morning ordeals. Keetmanshoop is only about an hour and a half drive, which was really nice. We drove to the Quiver tree Forest (quiver trees are large drought resistant trees whose trunk look like palm trees, but the leaves look like clumps of spikes) and couldn’t find it for awhile. This resulted in us getting stuck in the sand. We pushed and dug for about an hour and a half before 2 heroes in a 4 x 4 came to save us. They tied Naba to their car and pulled us out in about 10 minutes . We found the Quiver tree forest after that and walked around in it for about an hour. After that, we drove to Giant’s Playground. Giant’s Playground was full of giant boulders piled on top of each other. We climbed on top of them and all we could see for miles were boulders and boulders. I found that everything about Namibia was huge and random. Again, we were pretty much the only people at both places.
We camped at a really cool place in Keetmanshoop. It was run by “Namibian farmers.” They didn’t actually grow crops or have livestock, so don’t really know how they got that. The campsite just had the bare minimums, but it was one of our favorites. The showers were outside and the owners were really chill. Their dog and cat hung out with us all night and even slept right next to our tent. I named the dog, Dingo, after my brother’s long lost dog in Australia. The campsite was beautiful at sunset with the quiver trees in the background. We made “Namibian paella” for dinner. This consisted of braaied sausage and chicken, spaghetti and soup mix all in one big bowl. We were pretty desperate, but we embraced it and loved it. Keetmanshoop was full of huge bugs that were a cross between spiders and locusts. They were all over the place, so we went to bed early again because we were pretty creeped out by them. We had an 8 person tent for 10 of us, so it was very cozy. Half of the tent was really only a porch too, so when it got windy the sides came up and it was really just sleeping outside.
We said bye to the dog the next morning and headed to Sossulvei. It was about a 7 hour drive or so. The long drives really didn’t bother me though because it was a really good group. We spent the time sleeping, listening to crazy music, singing, playing games, waving to the one car we passed every 3 hours or so, talking, and eating lots of fruit, cereal, chocolate and crazy-flavored chips. Driving was actually a lot of fun for all of us. Along the way we saw zebra, ostrich, tons of antelope, lots of springbok (which are like deer, except they spring up when they run), baboons, foxes and a lot of cool birds and lizards/geiko’s at every stop.
We checked into our campsite at Sossusvlei and immediately left to go to the sand dunes. It was about a 45 minute drive to get out to them. Once we got there, we walked for about 4 k’s or so to get to dunes that we wanted to climb. The dunes were a lot easier to climb than I expected they would be. The sand was so soft and silky and we had fun just relaxing on them and enjoying the sunset. The view was breathtaking and one of a kind. It was so different from anything I had ever seen before. I think my favorite thing about Namibia is how there really aren’t many people there at all. Everything was so quiet and calm all of the time. I loved thinking about how I will probably be the only one of my friends or family to ever go to Namibia. It was great because it really felt like Namibia was ours and our unique experience.
We ate a very rewarding dinner at the restaurant of our campsite that night and had a great time. It was very exciting eating something besides cereal and pasta. That night, we hung out by the fire and made up lots of songs with the guitar. A lot of people in our house can play guitar, so there is constantly music being played by someone which I really like.
We woke up super early to drive to the dunes again to see sunrise. We climbed a taller dune this time, which was actually a really tough climb. We sort of missed sunrise because when it was rising it was super foggy, but that was cool as well. We stayed on the dune for a few hours rolling around on it and putting sand all over ourselves. I’m pretty sure I’m still getting sand off of my body and clothes.
We drove to Swakopmund after we packed up the campsite. It was a 7 hour drive. Swakopmund was the only actual town we stayed in. It had a beach and sand dunes. We stayed in a hostel the 2 nights and we all loved sleeping in beds again. It was nice having 10 people because that meant that we got our own room for the 10 of us. The night we got in we walked around and found a pizza place to eat at. The pizza in South Africa/Namibia usually doesn’t have sauce which is odd, but they are very inventive with the combinations they put on pizza, so that makes up for it. We went back to the hostel and called it an early night again.
We woke up the next morning and had breakfast at the hostel. We then walked around the town to all of the antique shops and small boutiques they had. We then had a lunch of good bread, brie cheese and mango on the beach.
Later in the day, Marie, Hannah, Elliot and I went camel riding!! The owner even made us wear turbans that she made for us. My camel was named Freddie and was the leader of the group and the oldest. The scariest part of the experience was when we got on the camels backs and then they stood up. I didn’t realize how high above the ground I would be! You have to be very careful to hold on, or you will easily fall off. Afterwards, I asked the owner how often people fall off and she said everyday, but luckily none of us did. The camel ride was actually a lot smoother than riding a horse. At one point the guide asked us if we wanted to run. We all emphatically said, “NO!” but he did it anyway. I think we were all screaming loud enough, that he decided that 10 seconds was long enough. After the camel riding, we had tea with the owner who was an old woman who saved the camels from being slaughtered decades ago. She also owned zonkey’s, which is a cross between a zebra and a donkey which are really cool looking. We got stuck in the sand leaving again, but it only took about 10 minutes to get out. Luckily, all of the workers helped us and lifted the car up, the owner even helped push!
We went to a nice restaurant in town that night and had a lot of fun once again. We made friends with another man at the restaurant named Wayne. He came over to us to tell us how he had been watching us all night (creepy because he had) and he wanted to let us now that he thought we were a great group of young people and how we made him excited for the future and all this stuff. We ended up talking to him for awhile because he worked on reality TV show production stuff in Nambia and had lots of good stories. After the restaurant we went to a bar and ran into our neighbors from South Africa there. I told you that no one else was in Namibia!
The next morning we started heading back to Cape Town. We took paved roads the whole way back, which was much easier driving. We were planning on coming home Sunday, but we all had a lot of work to do, so we decided that we should probably aim for Saturday night instead. We drove all day and that night stayed at the same campsite in Keetmanshoop, so we could hang out with Dingo more. We left Keetmanshoop around 8 the next morning and got back to Cape Town around 8 that night. We were all very said to leave Nam. Fall break made me love studying abroad even more and it made me a lot more confident with traveling in general.
The next Monday I was finally able to volunteer at the hospital. I have spent the last month getting forms together, calling the hospital and dropping off documents that they needed, but I was finally able to actually see patients on Monday. While I was at Iowa, I volunteered in the Mom and Baby Unit of the hospital for a year and half and even though the hospital in Cape Town is a children’s hospital, it could not have been more different. I was for the millionth time reminded that I was in Africa when I got there. I was placed with another volunteer since it was my first time. The wards don’t really seem to be organized in any particular way. I saw kids with broken legs, enlarged heads, broken backs, stomach diseases, premature babies and then lots of kids who I didn’t know what was wrong with them. Almost none of the kids spoke English, it was pretty much all Afrikaans and Xhosa. That was definitely a challenge, but no matter what language the kid speaks, they all understand smiles and playing, so I think it will be ok. It was nice being able to hold the children’s hands when they were getting treatments and stuff. They really let the volunteers get very hands-on which I liked a lot. One of the nurses bandaged my arm just like the girl I was playing with, so that the little girl didn’t take off her bandages. I definitely felt like I was making a difference much more than I have felt with other hospital volunteer experiences. The hospital didn’t have us wear gloves, but we had to thoroughly wash our hands and wash every toy between every patient. All of the volunteers had tea and biscuits (South Africa’s poor attempt at cookies) together towards the end of the shift. Most of the volunteers are older women. A lot of them have been volunteering for 30 years and are very territorial about the wards, I have been warned. I’m excited to continue volunteering there.
This weekend 2 of my housemates, Marie and Hannah, rented a car for the 4 day weekend. The car was about 25 dollars a day to rent and was a piece of junk, but we didn’t care. It was a very old VW with no power steering and there was even a choke to start it, but it got us from point A to point B.
On Friday, we drove to Stellenbosch with 2 of other roommates. (After a quick stop to McDonalds, which was surprisingly a lot fresher and better than in the U.S.) We planned on wine tasting all day, but because it was Good Friday all of the vineyards were closed. It was still beautiful just driving around and seeing the different vineyards. One of the vineyards was open because it had a restaurant attached to it. We stayed there awhile because it had a very cool playground with a crazy treehouse that overlooked all of the vineyards and we couldn’t pull the boys away anyway. We drove to Franschoek, which means “French corner” in Afrikaans. It really did feel like for the day we were in France, the mountains were really the only reminder that we were in Africa. We had lunch at a cute café and walked around a lot. It’s a small, calm town with lots of little stores and restaurants. We drove home and had a much quieter braaiday than normal, because we were all tired.
Saturday morning we went to Old Biscuit Mill. One of the things I will miss most about Cape Town in Old Biscuit Mill. It is paradise with all of the delicious food. We had smoothies, ostrich burgers, stir fry and bought pita bread and cheese for later. We drove to Camp’s Bay to a beach named Llandudno for the afternoon. It’s a beautiful beach with huge waves, freezing water and lots of rocks. Llandudno only had a few people on it because it’s really just a beach that locals go to. I loved having the independence that comes with a car this weekend and it made Cape Town feel a lot more like home. We felt like 3 surfer chicks with our beater car and deserted beach. It was a bit cold to lie out, but it was just fun sitting in the sand and talking. We came back home and later that night went out to Long Street.
Easter morning, Marie and I woke up to go to church and then went to breakfast afterward. We came home to pick up Hannah and then spent the rest of the day laying around at Kirstenbosch. It was a great way to spend Easter Sunday. We brought food and blankets into the garden and just relaxed the whole day. There were lots of families there with little kids, so we had fun playing with the babies that wobbled to us. Our housemates met us later to listen to the concert. It was another really fun day with the car.
I have another busy week ahead of me this week. I can’t believe my family will be here in less than 2 months now. Time is flying by! Hope all is well!
Cheers,
Megan
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