The Incredible Journey

Last Thursday I took my life in my hands and made the very long trip to Umtata to meet up with Sarah and Hannah, some other Project Trust girls who are living it up in a children's home there and go for a long awaited weekend away to Port St John's which is up the coast a bit.






After a hectic day at work in which I tried to leave everything in some semblance of order I picked up my rucksack from the rondavel, said goodbye to Sammy [this is the first time we have been separated since the beginning, bad times!] then started walking along the road in hope of a taxi. Thankfully, a taxi came past after about 15 minutes of walking, and fun fun times, drove me back to Zithulele Hospital. Strange place. Anyway, we finally turned around again towards the metropolis that is Mqanduli and since I had the front seat and therefore a low chance of being pick pocketed, I had a sleep.





Two hours later we arrived at Mqanduli and I jumped out and made my way to the taxi I needed to take me to Umtata. We waited for around 30 minutes for it to fill up i.e. for enough people to populate a small country to cram into the rusty excuse for a vehicle. [Okay, it really wasn't that bad!] Forty minutes later, the city was upon us. Not having been anywhere near civilisation in over two months, it was a little overwhelming at first to be in a place that was so busy, noisy and where I was the only white person and therefore attracted lots of attention. Less than one second after I disembarked from the oven on wheels, a lovely man called Desmond had declared his deepest love for me and asked if I wanted to marry him. I think the Notting Hill reference was lost on him when I replied, 'Tempting, but no,' and ran off in the complete opposite direction.

After some worried phone calls and confusion in the big city, I finally met up with Hannah from Thembilihle children's home and we went back to their project. It's a brilliant project and I have to admit I am pretty jealous of their set up there [even though Zithulele is, like, the best place EVER]. They live and work in the children's home with about 20 kids between ages of 6 and 16, teaching six days a week. It's pretty clear that their kids love them as they were climbing all over them :D Hannah, Sarah and I then went out for dinner at Umtata Country Club with Andrea and Amanda from Bethany Children home [more PT volunteers], and various other volunteers from around Umtata. It was great to have a meal out other than Papazela's pizza for once and I thoroughly enjoyed my smoked springbok and mixed fried noodles. It was Amanda's 18th birthday so there were celebrations all round including the weirdest cake ever made [make that three extra weeks of Lent, but it's rude to refuse birthday cake when you've only just met someone!] - it consisted of one squishy layer that was not cooked but tasted goood and a second one that was like a crunchy biscuit and it was all covered in pink icing that must have contained all the E numbers ever created. When we asked Andrea and Sandra how they made it, they replied that they had no idea how to cook a cake so had just bought all the ingredients they thought they might need and added half of the packet, mixed it, put it in the oven but then took it out after 10 minutes when the greaseproof paper caught fire. A winning formula indeed.

Epic jungle hiking

The next day we set off on the epic journey to big Port St John's (or PSJ as the cool kids call it). There were six of us: me, Andrea, Hannah, Sarah, Sandra and Stephanie. After three-ish hours in the crazy taxi we finally pitched up at Amapondo backpackers, a very very cool place. We had a dorm to ourselves and the bunks were about 3m off the ground which made for interesting attempts to get into bed.








First thing on the agenda was chilling on the beach. Or not chilling as it turned out. The arrival of six white girls looking like tourists prompted the arrival of every bead selling entrepreneur on the planet and we were soon surrounded with blankets covered in necklaces, bracelets, anklets, all manner of things that none of us particularly wanted to buy. We eventually managed to fend them off with the old 'Maybe Tomorrow' line but one unusually persistent girl ended up staying for over an hour just chatting. It transpired that she was only 15 and sold beads in the afternoon after school to earn some extra money. She was actually really funny and told us that she wanted to braid our hair. First of all she decided she would count all of our hairs [err...what?] but not Hannah or Sarah's because they had too many [err...what?] then proceeded to braid Andrea's into a style which resulted in all off her hair being plastered to her head. The girl then proudly announced to Andrea 'You look like a spear now,' which made me laugh a lot until she started to do the same thing to me and I realised what a painful process it was. She pretty much pulled out most of my scalp and made my eyes water but I was also rewarded with the prestige of looking like a spear. Once satisfied that we had weapon shaped heads, we made our excuses and got out of there as fast as possible before she offered to pierce us or give us tattoos or worse, get the damn beads out again...







Dinner was ultimate good times at a restaurant called Delicious Monster. We had to get a lift to avoid getting mugged outside a notorious shabeen on the way there so all six of us piled into a car on top of each other. The meal was stunning, we had these things called schwarmas which are big pitta breads filled with meat, onion, tomato, cheese and tzatziki. Yum Yum. A quick drink in the Amapondo bar and then it was time for bed.







After possibly the best night's sleep since I got here [since a) it was dark, b) it was cool and c) it was quiet] we awoke and went for milkshakes. Milkshakes are possibly the greatest drink ever; I could drink them all day long. [It's only due to budgetary constraints that I didn't.]







The day's adventure was a jungle hike of epicness into the wild African bush under the watchful eye of our guide Bongs. First up we had to do one of three Amapondo challenges, the rope swing of death. I looked at the rope and I looked at the drop and my brain did the necessary calculations and came back with the odds of 100% imminent death if I agreed to do it, but for some reason my mouth said yes and imminent death it was. Except it wasn't [hence you have the pleasure of reading my ever so eloquent words], it was actually really fun, especially when I swung back in and knocked Bongs down the hill...







We trekked through the bush, hacking our way through with machetes and pulling away the cobwebs of deadly spiders as we went. Okay, only Bongs was doing that, but it was humid and baking hot and everywhere was jungle and bugs and trees so it felt pretty epic. We even managed to catch a rare glimpse of some monkeys which was pretty cool. We did a little abseil-thingy down a little waterfall and crossed some rivers and had general banter until we finally arrived at our destination of Bulolo waterfall.

Bulolo waterfall

Plunge pool jumping

Can you spot me in the pic?




The waterfall was the next Amapondo challenge: jump off it into the pool below. So I pretty much hate heights with a deep passion so the thought of jumping off a ledge into a cold pool of undetermined depth filled me with er, no excitement whatsoever. Rather a deep dread. But, lo and behold, I found myself 7m up in the air, taking a very deep breath and leaping up, up, up, feeling a moment of extreme thrill, then falling down, down, down and feeling the kick of the freezing water as I hit the plunge pool. It was worth it, what an adrenaline rush! I jumped off a few more times, as did the others, then we continued the trek.







The third and final challenge for the day was another rope swing, this time out of a tree. You had to hold onto the tree with one hand, have one foot [one foot!!] on the swing and then let go and swing out over a river. It was pretty damn cool; obviously by this point in the day I was a hardcore thrill seeker so I was totally up for it. Sadly for Bongs, he had to stand in the river and catch us, but I kicked him over...ooops!







Back at Amapondo, we decided to take a trip up to the airstrip for sundowners. Apparently it was used as a location in Blood Diamond...anyone know? We got a lift up there in the back of this guy's 4x4 and were standing up as he sped through the forest up to the top of the hill where the strip is. When we reached the strip, Tim revved up the car as fast as it could go and we were getting that G-force thing going on where your face goes all funny, EPIC! Anyway, the view from the top was incredible, you could see for miles and miles and miles so we had our sundowners and chatted, good good good times.

Sundowners at the airstrip

I left the next day at ten for what was to be a very long trip back to Zithulele on my own. Four taxis, six hours, seventy seven rand and lots of stress later I was back home, what a relief. I had spent the last three hours in the back seat of a taxi squished in beside four guys with my rucksack on top of me and when I got out my shorts were covered in condensation, how disgusting. To my horror, I discovered I had no house key, but I'll save that story for next time...








xxxxx