(Troubles) On the Road

As my classes came to an end and work began to pile up for the first time all semester, it became difficult for me to find time to update you all on my life as of late. Instead of boring you with the monotony of papers, exams, and other “hand-ins” (as they are termed here), I will devote this post to some of the traveling I have been doing over the last few weeks. You may be wondering how I could possibly have found time to leave Cape Town with all the work I just complained about having. My answer is simple: these are the joys of studying abroad!

A while back, a couple of the guys I live with and I drove north along the Western coast of South Africa to some of the quaint coastal villages located there. Our final destination was the Cederberg Mountain range, which is located about four hours inland from Cape Town. The drive there was beautiful – pristine beaches, breathtaking views, and plenty of Rooibos (a tea plant indigenous to these particular mountains). As we left the town of Wupperthal, a small village at the base of the mountains that boasts a start-up rooibos soap business employing previously disempowered women from the area, the road up the mountain seemed manageable for the small car we were driving. At one point, however, there was a sign warning drivers of the necessity of a 4x4 vehicle to reach a town whose name we did not recognize. We decided to continue driving along the road, assuming that the road we were on would not deteriorate. We could not have been more mistaken! About a half hour into the drive, we reached the first of what would be dozens of deep puddles. In order to avoid flooding the car, the driver (my friend Sam) drove around the puddle, only to encounter mud that had us stuck for hours. To make a very long story short, we managed to escape the mud, drive the car through puddles that reached our knees, and to find our way in the dark to the highway we needed to get back to Cape Town. We finally arrived home at 4 AM!

As you can probably imagine, I was hesitant to get into a car for quite some time after my experience in the Cederbergs. So, when my friend Teal and I arrived in Namibia for a weekend adventure and learned that we had to hire a car in order to get around, I was not too amped. Luckily, Teal offered to take care of the rental and to drive us around. The first day of the trip, which we spent in the highly German-influenced (Germany once controlled Namibia before it gained its independence from South Africa in 1990 – the last country in Africa to do so!) town called Swakopmund, went smoothly. Unfortunately, early into our long drive to Sossusvlei, home to the most impressive sand dunes in the world, we ran into some car troubles when our car got stuck on top of a pile of large rocks alongside the road. Luckily, Teal and I were able to make it to the dunes alive, after having gotten a new rental car and having changed a popped tire (something that neither of us had ever done before!). Despite the rocky moments (no pun intended), Teal and I had a blast quad biking and sand boarding on the dunes in Swakop and climbing the dunes in Sossusvlei and Deadvlei, which made it all worthwhile.

And if that wasn’t enough…this past week, my two flatmates and a guy from the flat across the way drove another rental car from Durban, a city on the eastern coast of South Africa, through Swaziland, a landlocked country on the South African-Mozambican border, into the Drakensberg Mountain range, all the way to Joburg. We had originally planned on driving through Lesotho, another landlocked country within South Africa, but we learned that the roads in the country were not paved and that our car would struggle on them. With my recent history of car troubles, we all decided that it was best not to risk getting ourselves into any sticky situation. Even with the slight change in plans, the trip was amazing – beautiful and relaxing!

As I write this post, I am putting off studying for an exam on Wednesday. I wrote my first exam today, and have three more to go. While exams are worth 50% of my overall grade in each course and are pretty stressful as a result, I refuse to allow them to prohibit me from enjoying my last few weeks in Cape Town, especially now that the weather is so nice! I am looking forward to the travels that I still have to look forward to, but I will be very sad to leave this place and all the people I have come to know while living here. I imagine that by the time I find the time to write the next post, I will be finished with exams and will be saying goodbye to Cape Town. Between now and then, I will be sure to look back on all of the amazing experiences I have had here during the last four months. Even with the short amount of time remaining, I still plan on adding new experiences to the many I have already had this semester. There are so many things I want to see and do before I go home! As always, look for updates in the next (and perhaps final) post.

I hope all is well back in the States! Looking forward to seeing many of you soon…