Delayed Departure

Also the night before I flew back to the States, my organization asked me to stay an additional week to give a presentation to a funder. Pretty last minute and stressful, but this is how these things happen. I had nothing going on back in the States, so I decided to stay. The following week, I took Tuesday off to Limpopo with Nadia to check out the biggest baobab tree in the world…and possibly the oldest tree in the world. It took us about 4 hours to get there. We left at 5am, arrived 9am, climbed the tree, and took the even longer way home, just driving through the country and enjoying a day off.

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38 Days of Nothing

So it’s been about 38 days since I last posted. I could claim that it’s been 38 days full of nothing to report, but that would be a lie. Honestly, it’s been one of the most hectic periods of my life – much of it without access to email – but that is no excuse. It all involves lots of working, even more traveling, moving, then not moving, and interviewing for jobs.

So first up was my weekend in the bush with Alwyn, Attie, Ben and Nadia.  Alwyn develops game farms for a living, so he invited us up to check out one he’s about to launch. Or it may have already been launched. I can’t remember. I seem to have the memory the size of a dried up pea these days…

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Battling Dragons in South Africa

In October, Margie and I had the brilliant idea to go hiking in the Drakensberg Mountains. In about a month, we (ahem, she) had everything planned and we were on our merry way down south to Kestell for a weekend of hiking.

I drove along with Margie, Rosemary and Sadia and met Trevor, Nadia, Dave and Ben down there for dinner at this super sweet Afrikaans bar, where we clearly didn’t fit in and where I looked like an idiot trying to play pool. I guess all those afternoons training to be a pool shark with Mariah in college didn’t work out so well. Okay, but to be honest, I really only remember “training” for a semester, so what could I expect?

After displaying my poor pool skills, we went back to the B&B, and headed to bed to rest up for the big hike the next day.

Here’s a  little background on the Drakensberg Mountains: Also known as the Dragon Mountains, this range runs for nearly 1,000 km from south-west to the north-east and covers the border between the KwaZulu-Natal Province and Lesotho. The Drakensberg is the highest mountain range in Southern Africa, rising to 3,482 meters in height – and it’s this height that helps them make an appearance in the disaster movie 2012!

We decided to take the Sentinel Peak hike, located in the Northern Drakensberg, which allows you to climb to the top of the Ampitheatre and survey the Royal Natal National Park below.

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The hike took us about 6.5 hours round-trip, including an ample amount of time hanging out at the top and terrifying climbs up and down a chain ladder that had a tendency to flail around in the wind.

I won’t get into details about what happened later that night, but let’s just say it involved a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches (hey, Kori – they put tomatoes in theirs, too! I told you I wasn’t weird), a child sleeping on the floor of a bar, star-gazing, a guy bypassing the women on the trip for Ben’s number, vegetables and a dirty jacket.

It was SO fun.

I get by with a little help from my friends

Ever since the World Cup, we’ve lovingly referred to my apartment as a hostel, where all my friends from all over the country (and world) come to stay while they are in town.

In this case, it was my pals up in Acorhoek who came down for a visit. Sophie and Crab were on their way to East London for another internship – so Shira and Ilona joined them and came down for a weekend of sushi-eating, movie going, hiking, dancing, car fixing and singing along to musicals.

The highlight of their visit was pretty much the entire day on Sunday. We got up early to hike at Rietvlei Dam along with a bunch of other people from my ex-pat meetup group. Did I mention joining this group? My friend Margie runs it and being a oui (see what I did there??) bit introverted, she pretty much forced me to join 🙂

Our guide holding female rhino dung. Males kick it around (marking their territory)whereas women leave it in a neat pile.

Anyway, hiking at the Reitvlei Dam we went – it was great to get outside and nice enough, but for some reason the hike took us through several feeding grounds. The stench was…let’s just put it this way: It’s been about 10 days since then and every time I think about it I get nauseous. I also got a hilarious sunburn – my legs haven’t seen the light of day since about August 2009 and I stupidly wore shorts but also my hiking socks up to my mid calf. Just picture it. Yeah, it’s awesome, especially given the fact that I am going to a Gala Dinnertonight and have to wear a dress (updates forthcoming).

Next on the list? Shira, Ilona and I went to see Mamma Mia! For some reason Crab didn’t want to go, so he and Sophie went out for dinner while I tried not to embarrass anyone too much by singing along (take a chance on me!). Then again, Shira was really too distracted by the guy playing Sky to really be bothered with my crooning. To top it off, after the show, we picked up Sophie and Crab and went to Greenside for some dancing until 1am. Needless to say, I felt a bit tired at work the next day. Shira and Ilona left the next day and Sophie and Crab the day after that.

I realize this blog is sort of a laundry list of what I did one weekend with my friends. But the reason I share this with you is that I’m leaving South Africa in less than 2 months. I’m starting to get a bit nostalgic about the time I’ve spent here and the people I’ve met.  We’re a rag-tag team of Americans, French, South Africans, Nigerians, Germans, Dutch…you get the point. Most of us are far away from our home and our families and our friends – and it’s because of these circumstances that we get to create our own families and make new memories. Every time I hear ABBA, I’ll think of Shira and Ilona. Every time I look at this sunburn, I’ll think of our hike and Margie and how she encouraged me to join the meet-up group. Sappy, sappy, I know. But it just so turns out that one of the hardest things about living far away from home brings you some of the greatest things – new adventures with new friends who will always be a part of you because of the memories you share.