Traveling through South Africa

A short story about our travel from the last two weeks: hitch hiking with Sander through South Africa.

Top 3 of the best travel vehicles:
1) hitch hike in bakkie (car that you see a lot in South Africa and Lesotho - has an open boot in the back where you can take everything, like hitch hikers ... )in Lesotho. In the bakkie Sander and I enjoyed the nice moutain view. After an hour we got a friend with us at the back: a living sheep. Quite soft actually.
2)Taxi minibus in Lesotho. In such a minibus you sit with the driver and 17 people, quite cosy together. The tyre had to be replaced before we left and that didn't seem an easy job, so it took us a few hours before we could leave. When we finally left, every 30 minutes we had to get out, because they had to lift up the front seat to fill the engine with new water. The engine was getting hot quite fast. Maximum speed of the bus was 50 km/h and sometimes 70 km/h when we went down. But than as well, I liked the 50 better than going down in this thing at 70 km/h. When we had to climb I suppose we got a maximum of 4 km/h. But we got where we had to be: safe and quite in time.
3)4 by 4 drive in the wild coast with a closed bakkie with strong engine. So that was more like a ride in the rollercoaster. At one point I was thinking am I now sitting or am I lying down in this car ...

Top 3 of best places we stayed:
1) Rondavel hut in a little village in Lesotho. This was one of the chiefs rondavel huts and they welcomed us really well.
2) Stay in township house in Mthatha; We arranged this stay with somebody we met in the taxi, because we didn't have a place to stay in this city. The house was quite full with all the relatives visiting. So I slept with one of the kids in one bed and Sander had to sleep on the ground. But again we felt really welcome.
3) Big luxurious house in Jo'burg. We hadn't actually planned to go to Johannesburg, but since our drivers went to Durban, we thought we might go as well, in stead of going to Durban. So we finished our travel in a big house with electrical security fence and security guides.

More stories later or in Belgium!

What’s up with Goedele ?

It looks like it is ages ago that I have been writing my blog. My excuse: life is too busy to write blogs.

After the Otter Trail I have been travelling a week with mama, papa, tante Flavie en Gaston. And I really enjoyed that. Not only the nice hotels, which I am not used to and the nice food. But in the first place the company of my family. Although I must say that homesick is a word that doesn’t appear in my dictionary, it was really nice to see them back and spend a whole week together. And of course I enjoyed seeing all the whales in Hermanus, walking two kilometres on bare feet in the river not knowing how far we still needed to walk and how deep this river would become, the table mountain, the nice views from out of the car, the discussions about how the sun turns in South Africa and so on … .

Afther this trip life has changed a little bit for me. We finished the Laridae-era. Laridae used to be the name of our appartment and this name is associated with a lot of good memories, due to my companions over there: Bruno, Sander, Thomas and Eugene. At the end of November, time had come to change. Bruno and Thomas left Plett and Sander and I made the decision to go and live for our last two weeks in the township.

And I can tell you life in the township is a bit different: a one-room house, cooking water to have warm water to wash, allways neighbours around, during weekend there's a party from the morning until the evening and you'll listen to the neighbours music from morning till evening - or to your own music if you play your music really loud -, trying to learn some Xhosa - my tong turns in a knot when I try to pronounce their clicks -, no internet, ... . What can I say? Different, interesting and nice!

Die Sterreweg is finishing now and I am trying to get everything ready of what I had planned to do. So that tomorrow Sander and I can start our trip. This will also be interesting. We decided to make a hitch-hiking tour, so that means we didn't make too many plans yet. So I will have to tell you all about it when I come back!