Road trip!

Michelle left, two weeks have flown by!  I fetched her from the airport on Thursday which was a funny experience for me already. She flew from Dubai so I saw some interesting things. It felt like I was on the set from ‘Sex and the City 2’ meets ‘All you need is love’. There she was, finally! After a busy weekend in Durban she could do some volunteering for ICare before our exciting road trip started!

We were planning to hire a car on Saturday morning, and as South African as I am now, we decided to look for one on the morning itself. This led of course to some more money and details than we expected, but eventually we could embrace our sweet little Kia. We picked Andy up from Tekweni and drove to his place in ‘the valley of a 1000 hills’. What an incredible way of living. If my mother and sister would see this, they would immediately pack their stuff and move. (Including chickens, goats and dogs sister!) We fed the chickens, drank some 0,5 liters of beer and left for Drakensberg the next morning. After avoiding a number of goats and cows (we only hit one) we arrived at ‘amphitheatre Backpackers’ where you could see the snow on the mountains. Beautiful! We cooked some lovely Chicken Curry without chicken and went to bed early to prepare for the hike from the next morning. Our guide’s name was crazy Adrian. He was singing some nasty, dirty songs but man we laughed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a view like this in my hiking career. A-ma-zing. If you ever come to South Africa, please make sure you visit this place!!

Waking up at Amphitheatre Backpackers

Facing my fears!

Made it!

On Tuesday morning we drove to St. Lucia. After a couple of hours we entered a little village to look for some music. A pretty nasty old white man came towards our vehicle and started kicking against one of our tires. I was looking at him pretty scary to see what he was doing; we obviously hit that one goat a little harder than we thought. Around 4 pm we arrived at St. Lucia where we booked a backpackers because this was really ‘the place to be’ as described. A beautiful place; cats were eating out of trashcans and the blankets smelled pretty bad. The next morning we did a drive through the park and saw some hippos, rhino’s and several deers. The park is at the beach so it looked lovely. At night we left to Hluhluwe where we wanted to stay at Hluhluwe backpackers, but the place was unfortunately fully booked. Dave, a real South African man, was so friendly to let us stay in his house. He put an extra mattress on the floor and we could use his bathroom. Got to love this man. We met two Dutch guys here Michel and Aadje (Adriaan) and we spent the rest of the week with them. On Thursday we searched for lions and elephants. Michelle was easy to satisfy, as she seems to have a passion for zebras. Therefore, 77% of our pictures are zebras. At night we drove to Mtumzini, a little place at the sea. The four of us spent the night in this cute lodge in a bungalow park. We spent our Friday at the beach where they wanted to relax a little, but I was seriously searching for a shark since there was a warning sign for sharks and crocodiles. When two little boys jumped into the water I was hoping for some more sensation, but still nothing happened.. Maybe next time.  

At Friday night we drove to Pietermaritzburg where we drank some wine with some sort of Marilyn Manson, Akon, Perkamentus and our two Dutch friends. The next day we brought our car back and they didn’t even notice our broken tire, thank god. It felt great being back home!

I have been back in Durban for over 10 days now and I only got 2,5 weeks left. I am busy finishing my stuff at work and my school assignments. Yesterday was another incredible day. When it comes to sport and the support you should definitely be in South Africa. I could feel the tears burning after the great win of Chad le Clos. What a fantastic race!! Even when the difference was pretty big, everyone kept on shouting and supporting and what a party when he touched the wall at first! Amazing!!

I will see you all very soon and thank you all for reading!!
Love