David's adventures: Part II

After a number of rich experiences (including several typical David misadventures), I moved on from the Wild Coast, eager to arrive in Durban, a major milestone I had been anticipating since beginning this trip (and in another sense, since I first began to learn about South Africa). As the 3rd largest city in South Africa, I hadn’t seen anything remotely like Durban since I left Cape Town, and yet Cape Town is nothing like this city. Durban bustles, with Indian influences rubbing shoulders with Zulu culture and Xhosa influences, all on top of crumbling British colonial architecture lined with palm trees and creeping vines. The Golden Mile Beachfront and Sun Coast Casino are kitsch as hell, like a theme park version of Miami Beach’s Art Deco style. I was told crocodiles live in the river that cuts through the city, and to avoid Mahatma Gandhi Road at all times- especially after dark. I went on a tour of the city’s sprawling Berea market- a vast accumulation of market spaces winding under, above, within, beside, and between the tracks and highway overpasses of the Berea transport interchange. This was a place where you could buy Indian spices by the kilo, eat cooked meat off a cow’s face, buy bags of muti(traditional medicines), marvel at dried animal carcasses and skulls, buy pirated DVDs of children’s shows, bushels of dried herbs (imphepho) to burn in ceremonies, and just about anything else one could want. It was sunny and beautiful at the beach on Saturday (and I watched a bunch of fully dressed Zulu women roll around in the surf, it must have been a religious thing), the aquarium was stocked with ridiculous looking fish, morays, and ferocious crabs (Japanese Spider Crab, anyone?), and the food, Indian and otherwise, was damn good. I can’t wait to go back.

Herb/Muti Market, Durban (Sourced from internet)

Totally convincing smile as I prepare to descend a 25m chain ladder
off a sheer cliff face while wearing size 14 US hiking boots
that are too big for me to consistently fit my feet onto each ladder rung.

I left Durban after a week and headed to Pietermaritzburg, where I took a typically crowded minibus taxi to a town called Underberg, not far from the Drakensberg Mountains and the Sani Pass. From here I took a 4x4 trip up the Sani Pass into Lesotho, the highest country in the world, and also one of the poorest. This trip was by turns beautiful, surprising, and humbling. Also, the hike we undertook to Hodgson’s Peak South (AKA the Giant’s Cup), at an elevation of over 3,200 meters, was my first experience in high-altitude hiking. The highlands of Lesotho and the Drakensberg put the Appalachian to shame. I spent the next few days in the Berg as well, gradually heading north towards the Amphitheatre, stopping to hike and see San rock art, beautifully preserved for as many as 5,000 years. From a backpackers in the Northern Drakensberg we hiked along the top of the Ampitheatre and visited the top of Tugela falls, the 2nd highest waterfall in the world. We also descended down a sheer cliff face on a series of ladders that were over 100 feet long, one of the tensest experiences of my life. I also visited Lesotho again, this time the northeast of the country, and spent a day exploring Royal Natal Park.

Visiting a village in Eastern Lesotho, near the Sani Pass

From the Drakensberg, it was only a short jaunt to Johannesburg, the big city at the end of my journey. Johannesburg has reputation in spades, more so than any other African city I can name. It took a few days, but once I got used to Jozi and got over my fears, I was seeing silver linings all over and feeling the vibe that infuses this city. If Durban makes Cape Town look like a European outpost, Joburg makes Cape Town look like a playground.  After a night or two my traveling mate and I decided to relocate from the staid northern suburbs to the heart of dangerous, deadly, downtown Jozi; we ended up in a hilariously sketchy hostel in Braamfontein, an emerging area within Joburg’s CBD. While in Joburg I revisited the Apartheid Museum and Constitution Hill, and found even more to savor and discover in these rich historical sites. I took a daytrip to Pretoria and discovered the inspirational Freedom Park museum complex, and then trekked up the largest hill in town to visit the imposing and intimidating Voortrekker Monument. My other favorite experiences in Joburg included a visit to the Origins Centre museum at Wits University, and an adventure into the depths of Johannesburg’s massive Park Station as my traveling companion sought to find a guy about a minibus taxi to Zimbabwe. Ever get that uneasy sense that you’re being looked at? You should try visiting the Johannesburg minibus taxi ranks (sarcasm).

A view of Johannesburg, City of Gold, from Carlton Centre.

The end of my trip came surprisingly fast. I was able to find a dirt-cheap rate for a flight back to Cape Town, and booked it only 1 day in advance. Like that, I had my ticket “home”. I had entertained ideas about traveling beyond South Africa to Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana or Namibia, but my visa problems wouldn’t allow this. And the fact of the matter is, that although I had taken over five weeks to make this journey, there were still many places I passed up on visiting, entire areas I had not yet been able to explore within South Africa, and that a trip out to South Africa’s neighboring countries would require time, resources, and money that I simply didn’t have to do the right way. And so, my trip came to an end. It amazed me how it only took a two-hour plan ride to return me to the place I had spent five weeks traveling from. I returned to a Cape Town that was very differently from the one I had left, not just because of the passing of seasons and the changing of people, but because of how I myself had changed, and how my perceptions had changed.

Cape Town has been my home for the past two and a half weeks, and it will be my home until I return to the states, possibly in as few as ten or so days. It seems strange that such a long journey is coming to an end now. This trip, my entire experience in South Africa has completely and thoroughly trumped and tricked my expectations at all stages. This is what the future holds in spades, and I look forward to it excitedly.

David's post study abroad experiences

Catching up with David

Part 1

Hello everyone! It’s been almost two months now since UConn in Cape Town 2014 ended. Already I find it difficult to look back on the experiences I’ve had since that time, because I feel like I’ve moved through so many phases of feeling and thought. As I sit writing this in a café on Main Road in Sea Point, watching people pass by on a early winter day in Cape Town, I feel so far removed from the David who wandered in a surreal daze around the eerily quiet and empty interior of the house, minutes after my peers had all packed into vans and left for the airport.  In that moment, I was overcome by these thoughts: It’s over. UConn in Cape Town 2014 is over. Now something else begins. How am I going to finish packing? I am not prepared. What am I doing? It’s so quiet. Where do I start? I should jump in the pool! It’s too cold. And the house is empty.

That afternoon was so strange. As Ben and Liz went through the house with Diane and Harry and did inventory and surveyed the damages, I called my sister and talked to her on the phone for the first time since I left Connecticut. I packed away almost all my belongings into two large suitcases and stored them in Liz’s room, leaving behind only a tiny pile of supplies and clothing that filled my traveling backpack. I wandered upstairs and was caught by the sight of a gorgeous sunset, my last in Cape Town for now, but not ever. Sarah and Ben joined me on the roof patio, and I took a moment to register the feeling of change, of one thing ending and another beginning. And with that, I tossed my things in the car and we left.

The next morning I left on an open-ended backpacking trip across the vastness of South Africa. I had never embarked on anything remotely like this before, and my anxiety and nervousness in the days leading up to that first day were testament to my inexperience. Did I have everything that I needed? Was I adequately prepared with back-up plans and resources should I run into trouble? How will I communicate? How will I arrange travel off the beaten path? How will I manage to procure the necessary supplies and food for a multi-day hiking trip when my bag was already stuffed beyond capacity? Will I meet people? Will I be able to be outgoing enough? Every one of these questions resolved themselves along the way, and I ended up having a phenomenal experience traveling. Despite my passion for exploration and well-established pattern of risk-disregarding decision-making that I practiced in Cape Town, I never found myself in a situation where the challenges of the moment or the environment exceeded my ability to handle them confidently, to a greater or lesser degree. This is not to fail to mention that I (in most cases) judiciously took decisions to not place myself in high-risk situations, or that in many cases I was helped or saved by the kindness of strangers.

But back to the meat of the action: my trip! I left Cape Town and traveled along the Garden Route, visiting Wilderness, Knysna, Plettenberg Bay, The Crags, and Storm’s River. I found beautiful nature and verdant, rocky coastline in Wilderness; high-class living and working-class hardscrabble on a placid lagoon in Knysna; stunning views and cosmopolitan vibes in Plettenberg Bay; and monkeys, hippies and vast lightning storms that stretched across the sky in The Crags. From Tsitsitkamma National Park in Storm’s River I embarked on the 5-day Otter Trail hike, one of the top backpacking trips in South Africa. I spent days trekking along rugged coastline fringed with massive rocks and huge crashing waves, across river mouths and through native forests and fields, sighting baboons and birds and otters and more, passing waterfalls, caves, and freezing mountain pools, and watching the sun rise over the vast and Indian Ocean, here at the foot of Africa. I felt a powerful sense of accomplishment for completing this hike, for reasons that extend far beyond the significance of the physical accomplishment.

After nearly two weeks on the Garden Route (despite my sense that the time sped by), I felt the drive to move on to new things. 30 hours after completing the Otter Trail, I arrived in Port Elizabeth. The best thing I can say about Port Elizabeth is that there was a Nandos within walking distance of my backpackers, and it was open when I arrived at 10:45pm. This is not an insignificant compliment, as I was in withdrawal. Port Elizabeth also marked the first and only time I did laundry on this 5+ week trip, and just at the two week mark as well. Granted, I had just hiked for five days in those clothes, so they were essentially toxic.

I left Port Elizabeth and began the journey into the rural Eastern Cape, into the area of the country that used to be called the Transkei. I had commented in a status update upon leaving the Garden Route that I was ready to find something a little more “African”, but I had no idea how right I was. This part of the country remains very rural and often very poor, with little economic activity, poor services, and measly infrastructure. The Transkei remains the homeland (used here not in the politically charged Apartheid sense, if possible) of the Xhosa people, and it is here that they live according to traditional cultural practices. It was in this part of the country, while visiting the coastal communities of Cintsa, Nqileni (Bulungula), and Coffee Bay, that I had my most rewarding and fulfilling experiences while traveling. I could write an entire blog post on my experiences at Bulungula, a community-owned lodge in one of the most rural, isolated, and impoverished municipalities in the whole of South Africa. Suffice it to say, my experience there was more than just a vacation- but rather an opportunity to gain insight into traditional culture, to be the recipient of Xhosa hospitality, to meet and interact with members of a tight-knit community, to marvel at the village’s successes, to appreciate their challenges, and to go to bed each night feeling challenged, humbled, uncertain, and grateful.

May 14th, 2014. Walking over hills in Nqileni Village, Eastern Cape