Xmas holiday (Mike)

Our trip started on the 18th of December at 4am, Dunga (one of the
men we work with) took us to the bus stop which was a petrol station out of town we had been told by the locals that we should be there early to get a definite seat on the 11 hour bus, you can’t book seats and didn’t fancy standing for that long. The bus
stop was completely deserted; not even bus drivers; just empty buses, so we sat down to wait. At about 5:30 the first driver turned up and gave us some weird looks, as if to say, why are you here this early? We then had to avoid drunks, crazy people, taxi drivers and a mixture of all three for another hour and a half before we could get on the bus, which in spite of its planned departure time didn’t then leave until 8 am. By this time we just wanted to be off the overly crowded, hot, sweaty, VERY cramped bus which seats I did not fit in. When we finally left I discovered that Botswana bus drivers are probably faster than Hamilton around a track even with a bus full of people he was easily hitting 140Kh which is impressive considering the amount of donkeys, cows and locals wandering along in the middle of the road! After a while we both starting to drift off into a mild comer due to heat and the lack of oxygen, it is times like these when you REALY appreciate your iPod even though trying to listen to it without any one seeing it so that when you do finally get to sleep (this never happens) it doesn’t get stolen. We arrived in Gabs bang on time, we had booked into a motel for the night right next to the bus station, after we booked in we had some
food and were both asleep by 8.

I slept like a drunk 40 year old man and struggled to get up
when our alarms went off in the morning at 5am (which isn’t that early as we get up at his time everyday), but early as our bus was not due to leave till 6:30, but its a lucky thing we set them early as our bus to Jo-berg was not leaving from where we
though it was and after walking around a lot, we decided to get a taxi to the bus. After a 15 min journey, at break neck speeds, we arrived as the bus turned up so we boarded straight away and settled in for a much shorter journey. We left Gabs and about an hour later we were at the border so we all piled off and into immigration which were we told would tack forever but we thought it went really quickly and everyone had been overreacting until we realised that we had only done a tiny bit of it. We then had to queue in the sun for 2 hours to go through the main part of it. Final everyone was through and on the bus; we set off and immediately started to see green grass and hills, this was an extremely nice site after seeing nothing higher then my knees and no grass for 4 months. Then in true African style the bus broke down in the middle of no where!! A two hour delay followed whilst the in-tier bus though they new how to fix it and took it interns telling the mechanic what was wrong with it non of them were Wright and the mechanic finally got it fixed, having a mechanic on every bus would seem a weird thing but theses buses break down 1s in every 2 journeys they do so there is 1 on every bus. Then the bus driver (the only one that has ever done this) drove slowly the rest of the journey, we were 4 hours late getting into Jo-berg by which time the person I had arranged to meet and spend so time with, had given up and gone home! We got off the bus, collected the next bus tickets and boarded straight away, heading for Umtata. This bus was by far the nicest bus I have EVER been in, even at home, the chairs were huge and sooo comfy, just as well as this was going to be the longest bus we had to take the whole holiday.
When we arrived in Umtata it was the early hours of the morning. We meet up with some other volunteers, after a short combi ride, arrived at their project where they had arranged accommodation for us. We dropped our bags and went to have a look around. There project, it was a cool project but I still prefer mine. We stayed there for 2 days finding out a bit about their project which was really interesting and planning the quickest way to do the next leg of our trip. We set off on another long journey to Plettenberg Bay where we were meeting Tom and Darren (from the Botswana Bana Ba Métis Project). We had to get a mini bus to Port-Elizabeth and then from there to Plet, after the bus dropped us of in Plet there was a short transfer by taxi to the backpackers which was in the middle of no where. We arrived, exhausted and crashed out.

When I got up in the morning I could not find Gordon so I took my book and lay in a hammock, in the sun, and fell asleep again! I woke up to Tom and Darren both jumping on me which, in a hammock, was not a good idea we ended up on a pile on the floor very quickly with some very dodgy looks from everyone around us! The next few days were extremely fun including doing the world’s highest bungee jump on Xmas day and enjoying a traditional SA xmas meal cooked by the backpackers, it was a full spread taking up 2 table tennis tables and had 5 different types of meat including tong and some other meat which we decided we did not want to know what I was. We were supposed to do the worlds 2nd best skydive but it was cancelled twice due to bad weather.

We set off from there on another long bus trip to Cape Town, the bus did not leave until the evening and the guys at the backpackers thought it would be funny if they got us drunk before we travelled !!?? So after buying us a lot of alcohol we all clambered into the back of the backpacker’s shuttle bus and they dropped us off at the bus station. This bus journey was one of the worst that any of us had done and was not helped by alcohol in the system! When we arrived in Cape Town we walked to the backpackers which was further than we thought…. And when we got there it was locked up (7:00am), we had to phone another volunteer to come let us in (they were there already)! Once again we booked in and crashed out on some sofas as our rooms still had people in!

Later we met up with the rest of the volunteers and sat around catching up with everything. Bright and earl….. Well lunch time, 4 of us decided to climbed Table Mountain we were lucky and there was an amazing view at the top. Then it was down to some serious r and r with some tourist trips and good meals out. New Years Eve there was a Massive party held in the street, which we decided to dressed as sailors for! On our last day we arranged to take the train to Stellenbosch and joined the wine tour there. We visited 4 different distilleries, it was really interesting and entertaining too as you HAD to drink at each place during the course of the afternoon we amused our self’s with trying to give detailed descriptions of each wine we tasted all of us giving a different one and only occasionally getting it correct.

Then it was farewell time to the other PT volunteers and the 4 of us headed back on the overnight bus to Jo-berg. Completing the first part of our trip in reverse and making it safely back to our project on the 8th the boys then stayed with us until the 11th when they had to return to there project, we were all very tired but with really good memories, some good photos and stories to tell!