Yesterday I went up to my school! Larcacunga. Up in the mountains. Usually we take a public bus for half and hour and then hike up the mountain for 30 minutes but once a week we take food up for the school and on those days we ride in a pick-up truck. So I still haven't done the hike yet. There are 3 of us volunteers at this school. Lalita and I have the first and second graders and Matt has the 3rd graders. I officially have the first graders but there are only 3 so most of the time we'll [View Full Entry]

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Hey everyone! Estoy in Otavalo en Ecuador! And it's weird to type in English! And just weird to type in general because the keyboard is different here. Took me about 5 minutes to figure out how to type the @ symbol to get onto my email. But now I'm pro so don't even worry about it... Let's see... Saturday night I arrived in Quito, 2900 meters, whatever that is in feet, I think about 8500 but don't quote me on that... There was one other volunteer on my flight and then 4 others had arrived the day before. We met our [View Full Entry]

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So here I am, stuck in Miami, on my way to Ecuador. The flight from Anchorage to Seattle was fine. Then the problems started. We were delayed for almost an hour because there was fog. Seattle is having a lot of weather problems recently! It used to almost never have any! So we left almost an hour late. I had 35 minuted inbetween flights in Chicago. Problem. So while we were waiting to take off I got myself rebooked on a later flight from Chicago and then a flight from Miami to Quito the next day. I ended up getting to [View Full Entry]

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Friday (19th) we drove into Johannesburg. Our last day on the truck. Sad! It's going to be weird to not be living out of the truck and in tents! We had our last group meal in the evening at Moyos, an African restaurant. The food was amazing! I had Ethiopian beef and vegetable samosas and they were delicious! Especially the Ethiopian beef! Leftovers for dinner the next day as well! The restaurant itself was cool too! Nice ambiance, decorations, etc. They also had people who sang for us and painted our faces. Good way to officially end our trip! We're staying [View Full Entry]

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Monday (15th) we ascended into Lesotho: the mountain kingdom. Another day another country! The driving was great because the scenery was amazing! We took a shortcut on tiny dirt roads that didn't look like they could hold our truck that took us right up through the mountains. They are the same kinds of mountains as the rest of South Africa (rocky, interesting shapes, Table Mountain style), just bigger. Almost like Archangel Valley, but not even quite like that. It was like driving through a postcard! Gorgeous! It was like being back in more northern Africa again. Back to real Africa... More [View Full Entry]

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Thursday morning some of us went quad-biking (4-wheeling) in the indiginous forest near Tsitsikamma. It was pretty cool. I liked the sand dunes in Namibia better for 4-wheeling but it was still fun! Drizzling rain and lots of mud. From there we drove to Jeffery's Bay, the surfing mecca of South Africa. However, it is summer and all the good waves are in the winter. So they were mostly non-existent. Our hostel, Island Vibe Backpackers, was quite nice and had a good atmosphere. Lots of people to get to know. There were tons of tents though, practically wall to wall on [View Full Entry]

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So Sunday night we were in Oudtshoorn at the Backpackers Paradise. Oudtshoorn is surrounded by mountains: the Langeberg and the Outeniqua. It was our first night back in tents! Weird. Sarah and I are sharing now and we took over Warthog, Tom and Will's tent because they said everything worked on it. Sure enough, it was easy to set up, but then we tried to open the zipper and their padlock was still on it! So we were locked out of our own tent! Luckily Pat and James knew the combination... Monday morning we had ostrich eggs for breakfast. Chicken eggs [View Full Entry]

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The last day in Cape we went to Robben Island. It actually wasn't as good as I was expecting. I'm glad I went, but it could've been more informative. They basically just walked us through the prison. The bus tour of the island was better, but everything was rushed and the group was huge. It was still worthwhile to see though. The buildings and everything actually looked a lot nicer than I expected! I'm sure with a bunch of people there in the heat without much food it was terrible, but it wasn't as run-down as I expected. The rooms were [View Full Entry]

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First of all, I loaded a bunch of pictures. A BUNCH! Pretty much every entry since I started this overland trip. Enjoy... Wednesday morning Sarah and I climbed Table Mountain. Everyone else is doing it at some point over the next few days but they're all taking the cable car up. Sarah and I (Team North America) are the only ones who actually wanted to climb it. It wasn't a hard hike, it was just ridiculously hot and humid! We had to take several breaks in the shade. I'm glad we did it though, it was gorgeous! The view from the [View Full Entry]

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Sunday morning we stopped at Fish River Canyon. It is the Grand Canyon of southern Africa. Not as big or as impressive, but still really neat. The past couple days we’ve seen a lot more variation in scenery than we’ve been used to. Usually it’s just been flat for miles and miles in every direction. It’s cool to be able to see rain storms a long ways away, but I like some variation in the landscape. We walked along the edge of the canyon for a ways, taking lots of pictures of course. Then we continued on, crossing into South Africa [View Full Entry]

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