Blogs from Chintsa, Eastern Cape, South Africa, Africa

So it’s been a year now since we left our comfortable work-hard-play-hard lives in London, where life was more or less all about work and trying to spend our free time as best as we could. We traded it in for another type of life, where now there is no work at all and all we do is travel. To travel sometimes feels a bit like work we have to admit. For us it is clearly something different than holidays. We have been on the road travelling through 14 countries and we have stayed in 128 different places. We travelled 46.337 kilometres in total of which 22.100 with flights meaning around 24.000 over land and sea. The longest day of travelling by bus was 26 hours but we got really used to travelling long distances and ... read more

This week I fell in love with Africa again. I fed a giraffe a peanut butter sandwich, and had a bath on the side of a mountain. Monday was a wonderful, special, giraffe filled day. We went to Areena, the place where we went quad biking, to dart some impala in their game reserve.Rick and I took it in turns to dart them from the back of a quad bike, an experience in itself. Speeding along up and down the mud tracks, Jared the Guide told me "We'll have to do a bit of off roading to push the animals uphill. Hold on tight." Holding on for dear life with one hand, with a dart gun in the other was terrifying, and I tried to keep my cool and act professional as I darted the impala ... read more

The Wild coast is one of the less developed areas of South Africa. The coast should be wild and it’s a graet area to discover when you are on your trip here. Here, you can still go “off the beaten path”. I really looked forward, to this great place. But it was quite disappointment. Why? At the camping there was not much activities or excursions to do. The cruise that I looked forward to was very disappointing. Going out of yourself was not advised. The camping was not close to other highlights and ordering a taxi was not a good idea as well. So, we were stuck at a very boring place. At least they had a swimming pool to lay around there with a book, but I hate that. I want to do something, not ... read more

My freshman year of college I dated a girl (incredible for some to believe, but true) who had a roommate from California. This roommate only stayed at Greenville for 1.5 years, but during that time she was a part of many memorable experiences of my freshman year. A roadtrip to Mississippi and a spring break trip to San Diego (which was her home) were the highlights. I bring this up not to bore you with nostalgia, but, because since arriving in Chintza, I thought a lot about that trip to San Diego. Mainly because the weather is similar (perfect), and I have considered trying to attempt surfing again. In perhaps the most bizarre and providential moments of my life, I met this roommate on Friday night. In the dark of night I was approaching the campsite ... read more

I’m not a football fan. In fact, I tend to associate the sport with over paid, under worked guys & needless, violent, hooliganism. But…to be in South Africa right now is very exciting; the build up to our hosting of the World Cup, the anticipatory atmosphere around us, even in a small town on the Eastern Cape, is totally engrossing! This week a British marketing company sent their football team to stay in Chintsa with the intention of playing against local South African teams. A sense of intrigue surrounded them. Who were these guys? Was the trip about football or marketing? Not one of us could have predicted the impact that this one British team could have on our community; a small time team, decent players but nothing over whelming, enjoyed a beer & a braai ... read more