Advertisement
Published: February 11th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Venus
I stayed in this house for the weekend. My kind of campsite! It was in a section of houses named after the planets because there is a big planetarium close by. Like I said in the last entry, I spent this weekend in the Cederburg Mountains about three and a half hours north of Stellenbosch. We took six Volkswagen vans and two Toyota vans to hold all 53 students as well as the director of our program and some assistants in a huge convoy all the way there and back. The drive was interesting because in South Africa they have come different driving rules. Since we were driving on smaller roads than when I went to the beach, the first thing I noticed was the way of passing... on a two lane road when they have a shoulder, it is polite for a person driving slower to drive in the shoulder of the road to allow other people to pass on the inside. If the person passing has to be in the opposite lane and traffic comes from the other direction, that person gets into their shoulder of the road and the person passing stays in the middle. The lines are just suggestions around here...most of the time we were over the yellow line instead of in the lane. oh yeah, and going 100 km an hour on a dirt road is
African Wilderness
Somewhere close to my house at Cederburg...on the way out we saw a baboon along the road. Yeah, we were out there. also fun for South Africans. To give you an idea of how far out we were, once we got off the paved roads we had another 45 minute drive over several mountains and through a sort of valley on a very curvy road. It was great.
Unfortunately, it was raining as we were leaving (which is very strange for this time of year) and it continued to rain for most of the weekend... sometimes light rain and sometimes heavy. It was cold too... not as cold as it has been at home recently, but it was in the upper 50's or low 60's during the day, and nighttime cooled off even more. We weren't expecting that at all for this time of year, especially for that region of the country, so most people didn't take the pants and warm clothing that was needed. I happened to be wearing some jeans and a long sleeved shirt on friday, and I also packed a sweatshirt so I switched those up for the rest of the weekend. They were pretty gross by the end, though.
Friday we got the the mountains, checked into our "campground", had dinner and then hung
Our Road
This is the road we took for 45 minutes... it's scary to walk this road at night without a flashlight. We almost got hit by a guy on a bike! Who rides bikes on dirt roads in the middle of nowhere Africa at night?! around the fires and ended up going out into the lawn area to look at the stars. We were lucky for a break in the rain that gave us the chance to lay out and relax under the stars. It was amazing! It's a completely different angle for looking at the stars than in the US and we could literally see the milky way galaxy in one large strip from one end of the sky to the other. When I mean "campground" I actually mean nice little houses with all the amenities... I think they called it camping because we were so far in the wilderness. I'm not complaining.
Saturday we all got up to leave the houses for hikes at either eight or nine in the morning depending on if we wanted to go for the easy hike or the more difficult one. I was going for the easy one, but when we got together and had breakfast the slight drizzle of rain got very heavy. The leaders told us that it would probably rain all day and we would be cold, wet and miserable. I decided not to go. The thought of slick, vertical rock climbing was
Sweet rocks!
This was from above some of the houses on the hill that we climbed. It was a great place to look out and enjoy the quiet. too much so I went back to my house, read a little, listened to music, enjoyed not being with a huge group of people and took a little nap. Those of us who stayed behind met up again at one to go wine tasting at a vineyard that was about a ten minute drive from the houses. The people who went camping met us there when they were done and we all went back to the houses to relax and wait for dinner. About then the rain stopped and my friend and I decided to climb the hill (small mountain) in the back of the building to look out over the valley. It was a pretty easy trip up and down, and we got to see a good view.
Today, those who didn't get to the wine tasting on Saturday went in the morning and the rest of us slept and got ready to head back to Stellenbosch. On the way out we stopped at an area with some of the oldest cave paintings in the world! They were done by the San people (bushmen) with some dating back to 25,000 years ago. SO cool! We went from one
Overlook
I look dumb here but I think it's an ok picture of sitting on a cliff. oh, the view! set of caves to another area where we got to see a spot that was used for secret meetings over the past hundred or so years by people starting apartheid. They would meet there in secret (nobody knows where they would stay because there was nothing around at that time) and they signed the walls with dates to mark when they had met. That seemed strange to me since it was supposed to be a secret meeting. We climbed around the other side of the mountain and saw more San paintings and some amazing views from the tops of the bolders. It makes me really happy that I'm not scared of things like that any more. I was at the edge of these huge cliffs looking down and out over the mountain and valley around us and I had no fear about it at all. I completely enjoyed it.
We made it back to Stellenbosch around five o'clock this evening, much earlier than we expected... so a group of us got ready and went to get some dinner at a local seafood and sushi restaurant, Cape Town Fish Market. The food was really good and I only spent less
Cliff Paintings
This is one of the caves where we saw the cave paintings... this was the easy one to get to. very cool! than ten dollars on my meal and a small appetizer. I'm going to miss that when I get back home. haha
Oh! On the way to the mountains I got a call on my cell phone from Antoinette, one of the professors for my service learning class. She wanted to make plans for me to meet my site supervisor tomorrow. She told me that I am being placed with another person from my program, Meghan... she wanted me to tell Meghan about the meeting. So I did, and Meghan told me that we are doing something with a HIV/AIDS organization... it might be the on campus peer education group, or it might be elsewhere.. we aren't really sure. But I'll find out tomorrow! I'm very excited to get started with the project, especially now that I know I'm working in the HIV/AIDS field. wooo!!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.063s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 9; qc: 45; dbt: 0.037s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb