more beaches, sun and travel...

…

The next day, yes it is Christmas time we went to a mall in Port Elizabeth, our next stop, and honestly I never saw this before, the mall was soooo crowded. You couldn’t even walk properly, so we decided to go to bed early and to the beach, which was surrounded by harbor and industry, the next day. For us it was not a really nice city!

Although we were excited for our next stop! ADDO ELEFANT PARK…

We had some trouble with the booking but finally they gave us their additional room and we could go on our own Safari. The entrance to the park was really high, but since we are working for South Africa we got it cheaper :)

We drove and drove and drove and drove, but couldn’t see a single elephant, but Kudos, turtles, Zebras and many birds.

 

 We even saw a lion, what is a really not often to see. After almost two hours of driving we finally saw him:

We were a little disappointed because we only saw one out of 600 elephants, but the good thing was we saw 1 out of 6 lions :)

We had to get up really really early the following morning because we had long drive before us and wanted to spend at least half a day in Chintsa. And this was a good decision! Not only we were able to see a giraffe looking over a fence next to the road we drive on but also we had our own house in like a holiday camp and shared it with some other volunteers from Cape Town.

 

We walked through a little forest and some dunes to get to the beach. The water was so warm and to clear so Signe and I (Nordseekinder ;)) spent quite a long time playing in the waves in there. Afterwards we wanted to go to the supermarket but there would it be easier to buy some ice cream than noodles, so we decided to drive to the next bigger supermarket for 20 min on a grabble road with thousands of potholes…what a fun! But at least we had ice with Amerula for desert :)

 

Our last accommodation would be in Coffee Bay. We were supposed to drive about 2 to 4 hours but it took us about 7 hours to get there and also a lot of nerves because the roads were bad and went through all the slums, what was a unpleasant feeling from time to time.

But as we arrived we immediately fall in love with this place. Such a beautiful and nice hostel. We slept in a little hut like this:

 

For a long time we sat on a rock, looking at the ocean, listening to the waves and talking about our tour! It had been so good until this moment, even though we were on such a small room together for 24 hours and almost three weeks we all came along perfectly and got to know each other better. I really hope I can keep up some contacts with the girls here :)

We decided to eat the meal prepared at our hostel and this was such a good decision that we did the same the following day. As desert we had planned for a long time to do Chocolate fondue at the beach. Even though the chocolate basically existed of sugar it was a nice thing to do. 

Afterwards we sat at the cocktail bar and small talked.

On our last day we booked a beach day inclusive surfing lessons and lunch! Surfing was so much fun even though it was hard at the beginning.

I think the best thing was to spend the last day at a beautiful beach. In the evening we decided to make some new contacts and to have fun. At the bar there was a rule called “Buffalo” which means you are only allowed to drink with your left hand, otherwise you have to ex your drink. I think we should do this at home too, since it was fun watching the guys who forgot about the rule: D

We had nice three hours or less of sleep until we made our way back to PNB.

Sadly that our trip was over, we told the other girls, whose had been in Lesotho on a ponytrakkingtour meanwhile, about our trip.

I only can say we had a beautiful time and South Africa is really a beautiful country! But when you go on vocation and really want to see an “African lifestyle” you need to do more than the Gardenroute because no doubt it is really beautiful, it is really touristic and European! But anyway I can only recommend doing it!

So, this was everything about my, I guess, biggest trip while I am here. I hope you can understand why I like it so much here and maybe you are all a little bit jealous!

Lots of love!

Fredo

and the journey goes on...

And the journey goes on…

The following day we got up extremely early and picked up our car, a Ford fiego. Yes, it is a small car for five persons, but hey we are girls… Frauenpower…We put the big bag in the trunk and everyone a smaller bag on their legs and it worked out.

Driving on the other side of the road, yes it is difficult in the beginning, but we all made it and you get used to it. 

 And we all tried to help the driver: “Heeey you are onthe wrong side of the road! Left side!! ”.

Our first stop was Mosselbay (Bay of shelves) and you could see why it is called like 

this:

We would stay here for the next two days. Our accommodation was an old train only 30m far from the water. You could hear the waves. Truly this was an amazing night I had and defiantly a dream which came true! We ate dinner at the beach and could see the light of the city turning on.

The following day we woke up by the sound of the ocean, went to the breakfast and to the city. It is really touristic and kinda remained me of America. 

We went to many shops, even visited the oldest post tree, a tree where a message was found under and someone built up a mailbox under it. 

 

Afterwards we spent the day at the beach, looking for the most beautiful shelves.

The next stop was in a city called Knysna, where we went to the most beautiful beach I have ever seen. Our hostel receptionist told us to drive there. It was a nature reserve and simply beautiful, not only because we were basically the only ones at this beach. It was a little windy and we all got sunburned really badly. Shame.

In the evening we had a delicious BBQ at our hostel. At first we had some difficulties with lighting up a fire, but at the end it was a really nice idea.

We all slept really well in our beds and the hostel was a really nice one!

We decided to go to the beach again and two of our girls had some surf lessons while we others waited and watched them.

In the early evening we drove to Plettenberg Bay and went to a restaurant where we had dinner, sadly the other girls were still hungry afterwards, it was a quite expensive restaurant, so they had to get some more bread at Spar. We still make fun of this…My pizza was delicious.

The other girls went to party with some guys from the hostel, but Leonie and I were not in the mood and stayed there.

Our next stop was Jeffery’s Bay. I really felt like home in the hostel because it was a chilly and relaxing atmosphere there. JB is a surfer city, because “the waves are the best “, so there were many surfers in our hostel, which was a little out of town and kinda hart to find. But anyway we made it  :D

We walked downtown and looked around, went to the Billabong Outlet (still expensive haha ) and decided to have a little cake break in a small coffee shop. It was a good decision because the carrot cake was really delicious.

Our next morning started with sleeping in, had breakfast and a lot of talking while sitting in a Hollywood swing *-*. We went downtown to meet up with Michaela, the girl who left the Kinderhuis about a month ago. She came with two guys from her new project and they went surfing. In the evening we all went together to a restaurant and had really delicious dinner. I know I talk a lot about food, but compared to the Children’s Home food the food all the time was super delicious and something different than rice…

So this was it for today…the journey will go on…

Love from the hot Africa

Cape Town...our journey begins....

Hello everybody,

I am back from my vocation and I really have to tell you a lot.

To begin with we, that would be Leonie, Klara , Signe, Pauline and me, started our trip in Cape Town and after five days we rent a car to go all the way back to Greytown.

Today I will tell you about our five days in Cape Town and in some other posts the journey will go on because otherwise it is a holy lot to read!

So after we had a lift to Pietermaritzburg, we went on a bus for about 24 hours. Yes, it sounds horrible but it wasn’t actually as bad as we all thought. Even at night we could sleep over two places because there was so much room left. The landscape we could see was really beautiful since we drove near by the Drakensberge and Lesotho.

Our hostel in Cape Town was really central in Greenpoint, so we were able to go pass the Mandila Stadium and go to the Alfred and Victoria Waterfront, where we spent a lot of time in the beautiful food market until we bought our lunch there. Delicious muffin with cheese and spinach: D

Afterwards we looked around in the stores and recognized that it is really touristic there .

Thr Table Mountain from the Waterfront

In the evening some stores along the Longstreet were open up until midnight and served some snacks and cold drinks while you were able to shop and enjoy their stores. We enjoyed the drinks and the music and even had a little fashion show in one shop. We enjoyed cooking our own dinner at the hostel and went to bed early sine we wanted to get up early the following morning.

Our plan to go for a hike to the Table Mountain was destroyed by the wind, so we went to spend some money with shopping in the Longstreet and the Greenmarket Square. There you could by many typical African souvenirs and enjoy the feeling of African trade.

Afterwards we walked through the Company’s Garden (really beautiful, passed the Parliament and walked to the City Hall. Both are nice old buildings!

We decided this was enough sightseeing for today and went to a supermarket to buy our dinner. Then we walked all the way on to the Lion’s Head and had a picnic with bread, cheese and African wine while watching the sunset! This was a magical and really beautiful evening, just look at the pictures :)

View from the Signal Hill

  Our way back was a little difficult because it was really too dark to walk back home, so we just walked on top of the signal hill, where we had a fantastic view over Cape Town, even though one part of the city was out of electricity, and drove back to the hostel with a taxi.

On Nikolaus we got up early to walk all the way up to Table Mountain. It was terrible hot and we were sweating horrible, drank a lot of water while suffering for almost two hours until we finally reached the very top. And what must I say it was defiantly worth it! The view was fantastic and we took a lot of pictures after we had an ice cream to coo, down a little. We took back the expensive Table Mountain Cab and walked all the way back to the hostel (5 km). We had to relax for the evening because we went to Longstreet to party. At first we dance in “Space” which is a mainly black club. We were shocked how close the guys came to us and went to another club. Luckily we fall into our beds very late after an exhausting day.

The next morning Signe and I had to get up early because we booked a tour to Cape Point. Our first stop was in one of Cape Town’s rich suburbs, which has a beautiful view over the bay and the Apostles. Afterwards we could visit the penguins at Simon’s beach. They are soo cute, I wish I could have one at home ;) We even saw a small turtle there. We hopped on our bus and drove towards the Nature reserve at Cape Point. We drove through it with a bike so we had a possibility to see the beautiful landscape in slow motion and do some sport before we could enjoy a heavy lunch.

With our fully tummies we went up to the Lighthouse, which was not really interesting and it was really windy there too. 

But the following walk to Point of good Hope was beautiful and I really enjoyed walking on the cliffs while watching the Ocean. We saw some Baboons and Ostrich on our way back. 

Our last day started with sleeping in since the last two days were really hard :D

After a nice breakfast we walked to Bo-Kaap, a Jewish part of the town with lots of colored houses. Nice to take some pictures, as you can see below… 

Afterward we walked through downtown, had a coffee and decided to go to the food market again.

In the evening we went to a typical African restaurant called “Mama Africa”. While eating African meals like Ostrich with raisin or curry a live band play African music. Sadly we were not able to see them, but in my opinion it was a nice evening :)

The following day we had to get up early to fetch our car and start our adventure…..