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…..

Hello my dear,

we girls went to Durban and participated in the color run.

It was so much fun to run five kilometers while you were thrown with color.

Just look at the picutes :)

Love from South Africa Fredo

A little Christmas...

Time runs by soo fast, we have Saturday already. Not too much time till we go on our big trip J did I tell you about it? I and four other volis are going to Capetown J Afterwards we are planning to drive along the coast until we are back home. We are supper excited about this trip: D

But for now I am going to write about my last week and this weekend in Greytown.

This week so Children start to leave to their families because in the beginning of December the big Christmas vocations start here. Since all the exams in the schools are written, the kids don’t have to go to school anymore (isn’t that weird?), so some of them go back home even before the vocations actually start. So we don’t have a study time anymore because there is no homework anymore (if there ever had been haha ). So I have time to play with the kids in my house. 

I taught them some gymnastics had we had so much fun together.

Also Anele, my big little girl from NB left on Friday. I guess because of this she acted so weird this week. Most mornings she did not want to go to Kammaland and did run back home, which is a difficult situation for me because I have to bring her to school, even though she does not want to go! That is a bugging job, believe me!

Well it was hard to say goodbye to her yesterday after lunch. She will be gone for almost two month and I am sure that she will behave really differently when she comes back! But her smile while she kept telling me she is going home was a nice thing to see.

My week kept on being bad because on Monday evening I did cut myself really bad while cooking, but my other girls helped me with the blood as fast as they could. I am sure I am going to have a hub from that :$

On Wednesday Pieter offered Leonie and me as equation for our effort with the Certificates to go along to a meeting in another Children’s Home called Koningsdale. The road to go there is really beautiful. We drove along the President’s house and through a forest called Nkandla Forest. Here you can see how beautiful it is there:)

 

We even saw a wild horse…

Konigsdale was quite different than our Kinderhuis. It has 89 children there, even from the age 0. We played with the smaller ones for a long time. They also have sheep and horses there. We had an African lunch and made our 2 ½ hour way back home.

 

Leonie and I were actually really excited about Friday because from noon there will be just the two of us because the others will leave for Durban and the Drakensbergs.

Our hall time was great fun. We danced, played and shoot photos with the kiddies.

Afterwards we cleaned the kitchen and talked a lot about our plans for the weekend. We decided to go to the computer room to research a little bit more about our trip to Capetown. Suddenly the electricity decided to turn off for an hour and we were sitting in the dark. We planned to borrow a movie at LH and eat noodles at midnight while watching “Despicable Me2” (this was a great decision :D). We slept in Toevlug and had a great night. 

Today we will go with two of the Toddlers to the Supermarket where they can spent their pocket money. Afterwards we will bake some Christmas cookies because most of the time in December we will be gone. I can’t wait, we will have great fun I am sure :)

But baking cookies without electizity is really difficult but we had great fun!!

 Lots of Love
Fredo