The wonders of Southern Africa

It had been 6 months since my last big trip, so it was about time I'd go somewhere again. In this blog post I'll take you with me on my journey through Southern Africa: from Cape Town to Pretoria, plus Kruger Park and Victoria Falls.

A table for the clouds

I started with a few days in Cape Town, where I met my good friend Georgie again, more than 5 years after I last saw her in her home country Czech Republic. She was in Cape Town for a church conference and of course we wanted to spend some time together. On the first day we hiked up Table Mountain together with her friend who is a flight attendant for Emirates. It was very cloudy though and I wonder if Table Mountain is called this way because it's like a table for the clouds. In the evening we went out with some people we met during the hike. Despite the cloudy weather, it was a great day!

The following day the flight attendant had already left (crazy life, hiking up Table Mountain after a flight of 10 hours, going out in the evening and then flying back the next morning), but some people from the church conference had arrived and together with some of them we made a daytrip to see African penguins at Boulders beach and to visit Cape of Good Hope. So my first few days in Cape Town were quite action packed and full of meeting new people.

The biologist and the two hippies

South Africa is not really a country to travel through with public transport. You just won't get to the most beautiful places. Since it's a bit boring to rent a car and drive 2000 km on my own, I bought a Baz Bus ticket. The Baz Bus is basically a hop on hop off bus for backpackers. It picks you up at your hostel and drops you off at the next hostel. The Baz Bus route runs between Cape Town and Johannesburg and has stops at all the beautiful spots. My first stop was in Knysna: a small town with a beautiful lagoon next to it, separated from the sea by some magnificient cliffs. I stayed there two nights and wanted to do paragliding on one day. The paragliding was taking place in Wilderness, so I went there by shared taxi. The paragliding was however cancelled last-minute due to too much wind, so I had to find something else to do. So I explored the beach and the town. I also met the Belgian biologist and his two hippie friends, who I had talked to a lot on the bus the day before. I would meet them on 4 different occasions in total. That's the fun part of going with Baz Bus: you make new friends on the bus and you never know if and when you will see them again. Below some pictures of Knysna.

A mountainbike ride in Storms River

Up next was the relatively unknown Tsitsikamma National Park. I was staying in a village called Storms River in a bit of a hippie hostel with a goat walking in the garden who was sometimes pooping on guests' flipflops. In the hostel I met another Belgian (South Africa is full of Dutch, Belgian and German backpackers!) and we decided to go mountainbiking in the park the next day. We were rewarded with some awesome views:

Lesuuthuu

After a short stop in Port Elizabeth I went to the Drakensberg mountains. One of the most beautiful parts of these mountains is the Sani Pass which connects South Africa with Lesotho, so that's where I went. Lesotho is a country of roughly the size of Belgium and it's the country with the highest lowest point in the world. I wanted to spend 2 or 3 days there but the only possibility to stay more than 1 day was to join a 2 day pony trek. I really really don't see myself riding a pony for 2 days, so I joined a day tour to Lesotho in a 4x4. The views from Sani Pass were indeed stunning. We drove into Lesotho at the most relaxed border crossing ever: they gave us all an entry and exit stamp at the same time, so we wouldn't have to come back in the afternoon. Something I didn't know: Lesotho is actually pronounced as Lesuuthuu. The first time I heard it was while talking to a British girl at the hostel. I remember thinking "oh boy, she has the worst British accent ever" but the next day I found out she just pronounced it correctly. :) So in Lesuuthuu we visited a traditional village that was way too touristic (it reminded me of the floating village at Lake Titicaca in that sense), went to see some sheep shearers (sadly they were on lunch break), had a beer in the self-proclaimed highest pub in the Africa (hard to believe that this is true, but still, Lesothian beer tasted very good) and made a short hike during which we met two young shepherds.

In exchange for some apples we could take some pictures with them and I gladly took advantage of

this opportunity:

Onwards to the Kruger Park...

In the mountains the weather can change quickly. The next day it was rainy and foggy so I had to change my plans to go hiking and get some nice views. I got a ride to a nearby city from a friendly British couple and spent a day there. After that, I continued towards Pretoria. For time purposes I will not write about that and skip to the Kruger Park. I booked a package tour to go there. It was supposed to be a camping trip, but the tents had real beds and electricity and there was even a working fridge on the campsite to keep our beers cold. There was no wifi, which forced us to sit around the campfire sharing stories. Such a horrible way to spend our 3 evenings there. :)

The first day in Kruger Park didn't go as planned. Angry villagers had set up a roadblock and were throwing stones at cars so that nobody could enter the gate to Kruger Park. We had to take a detour of 2 hours to get to the next gate. We were rewarded afterwards however with lots of animals. We even saw 2 cheetahs chilling in the grass after just having eaten an impala. Some baboons were having some casual sex nearby, when the impalas asked them to take revenge on the cheetahs for killing their friend. So then the baboons attacked the cheetahs! It was not the most violent attack, but it did make the cheetahs stand up and cross the road right in front of us.

In the meantime we were also trying to spot the Big Five. We found the rhino, elephant and buffalo already. Just the leopard and the lion were still missing...

So the next morning we got up at 4am to beat the villagers (no, not beat them up, just to be ahead of them) and got to Kruger Park before any riots could start. We didn't see the leopard, but did see lions. At one point we were waiting at a crossroad because another safari vehicle was rapidly approaching. The driver shouted "ngala ngala" before making a right turn with squeeking tyres. So we followed them, racing with 50 km/h on a very bad dirtroad. We saw a lioness chilling in the grass in the distance. We waited for a long time and got rewarded: the lioness stood up and out of the bushes at least 4 other lionesses appeared afterwards. It was a nice moment.

Swimming in the Devil's pool

Victoria Falls has been on my bucketlist for a long time already. Since I was in the area anyways, I made a quick stop in Zambia to see the falls. I knew that December is a bad time to visit them because it is the end of the dry season. So the falls themselves were not super impressive due to a lack of water. But: when life gives you lemons, you just make lemonade. Since the water is low, it is possible to swim in Devil's Pool: a part of the falls where tourists can swim right next to a waterfall of 100 meters high. And then I don't mean at the bottom, no, at the top. So one wrong move could make you fall down the falls. It was a very cool experience and a great way to end my journey!