Schoooooool’s OUT! FOR! SUMMUH!!!

So as I had mentioned before, for our summer break a bunch of us decided to visit our neighboring country South Africa. After traveling 2,500km and a few pitstops along the way, I finally made it to Maputo! It was my first time visiting our capital city since training so I was pretty excited! I was also super super excited to get to meet Von’s mom and cousin marti! They are so awesome! When I first arrived at their really swanky hotel, after jumping on von and bear huggin her for a while cuz it had been like 2 weeks since I’d seen her, I got to catch up on the fam news and hear all about their cape town/Krueger trip! The food in Maputo is something else… good pizza, real Chinese, club sandwiches?!?! It was pretty great~ I also got to go out to dinner with Colin’s parents and the Hazels(I’ll tell you more about these amazing folks later) at the Polana buffet which is like 5 star class class class, and is it sad that more than the different kinds of meats, which were delish, I was more excited to see things like broccoli and mushrooms! Omg it was so amazing! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR DINNER JONES’!! Von’s fam and I also got to visit Namaacha and our host families, and even though my host mom was in Maputo for the day, just plain bad luck as we completely missed each other, I got to hang out with my host brother Eduardo all day!! He’s the greatest and he’s going to begin teaching at an elementary school next year!! It was really great, but I hope I get to go down that way again so I can see my host mom too!
So then Diana, von and I left Maputo on Christmas eve to leave for Johannesburg. We got tickets for an overnight bus that put us in joburg at 4am Christmas day. Upon arrival in joburg however, we couldn’t find a bus that would take us where we wanted to go on the schedules and had to wait until the ticketing counters opened at 8am, but there were no clear signs as to where we needed to wait and which carrier we should wait for. So we were standing in the line that I thought was right, but just past 8 I saw this lady walk by and go toward a different ticket counter and I just had this hunch that I needed to follow her so I told Diana I’d be right back and followed her to another office that she opened up and I was second in line and when I got to the front I asked her for 3 tickets to mthatha and she said the bus was already sold out and my heart just sank… but then she was like ‘oh wait a minute…. To mthatha… ok.’ And I was just like ‘ok…what…?’ and she starts telling me what time the bus is and how much the total is and I think I was too shocked to feel anything, but I got the tickets and I came out to meet von and Diana, who were so confused as to where I had run off to and why I looked so shocked, and I just held up the tickets and we just started freaking out cuz we were so happy that we got tickets! It was a friggin Christmas miracle! Unfortunately it was another overnight bus so we would be spending the next 10 hours in the Johannesburg bus terminal, but as long as we had tickets all else was A-OK! We ended up taking turns napping, eating bad terminal food, playing too many games of phase-10, and enjoying real ice cream cones! All in all it was an interesting Christmas day and the next day we finally made it to our first destination, Coffee Bay!
Coffee Bay was the most difficult place to get to, but it was worth the trip and hands down my favorite spot in SA! We stayed at Coffee Shack, which is the absolute best run backpackers I have ever been to and a backpackers that all other backpackers should strive to be even half as awesome! I won’t go into details but one of the really cool things we did here was go on this death hike on the Cliffside of coffee bay and it was tiring, exhilarating and terrifying all at the same time. But the reason why we went on this death hike, knowing very well that these could be the last steps we ever take, was because the hike would be ending with us getting to go cliff jumping! It was about a 10m jump into the ocean and it was by far the coolest thing I had ever done! I mean the scenery was absolutely breath taking and the hike there was so scary that it almost made the jump seem like the safest thing we did! Anyway I would go back there in a heartbeat especially if it also meant reuniting with the 2010 Coffee Bay Pub Crawl Crew! Our slogan was “Like we’ve been friends forever” cuz we forged this out of this world bond over 2 days with 3 other travelers and it was so much fun!
Next we travelled to Plettenberg Bay, where we spent new years eve, but we rang the new year in with a serious jump off the Bloukrans Bridge! A lot of jumping this trip! We went to Storm’s River to bungee jump off the highest jump bridge in the world! It was 218m to the rocky river under us and it was AMAZING! They took our group of about 15 across a walk way to the middle of the bridge where they have their entire business set up between the bridge where the cars go by and an arch underneath. It was also quite possibly the best party I have ever been to in my entire life! There was party music blasting and all the people who work there had the most amazing personalities that just made you feel comfortable and pumped you up for what was to come. I should also preface this story by telling you that there is a bar where pre/post jumpers, fam and friends can hang out and watch live video jump footage. So right before leaving to go across the bridge I stopped in the bar for fun and I walked in just in time to see this chick refuse to jump. She was like in tears and kept trying to back up and not jump and then finally the workers just kinda pushed her off the ledge… terrifying for her, HILARIOUS for everyone else watching in the bar cuz everyones screaming JUMP! JUMP! So then I run outside to tell the others about the crier and they all come in to watch some other jumps and we noticed that there are good jumps and bad jumps. A good jump was dependent on whether they actually took a leaping jump off the ledge or just kinda fell or got pushed off, and if they had good form. So they take you one by one and strap you into all the necessary gear and up til this point all we’re talking and thinking about is our form and how we’re gonna jump. This was key cuz it took our minds completely off what was going to happen after that form perfect jump off the platform. My turn finally came up and they bound my legs and attached all the cords and then no joke the next few steps all happened within 20seconds… they helped me to the ledge, said look and wave hello to the camera, so I gave em a big esther smile, and then they yell 5,4,3,2,1 (but not like 5mississippi,4mississippi… more like in nanoseconds) and at 1 I bend my legs a lil and then jump up and out, arms straight out superman style and in my head I’m thinking ‘OH YEAH that was a gooooood one’ and then it hits you… the music starts to fade and you’re diving head first into nothing and your stomach drops and so I started rowing my arms backward and out loud saying “OH MY GOD! WHAT DID I JUST DO! HOLY COW! WOOOOOOOOOOOOO! OH MAN! WAAAAAHHHHHHHHH! THIS IS FRIGGGIN AWESOME! WOOOOOOOOOO!” and as you get to the end of your bungee you stare down at the river and trees but it’s silent except the babbling of the river and some birds chirping and it’s so peaceful and then it springs you back up and I thought it would be a lot more jarring but it was a smooth ride up and a couple times you’re completely upright and staring out past the bridge to the river mouth where it meets the ocean and it was seriously the coolest feeling and sight ever! I hear you freefall for about 7seconds and then bounce up and down for about another minute or two and then they bring you back up. The whole process from when it’s your turn to when you get back up on the bridge I think is about 5 minutes but they are the most exhilarating 5 minutes EVER!
After the jump we went to Jeffery’s Bay and relaxed, ate at a real Mexican place, had the best mint chocolate chip ice cream, shopped and even had a real South African Braai, which is just their version of a bbq. We then headed back up to Joburg but stopped for dinner in Blomfomkstein, which is where J.R.R Tolkein was born! I mean who knew he was South African and now not only does the scenery of LOTR make a lot more sense, but also S.Africans are hobbits. I mean really, LOTR just makes so much more sense now… I can’t get into it, but man! Haha so we couldn’t agree on a place to eat because some people, AHEM mike and kelly, didn’t want mcdonalds, and we didn’t really see anything else, but there was a mall there so we decided to food court it so everyone could choose their own cuisine. Well there was also a movie theatre there and I just about peed my pants cuz I was so excited to see a movie theatre so I spent the next hour trying to convince everyone that we had time for a movie, and being the super persuasive person that I am, got everyone on board and we saw Due Date! The next morning we finally made it to joburg and we couldn’t get a bus out that day so we stayed one last night in South Africa, but I got to cook everyone Migum’s famous chicken, spinach and tomato cream sauce pasta! It was so yummmm!
Anyway so that’s the South Africa trip! Sorry it was long, but it was an eventful trip and I even cut out half of it! a few other notable things from the trip: I got to skype with my family a few times which was awesome! I love South African gas stations! I had about 20 chicken, steak, mushroom, spinach and feta pies during my trip… they are delicious. And even though we were only there for about 10 days we even got to have pies from the place where they supposedly have the BEST pies in all of South Africa. I was hooked = ]

traveled panda