50,000 words in to this blog and I can honestly say I am proud of myself for keeping up to date with it. I’m actually loving it, I love writing about my experiences and for my small amount of readers who have some across this blog, I hope you like it too! So, we have arrived in Cape Town – it’s excellent but the journey here was far from it. We flew Fly Safair (S.A’s version of Ryan Air) which in all fairness was actually great but we hit the worst turbulence on the way and for 2 hours I cried, breaking Leo’s hand and determined that this was the end. It was bloody horrible. However, we made it, and grabbed our luggage making our way to ‘parkage A ground floor’ to get an Uber, just in case any one reads this and needs an Uber in Cape Town, you have to go there. Hopping in the car, our driver was lovely, and we chatted, laughed and exchanged stories until CRASH!! Some dick head on his phone wasn’t looking and smashed straight into the side of us. The poor guys car was messed up and as much as we were all totally fine, I couldn’t help but feel so sorry for our driver. It was clear that he is struggling and needs this job and to do so relies on his car. Welcome to Cape Town hey? Anyway, we arrived at our Air B n B in Camps Bay and it is wonderful! Camps bay can be described as up market I guess and is known for its fine white sand, natural rock swimming pool and views of the Twelve Apostles mountains. Our Air B n B was booked months in advance so we got it cheap at approx. $70NZD per night – it is worth it... just look at the views!!
It was nearly 6pm when we arrived so we made our way down to the bay to grab some food from ‘Woolworths’ – which we later realised is really expensive so go to ‘pick and pack’ instead. The walk takes about 30 mins each way from where we are so it was great to get some exercise in, even with the heat and steepness of the hill climb.
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Today was an epic day. Raining … again, we opted to go explore the Sterkfontein Caves. The Sterkfontein Caves are one of the richest and most productive palaeo-anthropological sites in the world and form part of the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site. We had no idea what to expect but after a 30minute drive, we arrived, paid the $16NZD entrance fee and we were in. Our guide was brilliant and informed us right from the start that it was 127 stairs down, 60m underground and 232 stairs back up so at least we were getting in some exercise! We were first taught that within the Sterkfontein Caves, scientists have discovered many hominid and other animal fossils, dating back more than 4-million years, to the birth of humanity. The most important and most famous of these fossils are “Mrs Ples”, a 2.1-million-year-old Australopithecus skull, and “Little Foot”, an almost complete Australopithecus skeleton that is more than 3-million years old. These fossils, both found in the Sterkfontein Caves in the Cradle of Humankind, tell us much about the precursors of modern humans, Homo sapiens, allowing this cave to be one of the most significant in the world. Anyone will know that taking photos in the dark/ caves is super difficult and as I only had my phone, the quality is pretty useless, but I am sure you will catch the just of the experience, as it was pretty awesome. At one point in the cave we had to squeeze through a 1m squares crevice for 25m, so I would recommend not coming here if you are claustrophobic, scared of the dark, wet small spaces or generally not keen on big ass caves as this one was huge! An estimated 40% of all the world's human ancestor fossils have been found in the Cradle, so it’s pretty awesome to tick off the list, and it’s ‘indoors’ so a great rainy day activity in Jo’berg! At the end of the tour you can check out the statue of the founder of this cave and you can either rub his nose for Good Luck or his hand for Wisdom. Legend says that you can't rub them both though as it's considered selfish and bad luck. I went for Wisdom as I feel with great wisdom comes good luck? Who knows... it was a great day anyway! Our next stop is Cape town where we will spend a week in Camps bay, hopefully training hard for Kilimanjaro before we head off for a week along the Garden Route, which I am very excited for. Jo’berg was never on my list, in fact we only came here to visit family, but I can say I have thoroughly enjoyed it. I have loved how incredibly friendly everyone we have met has been and how as much as I wouldn’t say I felt safe, I definitely didn’t feel threatened at any time.
Today we visited the Apartheid Museum. If you don’t understand the horrid history of South Africa, then a trip to the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg is a must when visiting the country. I knew a bit about it, but I won’t lie, I didn’t know too much and certainly still don’t feel well enough educated to go into the details but now at least I understand way more than before and it was sickening! It’s also a very sobering experience from the minute you walk through the entrance, which is separated into black and white to demonstrate how it used to be. For me the museum added a lot of details, facts and stories to my knowledge of the black and white divide in South Africa and it is heart wrenching to watch and read the info in the museum. Similar to the Killing fields in Cambodia or the Agent orange museum in Vietnam, it’s deeply saddening but we both felt it was vital to learn and understand more about the country we are staying in. It’s a totally excellent museum, and contains a permanent Nelson Mandela Exhibition as well, so for the 100Rand entrance fee ($10NZD) I would highly recommend it, even if you can’t take photos indoors (I managed a sneaky few) From there, I was so hungry I felt I could chew my arm off but from also being jetlagged I chose to sleep the whole way home in the car like a child. Jet lag has ruined me the past 2 days, I don’t think the rain helps either but knowing we were heading for dinner and to watch a band that night made everything much less hazy. Despite the weather, so far we are having an absolute BLAST! Oh, something else I learned while on the tour which actually nearly made me cry was:
When Mandela turned 90 years old, a celebration that the public started was by devoting 67 minutes of their time on his birthday – one minute for every year of Mandela’s public service – here people can make a small gesture of solidarity with humanity and a step towards a global movement for good. Meaning that every year each and every person here will take 67 minutes to do community work, help at a shelter, feed the homeless, teach a class, clean up trash and so on. This is not a public holiday but something that is now ingrained in the population and when I heard it, it made me think how wonderful a human this man was. We really had such a rich and fulfilling day today – I loved it despite it being so upsetting in parts. ‘’Nelson Mandela has been making an imprint on the world for 67 years, beginning in 1942 when he first started to campaign for the human rights of every South African. His life has been an inspiration to the world,” Read more here : https://www.mandeladay.com/pages/what-can-i-do Hey, welcome back – hopefully you read my last post so this next one makes sense, and if not just take a read later on. So, next stop on our Tuk Tuk tour was to try out a staple Winter street food – Fat Cake - It’s a ball of dough; it’s fried; it’s tasty, it’s cheap to produce and it’s popular here on the streets of Soweto. ‘Vetkoek’ really lives up to its name as we sat and munched down on it after it had cooled. Couldn’t eat too many (that is clearly a lie) but loved it and would try again for sure! We then made out way to a smaller village in Kliptown, which was quite honestly eye opening and saddening to see how the poverty is so abundant here. No running water, shared cubicle bathrooms for hundreds to share, no sanitation whatsoever – it was truly heart-breaking. However, the people are beautiful, inside and out! Friendly, big smiles and none the wiser about their quality of life, oh, and the kids!! These kids love approaching foreigners! I am as white as they come and the most surprising thing to me was that they didn't approach nervously in the slightest, instead they simply just wanted to play with us, hold our hands, walk with us, smile and give us cuddles. It was a truly lovely experience both educational and humbling.
Next on the list was Nelson Mandela’s house. Nelson Mandela lived in Soweto for many years before his 27-year imprisonment on Robben Island, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu also lived in the neighborhood just down the street. That’s two Nobel Prize laureates who called this area home! The street itself is very touristic and filled with beautiful artwork and as much as we didn’t pay the entry fee to get into his house, we enjoyed the experience of being there in the neighborhood where this incredible man once lived. A couple of his incredible quotes of Nelson Mandela can be found below: “When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.” ― Nelson Mandela “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” Just like that we are off again! Can you believe that we spend nearly 3 months in Europe? Nope, me neither, but I can tell you all now it was truly brilliant. I barely had any free time to blog and to be honest I wanted to use this time wisely spending as much quality time with my family and friends as possible, oh and also TRAIN FOR KILIMANJARO which we will be starting Jan 1st 2020… Christ, what a month we have planned!
So, back to present day, we have now arrived in Johannesburg and apparently, it’s usually a very very hot section of the country but rains for about 10 days a year… guess what? It’s the week we arrived, oh, and it’s freezing. It was 35 degrees on Tuesday and when we arrived on Wednesday it was 13! 13 degrees, thank good god that we were in Scotland just beforehand as it was bloody freezing there as well, so we built up a resistance. |
AuthorHey! I'm Ally. I left the UK in 2011 to move overseas and ended up in New Zealand - my new home. This year we are taking a gap year to loop the world stopping in some AMAZING destinations - and I'm passionate about sharing these adventures with you! ArchivesCategories |