I have started my last week her in Stelles. It’s a very sad feeling knowing I’m going to have to leave this beautiful place that has been my home for the last 5 months. The last trip I did was about a month ago with 3 other ‘crazy chickens’ Monique, Marie and Nadine. We left our precious hometown and flew to Johannesburg (Joburg). At the crack of dawn a bus picked us up at our hotel to drive 6 hours to our lodge in the Kruger National Park. I still remember watching wildlife documentaries on National Geographic with my dad (which annoyed my mum) when I was younger and being amazed by the beauty of the big cats and the wildlife in general. So now many years later, I had a chance to see all of that in real life in a real wild park, a childhood dream come true! When we arrived at the Mohlabetsi lodge after driving along the beautiful Drakensberge mountains, a safari jeep with our guide (Nick) was ready to bring us to our lodge. Already on our way to the lodge we saw a lot of animals like wildebeest and giraffes, which fueled our excitement even more for our first game drive! Mohlabetsi has an open camp which means that the animals can get to a few metres away from our lodge or the dinging areas, there were even some baboons who were heading for the pool at one point. Everything in the camp was perfect: our rooms were huge with an outdoor shower, there was a big pool (it was about 26° there, not bad for the middle of winter, eh!) where we could chill during the midday, hammocks, an awesome dog called Timba to play with, 3 course lunches and dinners, an awesome crew who worked there, … just excellent service and surroundings in general. Our first drive started that afternoon with Nick the guide and 2 south African couples in their late forties with the mother of one of the ladies. Once they were adjusted to our abundance of energy, we got along very well and had so much fun with them! That first drive we already saw some impala’s, elephants with their supercute babies and a pack of female lions doing what they do best, chilling. Every drive we had a break where we could have a drink like a beer or some wine, you know in the middle of bush while the sun was setting, totally awesome. Our jeep companions were always going for a gin-tonic, I think they would have been good friends with my parents ;). At the end of our drive the peeps from our jeep always bought us an Amarula , a South African drink that you can compare to baileys but much more tasty (I really hope they have it in Belgium). The next day started at 6 in the morning and after a short drive our spotter, Lucky, saw some fresh footprints of a leopard (how very lucky indeed). We saw the leopard a bit further walking on the road and everyone got so excited (you could tell by all the ooohs and aawwws followed by shhhhhhht shut uuuuup!). We followed this majestic animal until he disappeared in the bush. We saw him 2 more times that day just laying around, posing for the pictures. After 3 drives we already saw the big five (the five most dangerous animals to hunt on foot: lion, leopard, elephant, buffalo and rhino) and all the other animals you can imagine except for a cheetah. So I asked Nick on the last drive if we could search for one, because that is my favorite animal (hmm maybe it changed to a leopard…not sure) and of course we got lucky, another jeep saw him and we raced to the spot. The cheetah was in the bush, where normally we are not allowed to go in with the jeep but Nick (slightly pushed by us) just said f*ck it and started chasing the cheetah. Constantly ducking for branches, almost falling out of the jeep going after a cheetah, THE highlight of the whole trip! One of the branches sprung up and crashed the side view mirror and made a huge bump in the jeep, Nick said he was going to be in trouble with his boss but it was totally worth it. After seeing some hippos playing in the water it was sadly time to say goodbye to Mohlabetsi and go back to Joburg. Those 3 days were one of the highlights of my whole stay here in South Africa. The next day we rented a car and decided to drive through Joburg centre to get a look at what it’s like. It is so different from Cape Town, you can say it is much more ‘Africa’. It was total chaos, people walking around everywhere and almost not a single white person. After that experience we were off to Sun City, ‘the Las Vegas of South Africa’. It was quite a disappointment when we came there and half of the city was closed for maintenance and there were only old people and Indians. But they had a beautiful pool where we could enjoy the ‘wintersun’ and see some monkeys drinking from the pool and steeling Piña Coladas from people (hihi). In the meantime, my parents have also visited me. They were here for 2 weeks but I think I only saw them for 6 days as my trip was already planned before they decided to come. As a first South African experience I brought them along a townshiptour. The same one I already did with the international office of the University. I wanted them to not only see the touristic part, such as the garden route and the centre of Cape Town. We ended our trip by visiting Mzoli’s, which of course is totally amazing and overall, they really enjoyed the experience of seeing what is really going on in SA. Apart from having many dinners together (woohoo, starters AND desserts), we also did some winetastings (a must in Stellies) and visited Cape Town to meet my greataunt/godmother of my father. People have also been asking about school. So after working my ass off for 5 courses, I passed them all and I also finished my literature part for my Master Thesis which my promoter said was good. Now I’m interviewing local politicians/councilors/NGOs/professors/… in Stellenbosch, talking about the situation between the different population groups and the policies they want to implement to improve the social interaction. I have already had a lot of very interesting conversations and it’s especially interesting to see how different the opinions are and how they sometimes talk about each other. So that’s how I’m going to spend my last week here, working for school. But maybe I can create some time for a last winetasting, visit to Cape Town or a little party (never hurt nobody) ;). I’m not going to talk much longer because I know that a lot of people already quit reading at the school part (totally understandably of course). But I just want to mention my amazing friend Monique. I had to say goodbye to her last week, which was very painful and a lot of tears were shed. I just want to thank her for being there for me every step of the way. I was lucky enough to have met her in my first days here and our friendship only grew stronger in these 5 months. We would talk every single day and visit each other’s room (especially after parties) in our pajamas, looking like crap, telling stories about the night before and laughing our asses off. Momo, if you read this, I can promise you you’ll be a friend forever and I’ll always be here for you even though we live in different countries . I love you and we’ll see each other very soon! Xxx Next week probably my last post… Emmy x
Posted on: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 11:07:58 +0000