Day 3: YES WE CAN(yon)!!

After waking up super early, before the sun was even awake, we were off to the edge of the canyon to watch the sunrise.  The Fish River Canyon, according to Wikipedia, is the 2^nd largest canyon in the world (after the good ol’ Grand Canyon) and it was beautiful.  It’s about 100 miles long, in some places 17 miles wide and around 550 meters deep.  We sat on the edge of the cliffs, hung our feet off the edge and just looked out over all the vastness.  I had never been to a canyon that big before so it was awesome to just sit and look.  After enjoying the canyon for a while we headed off to a campground to meet up with some Austrian friends for breakfast.  The rest of the day was spent in the car driving to Sossusvlei which is the area famous for sand dunes.  That night we camped in a drainage culvert along the side of the road pretty much in the middle of no where.

Another long, straight road.

Sam has a really fancy camera that can take pictures in all kinds of light.  She took this picture of our campsite. 

How we occupied our evening.  Sam's camera can do long exposure so we "painted" pictures using our headlamps.

Day 2: Just Around the River Bend

We left super early on our second day and Thomas drove for a long time before we reached the boarder.  We got our passports stamped (yay - I love getting more stamps in my passport) and then finally made it into Namibia.  Along the boarder of Namibia and South Africa is the Orange River.  Thomas really wanted to see the river so we drove for a while thinking that we would be able to find a road that would take us to the banks.  We tried one and ended up in a kind of driveway.  Since we didn’t want to get busted on the first day for trespassing, we decided to go back towards the border to find a different entrance to the river.  Before we turned around however, we got out of the car and walked around for a while.  Then we drove to a gas station and found a road that brought us to the river.  We went swimming and Neil and Thomas went alligator hunting before we got back on the road.  We got into the Richtersveld National Park which is home to the Fish River Canyon which is the largest canyon in Africa and I want to say the 2^nd largest canyon in the world after the Grand Canyon - but I may be making that up.  We camped at a watering hole with some nice bushes to park behind.  It had been a long day and we were all in bed before 9pm.

Our tiny car.  It was quite full when the four of us were all together.

Construction.

We thought this was a long, straight road, turns out we were wrong.  (There will be more pictures later).

Welcome to Namibia!

Our first stop!

Orange River - not as orange as I thought.  

Day 1: “Oh, *@%#! I forgot my passport!”

Yes.  That phrase was uttered by Thomas about two and a half hours after we left Stellenbosch.  After some last minute errands I had to run (to ensure we had fuel to cook with, snacks for the car, etc.), we left Stellenbosch around 11:00.  We had made it to the Cederberg Mountains, when Thomas realized that he a forgotten his passport.  After laughing at him, and then realizing that he wasn’t joking, we decided to turn around and go back to Stellenbosch so he could actually come with us and enter Namibia.  When we got back home we decided that we would leave the next day at 4am so that we could get to the Namibian boarder early and make up for lost time.

On the Road Again!

Between the end of the school semester and when everyone started to return to their various countries of origin, there were about three weeks of free time.  Some people went on organized tours, some people went home early for various reasons, but lots of people decided to partake in the classic college road trip.  A few weeks before the end of classes, I decided with one of my friends (Sam) that we wanted to go on a trip, but not necessarily an organized one.  Now all we needed was someone who could drive a standard car.  Enter Neil.  The three of us decided to rent a car and head off somewhere.  But where?  Sam really wanted to go to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe/Zambia, but after looking at a map and the amount of time we had, we decided that it was too far away.  Neil really wanted to spend some time sitting on a sand dune in the Namibian desert and I just wanted to see something totally new and experience an entirely different culture.  After a lot of research and realizing that we really could only afford to do one country, we decided to travel only in Namibia, but spend a lot of time there and really see the entire country.  In the end it was decided that Sam would spend the first few days driving with us and then we would drop her off at the bus station in Windhoek, Namibia so she could go on a tour of Victoria Falls.  A few days before we left, we added one more member to our crew.  Thomas (from Montana) would travel with us for a while and then we would drop him off with some other people so he could return to Stellenbosch to take an exam.  Then Neil and I would spend a few more days traveling before heading back to Stellenbosch so Neil could catch his flight back to Alaska.

 The Crew

Name: Sam

Job on Trip: Photographer

Name:  Thomas

Job on Trip:  Co-Pilot/Navigator

Name:  Neil

Job on Trip:  Pilot (aka driver)

Name:  Katie

Job on Trip:  Provider of Snacks

Means of Transportation:

The Nissan Micra

Neil and I spent a lot of time doing research on the kind of car we should get and who we should rent it from.  Although a Volkswagen bus or Landrover was our preferred mode of transport, we ended up settling on a tiny car.  Despite our reservations about whether or not the car would be able to make it on dirt roads or even hold all of us and our gear, the car was fantastic.  We (thanks to Neil’s driving skills) made it over some crazy bumps and down some seriously crazy dirt roads.

Run, Katie Run!!!

Jonkershoek Mountain Challenge - 21k

On May 5^th (Happy Birthday Grandmom!!), I ran my first long distance race.  Since I ran cross country in middle school and high school, I am pretty used to running 5ks, but this race was considerably longer.  I was originally going to run the 10k Mountain Challenge, but after running with Neil almost every day and doing weekly hill repeats, I felt that I needed more of a challenge.  It worked out too that one of my friends had signed up for the 21k but got hurt, so I ending up taking his place.  The race started pretty early and the course took me around 2 hours and 45 minutes which put me finishing just about in the middle of the pack.  The race was literally up a mountain.  You started running for a while and then everyone formed a single file line and started hiking - rather quickly.  Once you reached the top, everyone started running again because now is was down hill the rest of way.  In this race there was just over 900m of elevation change.  It was actually pretty nice on the way down although the way up was definitely a challenge.  But I finished before my goal (3 hours) and didn’t want to die at the end.  Also, I bloodied my knee (it was really just a scrape, but it bled a lot) so when I finished, I looked pretty hard core.  All in all, I thought it was a success.

I had to carry all of this in my pack just in case I got stranded.

Some of the people I ran with.  Toke, Sarah, Thomas and Amanda.

Here's what the course looked like on it's side.  It very clearly shows that the race was up a mountain and then down.

Helderburg Mountain Challenge - 15k

Right after the semester ended I ran another mountain challenge.  One my friends had signed up for it and then hurt her ankle, so I took her place and pretended to be her for the race - so when I crossed the finish line they said her name and not mine!  This one was awful.  Although there was actually less elevation change (a little under 900m), the hike up was much steeper (as in some minor rock climbing was necessary in parts) and the way down was rather treacherous.  At least 3 people got pretty seriously hurt during the race and there were two helicopter rescues.  I was much less prepared for this race which may have part of the reason it felt so bad.  I spent the week prior to the race finishing all the work I had to do before the semester ended, staying up late, not running everyday and eating much more junk than usual (I’m pretty sure I finished a jar of Nutella in a week).  But I finished and I only was slightly bloodied and the scenery was beautiful.

Dirt!!

Battle wounds.

What the race looked like!

Surfin’ RSA

South Africa is known for its surfing - also for its shark attacks.  Despite this, I really wanted to go surfing at least once.  I had the opportunity to join Stellenbosch’s Surfing Club, but I decided not to.  At the end of the semester, Neil, Daniel and I took a minibus to Strand Beach to rent some boards and take a lesson from Neil (who had taken several lessons over the course of the semester).  When we got to the board rental shop, the owner said that we were too late and he was closing in 1 hour which wasn’t going to be enough time for us to actually learn what the heck we were doing and then catch some waved.  But since we were already there we headed to the beach ended up building sand castles and swimming in the freezing cold water.  Daniel and Neil built quite the castle.  I started work on my hobbit hole, but didn’t quite finish.

Go Straight to Jail - Do NOT Collect R200

One Sunday, I went on a tour of Robben’s Island with the other American students that came to South Africa with the same study abroad program I did.  The tour itself consisted of a bus ride around the island and then a tour through the actual prison.

The island itself has mostly been used as a prison since the Dutch settled in the area in the second half of the 1600s.  In addition to this, during the 1800s and early 1900s it was used as a hospital and settlement for people with leprosy or were chronically ill.  The island is most famous for being the place that Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison.  It was also home to many other political prisoners during apartheid including Walter Sisulu, Robert Sobukwe and Jacob Zuma - the current president.  The bus brought us past the limestone quarry where many of the political prisoners were forced to do labor.  One of the fascinating parts of the quarry was the cave that was in one of the walls.  The cave was used as a kind of school where prisoners continued their education and where many of the prisoners began writing many aspects of South Africa's current constitution.  Our tour of the prison buildings was given by an ex-prisoner.  Our tour guide, who had been a student during the 1970s was imprisoned for protesting during the Soweto Uprisings of the 1970s.

Some other facts:

Political prisoners were allowed one visit every six months and visitors had to speak in English or Afrikaans so guards could understand.

There is a graveyard where around 1,500 lepers are buried.

All political prisoners on Robben Island were either black, colored or of Indian descent.  Depending on race, severity of crime and length of time spent in the prison, food, bedding, free time etc. was determined.

The tour itself was actually not that informative, but it was interesting enough.  What was really nice was the boat ride out.  On the way to the island we took a catamaran.  I sat on the trampolines in between the hulls.  It was great, until I realized that my shorts were soaking wet from the spray.  Also, we saw some penguins swimming in front of the boat which was really cool to see.

Some of the prison buildings.

The quarry and cave.  The pile of rocks is a memorial made by the prisoners.

This room is where prisoners would have slept.

The island from a distance.

Leaving Cape Town harbor.

It's a bummer that Mandela and the other prisoners didn't have one of these!!