Road Tripping Southern Africa Part Four: Pretoria and Cape Town

The tail end of my COS travel was back in my second home of South Africa. I spent a few days with a family in Pretoria recuperating after my travels and just relaxing. We went to a Blue Bulls Rugby game at Loftus Versfeld Stadium (big deal) and watched the game from a box - it was so much fun! I really enjoyed my time with the Bester family (who I had the pleasure of getting to know through Eugene who had been in charge of redoing the Ikhwezi Offices on behalf of Coca-Cola). Eugene was always saying that when I was in Pretoria I had to stop by and stay with his family. I was so grateful for them because not only did they let me stay with them before I started all my travels, but for three weeks they allowed me to keep my two monstrous suitcases with them. They were a true blessing! I had such a great time getting to know Sharon and their son better – it was a really fun few days.

 

I got on a bus for the last time in South Africa (fingers crossed) and headed to Cape Town. I had been to Cape Town two times before this, and had a great time. I did so many things that I'd wanted to do each time before and had ran out of time to do. Here are the highlights:

Robben Island

Nelson Mandela spent 18 out of his 27 years in prison on Robben Island as a political prisoner. We got to tour the island and the prison seeing where the political prisoners were kept, and even seeing Nelson Mandela's cell. It was a really interesting tour - and an amazing thing they do is have the tours led by people who were at one time prisoners on the Island. Our tour guide was from Port Elizabeth and was there as a political prisoner for five years. It was truly fascinating to hear about his own experiences in the very places we were walking through.

Table Mountain

Table Mountain sits in the heart of Cape Town and makes it one of the most enchanting and unique city skylines I've ever seen. There are several different routes to hike up to the top of the mountain and we took what I was told after is considered one of the "easy" ones. While we were able to complete the hike in about half the time they listed it should take it was not "easy". It was basically a mile or more of climbing stairs. The vertical climb was totally worth it though because the views at the top were amazing! You're able to see all of the city from the top and also look along the coast for miles. We took the cable car down the Mountain which was a fun ride!

Stand-up Paddle Boarding

Bright and early we got to stand up paddle board the canals at the V&A Waterfront. I was positive I was going to fall off into the water (which would have been FREEZING) but I didn't - yay! It was so much fun, and surprisingly easy, although I think it gets a lot more difficult when you introduce waves into the mix...

Tour of Cape Town

My friends Michelle and Neil were nice enough to take us on a tour all around Cape Town! We went down the coast one side, stopped at different places to take pictures, or grab something small to eat and just see what was around. It was a lot of fun to see the coast line of Cape Town from BOTH sides! We drove around on the other side of Table Mountain back around to the coast. It was such an awesome day! It was so fun to get to see a lot of the Cape Town coastline!

Enjoying Cape Town

From Long Street - one of my favorite places to go shopping, to eating out at all of the delicious restaurants I had a fantastic time hanging out with old friends and seeing new ones! It was great to get to introduce one of my best South African friends Michelle (who graciously let me stay with her) to one of my best Peace Corps friends - Sam (who was living two blocks from Michelle!). Cape Town is such an amazing city for so many reasons. It is larger than Chicago population wise, but it seems so much smaller (probably because it doesn't have millions of other people in the suburbs surrounding it...). It's a big city, with a small town feel to it, with a gorgeous backdrop of ocean and mountain. Long story short: I love Cape Town!

Justin Bieber Concert

BELIEVE TOUR CAPE TOWN! It was awesome! We had horrible seats, Justin was just a tiny speck on the stage but it was so much fun! His tour had a great message and his music is really fun - how could you hate? It totally made me a BelieBer! This was so funny to me because it was my last night living in Africa, and I was voted by our SA 23 group "Most likely to go to a Justin Bieber concert” in our SA 23 yearbook. Lived out my superlative. It was great.

 

Road Tripping Southern Africa Part Three: The Train to Victoria Falls

Traveling in Southern Africa was eye opening to me in terms of how great we had it in South Africa public transportation wise. There were many times throughout our "road trip" where I was honestly worried for my life, and miserable. The thing about the travel was that the actual travel was crazy - but the amazing destinations made up for it.

The TAZARA Railway

Since we needed to travel on the cheap though (and airfare in Southern Africa is anything but cheap) we decided to go with what seemed the most reasonable, safe, and direct route - the train! Safe, direct, and reasonable is pretty questionable when describing the train through Tanzania but it was an unforgettable experience.

The train didn't leave on time (which we anticipated) and only left several hours after it was scheduled to (which was nothing new to us, we're used to waiting). We were in the first class section which had four beds that came with a sheet, blanket, and pillow. The first night on the train there was Sami, another Tanzanian girl, and me in our cabin. We checked out the lounge car where you could buy drinks which were cold the first day and got slowly warmer as the trip went on. There was no temperature control on the train, but we had our car window open to get a nice breeze (it was so hot in Dar!). Our first cabin-mate got off the train in Mbeya on day two of the travels. During the day on day two we got another roommate who was a business woman from Kenya who owned a business in Zambia. She was transporting two computers on the train in order to sell them in her shop. 

The rest of the trip was a bit of a blur. It was four days and three nights on a train so one day of playing cards seemed exactly like the next day of playing cards and eating the same. This was our general schedule.

Wake up, eat breakfast, get a soda in the lounge car.

Morning hours: play cards or bananagrams or read.

Lunch break!

Afternoon hours: play cards or bananagrams or read.

Dinner break, get a soda in the lounge car (only if we’re feelin’ wild).

Evening hours: play cards or bananagrams or read.

Go to bed as early as we possibly could manage.

The scenery was gorgeous Sami and I spent the majority of day two in the lounge car going back and forth between playing cards, reading our kindles, and socializing with the other tourists on the train. We got to know a German couple and also became friends with a Canadian couple who were doing development work in Malawi. We ended up traveling with these couples for the rest of our trip in Zambia since it was less intimidating to travel in a pack than on our own.

Memories of the train:

-The toilet was a normal looking toilet seat, but it just opened up out onto the tracks. We weren't supposed to use it unless the train was moving. This rule Sami and I both broke. Opps.

-They had a room with two sinks in it that could be used for brushing teeth/washing faces. That was nice.

-There was apparently a shower...we did not attempt to take advantage of this.

-The train would consistently stop for long periods of time, for no apparent reason (which is why we had to break the bathroom rule).

-We had to switch trains at the boarder which was not too fun.

-We rode by overturned train cars (so comforting) and I would routinely wake up in the night TERRIFIED at how fast we were going and how the train felt like it was going to tip over sideways.

-Sami got sick for about two days so that was no good! The only bonus was that she had a bed and a toilet to use whenever she needed (good thing we weren't on a bus!).

-There was the occasional cockroach in our room.

-It was a crazy experience!

Zambia

After our arrival north of Lusaka, Zambia (where we needed to get a bus to Livingstone) we got a taxi (with other tourists in tow) to get to Lusaka. Once we got to Lusaka we discovered we could take a night bus to Livingstone and arrive quite late (or early depending on how you look at it). We arrived at our backpackers around three in the morning so happy to have arrived at our destination! It was a longggggg time coming but we finally made it!

Zambia reminded me of South Africa in a lot of ways. Partly because a lot of the same businesses that are in South Africa are in the cities in Zambia. The backpackers was the kind we were used to- it was a cool place called Jollyboys, and the people seemed similar to South Africans culturally (whereas in all the other countries we were in there was a very different vibe than in South Africa). We met a lot of Peace Corps Volunteers at Jollyboys who were PC Zambia and it sounds like their sites are MUCH more undeveloped than most of ours (they said no one had electricity or running water at site...which is very different than many of our sites in SA).

I enjoyed our time in Livingstone - it was more relaxed and we got to see Victoria Falls! That was a really cool experience. We knew we were going to get soaking wet because everyone does during the wet season (which also makes it difficult to see the falls because of all the mist but you still see them). When we crossed the bridge we did in fact get completely soaking wet! The massive scale of the waterfall is so huge - when the mist blows away for a moment and you can see how wide the falls are - it's breathtaking! We explored the park surrounding the falls and looked at them from lots of different sides - we saw massive (double) rainbows and got to dodge baboons. We did one of the hikes down to the bottom of the falls where you can watch bungee jumpers and on that walk we had to share the path with many baboons (which in case you didn’t' know, are slightly intimidating). We also went on a sunset cruise along the Zambezi River which was a blast!

The day after our trip to the falls we all flew out of Zambia back to South Africa. Sami and Mallory went to Cape Town and I flew to Pretoria. I had originally planned on traveling by bus, by myself back to South Africa but after lots of careful consideration I decided flying was both more cost effective and about a thousand times safer. I have never regretted that decision.

 

Road Tripping Southern Africa Part Two: Tanzania and Zanzibar

Getting to Zanzibar

While Anise, Sami, and I crossed the border from Malawi to Tanzania a "taxi driver" who looked like he was going into Malawi turned around to offer us a ride to where the rest of the taxis were that we needed to take from the border town in Tanzania to Mbeya - the first stop on our way to Zanzibar. He was very persuasive and also recommended we use his guy to exchange our Malawian kwacha to Tanzanian shillings. 

Long story short: Anise ended up getting scammed when a guy walked off with a big chunk of her kwacha "to find someone for change" (not the guy the taxi driver recommended). She got into a fight with the hoard of excessively pushy OTHER guys trying to get us to exchange our money with them. Our taxi driver was annoyed, we were annoyed, Anise was angry - it was not good. The situation escalated when she finally yelled in frustration "you're all in cahoots!" (and some swears). Then our taxi driver was angry because we didn't use his exchange guy, and sort of caused a scene. He took us the extremely short distance (which we could have easily walked) and then refused to open the trunk to give us our things until we had paid him the price that he tripled due to our fight. He had originally said 3,000 shillings for a tiny distance and then decided to charge us EACH 3,000 shillings which made us even angrier. The whole thing was a huge debacle. Then we had to get on a mini bus taxi, where I kid you not the floor was SO HOT it was actually painful. And we couldn't put our feet up because we had our luggage on our laps, of course. 

We thought this was the final bus to Mbeya but without explanation we stopped at another location where everyone started to exit our mini bus and get onto a DIFFERENT bus. No one said anything to us though, and we had no idea if we were supposed to get on this bus, pay again, or WHAT was going on. So we transfer to the already full bus. For a row made for four people there were NINE. People were still trying to get on, but couldn't get through the front door so they were literally climbing through the windows to get onto the bus. However, they were climbing into a full bus so Sami had a man STANDING ON HER KNEES in this bus. When I retell it now it makes me laugh but it was the farthest thing from funny. The front of the bus (aka the aisle) was standing room only and so full that's why no one else could get on the bus. When we stopped at other points before Mbeya people in the back of the bus had to EXIT THE BUS THREW THE WINDOWS. It was like something out of a movie – we were all like “is this real life?” 

By the time we got to Mbeya it was around 10pm. We had no idea of what kind of options were available in terms of accommodation for the night so we got in a taxi and asked them to take us to a hotel (SPLURGE!). We arrived at the hotel and we are pretty positive we were the only people staying there. It was clean, and secure so that was what mattered. We got advice from the front desk person on which "luxury" bus companies were the most reputable and safest. It was a stressful process because the second you got to the rank where the taxis and buses were you were bombarded with people all trying to sell you tickets and scams are more than commonplace. We went with what we could determine was the best choice and most legitimate to get us on the Princess (incorrectly spelled on the bus as "Princes") Muro bus. The Princess Muro bus took us to Dar es Salaam over the course of 19 hours. At one point we saw an overturned bus on the side of the road which was a less-than-encouraging sign. Also, the reason these buses are "luxury" is because they restrict the passengers to one per seat (novel idea in Tanzania). This is also where I experienced my first squat toilets (where the toilet hole is level with the ground so you squat…if that wasn’t self-explanatory). Not what I would describe as a pleasant experience, they are not my favorite…

On our arrival in Dar it was already after dark (typical) so we got a taxi that instead of taking us to the place we wanted to go, tried to take us to the ferry and drop us off there. What turned out to be a common theme here was people pretending they knew what we were talking about when really they had zero idea. After us refusing to get out of the taxi until we were at a hotel he finally understood the name of another place where we had heard Peace Corps Volunteers from Tanzania stayed. It was like a backpackers/hotel and worked out great. The next morning we got up early so we could make it to the ferry to Zanzibar (yay)!

Zanzibar

After three days of travel we FINALLY had arrived in Zanzibar! Our first few nights we stayed in Stone Town which is the big city in Zanzibar. It's the only city like it that I've ever been to, the streets are completely winding, and impossible not to get lost in. Which is fine because everything is so cool to look at! Unique architecture and beautiful old doors around every corner make it a city you WANT to get lost in. I loved Stone Town and would have spent more time there if we had the chance. It was a cool place to be! In Stone Town Sami's friend Mallory met up with us and she was our travel buddy for the rest of the trip.
 

 

While in Stone Town we signed ourselves up for some tours we had heard were not to miss and arranged our transport conveniently to take us where we needed to go in addition to the tours. Zanzibar is a tiny place so going from one side of the island to the other doesn't take long, but it was nice to have our transport arranged.
 

Our first tour was the Blue Safari which was absolutely amazing! We got to a boat that took us out to a coral reef where we got to snorkel and see seriously beautiful and amazing fish and reefs. There were also jellyfish which WOULD sting you and DID sting us. You'd be swimming and suddenly see all these little transparent things that looked like mini balloons and frantically swim backwards to get away from them, but a few stings were unavoidable. It was so fun though! After our snorkeling we were brought over to a deserted island where we got to drink fresh coconut milk straight from the source. It was amazing being on a tiny white sand beach surrounded by crystal clear turquoise water. Absolutely beautiful. As if this wasn't enough we were taken to another island where we got to climb on a massive baobab tree and had a free seafood lunch. It was as much as you wanted to eat fresh lobster, shrimp, fish, and octopus stew with coconut rice -it was DELICIOUS. We sailed around local tiny islands, took in the beautiful views, and got to swim a bit more. When we were all tired of swimming we headed back to the main island. It was one of the coolest things I've ever done! 
 

We spent two nights after that in an area on the East side of the island that was very quiet since it was off season. We were in Jambiani at a resort that was really beautiful right on the beach. It was a nice secluded get away - almost no one else was there! We went for a long walk on the beach and just enjoyed a relaxing time. On our way from Jambiani to our next destination we went on a spice tour which was so much fun! We got to taste and identify spices in their plant/root form. The guys who gave us the tour were so much fun, and such characters. We had a blast and it was neat to see all the different spices that are grown on Zanzibar.
 

 
After Jambiani we headed to Kendwa Beach on the North side of the island which was where all of the people were! We stayed at a resort that was right on the beach, next to a place called Kendwa Rocks that had amazing food! It was a really fun atmosphere at Kendwa Rocks so we spent two days on the beach hanging out! We went to a reggae party one night and swam in the crystal clear ocean at midnight to cool off after all our dancing. It was an absolutely amazing experience. We made friends with some South Africans we met there, and had a blast with them. We also met up with our Peace Corps friend Kristina and her friend (they had travelled separately from us in Malawi/Tanzania/Zanzibar up to that point). It was fun to be able to have a Peace Corps South Africa reunion in Zanzibar!
 

Sami and I were continuing to Zambia by train (to meet Mallory - who had flown) to Livingstone so we could see Victoria Falls. It wasn't easy leaving Zanzibar - a truly unique paradise but it had to be done. 

Here are some things I loved or noticed about Zanzibar that made it special:

-Stone Town's amazing architecture and buildings - you felt like you were stepping back in time!

-Muslim influence -for a hot island everyone (girls/women) are covered head to foot due to their cultural or religious practices.

-It's stunningly beautiful - beaches, water, sea life, everything! So exotic!

-Amazing food - nom nom nom.