The last weeks in South Africa (a bit overdue!)

So I actually had forgotten that I never finished this off until the other day when my email got hacked and someone kindly posted some adverts on my blog (yes astonishingly it wasn't me who tried to persuade yous to go to some website to buy a printer). Anyway email/blog hacking problems should be sorted now so back to South Africa....

In the middle of out time at the farm we had a few days off so we decided to head down the coast (in an attempt to follow the sun) to Port Elizabeth for the weekend. We stayed in what started out as a lovely little hostel, we were camping on their lawn at the back and had a whole bathroom and living room to ourselves for the first night, on the second night however we were joined by a possibly mentally ill homeless man who proceeded to tell us all about the philosophy of Alice in Wonderland and how trippy it was that we were both called Alice. The highlight was probably the point where Alice went upstairs to speak to the owner and find out if he was actually supposed to be staying there and he came out of nowhere with a huge carving knife and put it right up to my face and asked if I knew how to open a can with it, my life definitely flashed before my eyes at that point I can tell you. Other than risk our lives in the hostel we spent the weekend on the internet applying for jobs (how depressing), shopping (until Alice got her card declined) and playing with some adorable lion cubs at a pretty weird wildlife park (although we had an awesome British guide). 

The weekend was a nice break (especially as we didn't have to get up at 6.30) but it was good to get back to the farm as well. We had about another 10 days there before we were off again. The whole farm experiences was probably one of my favourite parts of my trip, it can probably be summed up as a list of lessons learnt.....

• Lemon curd is easy to make, and contains shit loads of sugar
• Weeding is strangely enjoyable and very relaxing (even in the rain)
• Digging a hole in the sun is a bad idea
• The disturbing image of a little pink piglet bum thrusting when they get it on with their siblings will be forever etched in your memory. 
• You really can't play too much scrabble (which has been proven since I've been home too - Alice and I have played on facebook ever since!)
• It rains a hell of a lot in South Africa in November.
• Everyone loves Karl's veggie patty recipe
• The rhino/nice horn thing will NEVER get old
• Alice and I should go into business building scarecrows - the one we made was pretty sweet.
• Dogs really aren't that scary (but horses definitely are)

From the farm we drove (via the awesome mall in East London where we got a supermarket and Mr Price fix) to a little town about 100kms north west called.....ALICE. We had seen it on a map months before in Kenya and I never actually though we would make it but we did and although there is absolutely nothing there we had fun taking pictures of the Alice church, Alice Memorials, Alice Pharmacy and the Keep Alice Clean bin. Awesome. From there we drove quite late into the night to Aliwal North where we camped at what was supposed to be a spa but looked like a deserted leisure centre grounds (with a few impala roaming around). It didn't really matter though as we were on the road again early to drive to Lesotho. Following the map we'd been given by the rental company we started driving along roads which were getting progressively worse and worse until we realised we were well and truly lost (a first - we had done surprisingly well with directions up to this point). We stopped a truck who (conveniently actually had two guys who were going the same way as us and said if we gave them a lift they would show us the way. Obviously (TIA) these guys couldn't speak a word of English except to shout 'STRAIGHT, STRAIGHT; everytime I turned to look at them, they were old and very cute and after we dropped them in what seemed like the middle of nowhere we were on our way to the border, relieved we had found our way and not died in the hands of our first ever hitchhikers. 

The border was painless (no officials around to run over this time!) and we were soon in Lesotho and on our way, our first stop was the dinosaur footprints which Lesotho is famous for which were (as expected) completely underwhelming but still, pretty cool, and something you definitely have to do. We stopped a bit further along the road to have lunch and then carried on east into the mountains. After about an hour of driving, we had another car 'first' (this day seemed to be full of them!) and we got stopped by the police. To be honest, I think the officer was just bored and wanted a chat - he looked as my driving license and asked where we were from but then told us that we needed a 4x4 to go any further that way so we had to turn round and retrace at least 120km back to the border where we'd started from (surprisingly this wasn't actually that annoying, the scenery in Lesotho AMAZING - some of the best i've ever seen - so I was happy to be experiencing it all again). We decided to head to the capital and after getting stuck in a car parking space outside KFC where I had a mini meltdown about Africa, driving along the same road at least 5 times looking for the campsite we eventually found a place to stay and bedded down for the night in a nice setting on the side of a lake. 

We were up early the next day and continued driving east past more beautiful scenery and amazing waterfalls, in the afternoon we tried to attempt the Sani Pass (even though you need a 4x4) to get to the highest pub in Africa (the things i'll do for a beer!) but after getting stuck on a 30 degree incline, which was basically made up of loose rocks with a 100ft+ drop I decided that our little chev (or my blood pressure/fingernails) weren't up to it and we had to turn back. It was still cool though, i've never driven through a waterfall before. It's a shame the reversing down the slope was too tense to take any pictures (I almost ran Alice over and then reversed into a stream) as I would like to see what is was actually like. Anyway, it all worked out well as we found a beautiful campsite (probably one of the nicest ever) on the side of a hill, next to a shop where the locals had great fun dressing us up in Lesotho blankets and taking our pictures. It was a really fun evening although after all the driving I was glad for an early night. From Lesotho it was back to SA and on to Kimberly which is an old mining town in the middle of nowhere. It was pretty cool - we checked out the local attractions - the big hole (which is actually just a big hole and nowhere near as cool as the coal mine in Yorkshire), pick and pay and mr price before driving up to J'Burg. Now we were supposed to be staying in Soweto, but it was getting a bit late and I didn't want to drive around there at night so we decided to go to a different campsite which should have been easier to find. Well it wasn't, and with night closing in, I was feeling more and more uncomfortable about driving around J'burg. We probably drove back and forth for about 2 hours, and after getting stopped by a lady who told us we weren't safe there and getting some ominous glances from the locals I lost it and decided to drive to the airport and stay in a cheap hotel there. We found a decent one (although it had a really strange bed arrangement and Alice had the longest blanket in the world), had biscuits and dry noodles for dinner, watched some random program about an abortion clinic in America and I slept like a baby so glad that it turned out how it had as it could have been so much worse.

The next day we drove to Orlando towers in Soweto which were pretty cool and took a very sketchy lift up to the top where we could see the whole of Soweto and J'Burg. I was really surprised by Soweto - it was so much more developed with roads and supermarkets and drive throughs and stuff than I had ever imagined, it was a shame we didn't get to take a walking tour but I'm not such a big fan of paying £20+ to walk around someone elses neighbourhood like they are a zoo/tourist attraction. From Soweto, we drove the 100kms to Pretoria, our final destination and stayed in a lovely little hostel just near the University. Our last two days were spent going to see Harry Potter, treating ourselves to awesome food and milkshakes, a last ditch attempt at tanning, shopping and depressing ourselves about going home by watching the 'big freeze' footage on Sky News. 

So that's it, from Pretoria I drove (on my own....cry cry) to the airport and boarded my flight home and all the snow/ice, sad times.