Happy Easter everyone!
In the middle of last week I left the comforts of Cape Town to visit Christy for the first time in almost two months. It’s strange how living in the same country has made our relationship seem all the more difficult…mostly because the closer proximity is just an illusion and we are still just as far apart. Oh well, we are still managing quite nicely and I was happy to jump at an opportunity to spend the weekend and the following week with Christy and some of her Peace Corps friends north of Durban, outside of a town called Underberg.
When we left Jo’Burg in a taxi that luckily only took one hour to fill, our driver left with about 5 of his mates. Out on the open road these 5 mini-bus taxis decided to play games with each other passing and slowing down and driving three wide on a two-lane road. They were like stock-cars weaving in and out of each other, driving as close behind the other as possible, but not really going fast, which was the odd thing. They would actually slow down if one got far ahead of the other so that the game could continue. There were many times that I wanted to shout at our driver to play with his life on his own time and to just get us to Pietermeritzburg alive. He got a dose of that from another driver who pulled ahead, slammed on his breaks and proceeded to verbally and physically (using time-worn hand gestures) abuse our driver for playing around on the freeway. It was quite dangerous considering the fact that all of South Africa was on the roads heading to holiday destinations for the long, four day weekend. But, we arrived safely after we stopped to get petrol and buy some lunch.
Anyway, we managed to arrive at Underberg around 8pm, after getting lucky and finding a ride out of Pietermeritzberg on a shuttle out of Durban. We then proceeded to spend the entire weekend drinking, eating and hiking around the beautiful green mountains that are the Drakensbergs. Dee will remember those mountains quite well as about 2 hours north on the same range of mountains, we almost came to our end twice in two days. We did not reach as far or high as Dee and I did on those days and settled for short hikes up the hills with the dogs from the farm as well as a 2 hour horse ride up the mountains. All in all, a wonderfully relaxing weekend. The sad part is that for the first time in a long time I managed to lose a few items. First to go was my sunglasses case, even before we left Pretoria. Next was my headlamp, which got left behind at the backpackers in Underberg. Finally, my cellphone lept out of my pocket on the last taxi ride into Bergville (where two of Christy’s friends live and where we spent the night two nights ago). So, I’m sans cell phone for the first time since returning from Peace Corps, when I refused to buy a phone on principle! Well, now I feel like I’m naked! Strange how we depend upon technology so much.
So, that was the weekend. We got a ride back from Bergville with a nice German man in a beautiful BMW who kindly stopped on the N3 (big freeway) and picked us up. For now, I wait to see if work will come or if I will go back to Limpopo with Christy for a week. I’m leaning towards Limpopo…pics to come!
