For the first leg of our journey we headed to the opposite end of Botswana. Once out in the "nose" of Botswana in a town called Selibi Phikwe, we met up with the three other volunteers we were about to go on an adventure with. The five of us rented a truck from a man living in Phikwe who another volunteer often rents from. We stayed the night with some of the most hospitable Peace Corps Volunteers in the world, Chuck and Marry. The following morning we woke with the sun and threw our bags in the back of the green 89' Hilux that we (I) mistakenly "the Hulk" (there was nothing ferocious about him.) The drive to the border was very typical Botswana, consisting of big open "sandveld" with the occasional small village and family farm. At the border, we made our first wrong turn. Who doesn't sign mark a border? Botswana. Once through the border and over the bridge into South Africa our scenery changed immediately. First world infrastructure was evident even in the details. The small villages were now proper towns with robots (stoplights) and the small family farms of Botswana were replaced by sprawling commercial farms. Also, the roads were real roads with proper signs and lines and free of potholes and farm animals.

We knew our first day of driving was going to be a long one but due to construction and the fact that the hulk couldn't go faster than 100K/hr it took much longer than we had planned. The drive was beautiful and took us along the southern border of Swaziland. After 16 hours on the road, we made it to St. Lucia just in time for bed. St. Lucia is a beautiful little tourist town on the east coast of South Africa not far south of Swaziland and Mozambique on the Elephant Coast. The town was quiet and charming since it is the offseason. We were told that the town has about 500 people in the off-season and balloons to about 2500 in the busy season. St. Lucia has many amenities a tourist town should, a couple of grocery stores, restaurants, hotels and trinket shops. We found a lovely little coffee shop so Amanda could get her fix. The coffee shop had wonderful coffee and croissant with beautiful artwork all over the walls.

We decided to go 30K north of St. Lucia into the iSimangaliso Wetland national park for our day at the beach. Cape Vidal is a picturesque beach with warm turquoise water and endless untouched pristine sand in both directions. Only about 20 people, and an equal portion of monkeys at the tree line, populated the beach. The Cape Vidal area is well known for sea turtle nesting during this time of year, but we didn't see any. In the afternoon, four of us went for a walk down the beach and Amanda stayed behind to relax and guard our things. When we returned from our walk Amanda told us a story of how she was mugged! Apparently when she was resting a group of American girls near her started yelling "watch out, watch out, he is going to steal your things!" looking she saw a monkey on the edge of her towl. She tried to shoo the monkey away but he immediately lunged at her and she jumped back. This happened two more times before she relented and let the monkey grab our "cheetos" and run away to feed his family. Crazy monkeys.

On our drive back to St. Lucia through the park we decided to take some detour loops for some game viewing. The great thing about this particular park is that it has such a wide variety of wildlife, especially for being right next to the ocean. We saw all of the usual deer/antelope type animals, buffalo and hippos which are all fun but we wanted to see some things we had not seen yet, and we did. We saw a family of rhinos (which were briefly mistaken for hippo) that included two big adults and a baby. A little farther down the road we came across a group of zebra in the road. We stopped the car and stared at them as they stared at us. The patriarch of the harem was in the middle of the road stomping his hoof. Then instantaneously they all turned and ran! I popped the hulk into gear and we gave chase. The frantic scurry that followed was a dozen zebra and Kudu running away as we chased them, hanging out the windows of our truck and yelling, "This is just like Lion King!" Never thought I would do that in my life. This was my favorite day of the trip.

The following day, 240K and a handful of change in tolls south we made it to Durban. Durban is South Africa's third most populous city. It is home to a beautiful beach skyline, an architectural wonder of a World Cup stadium and the largest population of Indian people outside of India. Our hostel sat just 30m from the beach and had an amazing view. We went to a movie our first evening in Durban. It was half price Wednesday so how could we not? We saw the movie Due Date (sounds like chic flick but it's not). The following day we spent the morning swimming (or getting pummeled by waves) on the world famous (to surfers) Durban beach called The Bluff. Then we headed down to the Victoria Street Market or Indian Market as it use to be called. Driving a big truck (on the left side of the road) with a big roof rack through Indiatown with thousands of people walking all around was hectic to say the least but once we squeezed into the off ramp of a parking garage and started walking around it was a lot of fun. The "market" was not what I would classify as a real market because it was filled with identical shops with one of two things inside: African souvenirs or Indian spices. After Victoria Street market we headed down to the south beach waterfront. We had a great sushi and seafood dinner at uShaka marine park.

I wasn't too sure about the drive to the Drakensburg mountains the following day because the hulk's power to weight ratio was lacking to say the least. It turned out to be fine because we were faster (barely) than a few semi trucks. Sticking with the theme, the drive was beautiful. We drove through Pietermaritzburg; the town Ghandi formulated many of his ideas. We also drove through Howick, which has a 100M waterfall right in middle of town. The town is also noteworthy because Nelson Mandela was arrested there on his way from Durban to Johannesburg. The hostel we stayed at in Drakensburg had a beautiful 360-degree view of the mountains including what is known as the Ampatheater. This area felt a lot like the Teton area with big open fields and towering mountains. The Apatheater is home to the world's second tallest waterfall, Tuegla Falls. On our full day in Drakensburg we headed up to Royal Natal National Park to do the gorge hike. The hike was absolutely amazing! The trail was a slow incline for miles into the ravine where we eventually had to cross the river a few times. Small waterfalls fell from the steep rock walls which surrounded us. Unfortunately it got too late for us to make it all the way to the top of the trail but it was a great 5 and a half hour day hike to say the least.
Tuegla falls is partially covered by clouds in the distance

We finished our trip with another long drive back to Botswana, bringing our total to 34 hours and 2600Km. Our trip to South Africa was a great break from village life. We would like to thank our friends Parisa, Sydney and Slo for a great vacation.