Tuesday was spent on an airplane, four hours to Atlanta (which was a first), during our layover I ate at a place called El Taco and got a "vegan mercado." It was really good! It had cactus on it I think.
We then boarded a second plane for about 14 hours and 40 minutes across the planet to the continent of Africa. It was extremely difficult to sleep on the plane, I was in a middle seat, and every time I'd try to watch a movie they'd make some sort of announcement and it would be like screaming over my headphones. I watched the movie "saving mr banks" and part of the movie "milk" on the ride. They were both really good and so was my vodka cranberry. Bonus on international flights, free movies and alcohol. The food sucked though, they got the vegan part right but basically just made everything the same without meat or cheese. First meal was okay it was a veggie patties and carrots.
The snack, a roll with lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers (everyone else got sandwiches), and the second meal, burned tofu on bread, I could have done without.
We landed at the tumbo airport in South Africa around 5 pm. We had to wait in a line to get our passport stamped and everything went smoothly. It was very interesting to see all the culture as we got off the plane, there were a lot of people in Muslim robes and many women with their full bodies covered. No one lost their bags which was a huge relief.
Once we got our bags we went to wait for the shuttle to take us to the airport, there were clearly more of us than they thought because it took two rounds to get us to The Sunrock Lodge, which is where we stayed the first night. It was a really nice place to stay, we had dinner provided (although I only rice and salad, everyone elses food looked really good.) There was plenty of hot water and wifi throughout the lodge which was something that was totally unexpected. Except Netflix and Pandora do not work in this country.
Waking up on Thursday was pretty easy, I haven't even had to take a sleeping pill yet! We got all of our stuff together and got on a large coach, almost like a grayhound bus. The bus ride here was pretty slow, it was interesting to see abortion advertisements and penis enlargement flyers all over the city. We did stop at a gas station for lunch and there were water buffalo, rhinos and ostriches outside. It was awesome to see!
South African currancy is called Rand, it runs about 10 Rand to 1 USD. I used an ATM at the gas station and bought some snacks.
It took about six hours to get to the South Africa/Mozambique border. We had to get out and walk through the boarder crossing, getting one stamp on the South Africa side and then getting another stamp on the Mozambique side. The man at the window spoke english and was trying to talk to me, and I felt bad because it was so loud in the building that I couldn't really understand him. They also were burning trash and there was ash flying everywhere.
There was a lot of construction and not a whole lot to look at. One thing I did realize is that the culture here is very divided, you can drive past a giant casino one second and then see a huge cluster of tin shacks.
The lodge we're staying at is down a dirt road, and there were puddles, it made it so the giant bus couldn't get down the road. We had to unload and walk to the lodge. It was really dark and we had no idea where we were going but we made it. It was so dark when we got to the lodge that we couldn't really enjoy the view, also they had just painted a couple of the rooms so our room arrangements had to switch a little bit. We currently have 4 people in beds and one on the floor on 2 mattresses.
Luckily we have a fan because the air conditioner isn't working and it was HOT in that room. Dinner was salad, noodles and something that tasted sort of like baked beans.
No comments:
Post a Comment