Vacation stories

Our vacation began with a 25 hour bus trip from Windhoek to Johannesburg, with two friends, Loren and Cara. Our bus was travelling begind another bus from the same company. In the middle of the night, the bus in front of us hit a horse on the highway. It was pitch dark out so I didn't see the accident but the situation was eerie. We hung around for a while to make sure help was on the way for the disabled bus, then continued on our way.

In Jo-burg, Loren, Inbal, and I rented a car and drove to Lesotho, a small mountainous country completely surrounded by South Africa. We drove from the capital city Maseru up to a village in the mountains called Malealea. It was chilly and rainy up there. the cool weather was a shock to the system after coming from sweaty Odibo. We slept in a little round mud hut with a thatch roof that did a good job of keeping the rain out. We spent a whole day sitting around a fire at the lodge and playing with some dogs that live there. The next morning, the clouds lifted and we could see stunning views all around us. We were on top of one mountain peak, and we were ringed by valleys and other peaks. There was a big river below, andmany small villages with huts and livestock and cornfields. We did a two-day pony trek up and down the valleys and peaks. It sounded idyllic before I did it, but it was incredibly challenging. Riding horseback next to a sheer cliff brought out my fear of heights. It was physically difficult to ride a pony for 2 days, and my pony Nomsa didn't get along with Inbal's pony Sepuchi. After day one of the trek, we slept in a traditional Basotho village in the chief's spare hut. The hardest part of the trek was guiding the ponies through rivers. The water level was high and roaring after the rains, and the horses were afraid to cross. We crossed the river about four times during the trip, and at one spot the water was deep and the ponies kept tripping. There was one part of the riding I really enjoyed, which was along a flat path next to a cornfield. Anyway, I was happy to get back on my own feet at the end of the journey. The horses worked so hard for us. They are very intelligent, strong-willed and athletic animals.

After a bit more time in Jo-burg, we got on a bus to Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, which is a beautiful city with lots of old Portuguese architecture. As the bus pulled into the downtown area, I heard a gunshot coming from a side street. I looked down it and saw a burning car. I never found out what happened. We got some fruits at a stand on the street and a large red fish at the fish market, and we cooked dinner at the hostel. It was my first time to take an entire fish, fresh from the sea, and remove the scales, skin, head, fins, and bones before cooking it. The descaling was a messy job. I think the whole process of preparing and cooking took several hours, but the eating took ten minutes. Delicious.

For our next adventure we traveled up north to a town called Vilanculo on the coast of Mozambique. We arrived after the bus trip after dark so we didn't see how beautiful it was till the next morning. Our hostel was right on the beach. I didn't realize how much I missed the ocean until I saw it. Watching the waves on the shore, and later seeing the sand bars at low tide, made me happy and homesick at the same time. The ocean reminded me of Grandad. The warm sparkling green waters of the Indian Ocean look very different from Grandad's channel in Buzzards Bay, though.

We met a guy named Alredo on the beach who told us he had a small sailboat and offerend to take us to the islands of Bazaruto National Park for a reasonable fee. We spent three days there, stopping at three different islands, and did a lot of snorkelling and ate lots of seafood which Alfredo cooked over a fire for us. We even got to climb a huge sand dune (it felt like a mountain, with amazing views all around) on the biggest island. The best snorkeling was at a place called 2 mile reef. While I was under water snorkeling, I saw a lot of multicolored fish. At one point I was watching a school of small fish on my right. I slowly turned my head to the left, and I saw a shart head-on, watching me from about 5 feet away. I started swimming in the opposite direction quickly, and then I remembered hearing that sharks are attracted by splashing. So I slowly put my head out of the water and started screaming to the guys in the boat. The boat wasn't too far so I made it over there. Luckily the shark was not aggressive (it swam away), and it was pretty small. I'd say it was about 5 to 6 feet long, brownish, with a slender body and small face. We met a park environmentalist later who, based on my description, thought the shark was either a reef shark or a juvenile bullshark (Zambezi shark). I asked him for advice in case of a future meeting with a shark. He said screaming is just as attractive to sharks as splashing. He said the best thing to do is to stay still and keep an eye on the shark. Don't look it directly in the eye, but keep it in your range of vision. If it comes at you, punch it in the face. Even better, carry a stick or club with you and hit it. He said he's done this a few times with big sharks and they swim away.

After I got to the boat, I was too scared to get back in the water for the rest of the day. From the boat, I spotted Inbal and I shouted to him to watch out for the shark, and I told him which direction it was in. He perked up and swam directly there. He spent a lot of time over there, and eventually when he came back to the boat, he said he could see the shark swimming from a distance as well as a huge moray eel.

After our third day of the sailing trip, we left Benguerra Island early in the morning and intended to make a short trip sailing directly back to Vilanculo. the wind died though, and we spent the entire day in the middle of the ocean between the islands and the mainland. We were literally not moving an inch and the water was perfectly calm. The sun was baking hot and we ran out of drinking water, but the good news is that in our stillness we were able to observe the life around us. Some dolphins swam by the boat, and Inbal saw a sea turtle come up for air and dip back under again.

We stayed a couple more days in Vilanculo and then bused it south to Tofo Beach. While our Vilanculo sailing experience was an adventure, Tofo was the perfect place to relax and veg out. The beach was exquisite, with white sand , big waves, and dunes. We body surfed on the waves every day, sat on the beach and read, and ate lots of seafood. We stayed there almost a week.

We had a day in Maputo on our way out of the country. It was fun to walk around they city and observe the street names. In the neighborhood around our hostel, I found Avenida Mao Tse Tung, Av. Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Min, Vladimir Lenin, Karl Marx, and some African leaders I've been learning about. Also when I walked around, I was struck by all of the fancy mansions that were abandoned. They were scattered all over the rich parts of the city. They were crumbling with missing walls and roofs, and trees growing inside, but some of them still had their stained glass windows and ionic columns and overgrown gardens. The owners must have fled or been killed during the war. The civil war ended about 15 years ago, around the same time as Namibia's war for independence ended.

Since then we've been living on buses and not sleeping much. We're back in Windhoek now for a couple days of rest before the mid-service conference with the other volunteer teachers. Then it's back to work!

Now I'm going to take a nap at the hostel.