July 2014 and Beyond, pt. 1
Tomorrow, we have been in South Africa for one month. If I wasn't already so adept to the time zone, it would feel like we arrived yesterday. I've never known a time in my life to move at such a ferocious pace, Europe included, and I have absorbed every second of it. From the highs and the lows, the hostels and the hotels, the familiar and the completely terrifying, I've seen it all through my expanding eyes. The feeling of it is all consuming.
What I'm trying to say is, we have been very, very bad bloggers. Very. Nearly one month here and we haven't breathed one single, solitary virtual syllable, nil. Yes, we know how absurd that is and yes, we apologize from our deepest hearts of hearts, and hope that we can gracefully move on from this unfortunate hump in our track record. I could spend the entire intro to this post coming up with a long list of semi-credible excuses to make myself feel better, but since this is your post, I think a more wise use of my time would be to address your concerns. I understand that some of you lovely readers have reached out, asking what in gods name was going on and if we could please post something just to confirm we hadn't died.
Well, that's basically the purpose of this blog post, so hopefully, by the end of today, all your questions will have been answered, just, make sure to ready yourself with a big bucket of ice water to dunk your pretty heads in incase you start to fall asleep, because this is going to be a long one!
On the 11th of July, 2014, we arrived tired and hungry, in South Africa. I can't remember what time it was. In fact, I can't actually remember what time anything was in that first 7 days. Jet lag is a freaky thing. C
oincidentally, we got no pictures at all in the first week which, when you think about it, wasn't at all coincidental, seeing as we all looked like angry, sleep deprived baboons.
Despite that, we still managed to get most of what needed to be done, done. We bought food, visited schools, aquatinted ourselves with the house, sorted out some urgent work issues, etc, etc. And, most important of all, we slept. It took me a full six days to adjust to the time zone. Thats six days of falling fast asleep in the car, not being able to close my eyes until 3:00 in the morning, and waking up at noon. Our poor domestic, Mary, waited outside for two hours on the first day, not wanting to interrupt our sleep! Once we finally hauled our lazy butts out of bed, we enjoyed a delicious brunch, provided by the one and only Tim and Rose, a.k.a some of the greatest people I've met in SA thus far. Brunch was followed by a day of intensive shopping and touring, which, while fun, left me utterly pooped (no surprises there), and once Rose loaded us up with a full supply of South African cookbooks and DVDs we headed home. We spent the rest of the week doing more of the same, which was fine with me! I loved the look of my school and, as my crippling jet lag faded, started developing a routine.
The next week, I spent nine hours in a cramped car with a dysfunctional engine.
That was not part of the routine.
Our first excursion was to the Kruger National Park. If you haven't heard of it, it's an enormous wildlife reserve on the border of Mozambique and the provinces Limpopo and Mpumalanga in North-East South Africa. The park itself is a stunningly rich Savannah landscape, and so it was no surprise that we were all eager to arrive. Unfortunately, it wasn't as easy as it had sounded.
As I mentioned, our car was experiencing some issues. The first time we failed to start it was when my parents were picking us up from mine and Rory's school. It had been a shockingly fantastic day and we hopped into the car with spirits high; spirits which were promptly flattened as soon as my Dad turned the key. It simply refused to start. So, we sat. We sighed. We waited. We tried again. Still nothing. Fortunately, the staff at Sacred Heart College was very helpful and did everything they could to make our suffering as comfortable as possible. After roughly a half-hour of sitting around, we called the South African Automobile Association (SAAA or AA for short) who took an eon to come. They couldn't find a problem so they called for a tow, which took another eon to come. Just before they arrived my dad tried again and by some miracle, it started. As you and I both know, though, this stroke of good luck couldn't last.
We divided the trip in two and made a stop in Sabi where we stayed a night. Our B&B was eclectic, toeing the line of kitschy, but pleasingly so. We had an amazing dinner at a local traditional restaurant and a good sleep. Apart from being squeezed into the backseat of a car with my two other siblings, we were quite comfortable!
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Swimming pool in winter
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Our luck changed for the worse the next morning. We woke up later than had been expected, had a lengthy breakfast followed by a morning swim and a short stroll. By the time we left Sabi, it was
9:00 am. Assume panic stations, everyone. We drove for a while, our minds alert with worry for the car stopping. The longer we drove, the uglier it sounded, the more we prayed. Please,
please, may we not stall in the middle of the road. In the first leg of the drive, we didn't pause, even for one second, we just kept driving and driving. And then, the unthinkable happened. We saw a stop sign. I'm assuming that most of you reading this are adults, and so I won't need to repeat Mr. Police Man's definition of a rolling stop.
Fortunately, he took pity on us and our dying car and let us putt free with an address for a local mechanic. In town, we stopped for a bite at Wimpy's, a local fast food chain. I had the greek salad (otherwise known as the big pile of lettuce with a few olives on top). May I just say that as a vegetarian, by the end of July, I could barely think of a greek salad without convulsing.
This whole stop got both of the 'rents very anxious. As far as they were concerned, any time spent not driving was time waisted, and the hours were counting down to 6:00, when the doors to Krueger closed for the night. Did I forget to mention that? On top of this, a slight miscalculation had been made. My parents thought we had to be through the gates to the park by 6:00 but in fact, we had to be at our rest camp by that time. Our rest camp was three hours away from the gate. Needless to say, they couldn't let us in.
A big thank you to the folks at the South African Wildlife College for allowing a family of five, tired, grumpy hooligans to spend the night with you. We owe you our sanity.
I think I can safely say, with the agreement of the rest of my family, that this was our most trying experience to that moment.
Other notables include, getting locked out of our house, the power going out for 24 hours with a simple fix and setting off the alarm. So. Many. Times.
Talk soon!
Holly
