After my last post full of text, let's finally have a look at some pictures!
For my last week in South Africa, I rented a car and went around the Mpumalanga region (where the Kruger park is). There are many amazing landscapes there, the most impressive one being the Blyde River Canyon, the 3rd biggest Canyon in the world. I drove to the top of it and the view was breath-taking!
Lunch break at the top of the canyon!
A few weeks ago I left South Africa as my visa was expiring, I am now writing this from Mozambique! More about that in future posts. This post is a bit different, I wanted to share a bit my impressions on the social situation in South Africa, so beware it's a lot of text, don't expect pictures here.
I loved my trip around South Africa, those three months have been
incredible. It was the first time I took so much time to discover a
country in a trip, and it really is a completely different experience.
Besides the obvious advantage of having more time to see more places and
enjoy them more, I found that the most interesting part was to really
be able to properly experience and understand the culture there. When going on
a short trip to a country, it is so easy to completely miss the actual
cultural environment; not the one you see in museums, but the things you
only get to learn by interacting with locals and going out of the
touristy places. This is something I was fortunate enough to experience
in South Africa, and I actually feel like I now got a decent global
picture of the different aspects of South African culture, its
struggles, history and aspirations. And I find it absolutely
fascinating! South Africa really is a special country, because of its tragic
history and the fragile balance between the different populations that
compose the Rainbow Nation. You got a few hints here and there
throughout my posts, but I thought I would try to introduce you a bit
further to the situation in South Africa and what it is like to live
there, in a dedicated post. Of course this understanding is mostly based
on my encounters so it could be biased, but I do have the impression I
have met quite a few different people there from different backgrounds. Feel free to react if you agree or disagree in the comments!
After Pretoria, my next and last stop was Kruger, in the North East of South Africa. Last stop because unfortunately my visa was expiring after 3 months of travel in this wonderful country! The Kruger National Park is one of the biggest reserve for wild animals in Africa. It's huge... roughly a region of 65 x 360 km size. It's very famous and you get to see any african animal you can think of, including of course the Big Five: Lions, Leopards, Buffaloes, Elephants and Rhinos.
I found a nursery farm right next to the park to work in (with Workaway), where I stayed for about two weeks. The farm was nice, and I had free weekends to explore the surroundings with the other volunteers! We rented a car and went straight to Kruger.
In Kruger, like in most safari reserves, you pay to enter with your own car, and then you look for animals while driving on the numerous roads going through the park. It's quite touristy but the park is so big that you are alone most of the time!
I saw sooo many amazing animals in there... Let me show you some of the numerous pictures I took of them them!
First of course, the lions... We saw some lions eating a buffalo right next to the road, it was crazy!
After Lesotho, I went straight to Pretoria, the capital, by night bus. Pretoria isn't really a very interesting city by itself, but I went to visit a friend, Bryson, I had met in my hostel of Cape Town.
Bryson was very sweet and came to pick me up at the bus terminal (he showed up two hours late, of course, this is Africa!), and then took me a bit around the city.
It's been a long time since I haven't posted, and a lot has happened since last post! So let's first start with a memorable journey through Lesotho :)
Once back from the Sani Pass at my hostel on the South African side, my next goal was to enter again into Lesotho, but this time with all my backpacks, to cross Lesotho from East to West! Here is how it looks on the map:
After a few days of hiking around the mountains, I was finally ready for the ascension of the Sani Pass, and had fully recovered from my tick bite fever.
I booked a hostel at the top of the pass, the plan being to hike up, spend the night up there, and hike back down the next day to my lovely hostel at the bottom. It didn't all quite go to plan in the end as you'll see!
The Sani Pass: Lesotho is hiding behind those mountains...
After a week of antibiotics to treat my tick bite fever, I was back in shape to finally explore the Drakensberg mountains around me. I'm staying at a nice hostel in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by beautiful mountains, with a lot of amazing hikes to do, so I was eager to start!
It's the end of my volunteering at the farm! I am now at Sani Pass, in the mountains, at the border with Lesotho. I didn't get to do much here for the moment because I got a tick bite fever and have been a bit sick, but I'm taking antibiotics and am already much better. So before I post about the amazing hikes I will be doing around here, I'm coming back a bit on my stay at the farm with some more pictures and videos!
I stayed almost 3 weeks at the farm in the end, it was a great way for me to settle down a bit, take a rest from the moving, and enjoy a peaceful environment while learning a lot about work at a farm!
A peaceful little farm in the mountains
On one of the days at the farm, Gerry (the owner) decided to take us on a safari! So we jumped on the back of his pick up truck and went into a nice game reserve. Game reserve is the name given to the safari parks, like the Addo Elephant national park I went to earlier.
This game reserve was called Tala, and although a bit smaller than Addo, was also very impressive with other animals. No elephants here, but Giraffes!
Curious Giraffe!Hi all!
After two weeks on the road, I was pretty happy to give the car back and being able to relax a bit. Being every day in a new place is quite exhausting, and I needed a place to settle for a bit!
So I subscribed to this website called Workaway, on which people can post if they need volunteers to work for them in exchange for accomodation and food in general. I found close to Durban (or rather to Pietermaritzburg) an offer of staying in a organic farm, and I decided to go for it!
The farm is ran by a small family, Gerry, his wife and their daughter, all very nice and friendly. There is another volunteer here with me, another french guy!
The deal is that I work about 5 hours a day, 6 days a week, and I get to stay at their farm and get food from the farm every day.
