Goodbye SA

I'm having a hard time saying goodbye to this country, I've realized. South Africa has been a sort of "home" for us these past two years... An escape from the rural African life. Not to say parts of South Africa aren't exactly the same as Swaziland, but the feeling of crossing a boarder and going to a city with skyscrapers and malls and consistently hot showers was as close to going home as we could get. South Africa has always been our shining beacon of hope when life in Swaziland became too much. "If I can just make it one more month, I'll be in Joburg/Durban/Cape Town for two weeks." It's hard for me to imagine never coming back here. I hope that's not true. I hope I come back many many times. If this trip across the coast has taught me anything, it's that South Africa has so much to offer. We've seen cities and beach towns, townships and suburbs, McDonalds and Chicken Licken, black people and white people, and 11 different languages. It is so extremely diverse in everyway, and that is something I have come to appreciate, having lived in a place where 99% of the population is the same race and ethnicity. I love this country.

It's been such an interesting trip across the coast. It is such a great route to backpack, but not a well tapped one. Everyone goes to Europe. Not many people think of backpacking the coast of South Africa. Because of this, and because everyone does one of two routes (CT to Durban or Durban to CT), you run into the same people in each town. There's only about 50 people backpacking the whole thing, and 50% are going the same way you are, so you all get to know each other pretty well. By the time we reached Cape Town, we didn't go anywhere without running into people we knew... The Old Biscuit Mill Market in Woodstock, the reggae concert at the random backpackers, the bar down the street. It was fun. But now we're leaving our group of surf loving, coast travelers. Will it be the same going up? I've heard so, but I guess we'll see.

Anyway, this past weekend in Cape Town has been fun for sure. But we're ready to move on to places we haven't seen; uncharted territory... for us anyway.