Sunday 22 May 2011

Day 15

Our last day of the trip started off with a bit of breakfast, and a trip to the local street markets. The girls bought some wicked souvenirs, including some really nice paintings. We bought some lunch at a local supermarket, and ate on some rocks that looked out into the Indian Ocean - very beautiful and very relaxing. After lunch, we headed back to the hostel, and did some last-minute packing before Percy, our driver, arrived. We said goodbye to the people at our hostel, and headed to the Cape Town International Airport. At the airport, Sarah and Andrea were picked up by the people from the International Volunteer Headquarters - these two will be staying one more week in Cape Town to volunteer at an orphanage. And then there were 4. After eating a bit of food in the airport, we said our goodbyes to Ilze and Craig, and thanked them for everything they had done for us. We then waited in the airport until Karl, the program director of Soccer4Hope, arrived for a debriefing. We discussed what we enjoyed about our time with Soccer4Hope, and what will be the next steps for the organization. We hope to continue helping the All-Stars on a monthly basis, and do the best we can to make this organization more and more successful. We then said our goodbyes to Karl, and headed to our gate. We hopped on the plane, and that was the end of the trip for Kristen, Salina, Jo, and I.

This concludes our blog postings from our trip. We hope you enjoyed following our blog, and we would like to thank all of our supporters and donors! This trip became a reality because of you!

Stay tuned for a montage of our trip!

Yours truly,

Morena

Day 14

Our 3rd day in Hermanus started off with a trip to Zwelihle, where some local soccer games were taking place. We watched some soccer for a bit until the two youth teams affiliated with Rainbow Trust arrived. They played a friendly match against each other, and team black ended up winning a shoot-out After the game, the team and split the teams into two groups, and we ran a fun training session for them. We played some games, and put together a few relay races for them. I think the kids really enjoyed themselves. After the session, we walked over to the Red Cross, located in the township, and had some braai, which was prepared by the wonderful people who volunteer for the Red Cross. After our lunch, we headed back to our hostel to change into some more comfortable clothes. We had the afternoon at leisure, so Corrie, one of the employees of Rainbow Trust, picked us up at our hostel and took us on a beautiful mountain walk. We walked to the "waterfall", but since the weather had been very dry, it looked more like a puddle - haha. The cave in which the waterfall was located was very beautiful, and we took lots of pictures together. After our walk, we headed back to our hostel to get ready for our farewell dinner! We ate at a beautiful restaurant (I can't remember the name), and we all had a FEAST! the meal was just sensational. We headed back to the hostel after dinner, where we all stayed up played pool until 2:30am, which was when Lindsay, Caitlin, and Brittany were picked up to go to the airport. We said our goodbyes, shed a few tears, and the 6 remaining players went to bed!

Stay tuned for our last day of the trip!

Day 12

Hello blog followers!

We starting off the day with a verrryyyy cold game drive in Aquila. We drove around for about an hour, and had yet to see any animals. We finally arrived to the lion area, and we saw about 8-9 lions. They were all walking so close to the safari truck, and we were able to take some beautiful pictures of the pride of lions! The lions started eating a bit of food further up the mountain, so our tour guide decided to move closer to the animals in order to get a better view of the feast! Unfortunately, one of the lioness's was not impressed that we were watching them eat, so she started to walk towards the truck, crouched down as if she was hunting, and was growling at us. The tour guide had to slowly back the truck up out of there before the lion attacked us! Very intense. After our near-death experience, we continued through the mountains, where we saw more hippos, springbuck, rhinos and zebra. As we were heading back to the resort, we ended up seeing what many of us were eager to see, a giraffe! He was quite far away from us, but Kristen was able to take some wicked pictures with her high tech camera! We headed back towards the resort and went into another blocked off section for animals; this area had cheetahs, leopards, crocodiles, and warthogs. All in all, the safari was absolutely unbelievable!

After the safari, we backed up the van, and made our way to our next destination, Hermanus. Along the way, we stopped a cute little shop in the middle of nowhere; we had a bit of lunch, and bought a ton of dried fruit and nuts. We arrived in Hermanus about 3 hours later, and we checked into our hostel, called Hermanus Backpackers. We decided to walk around the town and look fr whales in the Indian ocean. Although we didn't see any whales, we definitely enjoyed the beautiful views. We had a few drinks at a little pub close to water, and afterwards we headed back to the hostel, where the employees had prepared a beautiful braai for us; it was definitely one of the best meals of the trip! Finally, after a veryyy long day, we decided to call it a night.

Cheers!

Monday 16 May 2011

Day 13

Good evening dear followers!

Day 2 of Hermanus started with a simple toast and coffee breakfast followed with our introduction to the Hermanus Rainbow Trust. We got in touch with this organization through our absolutely amazing travel agent Ilze. Seriously don’t know what we’d do without her. The headquarters are located in the township Zwelihle and although another township in South Africa, the environment is quite different from Guguletu. A couple of facts: the crime rate is way lower and there’s a smaller population therefore resulting in quite a bit more space. Many of the houses have yards basically. We had a briefing at the headquarters, running us through the general mission of the organization and the different departments within the org. Corrie has been working pretty closely with us during our time with the organization. Afterwards, they kindly took us to see one of their facilities. In one word: impressive. The athletic facility was complete with two rugby fields and a turf field for soccer and field hockey. Leanne, who works for Rainbow Trust, have us the run down on the facility and its maintenance. They have been able to fund a lot of the projects with the help of Barclay’s as well as the national lottery. After visiting the facility, we hit up a random field in Zwelihle and played a little World Cup. Congrats to Caitlin and Yuando for the big win. Lindsay and I were terribly disappointed. We headed back to the headquarters where Corrie organized such a nice and super appreciated lunch for us. What a gem. From there, we came back to the backpackers to get ready to stroll through the markets and have some dinner. Some of us were feeling under the weather or just plain exhausted so it’s no surprise that some of us used this time for a nap. We walked down to the coast for some whale watching (we spotted what we think was a Southern Right whale), market bartering and dinner. Some of us also hit up the Whale Museum at the time. We polished off the night with some great dishes, mojitos and amazing desserts at Cubana (might I suggest the brownie).

Stay tuned for our last day (and day 12) in South Africa. Sad face. Again, sorry about the lack of photos. We’ll get on it as soon as possible.

Friday 13 May 2011

Day 11

On Wednesday morning we said our goodbyes to Cape Town and set out on the road. This time, we were headed for the quintessential African experience – a safari. We packed up all our belongings and piled into the van with Charley and Craig at 9:00 am. The drive was scenic and took us along a series of mountains and valleys, although most of us were either asleep or reading within ten minutes of departure. At one exciting point along the way, we witnessed a troop of baboons following along the roadway in the opposite direction as we were traveling. Our first African animal sighting of the day!

Around 11:30, we arrived at the Aquila Game Reserve, our home for one night. Driving into the reserve, we were all very excited to see the rows of buildings with thatched roofs that looked exactly like one would picture for an African safari. We were welcomed with a tall glass of sparkling wine or grape juice, and instantly felt transported into a luxury lifestyle far different than that we had experienced during our time visiting the townships of Khayelitsha. After we made our way through the reception area, we came upon a beautiful infinity pool where we instantly dropped our bags, found places on the surrounding lounge chairs, and settled right in. We had to wait until two to check in to our rooms, so we hung out by the pool for a bit, and then had a delicious and extensive buffet lunch inside the beautiful dining hall. Finally we got to check into our rooms. We each shared with one other person and enjoyed beautiful king size beds, outdoor showers, and towels rolled into the shape of elephants.

At 4 pm, we departed for our first game drive of the trip. We rode in a sturdy 4x4 vehicle with several other tourists and were each given a fleece blanket as we got in. We set off with our driver, Bergke who also acted as guide during the expedition. First off, he explained to us all what the “Big Five” animals of Africa were. Consisting of the lion, leopard, Cape buffalo, rhino, and elephant, these are the most dangerous animals because they won’t back down from a fight, and can do some serious damage if you manage to find yourself in a confrontation with one of them. Bouncing along the rough tracks of the 4,500 acre game reserve, we soon came across the first of the animals sighted, the Cape Buffalo. After that, the animals came in quick succession and by the end of the day we had managed to see:

A raft of hippos
A herd of springbok
A crush of rhinos
A dazzle of zebras
A flock of ostrich
A herd of oryx
An implausibility of wildebeest
A memory of elephants (ok, just two)

And, last but not least

A pride of lion

The lions were held in a separate enclosure and were quite a distance away when we saw them, but we heard that in the mornings they are often quite lazy and can be seen closer to the trail, so we crossed our fingers for our next game drive the next morning. As we left their enclosure, the sun had set beyond the nearby hills and I noticed it was getting quite dark so I asked Mo if she could still see anything. “Take off your sunglasses” was her response. Oh, right. Not my brightest moment.

We followed up the evening game drive with yet another filling buffet dinner where we went over many of the events of the previous days and discussed our amazing experience with Soccer 4 Hope. After a very exciting day, we all made our way to our rooms for an early bedtime, anticipating the early wakeup for the morning game drive on Friday.

Stay tuned for more adventures from South Africa! (and we will post pictures soon - they take a really really long time to upload and our internet time is limited, sorry)

Day 10

Molo!

Tuesday – our last day with S4H. Also, Wewe’s birthday. Thanks to some thinking ahead from Brittany and Kristen, we had ordered some cupcakes from Checkers. When we went to pick them up, Kris had a minor heart attack when the baker played a slight trick making her think they had not understood our order. No need to panic – we walked out with cupcakes and other refreshments incident free!

We arrived at the Rainbow Centre as usual – we opened the morning with a couple rounds of flinch and continued from where we left off on Monday. The groups switched activities between Excel and reffing, and both sessions went smoothly. After we had completed the skills training, we sneakily set out our party paraphernalia and surprised Wewe with a smashing rendition of “happy birthday”. Some heartfelt “thanks” were exchanged between ourselves, and S4H. Over the course of our 7 days working with S4H and in particular the 8 All-Stars, we developed some very close relationships, and lasting memories. We entered this opportunity with humble expectations, which were far surpassed. Hopefully the skills we provided were as useful as the life lessons the All-Stars taught us.

Charley arrived at 2:30 and we packed up one last time to deliver the last of our gear bags to the local schools. We stayed at the school for only a short time, as S4H had organized a game for us at 3:30. In Cape Town time, this really meant that despite our timeliness, the game did not kick-off until 4:30. We played 2 short matches, the first against a local U20 team, and the second against a U16 team. It was highly entertaining – the girls showed a good understanding of the game, and it was a good chance for us to show off our skills (or lack thereof).

Arriving back at Ashanti, we showered (we were a tad sweaty post match), and proceeded to the hostel lounge where they had organized a braai (aka a bbq). We ate our boerwurst and got amped for the upcoming pool tournament. Salina showed impressive (and highly unexpected) pool skill and made it to the final where she faced Wayne. Despite some fierce competition, Salina triumphed and won a Cape Point Tour, which, given our imminent departure from Cape Town, she kindly donated to Wayne. Shortly after Salina’s victory, we headed back to our rooms and to bed.

Later, Cape Town!

Day 9

Hey there!
Guess who!?

It’s Sarah and Andrea again!
Miss us?

It was quite a slack day with the usual breakfast of champions, consisting of the Ashanti Lodge breaky medley. We then raced to the local food stand to acquire goods for our large lunches. Yay for Checkers.

With a hop in our step we headed for the Rainbow Center. Little did we know that we would be waiting for an hour and a half…for the Allstars to finish their Monday morning meeting. In the meantime we hackied away and played some ‘taps.’ I leisurely slept on the concrete.

When they finally graced us with their presence, we started off the morning with the animal game. Caitlin was absolutely awful as she couldn’t hold a steady beat or remember any other animals involved. She improved…slightly. Lindsay and Brittany took half the folks to work on basic excel training and spreadsheets. The rest of us taught basic soccer and refereeing skills. It was funny…..Vuyani gave Bart a yellow card and then had to take it back after realizing that he incorrectly penalized her. We played a small-sided match and had the Allstars ref it as we purposely…and not so purposely, messed up.

It was then lunchtime…..we once again enjoyed our homemade goods and hung out at the center playing some goofy games. We then were sent to a couple schools to deliver equipment and then went to a large field in Gugulethu to ref and assist in a couple soccer matches. We led warm-up and I reffed. It was extremely difficult with the language barrier.

Dinner was at The Clay Oven on Long Street….we once again had pizza and it was fantastic as per usual. We went to bed ridiculously early…Mo achieved 8:30pm bedtime.


Keep following. Yo da best.

Peace and love,
Bean and Bug.