Frontier!

A couple of things I forgot to mention in my spring break (it’s actually called the autumn recess, people look at you weird if you say spring break). While in Lesotho we stayed at a house in a Sotho village. I was too tired to ever go out into the village to talk to the people, though they didn’t speak English. The first night we stayed in the house a few kids from the village came in and sold stuff and sang. It was so cute. There were also these two kids of the lady that cleaned the house that would come around every morning. The little girl was probably 2 and her brother 6. We would play peek-a-boo with her or she would copy us making faces or tapping the glass. She loved it and the best part was her brother would just light up every time he would see his sister having fun. On the way back to South Africa, we met up with another group that was just heading out. This group was 3 ladies from Holland. They were not dressed for horseback riding. They had on nice shirts and sweatpants, they were chain smoking, and they had toilet paper for when they had to go to the bathroom outside. We just sort of laughed at them.

On Monday (that is the 13th) the South African National cricket team was playing Australia in Port Elizabeth. I went, got burnt, and had a great time. The park was packed. We sat directly in front of the band and directly behind a couple of drunk frat guys who tried to sing and dance to the music but could never really get on the beat or the right tone. South Africa kicked Australia’s butt. The crowd would go nuts when SA got a 6 or 4 or when a player got a 50 or 100 (if you want me to explain what this all means let me know, it may take a while I just learned myself).

This weekend, the 17th-19th, we had our final excursion as a large group. We went out into the frontier (hence the name frontier excursion) and stayed with a couple of Afrikaner farmers. I thought it was going to be an interesting weekend full of awkward moments but it turned out to be a lot of fun. We left on Friday morning and drove for 3 hours into the middle of nowhere. We were on a tiny dirt road for about half of the drive and had to pass through a guarded gate to get there. I’m surprised the vans we took to get out there made it. Once we got there we had lunch and rode horses. You would think after riding horses for 3 days over spring break I’d be sick of them and you would be right. My horse didn’t listen to me, apparently I’m not aggressive enough to ride horses, and walked me through a thorn tree (I have the scratches to prove it). After that we went to go see a milking demonstration which is basically exactly the same as here only on a smaller scale. The cows did not seem all too happy to be stuck in a small building getting milked. Then we lounged around outside and waited for about 3 hours for dinner, which ended up being well worth the wait.

The next day we woke up by some loud roosters and ducks right outside our window at 5, got distracted by Project Runway and Danger Mouse on TV, had breakfast and hopped onto the back of a few bakkies and rode around the farm to check out some animals. We saw (besides the tame eland and kudu in the front yard) ostriches, mohair sheep, angora goats, and horses that looked as though they should be in a movie with their tails and manes blowing in the wind as they are running with their little babies running beside them and the steed galloping behind (deep breath), and we almost ran over a couple of baboons on the road. We rode through bunch of fields, saw some amazing views, had some fun times getting bruised butts in the back of the truck. Then we went to go swimming in a gorge. It was too cold for me so I decided to climb some rocks instead.

That night we hung out at the other farmer’s house (there were 2 farms we visited total). This house is amazing. Just from what I saw it had 6 bedrooms, 5 baths, 3 dining rooms, a huge TV room, a pool, a pool house, a guest house, a tennis court, and a tame eland, kudu, and a herd of fallow deer. The first thing we did was go to a sheep shearing demonstration. It was kind of hard to watch the ram being contorted into odd positions as the farm hands sheared it but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop wearing wool. We then went to the farmer’s trophy room. He loves to hunt big game and the first thing I run into when I walk in is a giraffe head. A bit frightening I have to say. There were probably 50 mounts in that room including zebra, warthog, springbok, eland, wildebeest, some birds, and a lot of other stuff. I then just hung out, read, watched rugby and soccer, played ultimate Frisbee, watched people play tennis and had an amazing dinner. After dinner we had a night drive scheduled, to see all the animals that come out at night. It was cold, being up in the mountains will do that, but never had I seen so many stars. I was more interested in that than the animals we saw, which were few.

The next day (which was just yesterday) we got to breakfast late. We were supposed to be at the farm by 8 so we could be on the road back to PE by 3 (we joked that Gary had a tee time and couldn’t miss it – he’s obsessive about golf). That didn’t happen. We got there at about 8:40 and took our time eating breakfast and then hopped back into the bakkies for a drive to a very scenic overlook. It took about an hour off road to get there but it was worth it. On the top of the mountain/hill thing we could see all the land owned by one of the farmers, which was a lot. This weekend gave us a glimpse into the lives of some South Africans we have not met yet. It is a different view on rural South Africa. Unlike the tiny villages I have been used to seeing this is a farmer living a very comfortable life in a nice house in the middle of nowhere, the closest town (of probably only about a couple hundred people) an hour away on bad dirt roads. It was funny to see such comfort in the middle of nowhere. I’m so glad I went and I had an amazing time (the incredibly cute puppy, Charlie, helped too).

Peace.