Spring Vac Day 1: An eventful start

My apologies that this is about a month late, its been a bit crazy these past few weeks and I’m just now able to update this.

Who: Me, Rachel, Gillian, Becca, Nora, and Mary

What: Spring break! (aka spring “vac”)

Where: The Garden Route to Cape Town!

When: August 31- September 1

We all woke up fairly late on Saturday morning and took our time getting ready for the next week of adventure. After some setbacks with the cars and an extended brunch we hit the road and began our +10 hour drive to Cape Town. Ok so everything was going pretty much fine; My car had a spectacular DJ (Rachel) and a wonderful driver (Gillian) and if I do say so I was the perfect passenger. About 2-3 hours in we were in need of a potty break so we pulled over at a gas station right outside of Plettenberg Bay. This is where we encountered our first oops moment.

Long story short Rachel got locked in the bathroom. The doorknob broke and she was literally trapped in there. Thank goodness she is brilliant, she somehow climbed out of a window and freed herself from that awful place. We then loaded back into the cars and continued driving for a while, until we got hungry, that was oops moment #2.

So driving in South Africa is the opposite of what we are used to in the States, and sometimes you just forget. On our way off of an exit ramp, we accidentally went on the wrong side of the road and thankfully no one was coming right at us but we all had a bit of a freak out.

So we continued our journey for quite a few more hours, stopping for gas and food as needed. It felt like we would never make it to Cape Town, but honestly the views  that you see along the Garden Route are breath taking. I was so happy to get the back seat because I was able to see everything, and get some pretty spectacular shots all along the coast. 

We finally started seeing signs for Cape Town and thats when the excitement really hit. The sun had been down for a few hours, and we were making our way over a mountain, confident that Cape Town was just on the other side. When we reached the very top of the mountain we were covered in fog. I’ve never experienced such thick fog before, it was terrifying. We very slowly made out way down the road, but none of us could really tell if we were on the correct side, or on a road at all. The fog finally cleared after about 5 minutes and then we  saw a valley full of lights. CAPE TOWN! We just had to follow a few more simple directions and then we would be at our hostel! The amount of cheering going on in both cars was probably audible over the noise of the traffic, we had finally made it after nearly 11 hours in the car. There was one slight problem, we couldn’t find our hostel. It didn’t make any sense, we had been on the correct road, and turned around at least 5 times, but there was no Long Street or Long Street Backpackers to be found. After a few very confusing and unhelpful  phone calls we pulled over at a gas station to ask for directions, surely we were close by. 

And here ladies and gents is oops moment #3

It turned out we weren’t even in Cape Town. I wish I was joking, I really do. We were still over an hour away...

A bit frustrated, we all hit the road again and finally made it to Cape Town around midnight. Now the thing that you need to understand about Long Street is that it is he main everything street in Cape Town, and when we arrived that Saturday night, it was wild. I’ve never seen a street so packed full of people, the night life scene on Long Street is great, and with the awesome bars and cafe’s lining the street there is so much to do! With that being said, parking was terrible, but hey at least we made it there.

After checking in we were put in a temporary room (of course there was a booking issue because as you have probably noticed, things just don’t ever seem to work out quite the way they should for us), and after some showers we all passed out. It had been the longest and most exhausting day ever, but we had finally made it to Cape Town.

Cheers,

An exhausted American