Day One of Spring Break!!

The first day of the trip started off fairly early. Around 4 a.m Thembie and Moses came to pick me up to take me to the airport where I would get to meet my other adventure seeking friends for the week ☺ The group ended up being really nice, and although I was the only one traveling alone I ended up making a group of great friends. There were a few students from my program, a few from interstudy, and two from arcadia. Our leader for this trip was Wesley, who we all met up with at the airport in Johannesburg. After arriving in Joburg we met Wesley as well as our truck driver Theunis and our cook for the week Mxolisi. Mxolisi, whose name is difficult to pronounce because there is a click in it, let us call him Moyo. We all were briefed on what our week would look like and then we boarded the truck where we would be for the majority of the day as we had a long journey ahead of us.
We had a short break for lunch at a grocery store known as Pick N’ Pay which are all over Southern Africa. I get pap (a very starchy form of mash potatoes) and a sausage, and of course a Cadbury bar.
We crossed the border between South Africa and Zimbabwe and set up our tents on the dusty ground at a backpackers lodge in Botswana. Botswana’s form of currency is the Pula, which is a bit stronger than the South African Rand. So as all of us went to the bar to play pool and buy drinks it was evident that we would not be spending much money there or else we would go broke very quickly. Wesley and Jake taught me how to play pool, which is always embarrassing, as I have been taught several times and still haven’t managed to succeed in playing well. Afterwards we had a buffet dinner for us consisting of beef stew, salad, pap, apple crumble and much more. It was all so delicious and after being stuffed we all walked back to our tents and thought about our journey to come.
From the get go, I have greatly enjoyed seeing a different part of Africa other than Cape town and the garden route. Although I hate the term the ‘real Africa’ this is what people would most likely refer to as the real Africa. Very rural, dusty bad roads, cows donkeys and other various animals spending time in the middle of the street, and fields and trees for miles to come. Botswana is truly beautiful but very different from Cape Town, and at that time, I needed different.