Leaving Coffee Bay, I drove in the rain
north to the main highway. Confident in my driving abilities so far, I picked
up two girls on the way to school as my
first hitch passengers. Then somehow I got led to this dirt road where I had to
do some serious off-roading in the grass where the road was under construction.
Let me tell you- bouncing down a bad dirt road in a tiny car with tires the
size of your head is not the most fun thing in the world. Then I picked up an
old lady (people call grandmas “gogo” here), again used my infantile isiXhosa
to greet her and ask her where she was going, and dropped her off at the
highway junction. Then I drove to a town called Cintsa just to check it out. It
was pretty meh, especially in the rain, but I guess worth a look since I was
able to write about it. I’m trying this new thing where I write city
descriptions for this website hostelz.com and get a few bucks for each one. I
think it’ll help me break into travel writing if I decide to get serious
about that.
Soon
enough, I got into East London, where I would be staying with my friend
Colleen’s extended relatives who live there. They moved about a year ago from
Germay because they just wanted to live abroad. Good enough reason for me. The
family was amazing and so sweet, and I spent the afternoon playing with their
dog Scooper (named after Sheldon Cooper, as they are obsessed with the TV show
Big Bang Theory) and with the daughter. The father and son and I did some
obligatory, post-election political talk over an amazing German-inspired dinner
they cooked.
The
next day, I took the dog to the beach, then the family went out to this
adorable café called Lavender Blue where I got an awesome
pear/biltong/brie/peanut brittle salad. I am in love with salads now that they
are actually available. Salads in the traditional sense (and certainly not
fancy salads) don’t really exist in Lesotho. Then I met up with a girl I had
met in Coffee Bay at a restaurant called Sanook for dinner.
East
London doesn’t really have much going for it in terms of touristy things to do,
except a pretty nice beach, but it was just so nice to be so fully welcomed
into a family’s home for a couple of days after camping and solo traveling thus
far.
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