_I sorta hate travel logs like this because they tend to be self-indulgent, but I guess I owe it to you guys to give you a bit of a glimpse of South Africa. And I didn’t bring my digital camera for fear of it getting stolen, but now I regret that decision.

_The term ended on Friday and vac(ation) officially started on Saturday. There was a point on Friday night when Cuzzie, Corbs and I were sitting at Friar’s Nightclub bitching about our respective girl problems. I told them that the only reasonable thing to do would be to get drunk, forget girls and dance. They agreed. Which is probably why my vac started with our house warden knocking on my door at 10am, telling me that I needed to clear out. Luckily I’d packed the night before.

_I met Mumbai outside and we got picked up by a family friend of his. After we got our bus tickets and some much needed still-drunk lunch, we went back to family friend’s house and spent the day the way that all first vac days should be spent: asleep. Eventually we woke up, got some food and watched premier league soccer until Calypso came to pick me up. Calypso, her sister and I all went out for a quick drink, which turned in to a long drink. Which, amazingly, managed to turn into me meeting Mumbai at the bus stop at 7am.

_I learned one important life lesson from all this: If you get motion sickness easily, than don’t ride in the very last row window seat on the top level of a Greyhound double decker bus. You never quite get over the feeling of tipping over when you go around curves.

_We arrived in Port Elizabeth and got in the sketchiest cab ever. It had no meter, no signs and a crack in the windshield. Then the cabbie started eating his breakfast while driving us to the airport. It was so cheap, though. We found out, upon arrival at the airport, that one of the breakers was shot so the Steers (South African McDonalds) had no power. Mumbai was heartbroken. But we were also sitting there with about sixty Rhodes University kids, so we had people to talk to. While Mumbai sat on pins and needles waiting for the Steers power to come back on, I decided to make some actual travel plans. I didn’t have any yet. Unfortunately for me, Iron Man was taking place, so almost every hostel and guest house was booked. Luckily after many calls on Mumbai’s phone I found one that had a room. And then the power came on. So I got some food, took a cab to the B&B, fell on the bed and was instantly bored off my ass.

_I spent the day sleeping and watching movies on the three channels that the TV offered. I began to feel a little depressed. I was going to Cape Town, I new that, and I had a BazBus ticket, which was a good start, but I really did not have any accomodation along the way or anyone to travel with. That “What am I doing with my life” feeling started to weigh me down.

_Now here comes the shameless plug: If it weren’t for BazBus, I would have given up, taken a bus back to Gtown and spent the entire vac with Calypso watching every movie we could find on DC++

_Monday morning at 7:00 am, I got on the bus and instantly knew that I was more or less on the right track. The three girls that I saw on the bus looked incredibly Nordic. Backpacking isn’t backpacking until there are Scandinavbian kids involved. I was still stressing for most of the ride, completely unsure of where to get off or what I was going to do when I got there, and I don’t speak Norwegian or Australian, so I couldn’t ask any of my fellow passengers for help. And the weather sucked.

_After a few stops and a much needed cup of coffee, I started to feel a bit better. The weather was clearing and the sun was coming out and I was beginning to realize something. Lately we’ve been talking about traveling and being homesick on The Scene. What we’ve decided is that being homesick is not only about missing home, but also about not knowing where home really is. What I was beginning to realize is that with the sun out and some good music playing, I will always feel at home on the road.

_And then I nearly died of a heart attack.

_The sun was out now in full force and I looked around to realize that we were on a bridge over some incredible gorge. Because we were in the far left lane and the bus was taller than the guard rail, there was nothing between us and the view. There was no illusion of safety. There was only a few hundred meters of the clearest air hanging over some of the sharpest, most pristine rocks along the side of some of the whitest rapids that flowed past some of the blackest teeth at the mouth of the river that emptied into some of the deepest, bluest sea ever. My scared-of-heights heart stopped at the sight of all those terrifying adjectives. Then the driver slowed to a crawl so we could take pictures.

_But once we got on our way, it was worth it. A few miles down the road we started to descend and Plettenberg bay spread out before us like a reward. The city sits on a hillside overlooking the bay and looks more or less like any of those stereotypical Mediteranean towns, but with worse architechture. I decided it was now or never and got out at the backpacker they stopped at to change drivers. The front desk lady helped me plan out my trip to Cape Town and handed me a copy of Coast to Coast, the best travel guide ever. That helped me calm down a bit, but the beach took care of the rest.

_I never meant to go all the way down onto it, but once I started, I found out that I couldn’t stop myself. I followed a few kids with a rugby ball down a path that kept looking like it should stop. But it kept going, sometimes overgrown, sometimes rocky, sometimes canopied by arching branches, all the way down maybe a hundred and fifty feet of steep hillside until it hit a concrete staircase that led straight to the sand. Remember when I was using all those adjectives a few paragraphs ago and I got really freaked out? Now all those adjectives were waiting for me with open arms. Plettenberg’s beach is the most beautiful piece of beach that I’ve ever seen. The visability was out in the hundreds of miles, the waves were big enough to surf on but not big enough to keep you from swimming. The beach itself was wide and flat and ran right into the overgrown rocks that kids were sunbathing on.

_So I took off my shoes and shirt and walked as far down as I could without feeling embarassed about my complete lack of a tan. I began to realize that as well as with roads, I will always feel at home on a beach. Except maybe the Jersey shore. In fact, I felt so much better and was in such a good mood, that when I got back to my room, I thought that the complimentary bar of soap they gave me was a complimentary choclate and took a bite out of it.

- Kid