I didn’t expect the end to come so soon. And yet here it is: the final post of my #MeetSouthAfrica series.
As I mentioned before, the #MeetSouthAfrica blogger adventure ended in Durban. We were in Durban for three days but spent only part of that time exploring the city; a large portion of our visit was devoted to attending the 2014 Indaba – a huge international travel convention.
One of the most memorable experiences of my #MeetSouthAfrica trip was when I swam out of South Africa. But I’ll come back to that later.
The #MeetSouthAfrica Adventure group arrived at the Growcery – a peaceful camp on the banks of the Orange River in the Northern Cape’s Richtersveld – after a long journey from Joburg. (We flew to Upington and then drove about six hours to the Namibian border, 120 kilometers past the town of Springbok.) The Orange River is the longest river in South Africa and the Northern Cape is the largest province in South Africa – also the least accessible province as it’s basically a huge desert.
Now that I’ve presented the basic chronology of my #MeetSouthAfrica trip, I’m going to skip around a bit. I can’t wait another day to talk about my 24-hour visit Cape Town, which was sandwiched between longer stints in the Northern Cape and Durban.
I really got around South Africa last week.
I participated in #MeetSouthAfrica, a campaign sponsored by South African Tourism in which 14 travel bloggers split into three groups – the Luxury group, the Adventure group, and the Heritage group – and followed different routes around the country. I was in the Adventure group with Meruschka from Mzansi Girl, Melvin from Traveldudes, Matt from the Expert Vagabond, Caspar from StoryTravelers, and Kash from the Budget Traveller. We covered a massive swath of the country in a very short time and had an insane amount of fun.
I’m on Day 6 of my 10-day #MeetSouthAfrica trip. I intended to post on a regular basis during the journey but lack of time and wifi have prevented that. We’ve done so much. In the last three days alone I have crossed South Africa by bus from one end to the other (twice), learned to paddle a raft, made some awesome new friends, cooked my own gourmet meal in Cape Town, gone deaf in one ear (don’t worry Mom and Dad, I’m sure it’s temporary), and swam – yes swam – across an international border (twice).