#Photography

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.

Amidst all the excitement of the #MeetSouthAfrica trip, I nearly forgot that I was going to Lesotho.

One of my newest Instagram connections, @nuttywheat, recently referred to Lesotho as “the land that grows rocks”. It’s a perfect description so I’ve decided to adopt it.

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 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’ve been writing a lot about hashtags lately, which is a little embarrassing. Hashtags are so trendy. But sorry, I can’t help it. Once you’ve read this post you’ll understand my newfound hashtag passion.

This weekend I participated in a city immersion adventure in Joburg, tentatively named “Jozi, the Amazing Place”. Eight people spent 48 hours in downtown Joburg, traveling around on public transport and accomplishing various “missions” assigned by our hosts. In addition to carrying out the missions, we slept in dorm-style rooms at Curiocity Backpackers in Maboneng, hung out on the 52nd floor of Ponte City, drank copious quantities of Black Label on a pub crawl, and laughed a lot.