Before school starts on Friday, February 5, we had about 4 days to do whatever we wanted. So for this 4 day vacation, most of my roommates and Rodrigo, Brooks, and our girl friend Lauren decided to drive up the Garden Route, which is a road trip that you can make that goes from Cape Town to Jeffery’s Bay (which is about 7 hours away) and there are a bunch of activities and beaches that you can check out along the way. We pretty much decided to do this last second, and we didn’t have any type of itinerary to follow. We had a couple of guide books and pamphlets and that’s about it.
Before we could leave however, we needed to find a place to rent cars. So the day that we wanted to leave for the Garden Route, we woke up at 9am planning on picking up the cars from downtown Cape Town at 9:30, sign up for school clubs/activities at 10:30, and then be on the road by 12:00. This obviously did not happen. Rodrigo, Nathan, Slaughterhouse, and I first went to Hertz because we had made reservations to rent a couple of cars. But as we were filling out our paperwork, we realized that the Hertz policy was that you needed to be 23 years old to rent a car. Mistake number 1. We then continued to seek out Budget and Avis to see if they had the same policy, and of course they did. We then found this place called Daddy Long Legs, which was a bar/hotel/spa, but you could also rent cars from them. So we hung out in their lobby for half an hour, drinking free coffee and biscote, until they let us know that they had no cars available. It did not look like we had any chance of making it on the Garden Route, considering we had no car, we ran out of airtime minutes so we really couldn’t contact others to let them know what was happening, and it was getting a little late considering we needed to drive 5 hours to get to our first spot on the trip.
Before we could leave however, we needed to find a place to rent cars. So the day that we wanted to leave for the Garden Route, we woke up at 9am planning on picking up the cars from downtown Cape Town at 9:30, sign up for school clubs/activities at 10:30, and then be on the road by 12:00. This obviously did not happen. Rodrigo, Nathan, Slaughterhouse, and I first went to Hertz because we had made reservations to rent a couple of cars. But as we were filling out our paperwork, we realized that the Hertz policy was that you needed to be 23 years old to rent a car. Mistake number 1. We then continued to seek out Budget and Avis to see if they had the same policy, and of course they did. We then found this place called Daddy Long Legs, which was a bar/hotel/spa, but you could also rent cars from them. So we hung out in their lobby for half an hour, drinking free coffee and biscote, until they let us know that they had no cars available. It did not look like we had any chance of making it on the Garden Route, considering we had no car, we ran out of airtime minutes so we really couldn’t contact others to let them know what was happening, and it was getting a little late considering we needed to drive 5 hours to get to our first spot on the trip. 
As we were walking to the bus stop to get back to campus, I decided to call this guy who had one day been waiting outside our house with a “party bus” which was decorated with a bunch of licensed plates, a disco ball in the middle of van, and surf boards on top to see if he could take 12 of us on the Garden Route for the week. As I was talking to him however, I realized that this was a little shady because first of all, the guy had been waiting outside of our house looking for someone to talk to….he also gave us a pamphlet that he had drawn and written describing how the party bus was “simply amazing” and how it is “a musical transportation and its a FUN disco on board.”
And the guy looked like an African version of Dog the Bounty Hunter. He described his haircut as the “half bread loaf.” So that obviously didn’t pan out.
Fortunately, when we arrived at the club fair at school, we ran into some of our roommates who had found the number of a local car rental company that would rent their cars out to 21 year olds.
Fortunately, when we arrived at the club fair at school, we ran into some of our roommates who had found the number of a local car rental company that would rent their cars out to 21 year olds.
This was at 3:00pm. So after signing up for Yoga, Soccer, Mountain & Hiking Club, and Shawco (a student-run community service organization), we all made it back to the house, packed our bags, took two taxis to the car rental place in Sea Point, and got the cars. I was the one who decided to put the car on my credit card, and it definitely felt like I was signing my life away. Bye life. Anyway, since I can’t drive stick, Rodrigo had to drive the whole way there and the whole way back.
Our first destination was Mossel Bay.
Our first destination was Mossel Bay.
After we drove over the mountains that surround Cape Town, it was open and expansive landscapes for the rest of the trip. It was gorgeous. We saw farmland, vineyards, forests and beach towns. When we arrived in Mossel Bay, we drove to our hostel that was located in Santos Beach. The hostel was literally a train parked on train tracks, but it was located right on the beach. It was definitely a very cool set up.
We fit 3 in each little compartment (I lost Rock, Paper, Shoot…so I had to sleep on the top bunk with the ceiling 8 inches from my head. After we checked in, some of us went for a night walk on the beach and walked through the way warmer water of the Indian Ocean.
Had I known that Mossel Bay was a haven for sharks, I wouldn’t have even got near the water. Anyway, it was very relaxing to watch the waves come in on this little cove…the only word to describe the moment is EPOCH (I use the word EPOCH instead of the word EPIC because the word Epoch is way more epic...).
More to come from this trip on my next post…
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