As you may well know, I had this past month off of school as the month of May is a school holiday, separating term 1 from term 2. My Dad came to visit me for the last few days of the school term to see my village and see me in action. Dad had a chance to meet my colleagues and some of my learners and got a taste of what my day-to-day life is like here. It was really special for me to be able to share that with him and I'm so grateful that he decided to come and see me. We had a great, yet brief stay here before heading out on our adventure.
Dad and I left Okahao on Thursday, April 30th and caught a minibus (an overcrowded and notoriously delayed 22-seater van) from Oshakati to Windhoek. After waiting in Oshakati for over two hours for the driver to fill all of the allotted seats we were off. The drive itself is about 8 hours, but factoring bathroom and supply stops, and for-no-good-reason stops, it was closer to 10+ hours. It's not the most comfortable ride, boasting small, awkward seats crammed 4 across with a thin aisle running up the middle, often crowded with luggage and people, no air conditioning (and a reluctance of passengers to open their windows) and the driver blasting obscenely loud Oshiwambo music, making it nearly impossible to sleep or listen to the music of your own choosing in your ipod.

We arrived in Katatura, just outside of Windhoek at about 8pm and from the chaotic and dubious bustle of the crowded hike point we caught a taxi into town where we would be spending the night before departing to Cape Town.

We caught a red-eye "sleep-liner" bus to Cape Town, not wanting to waste our precious little time we had during the days on a 20-hour-long bus ride. We departed at 7pm on the Friday and arrived at 3pm Saturday in Cape Town a little groggy but ready to see the city. We checked ourselves in to the Tulip Inn downtown, where our tour group was to be meeting the following night. It wasn't exactly luxury-a bathroom door that required someone on both sides of it collaborating to actually get it to close and a shower that made it impossible not to leave the bathroom without an inch of water on the floor-but it was fine enough as we planned on spending as little time as possible in it. Since it was after 5 by the time we had ourselves settled in and cleaned up we decided to go down to the V&A Waterfront to have a look around and to get ourselves a decent meal that wasn't a gas station special as we had been enjoying the past couple of days on the road. We toured through some of the shops and then settled on a Karibu, a restaurant boasting South African cuisine. I can easily say that, in its entirety, it may have been the best meal of my life. We ordered a bottle of white wine and had biltong paté as a starter. For the main courses Dad had ostrich and I had fresh local fish, both with a side of puutu and chakalaka..similar to a couscous and vegetable curry..amazing! With the meal we also had some butternut squash and boiled creamy spinach. Every part of the meal was amazing, in particular the ostrich, which is hands-down the best red meat I have ever had. We did some more wandering and I had a cone of gelato (my one true love) before retiring back to the hotel at around 9.

We left the hotel the next morning at around 9 to start our day of sight-seeing. We opted not to do the hotel breakfast, due to the unsavoury smell of smoke in the elevator on our way down, and thought that we would stroll along Long St, which boasts many cafés, hostels and eclectic shops. As we were walking out of the hotel we saw a small crowd of people gathered around across the street, pointing and looking up at our building. Turing around, we saw that there was smoke billowing out of a second-story window. Our hotel was on fire. The crowd outside grew larger and larger as we stood there, yet there were no alarms or sprinklers going off in the hotel at all, and guests seemed to be strolling out much as we just had earlier. Then panic set in. A man on the fifth floor started throwing his things out of the window to the ground below and then actually climbed out of the window and scaling the wall like he was Tobey McGuire. People started screaming and shouting at him to get back inside, and after several attempts he conceded and returned to his room, shouting that he couldn't get out, the halls and stairways were filled with smoke. A family on the 7th was screaming for someone to help them, their children seated on the window ledges with cloths over their mouths. After another ten minutes or so emergency crews arrived and set about putting out the small fire and getting people out of their rooms. No one was hurt and there was minimal damage to the hotel. We were then taken to a hotel down the street to check in there. The hotel turned out to be nicer than where we were currently staying, plus we got a complimentary gourmet buffet breakfast out of the deal; we just had to pick up our luggage from the room at a later time once the building had been cleared.

....To be continued...