Dearest Friends, Family and Other-Interested-Parties,
As we progress into the “dog-days” of summer here in
Lesotho, we hear that many of you continue to battle snow and cold
temperatures. In any case, we hope you are doing it in good health. It has been
a few weeks since I last posted, I had started the previous one and then the
power cut out before I could actually post it! Since then, we were busy
preparing all of our projects for us to go on vacation, actually taking
vacation and then getting back and getting caught up with everything.
We are doing quite well, Shane just had a birthday that we
enjoyed celebrating with homemade 3-layer chocolate cake (thank you very
much...) and our neighbours from Wales. This was also immediately after we
returned from an 8 day vacation that was much anticipated (for about a year
now!) and much needed. I’ve created a new page (Durban and Mozambique Vaca) for the photos, please enjoy
them.
We spent 3 nights at a guest house in North Durban, we went
clothes shopping at the “Gateway Theater of Shopping” which is supposedly the
largest mall in Africa – it was ridiculously huge, we spent all day there and
were exhausted. We got some great scores, for very reasonable prices. Our
everyday clothes are also really suffering after nearly two years of
handwashing and life in Lesotho, but we enjoyed getting some nice formalwear
and Shane got Vibram 5-finger shoes that he’s been really excited about for
awhile – you can look for all of these things and even my HAIRCUT! In the
photos, we enjoyed wearing our finds on our CRUISE to Mozambique!
We got on the MSC Opera on February 11, and enjoyed 4 nights
aboard the quite luxurious ship with all-you-can-eat food included in the price
of our tickets, breakfast in bed, evening entertainment, turn-down service, hot
tub, steam-room, sauna, gym, pools, hot running water and we didn’t even smell
raw sewage once! You can check out the photos of our time on the ship as
well! We stopped in Maputo and did a
city tour where we saw the train station, designed by Gustav Effiel of Effiel
tower fame and where a lot of the movie Blood Diamonds was filmed, we saw
several statues, the Museum of Natural History and Fort Sebastian which is now
a military museum, we finished at a handicrafts market with loads of beautiful
things at the usual rip-off-the-tourists prices, it was a nice sampling of the
city and very efficient and unusually luxurious for how we usually travel, in
our air-conditioned van...
Back onboard the ship, the captain headed north to the white
sand beaches of Inhambane, which we tragically anchored in the bay and looked
at the beaches all day, but the waves were too big for us to reach the beach
from the boat! The “Entertainment Team” substituted the day on the beach for
cheesy games and group dancing, and BINGO which was quite popular on the ship.
There was quite a bit of nice evening entertainment which is really lacking in
our everyday lives in the rural highlands of Lesotho. The shows included a lot
of good singing, flashing lights and dancing girls – even a musician. We also
spent time in the piano bars and the nightclub, staying up much later than our
usual bedtime of 9pm! The restaurant had several theme nights including “gala
night” and “tropical party” and of course, Valentine’s Day – when we recruited
both South African and Italian sparkling wine to help us celebrate.
We disembarked at 6:30am on Friday the 15th and
went to Port Shepstone on the “South Coast” and enjoyed one last night of
vacation at a much less luxurious backpackers, right on the beach. We enjoyed a
bit more non-cabbage and lentils food, with a drizzly walk on the beach, before
our 8 hour ride on public transportation to come back home.
It was a lovely way to celebrate Shane’s Birthday and
Valentine’s Day and all of the other holidays that we’ve celebrated at home
since our last vacation in June. We did many toasts throughout to Christmas,
Anniversary, Thanksgiving etc...
We also want to offer a disclaimer about vacations during
Peace Corps. We are quite lucky to be able to vacation in South Africa, which
is a pretty cool place- that it seems is distinctively off the radar of most
American travellers. So, yes, we’ve taken vacations to some pretty cool places,
at the same time, remember that we get less than $300 a month, to live on and
to take vacations from – unless we have money coming in from the states. We’ve
been saving for this vacation for about 9 months, and haven’t been outside of
Lesotho in 8 months. We also cannot express the appreciate for the helpful
gifts we received for Christmas, as you will see from the photos, we really
enjoyed the holiday! Some PCVs take shorter, backpacker style vacations, we’ve
been taking longer vacations, that are along the lower end of the mid-range;
but we really pay for this in our day to day living. This disclaimer is
primarily for Peace Corps Invitees or those who are considering joining Peace
Corps, to give you an idea of what you are getting into on the vacation front –
and suggest that you consider putting some money aside in your US funds for
vacations, because they will be a much better part of your service.
We hope you enjoy the photos on the vacation page!
Hugs from back in Lesotho,
Carol and Shane
