The day started off with a few more smiles than usual for a 6am wake up, as we all knew it would be the last time we would be dismantling our tents. We boarded the truck with our breakfast packs and started an eight hour journey to Cape Town, with a very bumpy start on a dirt road through the Little Karoo. As soon as we all got hungry, shouts of bartering between the contents of our breakfast packs were heard throughout the truck. This was too funny watching people swopping yogurts for fruit chews and juices for Provita’s.

We were all woken up by Max as soon as we hit Cape Town, so that he could very proudly give us a detailed guide through his home city. As usual, he was full of useful information on the history, culture and sites of Cape Town.
Our first stop was the Redhill informal settlement, which is one of the many inspiring Planeterra projects in South Africa. This one in particular was specific to the development of the Redhill pre-school and the upliftment to their community. Through these projects, foreigners are encouraged to volunteer in refurbishing, building, teaching and cleaning in the community and at the same time as being able to completely immerse themselves in the cultures of South Africa.
After spending a while learning how the community operates and playing with the children, we headed off to our hotel, the lovely “Lady Hamilton” in Gardens. Full of excitement at the thought of finally having a real bed to sleep in, we offloaded our tons of luggage and traipsed into the hotel looking like a bunch of tramps. After a few showers and rummages through bags for the cleanest clothes remaining, we exited for dinner looking like beauty queens.

We had a long walk to the “Grand Daddy Hotel” where we were surprised not only by the arrival of Amy and Liezl but also of a video clip of all the pictures of our best moments on our trip. This was followed by a hilarious awards ceremony, some of which were the award for best boots, most checked if present, best laugh, biggest flirt and an award for facing fear.

After some drinks we walked up Long Street to Mama Africa for delicious African cuisine as well as many laughs and reminiscing around the table. This was followed by a hilarious fines ceremony! Around midnight we moved onto an Irish Pub up the road called the “The Dubliner” to dance and sing until the sun came up.

The next morning, we woke up to a delicious breakfast consisting of bacon, eggs, sausage, grilled tomatoes, fruits, cereal and basically everything you could possible imagine, before everyone slowly made their way to the waterfront for a little bit of Cape Town site-seeing. At the waterfront we said good-bye to everyone at 12 o’clock as they boarded the truck to go to the airport. As always we headed out in style with everyone shouting and singing songs of farewell. It was a very sad good-bye as we were leaving the people who had become our family. The memories and bonds that have grown will always remain in our hearts.