Today is my
last full day in the US for nearly two months. It’s been a very busy week full
of making sure I have everything I need, doing some last minute planning, and
seeing friends and family before heading out. Everything I’m bringing to Africa
with me is spread out on the extra bed in my house, and I’ll be looking over it
one more time before actually putting it all into my bag. I think I have enough
experience travelling now that I’ve officially mastered the art of not
overpacking. Elizabeth in 2013 would bring seven shirts and six pairs of shorts
for a five day long trip, while 2017 Elizabeth feels like five shirts and four
pairs of shorts should be just fine for seven weeks. One thing I love about
travel is that it makes you quite a minimalist- there’s something very freeing
about knowing that nearly two months of your life can be carried on your back
quite easily! At the same time, I’ll be leaving for this trip in less than 24
hours, and I haven’t actually packed up my stuff yet. I’m not sure if traveling
more makes me more experienced, or more of a rookie!
I’m trying
to think back on how I felt the day before I left for my first trip to Africa
and comparing it to how I feel today. I just read over the blog post I made
before I left in 2015, and it reminded me how little experience I’d had
traveling solo up to that point. Before that trip, I’d been on two flights by
myself. Now I’ve been on twelve. That was my first trip out of the country.
This is my third. At that time, I had no stamps in my passport. Now I have
eight, plus my Bolivia tourist visa. Needless to say, I’ve experienced a lot
between May 2015 and February 2017. On one side of things, I think that no
matter how much someone travels, there’s probably no trip quite like the first
one. At the same time, it’s nice that I now know things that I didn’t know on
that first trip; I’ve become a lot wiser. It’s nice that I already have some
South African money in my wallet that I preordered from my bank, where I got a
much better exchange rate than I would’ve if I’d used an exchange booth at the
airport, like I did last time. It’s also nice to know what to expect of the
sixteen-hour flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg, and I’m glad that I now know
little tricks to make those hours more bearable. I know which type of porter to
use in the Johannesburg airport and how much to tip them, I know where in the
Cape Town airport to find my airport transfer to the hostel, I now have a
better understanding of Afrikaans and the South African accent. These are mostly
little things, but they still make me feel more relaxed and confident than I
probably did before my first trip to Africa. After months of working, saving,
and planning, I’m so ready to get out of the US and board that flight back to
the beautiful country of South Africa, even if it means being stuck in a tube
up in the air over the ocean for sixteen hours.
Tonight I’ll
enjoy my last real American meal, followed by my last night with my own bedroom
(and bathroom) for nearly two months. I’ve been dreaming of this trip ever
since I left Africa about eighteen months ago, and tomorrow it’s finally
happening. The next blog post I make will probably be from my hostel in Cape
Town. Bye for now, US. See you very soon, South Africa! This post’s food for
thought: “One does not discover new lands without consenting to lost sight of
the shore for a very long time.”-Andre Gide
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