Day 1

Aweh, guys!

So, our lovely driver of the shuttle from the airport loaded all our bags into the back of this huge van commissioned for us to get to our AirBnB in a tiny farming community called Baarn. Cars are on the flip side in SA with drivers on the left… here it is drivers on the right so for a few weeks we would instinctually try to get into the wrong side of the car. But we rectified ourselves and chatted with our driver on the way.

The highways are so smooth and well cared for and the drivers, while not very defensive, seemed to be following the rules and the only nuisance seemed to be some really bad graffiti on the sides of the roadways… we entered Baarn after about 40 minutes and we were stunned by the beauty of the buildings (unfortunately we didn’t get any pictures).

Eventually our driver found a dirt road outside a gas station and took us through. Our AirBnb was actually located deep into the woods but we eventually found it. There to greet us was a lovely lady named Monique (a different Monique to Henk’s colleague) who showed us the folder of what to expect of the AirBnB, got us connected to the wifi and showed us how to work the washing machine and dryer. She left us after a little while and we tucked into the care packed provided by Monique number one. We had a loaf of lovely rye bread, peanut butter, apricot jam, a herb cheese, olive oil spread, rooibos tea, milk, hagelslag (chocolate sprinkles for bread) and most importantly, STROOPWAFELS. SIM cards and train cards were also included which was a nice touch.

Stroopwafel and rooibos

At around 7PM, exhausted from our travels, I climbed the steps to our temporary bedroom collapsed into bed and slept until the next morning.