The final installment of my adventure blog is about my rafting trip on the Orange River! Sorry this took so long!

CGE allows us just over a week to do our own traveling wherever we may want to go.  Most people in our group headed to Zimbabwe and Botswana to see Victoria Falls.  That was the trip I had originally planned on taking, but when we discussed our Spring Break options, a few relaxing days on a river just seemed to call to me.  Truthfully, I really want to go to Vic Falls when I can sit in the pool on the edge, but that’s not an option in this extra-rainy season!

Myself and two Clark University students, Amanda Major and Katie McGonagle, drove all the way to the South to reach the Orange which forms the border between South Africa and Namibia.  As usual, the landscape continually amazes me and this trip was no exception.  While we were in the North, we saw flat, flooded, grassy lands.  Now we were seeing the exact opposite.  The lands became desert, like on our trip to Swakopmund, but this time the land seemed more orange than brown.  Eventually we hit a long series of plateaus that seemed so out of place.  After 9 or so hours, we reached the border in over 90 degree heat!

We thought there would be other students on our trip because it was a special student price, but it ended up just being the three of us and our rafting guides!  Pine was a 40 something stereotypical adventure guide and Frans was 24 and new to being a rafting guide.  Pine also brought his crazy girlfriend Kelly.  The three of them made for a great time!  We woke up the next day and had to go back to the border post and stamp back into Namibia since our trip would be ending on the opposite side of the river.  We finally set out on our trip and I knew it was going to be great – the water was warm and calm and the scenery was beautiful.  We spent the next 3 days navigating the Orange while swimming or drinking whenever we pleased and sleeping under the stars and the full moon.  Talking to our guides about their lives in South Africa was also a highlight of the trip.  Pine had been in the forces fighting against the Namibian freedom fighters in the 80s, so it was definitely interesting to get his perspective since we’ve been studying so much Namibia history.

When it comes to deciding on your own travel, I say go wherever your heart desires!  I still would love to go to Victoria Falls someday, but rafting called to me as soon as I heard about it.  And I don’t regret it one bit!  It was nice to get away from the big group for a while and I had an amazing time!

OH! I forgot to mention before that my friends and I got our picture in the Namibian, the newspaper here!  We were at an Elemotho concert at a local restaurant (he’s pretty good, by the way!) when they took our picture, and sure enough it turned up in the “Faces and Places” section the next week! We all thought it was pretty exciting.

Our free weekends are dwindling in numbers, so I’m off to find something new to do in this place before I run out of time!