Posts by author

Christopher Blachut

3 posts
  • In Durban, we witnessed a gangster threaten someone with a gold-plated pistol in plain daylight while destitute, drug-addicted, and prostituting pedestrians nearby barely batted an eye. Then, just three blocks away, we joined other rich (mostly-) white people to dine on free-range burgers and yam fries at a modern, beachfront, California-style restaurant. Even in a country so infamous for its inequality, such a contrast shocked us. Read more about our experiences in dis-Durban in Day 5 of our Hectic Route road trip from Cape Town to Johannesburg.
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  • Sometimes the unconventional route is a dead end. Day 4 of our Hectic Route road trip from Johannesburg to Cape Town, for example. Our objective was to cram multiple days worth of experiences (and food!) into one at the so-many-things-to-do-it's-Club-Med-esque Cathedral Peak Hotel. This included two hikes. On the first hike, Rainbow Gorge, we thought we could take an unconventional route back up over a mountain instead of wasting precious time on the out-and-back that the map prescribed. We failed. We ended up wasting an extra hour and a half scaling cliffsides and wandering aimlessly around knee-high grass on the side of the mountain, before giving up and dejectedly following the conventional route back. But the unconventional gods rewarded us for our efforts anyway. One of our rewards was this huge grasshopper that looks like a painted African warrior. So even though our unconventional route was a dead end, it was worth it. Read the full Day 4 recap for the rest of the story.
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  • We were hit by an avalanche. It happened in the Dragon Mountains (a.k.a. The Drakensberg​) and we can't say we weren't warned. The rumbling thunder during our absolutely mind-boggling hike was the dragons themselves telling us to turn back. Even the herd of eland we saw (pictured here) seemed to listen; they hurried the other way. But we didn't pay attention and walked right into it. It happened fast. I was happily trundling down the trail when Kim suddenly yelled at me to put on my jacket and cover the camera. She was behind me on the trail, so I looked back at her to ask why. Behind her, I saw the answer. Dense clouds poured down the valley and directly toward us. They looked exactly like snow in an avalanche from the movies. Then—WHOOSH!—it hit us. Rain, hail, and gale-force winds pummelled us while the sky exploded with thunder and lightning. Luckily, there was a small cliff nearby where we could hide behind for cover and hold onto branches to not get blown away. It lasted about ten minutes before vanishing. Only the path, which was previously bone-dry and was a now running stream, and our drenched, shivering bodies were evidence of the avalanche that had struck. It was awesome. Everything about Day 3 of the Hectic Route was awesome. Check it out.
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  • You know what's cooler than seeing a rhino or a giraffe? Seeing a half-rhino, half-giraffe. Imagine how cool (or "hectic" as they'd say here in South Africa) that'd be—seeing something you'd never even seen a picture of before and didn't even know existed. Well, we saw the scenic equivalent of a gir-rhino on the second day of our "Hectic Route" South Africa road trip. Golden Gate Highlands National Park is a hybrid of Scottish highlands and Arizona desert. Like a gir-rhino, we didn't know it existed and had never even seen photos of it before seeing it in real life, so it blew our minds. Maybe it wasn't as mind-blowing as a gir-rhino would be, but it was cool. For more photos, check out our Hectic Route Day 2 recap on the blog. Link in bio! ☝️
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  • What do you think of Johannesburg? We really wanted to like it. Maybe, like Bogota, Colombia, it didn’t deserve its horrible reputation. That's why we were full of optimism when we kicked off our two-week "Hectic Route" South Africa road trip there (which we'll be recapping daily here). It didn’t take long for that optimism to dissolve. Kim was in tears by the time we checked into our prison-like Airbnb. Things did get better from there, but, as we explain in our post on our day in Johannesburg, it isn't on our list of places we're eager to go back to. Is your opinion of Joburg similar, or different? Let us know! Also, stay tuned over the next 14 days as we recap a HECTIC two-week South Africa road trip and uncover many colors of the Rainbow Nation that most foreigners, us included, don't know about. ☝️For full recaps, head to the blog. Link in bio!
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  • The view from Noordhoek Peak a couple weeks back. 😎 Thanks to @justinhawthorne for teaching us about fynbos, South African culture, and where to find the best wine in the Western Cape! If you need a guide while in CT who really knows his stuff, Justin is your man.☝️
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