Lion's Head to Langa (Day 3)

Day 2, Part II (Tuesday, March 24)

Today was a really fun day. It started in a rush for some people whose jet lag caused them to sleep through their alarms. Luckily, everyone made it on time for breakfast where we, of course, ran into Sunny (the hotel’s engaging and smiling waiter) again. We then drove up to the base of Lion’s Head, a huge mountain that we can see from our hotel rooms, and the bus ride was fun as always.

At the bottom of Lion’s Head, a lot of us decided that the hike would be a breeze, so we decided to play the “Alphabet Game” where you yell out a phrase at other hikers passing by, starting with A and ending at Z. For example, Harper’s first phrase was “Aye, what’s up party people!” which set the tone for the hike. After 100 yards, and no responses from our compatriot hikers, we ditched the game.

As we trekked along, we quickly realized the hike was NOT as easy as we thought it would be. It started as an uphill climb on a sandy trail but soon turned into full on rock climbing. Some people (AB and Myles) climbed most of the way on all-fours because of their fear of heights.

After two hours of climbing, we finally made it to the top.

As exhausted as we were, we took some really fun photos at the top and rested to regain our strength for the two hour climb back down the mountain.

The journey down was arguably harder than the way up because we were led down a not-so-short “short cut” that somehow had us walking uphill to go down?? The whole way down, all we could think about was this smoothie truck we had seen at the start of the hike, but since we took the “shortcut” down, we never tasted our smoothies :(. 

After finally reaching the trail head, Lawrence, our bus driver, picked us up and drove us to lunch at a restaurant called Nando’s, which is basically Mediterranean style chicken. No one in our group of almost 20 really remembered what they ordered, so the waiters kinda hated us, but the food was pretty good. 

After lunch, we headed to Langa Township for the first time where we met up with Ingrid, Inesh, and Siviwe who were our three guides for the week from the educational groups iThuba and Leap High School. They were all super welcoming, and it felt like we had almost joined their family. They gave us a tour of the Township, and we experienced how each social class lives there, all very different from how we live in LA. We got to step inside a lower class family’s home (the living room, dining area and bunk beds), which was contained within a shipping crate (split between two families with each family’s side being 3 meters x 2.5 meters and housed 3-4 people).                                                                     

As we continued walking through the Township, we instantly noticed the clear divide between each social class. The middle class families lived in small, apartment-style buildings while the upper class (typically government workers) lived in small houses on their own properties. Even though each social class is visibly unique, they all interact with each other to form one community. 

Later in the afternoon, we got back on the bus to visit iThuba for the first time, an afterschool program in the Township that helps provide kids academic support so that they are able to enter top high schools in the area such as Leap High School (a prestigious STEM school). 

We wrapped up the evening by walking to an Italian restaurant near our hotel. Overall, it was a really tiring but really fun day. Olivia and Harper