The last stop on our journey was Cape Town, South Africa. As most are aware, Cape Town has a very colorful history, full of a lot of racial, ethnic, and religious strife. In fact, many roads have changed names because of the political strife in the past. We were told that one of the reasons that the residents of Cape Town are so kind is because they are trying to overcome their negative past. The information in this section is split up into history of Cape Town (which includes general information about Cape Town), history of Robben Island (including information about the Sharpville Massacre and Nelson Mandela), information about the…

To access Lesotho (leh-soo-too), we flew from Eswatini, through Johannesburg, to Durban (in South Africa). We were then driven 3 hours (in the most dense fog I’ve ever experienced – it was scary how poor the visibility was!) to Underberg, which is a town at the base of the Drakenburg Mountains, which span about 200km (125 mi) from North to South (we were in the south). There are Bushman paintings in the mountains and, as a result, the mountains are a UNESCO World Heritage site, which protects those paintings. When the fog cleared the next day, the scenery was stunning! Underberg (with a population of 100,000 people) is the closest…

Eswatini (which changed its name from Swaziland in 2018) was a 50 minute flight from Johannesburg, South Africa. Eswatini was the original name of the land, but it was not pronounced properly when it was under British Rule, so, they changed their name to Swaziland. Swaziland became independent in 1968, and it was not until the King’s birthday in 2018 that it was changed back by the king because “enough is enough.” Eswatini is 17,000sqkm (6563sqmi), with a population of 1.3 million people. While Manzini (the town we landed in) is heavily populated because of job opportunities and industry, it is not the capitol. In Manzini is a new airport,…

Zambia is in the south central part of Africa and is landlocked (has no seaport). It is surrounded by 8 countries: Angola, Namibia, Mozambique, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Malawi, and Botswana. Zambia became independent from British rule (after 70 years) on October 24, 1964, at which point they changed their name from Northern Rhodesia. Zambia means “land of many rivers.” There are 16 million people in Zambia, made up of 7 tribes, with 72 different spoken languages, the official language of which is English, which is taught in schools. Their main industries are mining copper, agriculture (depending on the season), maize (which is a cash crop), and…

The portion of Namibia that we went to was an area called the Caprivi Strip, which is a strip of land that extends from the country, and is bordered by Angola, Zambia, the tip of Zimbabwe, and Botswana. We took a speed boat about 2 minutes to Botswana Customs, and then another five minutes to the Namibia water border. Impalila Island (where we were; 26x15km [16×9 mi)) is the area of land where the four countries (Zambia, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Botswana) meet, and is the reason we chose to focus on this area when planning our trip. Namibia was a German colony and, as a result, there is still some…