By Roy Pereira
When in Rome do as the Romans do. It's a saying that comes to mind very often if you're in a foreign place doing foreign things.
As a foreigner in South Africa I have found the phrase playing through my mind on several occasions, especially when I am amazed by how much South Africans love their meat, drink, and getting rowdy.
But last week, while on a five-day river rafting trip on the Orange River, I found the proverbial shoe to be on the other foot. There I was surrounded by more of my own kind (Dutchmen) than "Roman" South Africans. The trip downriver turned into a booze-filled adventure and it was not the Romans doing the damage.
"Time for the first beers!" It was about 9am when I was rudely awakened by a loud shout from the front of the overland truck.
The source of the voice, a young guy, looked around at the sleepy faces, shrugged when he got no reply and then opened a beer.
We soon started driving, and most of us were still trying to find a soft spot to continue sleeping. But not Youri, the youngster who had shouted earlier.
He was part of a group of mates, all Dutch, who had recently met and really liked their beer. The truck was stuffed with an assortment of pints and cans, and soon the whole group was drinking.
By 10.30am everyone on board had had their first beer and we were not even halfway to the base camp on the banks of the Gariep River.
The group's love of beer set the tone for things to come, but the river rafting experience was memorable for several other reasons.
By evening there was a chance to swim in the warm waters of the Orange River where it divides South Africa from Namibia, and then it was time for dinner. Hennie and Douwe, our two guides on the trip, prepared a delicious meal over an open fire.
Again, in true South African tradition, it included lots of meat and the group loved it. Especially the Dutch tourists, who complemented the meal with some beers and devoured the food as if it were their last.
That evening was amazing and people sat chatting until it was time to go to bed. Then the lights were put out, but not really, because the clear skies above the southern hemisphere still shone bright with stars.
It was a nice way to fall asleep, blissfully ignorant of what awaited us the next day.
If you think about the word rafting, you probably envisage a fast-moving, action-packed, adrenaline-driven adventure through rapids and down high-velocity waterfalls.
The mind seldom, if ever, imagines the paddling, the never-ending paddling. And that is exactly what we did for the next three days.
The water was so low, that at one stage we renamed the trip, the Orange River Hike. It seemed we were carrying our boats more often than we were actually able to sit in them.
But hey, we had beers and sun lotion. No one complained.
The landscape that surrounded us also helped. After seeing quite a bit of South Africa, I was still amazed by the sheer beauty of it all.
The rock formations were stunning and with clear skies every day, it was just a blast to be out there.
After "rafting" for three days, drinking litres of beer and using a bathtub of sun lotion, we finally reached our destination: a quaint little safari lodge on the Namibian side of the Orange River.
There we enjoyed an amazing lunch and some cold beers (of course) and later chilled out at the pool. This was followed by a ritual which had the locals loading us and our boats onto a big truck for a not-so-pleasant drive back to base camp.
But exhausted after three days of paddling the Orange River, many were soon fast asleep as the truck made its way back on what we considered to be one of the bumpiest roads we'd ever been on.
At base camp, and after cleaning out the truck and collecting our belongings, it was time to reflect on what had been a challenging but lovely trip.
So we each did it in our own way. Some of the guys went for a last dip in the river, others (they were Dutch) opened beers, while I just lay on my sleeping bag and listened to music (At The Drive-in and a bit of Jay-Z's latest worked just perfectly).
On reflection it was an amazing trip, a fun experience I enjoyed with some lovely people who knew how to play drinking games.
Next time I'll try the Zambezi for a bit of real rafting but perhaps leave a couple of my countrymen at home.
But then again. I'll probably miss the beer-fuelled bantering on the river banks.