For starters, I just want to apologize in advance to my parents for all the stupid things I did this week (stupid, safe things of course). This week was literally unreal. Our excuse… “It’s Africa... you can do whatever you want”
So, on Sunday our rental car search finally ended and we found an automatic 4-seater car. We immediately began booking our hostels and planning our activities (which ended up changing multiple times anyway...). So, Monday morning around 10 am we started on our journey to Knysna. Our car ended up being a lot nicer than all of us had expected it to be. It took us about 5.5 hours to get to Knysna and we stopped at our hostel first. It seemed okay, but in the end it turned out to be the worst of all the places we would stay at. We stayed in the dorms there with two other people, one was an Irish girl that was just traveling, and the other was a creepy middle-aged guy, who didn’t say a word to us the whole time we were there. Monday night we just first just wandered around the waterfront and decided to get on a boat to get a tour of the lagoon and to see “The Heads”. We thought they were a much bigger deal than they ended up being.. which was not exciting. We had a couple ciders on the boat (I can only describe cider as like alcoholic applejuice, but it’s pretty good). After we wandered some more and got dinner at this Italian place. Italian food is just not the same here. We tried to get a cab back to our hostel because it was pretty late but the cab driver told us that he should be sleeping so… we then had no choice to walk. It was pretty dead out so the walk was fine and we got back to the hostel and showered. We woke up really early so that we could get to Storm’s River Village for our water tubing adventure.
Tuesday: We got to the tubing place on time and then the real fun began. We first had to basically sign our life away on a form that pretty much said if anything happened to us that it was not their fault and we were liable if we died. Then we went into the back room to get our wet suits on. These wet suits probably had a couple years on them and were covered with holes, but we didn’t really have another choice so we got on our wet suits, life vests, and helmets. We also had to get shoes from them because the water is black (Brown really, it’s stained like tea because of the sediments in the rocks) so I didn’t want to wear my own shoes. The shoes I wore were probably older than the wet suits and were cheetah… And I only found out after tubing that I would be charged 30 Rand for them, which is only like $3.50 but these shoes were not even worth anything. After we were all dressed, we piled into the trunk of a pick up truck and they took us down a extremely rocky, pot-hole filled road down to the river. When we got there, this guy gets out of the driver seat and comes around to let us out. Literally he looks like he’s homeless: long hair, leather cowboy hat, pants that had obviously been cut to capri-length except they were cut unevenly so one was slightly longer than the other. This is Brad, he gave us a safety talk which was the farthest thing from a safety talk and just was pretty inappropriate with his comments. We later found out that he owned the company, and the hostel we’d be staying at that night. We then had to carry our blown up tubes down an extremely steep hill down to the river, not an easy task in sole-less cheetah shoes. Our two guides were pretty professional and normal so that was fine and we started our river tubing by practicing tube jumps. On the river, there were a couple times when you could climb up onto a cliff or up a tree, 10 meters above the ground and jump into the river. I did the first jump and climbed the tree and jumped from there as well. The last jump was pretty scary because you had to jump out about 4 feet to avoid the actual mountain/dying on the way down. It was really fun though, afterwards Brad picked us up again and we got out of our wet suits and went to the hostel to shower. This hostel was my favorite place we stayed at. The whole theme was really cool and all the decorations were amazing. (I took a lot of pictures of this place so check it out on facebook). We then met Brad’s girlfriend, who we didn’t know was Brad’s girlfriend at the time and she told us Brad built and decorated the entire hostel so we were obviously shocked and she got a little confused. They made us dinner there and we started talking to another hostel-stayed, Danni, from Holland. At this point it was around 5pm, so mostly everything was closed and one of the people that worked at the hostel told us we should wait until 6 pm when the park was closed, and sneak into it to see the “Big Tree”. So this is what we did. We took Danni along for the ride because he had no way of transportation and was by himself (he was 24 and seemed like he was pretty non-threatening) It took us way to long to find this “big tree” but we finally found it and went for a little walk and took some pictures. Then we went to get some dinner, one of the only places we could find was this American Diner in town. It was pretty hilarious and was themed Elvis and Marilyn Monroe. There was a whole big room which old 50’s cars and costumes so of course we tried them on and took some more pictures. It was a pretty interesting experience but they did have grilled cheese so I was happy. After we went back to the hostel and had a few ciders with the bar tender, who had bungee jumped 16 times and was telling us all about the bungee jumping. I’m not sure if this calmed my nerves or made me more nervous. After a while we went to sleep because we had to do bungee jumping in the morning.
Wednesday: We got up, had breakfast really fast then got in the car to go. Of course it was raining, and just as we were pulling out our car got stuck in the mud. Stuck. We got out and tried to push it, but we 3 girls it was pretty useless and one of the guys in the hostel must have heard us struggling so him and Danni came outside and he ended up pulling us out with his truck. Finally we got on our way to bungee jumping. I think there are very few times in my life that I was as nervous as I was getting weighed and getting my harness put on. The walk onto the middle of the bridge was probably the worst. It was a thin little tunnel and the bottom was a grate so you could see right through to the bottom of the gorge. It also shook a little so I was already completely nervous. When we got to the middle there was loud music playing to get us pumped and a lot of people from out program were there so I was getting a little less nervous after hitting a point where I thought I might not jump. When it was my turn they sat me down and wrapped my ankles, which was the main support when you jumped, with the second support (in case) being around your torso if the ankles failed. They held hold you as you hop to the edge (because your ankles are tied together) and you have your arms around their shoulders then you take your arms off and they count 1,2,3,4,5… BUNGEE! If you don’t jump yourself, they push you. At that point though there was no going back so I actually jumped. The first .5 seconds I literally felt like I was going to die but once you just keep falling, then bouncing back up a couple times I looked around and it was really just amazing. The whole view and experience was amazing and I was so happy I did it.. as the bungee jumping slogan goes “Fear is temporary, regret is forever”. Afterwards we were so hyper and pumped so when we got back to the restaurant/gift shop we took a quick Smirnoff shot to calm our nerves. After we got our pictures and videos we were off to see some animals. We first went to the elephant sanctuary were they keep elephants that they’ve saved from poaching, or other injuries. I got to walk them and also touch their skin, ears, feet… Their skin is so rough but they’re such smart, amazing animals. Afterwards, we went to Monkeyland, which is just basically a big forest where tons of different kinds of monkeys just roam free. We somehow snuck in with a group of old Belgians who were obviously in a tour group. The guide questioned us once about if we were actually with the group, which we acted like we were, even though it was pretty obvious that we weren’t. At the end we went out to our car and thought we got away with free tickets but then the security stopped us and our tour guide came out and basically caught us and we had to go back in to pay. The park was really cool and I got some great monkey pictures. That night we were planning on staying in Plettenberg Bay, but last minute we decided to go to Jeffrey’s Bay instead because on the first night in Knysna some drunk people on our boat told us this was the “place to go”. We found a room in a hostel and were on our way to Jeffrey’s Bay. This was probably our weirdest night. The two people that were there working were Kaio, who was from Brazil doing volunteer work and was 22 and Werner (verrr-ner) who was like 43. We put our stuff away and took showers then went to the bar and drank a couple ciders and talked to Kaio and Werner, both very interesting and funny people. We then went to another hostel to hang out with some other people from our program on the beach. The beach was so nice at night and some people went into the water, which was pretty insane cause it was freezing. Afterwards we went back to our hostel where it was still hopping. We hung out with Kaio, Werner, and their strange middle-aged friends, aka the “permanents” who lived in the hostel. I guess it pays to have friends that work in a hostel. One of them was a local artist – Buffy, who spray painted streets and buildings.. and his dog.. which was kind of weird. He had weird dreadlock-y/just dirty hair and a Braves jersey that he had painted on a shirt. Interesting guy to say the least. But, anyway he asked us to paint/spray paint the street, and so we did. He ended up getting arrested because a cop drove past, but this was obviously a common occurrence and so the police let him go. This is when we decided it was time for bed haha.
Thursday: The next day Kaio was going to give us free surfing lessons but we were just hanging out on the beach all day and became to lazy to actually try to surf so we had to cancel the lessons and just spent the day in the water, reading and whatever. We then went to shower in the beach bathrooms after and mid-way, they decided to close the bathrooms on us so we had to leave and we just stopped to eat before we started driving to Oudtshoorn. We ate at this really cute little restaurant and the food was amazing. The drive to Oudtshoorn took awhile and we only got to our hostel at like 9 pm… The drive was amazing, we were a little off the beaten track but it was so pretty. Well, we ran out of gas and had to get off a random exit and when we literally only had .4 liters left, we found a has station just in time. We also happened to see an Oudtshoorn sign so we looked at a map and just decided to take this way instead. We were happy though because it was beautiful and Ostrich filled. The hostel we stayed at this night was called “Oudtshoorn Backpackers and Joyrides” so we knew we were in for another weird night. When we got there, the power was out in the whole hostel so we were using flashlights while checking in and being shown around. This place was the nicest for sure out of all the places we stayed and there were a lot of Americans there from other programs. We put our stuff away and headed to the bar to make more friends. We spent most of the night joking around with these 3 guys from Austria and also the fake David Guetta (but seriously this guy looked exactly like David Guetta). We played pool and somehow made a cheerleading pyramid with the Austrian guys. We ended up being a little too loud and got sent to bed/probably almost kicked out of the hostel. But it was fun and well worth it.
Friday: Got up early again, got some breakfast and then we were off to the Cango Caves. We went on the “adventure tour” there. At first it didn’t seem very adventurous but that’s just because the beginning was the normal tour. Then it got adventuresome and we were climbing through small holes in rocks in the cave and through REALLY thin tunnels. I tried to take some pictures but they don’t really do the claustrophobia justice. It was still really fun and a great experience. After we finished the caves, we felt to a strange little restaurant to get a late lunch before we drove back to Cape Town. Not the best place, but still had cool, old antique-y decorations. Our drive back was about 5 hours and we finally had an AUX cable so we could actually listen to music. When I got back I just hung out for a while and went to sleep because this week has been pretty exhausting… Today I’m just spending time catching up on e-mails and getting ready for my classes, which start on Monday. It is not going to be fun or easy getting back into class-mode but I am kind of excited for my classes.
Anyway, I’m not going to post pictures on here because it’s too hard to figure out and they’re all on facebook anyway. I’ll also try to get my bungee jumping video up when I can figure that out. This entry was even longer than the last so I’ll still catch up on those other random things later when I have down time (which I’m sure I will when classes start).
Lesson of the week: Never judge a man by his asymmetrical pants.
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