Garden Route!

Last week was our semester break at school, and my study abroad program included an amazing trip along the Garden Route (the southern coast of South Africa), a very popular spring break trip for South Africans and foreign students. We travelled for a week in a caravan of 10 seater vans and it was the best week ever! So here's a quick recap:

Saturday we left Stellenbosch super early and drove most of the day until we got to Buffalo Bay. This was my first experience staying at a backpackers (cross between a campground and a hostel) and the Buffalo Bay Backpackers was great. Nothing fancy, it had a great vibe and the people who ran it were quite the characters. We were right on a secluded strip of beach, slept in bunkbeds like summer camp, and I didn't even see any of the huge spiders they saw last semester. When we got back from a group dinner out, there was a reggae band at the backpackers who entertained us for most of the night.

Sunday morning we went to an elephant reserve in Knysna. We learned about the plight of the elephants in the region, and then got to feed them and hang out with them for a bit. It was kind of staged, and not as cool as it will be to see them in the wild when we go on game drives, but still awesome. They were amazing up close, and feeding them was fun. After that we went to Judas Square, a rastafarian community in the Knysna township (where the band from the night before is from). We got to go into their worship area and learn about the rasta religion/way of life. It was fascinating, and also really cool to see how they use tourism as a way to sustain their community. Everyone there was super friendly and excited to share their way of life with us.

Monday we were up early again. We stopped at Cango Caves and got to do some crawling around there. It was like being a kid in a giant playground. Funny story--a few years ago, a woman was stuck in one of the passages for over 10 hours because she insisted on continuing even though she was repeatedly told she was too overweight to fit through some of the tiny spaces. They got her out, but everyone behind her was also stuck. There were a ton of framed newspaper clips about it at the place. After the caves we went to an ostrich farm. I'm actually terrified of large birds, so this was a bit of a stressful stop for me. They let people ride them, which I thought was a bit inhumane (they put little bags over the ostrichs' heads when they reign them in because they don't panic if they can't see, and it reminded me of Abu Girhab and it was just weird) but it was hilarious to watch people hang on for dear life. Ostrichs are 1. ugly 2. wicked fast 3. stupid (their brains are smaller than their eyes). That's basically all I got from the ostrich farm.

Tuesday we hung out at the beach at Plettenberg Bay in the morning, and then saw some more animals that afternoon--Monkeyland, which was exactly what it sounds like (I hid my camera under my arm the entire time because monkeys are sneaky and like to steal) and a cat sanctuary, where we got to pet cheetahs. On Monday and Tuesday night we stayed at a summer camp type place that was in the forest and it was EXACTLY like Nature's Classroom.

Wednesday was the big day--bungee jumping at Bloukrans Bridge. It's the world's highest commerical bungee jump (216 m which is about 700 ft I believe). I was in the second group, so had to watch about 25 other people from my program go before me. It was hilarious watching how everyone reacted when they got to the edge. I honestly wasn't scared at all until right before I jumped, and even that wasn't so much fear as disbelief that I was actually doing it. The feeling of falling is pretty indescribeable, it's so surreal to be jumping off a bridge knowing you aren't going to die. It was actually quite peaceful, which I didn't expect. I had a pretty odd feeling after as well--my friend Andy and I both said how we felt like we could just run off the bridge and jump again (without harnesses) and we felt like we'd be totally fine. This made Alex nervous.

On Wednesday and Thursday night we stayed at Jeffrey's Bay, a world famous surf spot. The backpackers we stayed at was awesome, the stretch of beach we were on was beautiful, and the Billabong outlet was 50% off on Thursday. A bunch of people stayed for the weekend at JBay, which I totally would have done, but we had to get home early on Friday to head into Cape Town for the Two Ocean's Marathon.

Saturday AM Alex, Jim, Hannah, Micho and I (along with Courtney and Ilana our soccer moms and biggest fans) woke up at our backpackers in Cape Town at 4:30AM to get to the start for 6AM. I was way more terrified for the race than I was for the bungee but it went so well! It was a great experience, I'm so glad I did it and want to do another one soon. It was pretty crowded and the first 10K was alot of dodging and stopping and going, but I still finished in under 2.5 hours which is all I wanted. We all got medals and tshirts and were so happy about the whole thing. I've never run 13 miles in my life so that was pretty cool.

We stayed in Cape Town all weekend, Sunday morning we went to St. George's Cathedral for Easter (Desmond Tutu's church). Parts of the service were in English, Afrikaans, and Xhosa, so that was pretty cool. Then we went to the last outdoor concert at the Kirstenbosch gardens--Goldfish, my new favorite band. They're awesome and Alex, Micho and I want to try to get them to play at SMC. It was a perfect end to a perfect week/weekend. It was a bit strange not being home for a holiday like Easter, but we made sure that we had a memorable one here.