GARDEN ROUTE ROAD TRIP!!!!

Friday August 6, 2010

Road trip down the Garden Route starts today J yay!! We planned on leaving Cape Town at 4pm because a few people from our group had class, but after many complications with the rays of sunshine a the Budget Car renal place we finally departed CT around 7:45! We packed our little blue 7 seater suv full of backpacks, loafs of bread & tons of pb & J haha! Thankfully one of the girls in our group knew how to drive a manual so the drive was smooth & we only turned on the wrong side of the road once, totally safe J No seriously, it was not scary at all and such a fun road trip! It took us about 7 & a half hours to get to Buffels Bay where we were staying at a Backpackers Hostel right on the beach!! The drive was dark the whole time there but the stars were unbelievably beautiful!! I saw a few shooting ones too! We finally got in at about 3:45am and went to bed in our room with 12 bunk beds because we had to be up bright & early the next morning!

Saturday August 7, 2010

8:30am came extremely fast this morning!! Sadly all the hot water was gone so I took a freezing cold 2 second shower haha and we loaded our backpacks up and headed to the Wild Oats Market which was 20 minutes from Buffels Bay. It was so cool, lots of different stands selling all sorts of African art, carvings, jewlrey, clothes, etc.. the best part was the side with all the different foods J mmm just infinite stands of any kind of home made delishious food you can think of!! I had strawberry and banana creeps that were made right in front of me.. and they were DELISH!! We stayed at the market for about an hour and a half then headed off to “The Big Tree” which was like a 30 minute drive. We all wanted to go hiking there, but sadly when we got there it was only a 2 minute walk from the car haha so we saw the tree, which was massive but the whole think was over in like 5 minutes. Our car of people decided to drive to the next town Knysna and check out the elephant park J We figured we could maybe go feed the elephants and eat lunch or something! SO much better, we got there and saw they offered a sunset Elephant ride, so the seven of us were not passing that up!! We ate at the restaurant there which over looked the reserve the elephants lived on & we saw them while we ate!! It was so beautiful and peaceful there! At about 4:30 we watched the safety video and then hopped on the bus where they drove us to meet our elephants!! There were 3 of them, Harry, Namib and Tosha!! They are seriously the most beautiful creatures & they have the most innocent eyes! I LOVE elephants now!! They split us up, 3 people on Harry, and 2 each on Tosha and Namib. I was on Harry, the 22 year old leader of there pack!! He was MASSIVE but so adorable! We had to walk up steps on the deck and ho on the ellies which was too fun! Their skin is so tough that they don’t even notice you stepping on them! The ride was about 45 minutes and so amazing! The elephants walked us to their watering hole, and got a few drinks and then walked us back! The view from the reserve was amazing too! It was one of the coolest experiences of my life. I never in my wildest dreams thought I would ride an elephant!!!! Once they elephants brought us back we were given buckets of elephant food, some kind of grain pellots, to feed them!! This was so fun because you just put handfuls of the stuff in their trunks and they toss it in their mouths lol Harry was so greedy, we would feed him one by one and he just kept going in a circle to get more food from us haha. After we fed them the manager asked us if we wanted to walk with the trainers and elephants back to their stalls because it was their bed time! Seriously, is that even a question? Haha it was so cool getting to walk and pet the elephants on their way to their beds!! Its funny because they look like they walk so slow but you forget how huge they are so we were having to jog to keep up with them!! After the trainers put them in their stalls we got to watch Tato the baby elephant eat!! Aw he was the cutes thing ever!! While I was standing by his stall he wrapped his little trunk around my leg, So precious, then his buddy put his trunk on my purse and left a little surprise booger for later hahaha gross but hey never though an elephant would use my bag as a tissue!! Haha. Sadly the experience had to come to an end, but when we left we were given photos and a dvd of our adventure!! The Dvd is SOO cool, I cant wait to show everyone at home! Its too long to upload on the internet so you guys just have to wait till January!

When we got back to the Hostel, there was a huge party going on because there had been a surf competition earlier that day, so there were tons of people there! We put our stuff up and joined the festivities lol They even did an auction for the surf benefit so that was cool to watch! One of the boys in our group turned 21 at midnight so everyone was having tons of fun partying with him! Hahah we were supposed to set alarms for 7am the next morning too… that happened .. not lol

Sunday August 8, 2010

Some how we all managed to sleep through alarms but thankfully people from the other group found our hostel room and woke us up because we had to make it to Tsitsikamma in Plattenburg Bay which was about an hour and 45 minutes away to get the hike done before bungy jumping! It was sososo beautiful!! The hike was up a HUGE mountain right on the ocean and half way through we had to walk over a 75 foot suspension bridge over hammer head shark nests!!!! The hike took about 2 hours total, but it was breathtaking when we got to the top! There was this cool porch thing at the very top that let you overlook the whole path and the cars down below as well as the gorgeous ocean!! It was a perfect day out as well because the sun was shining and a nice breeze! Luckily it didn’t start raining until 5 minutes after we finished the hike! I was freeking out because I was scared to bungy in the rain but the place says they bungy in any weather! It took us like 15 minutes to get to Bloukrans River Bridge, where we were about to jump the highest commercial bungy jump in the world, 216m high!!!! I have never been more nervous in my entire life! After we paid they put our harnesses on and we met the guide to walk us under the bridge on this tiny cat walk hundreds of feet in the air on top of what looked like chicken wire!! Haha that was almost more scary than jumping off the bridge!! They gave us instructions and then we waited for our turns to go once we made it to the middle of the huge bridge!! I had no clue that when we paid they put us in order by the numbers on our hand so luck me I had to go second!! Haha I saw the first guy in our group get pulled over to get the straps and bungy put on his ankles and I was freaking out and I figured I would go in the middle, but then the bungy man came over an looked at our hands and did the finger motion “you’re next”… I about fainted haha! But I didn’t wan tot chicken out because I knew I would regret it! It took about 2 minutes to get all straped up and ready to go! Once they had your feet all wrapped up you had to put your arms around the two guys and they hoped you over to the edge of the bridge. Genius me, I looked over and saw the hundreds of feet of rocks, trees, and ocean/river below me and I almost lost my pb&J from earlier haha. I got a few tears and told the guys I couldn’t do it, and they said just look up, you can do this and then they told me to realease them from the choke hold I had them in and get ready to go! Haha it was so crazy I put my arms in a T and took a deep breath and they counted down 3, 2, 1 … and then they said Bungy and I dove off the bridge and free fell for 45seconds!!!!!!! IT WAS THE CRAZIEST FEELING IN THE WORLD!! It is so hard to explain, but I closed my eyes when I first jumped and everything just seems still, and when I opened them I was soaring through the sky like buzz lightyear after 50 redbulls!!!! The craziest part was that it was raining and I was flying faster than the rain drops so they looked like they were standing still!! SO CRAZY!! Haha they whole time I was screaming & after the terror let out I was having a blast!! I hope that everyone bungy jumps once in their life so they can know what it feels like because it seriously is indescribeable.. haha the only thing I can really say is that I felt like a complete bada$$ because I felt like I was kicking gravity’s butt haha!! After the first plunge the bungy pulled me back up and I shot down again just screaming OMG, MOM, HOLY MOLEY… $@*% hahah once the bungy stopped they started to pull the cord back up and a little dude on a different cable came down and hooked my harness up so I wasn’t hanging upside down any more and pulled me up with him back to the bridge… he scared me when he first got there though because I didn’t see him and the whole time I was talking to myself saying OMG that was SOO awesome & Dear God please don’t let my feet fall out of this thing hahahah. He just laughed because as soon as he got there I latched onto him like a spider monkey till we got back to the bridge. After that I watched all of my friends go and had the best time dancing to the music they had blaring!! Once we all finished we headed back across the scary cat walk down to the picture place where they gave us DVDs of our jumps and pictures!! Haha I re watched the DVD and it is So funny! I can’t wait to show you guys when I get home!!! I feel so cool now baha.

We headed back to a different Hostel in Plattenberg where we all got to stay in the same room this time with 12 bunk beds, 1 shower, and a kitchen! WE threw all our stuff in the rooms and walked to a near by restaurant for dinner and to celebrate Reza’s 21^st bday. This place was delish, I had a yummy steak and split a few bottles of champagne with the table and had a great time! After dinner we were all so tired so we stayed in and played drinking games with everyone for a while and then passed out!

Monday August 9, 2010

Happy Women’s Day! I love South African Holidays that give us days off of school! Lol We left Plattenberg and headed to the Canga Caves which were about 2 hours away. We took a 90 minute tour of the +800,000 year old caves which were so HUGE and awesome! I have never been in a cave before, but it all seems so surreal! It was pretty warm down there too, which was weird because I figured it would be cold. Either way the tour was really cool and we had a neat tour guide pointing out all the different stagtellites and structures that were over 800,000 years old! So insane, it’s actually where some of the San Bushmen lived apparently! After the caves we jumped back in the car and headed home! We got a tad bit lost and took the wrong highway for about an hour, but it was the best wrong turn ever because we drove through the most amazing scenery, the pictures don’t do it any justice! Mountains, and beautiful pastures, rivers, rocks, adorable little towns, amazing rainbows, and the most beautiful sunset ever. The Garden route was seriously breath taking and I can not believe I got to experience it! After about 30 pb&J’s our Road trip came to an end around 8pm. It felt good to get out of the car, but it was one heck of a trip! I had the best time of my life J I absolutely LOVE South Africa!!