A group of us spent the weekend exploring on
a 3-day Garden Route adventure! The first thing we did was explore the
Cango Caves; we thought it would be a nice stroll through the undeground
limestone caves, full of stalagtites and stalagmites... yeah, we were wrong. It
was more than a stroll. We had to squeeze through tight entrances and army
crawl through passages. At one point, we were climbing up a tunnel that was
only wide enough to lift your legs to the next rock. Meanwhile, it was dark and
slippery (yes, we went barefoot) and SO COOL. There were so many different
kinds of formations from the dripping water and we explored both passages and
chambers of the caves, while also seeing a number of bats. I took a video of
the pathways through the caves, but the lighting was so low that only some
parts of the video had anything other than darkness. It was such a fun start to
the best weekend!!
Saturday was the BEST day ever. That sounds
dramatic, but the collection of things we did in one day was the most
amazing experience I’ve had! The morning started off with a bush walk with
THREE elephants that were thrilled to meet us. We walked with them out to an
open area and as we were walking they kept hugging us with their trunks.
We fed them squash and carrots and they would stick their tongues out to lick
the vegetables! It was so incredibly adorable. I received endless amounts of
hugs from all three of the elephants and one even tried to use her trunk to
play with my hair. They were all orphans that had been rescued and brought to
this particular reserve. It was sad to hear that they aren't always safe, even
after being rescued, because poachers had killed elephants on the reserve a few
years ago. They are such gentile and loving animals, it's really sad to think that
people harm them. I have never experienced so much admiration before spending
time with the elephants; they interact with each other in such interesting ways
and they are so intelligent.
I wasn't about to jump off the highest bungee bridge
in the world since I'd like to live to see the rest of the world, so instead of
bungee jumping I went zip-lining in Tsitsikamma Adventure Park! There were 8
different zip lines and we had a decent sized and very fun group of
people. Turns out, it's normal not to want to jump off of
a bridge and free fall for 260 m before being snapped back into the
air by the cord that's attached to your ankles. Who knew? We were zip lining
over a canyon type thing that had a stream and water falls below. It was
beautiful and the course included both long and short, as well as fast and slow
lines. I kept my go pro on the entire time, so we got great action
footage!
 |
| Mariko, Lily, Becca, Caroline, Isabel, Meg, Trista |
On the final day of our trip, we went on a safari!! It
was a private game reserve that held many different wild, but often rescued,
animals. We were in an open 4x4 safari truck and spent 3 hours seeing all
kinds of animals! We saw giraffes, lions, elephants, rhinos, springbok, zebras,
ostrich, and so many others! We saw 3 of the Big 5 (we didn't see buffalo
or leopards) which was really cool and it made me really excited for the spring
break safaris. I kind of wish that we had a say or vote in our spring break
excursion because the company we used to book the trip also had trips that were
a week and longer! It made me realize how many different programs and
activities are out there that we won’t have time to see, since they take longer
to get to. I would LOVE to spend that amount of time with animals and exploring
nature here in South Africa! Just means I’ll have to come back someday.
No comments:
Post a Comment