The Garden Route

I have just come back from a blissful trip on the Garden Route. The Garden Route is an area on the Eastern Cape of South Africa, stretching roughly from Mossel Bay to Port Elizabeth. All the towns are small beachy or fishing villages, each with their own charm and attractions. I rented a car with three of my housemates and we started on our four-day journey.

Here is a little taste of what we did:

• KLOOFING – what is kloofing, I still couldn’t really tell you. It is a cross between hiking and rock climbing and swimming. We started on a hike into a gorge and from there our guide simply told us to follow him. We climbed over boulders, swam in the river, jumped off cliffs, and everything in between. It was exhausting but a blast.

• Mitchell’s Brewery Tour – this local brewery doesn’t use preservatives in their beer, so it is always fresh. The beer was great and we felt like champions because we did the tour at 10:30 am.
• Knysna Elephant Park – we got to feed, touch, and watch elephants, they were adorable, I wanted to take one home!

• MonkeyLand – we walked around this monkey sanctuary where there are 9 different species of monkeys, this was my least favorite activity that we did, it wasn’t very interesting and you didn’t interact with the monkeys at all

• Bungee Jumping – the highest bungee jump in the world – this was by far my favorite activity of the trip. It was so scary but awesome at the same time. To get to the jump, you have to walk under the bridge in a wire cage. It was terrifying but good preparation for the jump. When you are at the jump station, they blast loud music to get you pumped up and all the people who work there are dancing and having a blast. They call out your jumper number and you mentally prepare to go. They make it impossible for you to chicken out. They bring you to the edge of the bridge and say, 5-4-3-2-1 BUNGEEE, and you just jump. It was an awesome sensation to free fall, and then the recoil was great too. It was so silent and peaceful hanging there, I loved it. I was on such a high after that happened.

• Jemima’s restaurant in Oudtshoorn – an awesome restaurant where we tried ostrich. It really was like a red-meat chicken. It was delicious, the best meal of the trip
• Cango Caves – caves outside of Oudtshoorn, they weren’t my cup of tea but interesting nonetheless
• Safari Ostrich Farm – we got to see and sit on ostriches, stand on their eggs, and I even got to ride one. Ostriches are just fascinating creatures, they don’t seem like they’re anatomically possible but they are. Riding the ostrich was hysterical, they go so fast! I had a blast here.

The trip was tons of fun, but I was ready to come back to Cape Town by the end. It was great to drive on the other side of the road, experience different places on the Cape, and have a vacation within our vacation.

On Friday, we had our first day of classes, kind of. At UCT, they have a day before classes start where you attend the class and they deal with administrative stuff like giving out the syllabus. I have to rearrange my classes a bit, but most of them seem interesting and fun. My Sustainability and the Environment Class particularly sounds awesome. I was so excited about it when I left that I felt like such a nerd. I’m excited to start classes for real on Monday and get into a routine. For now, I am going to savor my last weekend of vacation.