Fall Holiday Edition: The Garden Route

Good Friday was the start of our much needed Fall Holiday.  We had a week off and booked a trip on the highly anticipated Garden Route.  Our trip was through a company called Earthstompers.  On their website they say that the Garden Route trip is for people that have a love for nature, which we all know I do not have.  Luckily, for the most part they mean you need to love the ocean/beaches and animals, which I do love.  We were picked up the day after Easter for a 6 day tour and I looked like a princess with my three bags and a snack bag.  I didn't want to deal with hungry people on the bus, so I packed a huge bag of "snackage" (when in reality its me who gets grumpy and angry when I am hungry).  So I may have ended up overpacking a little, but at least I had options when it came to clothing.  Anyways, when we got in our van we met our driver Nicole, a native to South Africa and ended up being the coolest tour guide possibly ever, a German couple visiting their daughter studying abroad, a girl our age from Switzerland, and a guy named Zach from Nova Scotia originally and lived for a long while in the United States but currently resides in China.  I came on the trip with some of my best friends here including my roommates Ali (USA) and Mo (USA), my honorary roommate Kelsey (USA), and our friends Melodi (Sweden but everyone never believes her and thinks she is from USA due to the fact that she is always with Americans), Lindsay (USA),  Rachel (USA), and poor Pierre (France) who we now call Pedro.  Pedro was a good sport as he was the only guy with us our age and had to sleep in a room with 8 girls three nights.  He ended up being okay though because I think he saw his fair share of butts and boobs.

Day 1: After we were picked up, we drove to the African penguins at Betty's Bay.  These are endangered African penguins and are adorable, but really smell.  They had a breeding program going on the get the numbers of these penguins up.  Following the Scenic Coastal Route, we went to Hermanus Beach which is famous for whale watching from July to November.  Even though we saw no whales, we saw tons of mussels on the rocky beaches and dipped our toes in the freezing Atlantic Ocean.  After that, we drove to Cape Agulhas, the most southern tip of Africa.  This was the first time we saw the Indian Ocean.  This is where the Indian and Atlantic Ocean mix and due to this there are very strong currents. When we got to the hostel that night I was surprised that a hostel looked like that.  I heard how dirty and nasty hostels were and as this was my first hostel experience; it was a very positive one.  We stayed in dorm settings the whole time, and most people did not like sleeping with that many people.  For me, it was like being right back on porch in the sorority house and was comforting.  We were 300 meters from the beach that night and went there before dinner.  Of course I wanted to say that I swam in the Indian Ocean, so I promptly did.  And in Lilly clothes (I'm sorry Lilly Pulitzer!!).  After that we had an amazing authentic South African dinner consisting of weird but amazing concoctions such as bananas on our potato salad.  

 Me and the gorgeous scenery.

Endangered African Penguins! 

Super cool rock formations. 

An extreme abundance of mussels.

The Beatles appeared in Hermanus. 

Pedro's angels: Kelsey, Mo, Mel, Linds, Rach, Katie, Ali, and Pedro

Proof that I swam in the Indian Ocean (Attention: Mom, Dad, Ben, and Josh).

A cute little snail!

Linds and me at the most southern tip of Africa! 

Where the oceans met.

Day 2: The next morning we drove to the Little Karoo, the Ostrich Capitol of the world.  We stopped at Ronnie's Sex Shop on the way.  This place is a restaurant/bar with bras and underwear hanging all over.  Ronnie's friends wrote SEX SHOP on the side of the building as a joke and this ended up being a popular stop along the Garden Route.  At the Ostrich Farm, some people ate ostrich (I had already tried it and did not like it) and then we saw some really stupid ostriches.  Ostriches are attracted to foreign objects and they were constantly trying to eat the wire fence.  We stepped on top of ostrich eggs, as they can hold a lot of weight.  I was jumping on one with all my force and could still not break it (I'm sorry to the chick inside that I probably disturbed).  We were supposed to ride the ostriches but thank God we didn't because it was raining.  The only way to get down off of an ostrich you are riding is to fall backward off of it and hope the guy catches you.  I ended up purchasing an ostrich keychain that is bigger than my head; best purchase of the trip.  After this we went to the Cango Caves which are pretty cool and hard to explain so you should check them out: Cango Caves Pictures.  Our guide sang us 'Ave Maria' at the end of the tour in the cave to show us the amazing echo.  There used to be concerts inside the caves a few years back.  That evening we stayed in a hostel right on the beach in Sedgefield.  You literally couldn't get closer.  There at the hostel we had another amazing South African dinner with beautiful candles and all.  After dinner we sat by the fire and then went to hang out in the same room where we had just had dinner.  It was totally transformed into a room with beer pong tournaments.  We got to know lots of the locals and played beer pong the South African way (which by the way is a lot easier than the American way and we felt as if we were cheating).  

Trying my headrest to break the ostrich eggs.

Cango Caves 

The beautiful beach.

Day 3: The next morning when everyone canoed and hiked to a water fall, I slept in and took a long leisurely walk on the beautiful beach.  Their canoeing trip was supposed to be filled with beautiful birds of all types and birds scare the crap out of me for some reason, so no thanks.  When they got back we packed up the van and worked our way towards Knysna where we indulged on pizza and sushi.  We saw a beautiful view from the top of a mountain there and got some great pictures.  I also went house shopping while on the top of the mountain (Dad, got an extra 5 million laying around for a gorgeous house on a cliff??).  We then went to Knysna Elephant Park where we fed ellies and played with them. There were even babies!!! They are much bigger and intimidating when you are standing underneath their mouths in-between their trunk and legs...  From there we drove to the beach town of Plettenberg Bay where we ate at a local favorite hang out for people our age and had some super good Mexican/Asian/South African food.  I still have no idea what I ate, but it was super good.  

Pan Love <3

The girls: Selena, Mo, Mel, Kels, Katie, Rach, Ali, Linds 

Pedro's Angels <3

Feeding ellies!!

Crouching elephant, hidden Katie

Hidden Katie

The group: Pedro, Rach, Kels, Mel, Zach, Ali, Mo, Selena, Katie, Linds

Playing with elephants, no big deal.

Walking along with the baby elephant.

Getting ready to feed the elephants; ps their pumpkins does not taste good raw.

My elephant I got at the Knysna Elephant Park! 

Day 4: We had a very early morning as most of our group was jumping off of the worlds largest bridge bungee jump.  We traveled to Bloukran's bridge which had an amazing view.  Pedro and I were the only ones out of the Stellenbosch group that did not jump.  I would have done it in a heart beat if it weren't for my stupid, messed up back from cheerleading.  Pedro and I walked out onto the bridge though for moral support.  Walking out onto the actual bridge was the scariest part of being on that bridge.  It was a suspended bridge from the actually bridge with a grated bottom.  Kelsey's biggest fear is heights and she was freaking out on this part.  What should have been a 3 minute walk turned into a 15 minute walk.  I was guiding Kelsey from the front and Pedro was guiding her from the back while she walked the whole tiny bridge with her eyes closed.  Once we got to the main bridge and everyone saw that Kelsey didn't chicken out (because it took so long to get there they thought she chickened out and went back), there was music blaring.  There was an actual DJ on the bridge, which pumped everyone up for their jump.  Everyone that jumped did an amazing job, and Kelsey is one step closer to getting over her fear.  After the bungee jumping, we went to Tsitsikamma National Park which is known for its unique combination of indigenous forest and Indian Ocean.  After lunch, some of us embarked on a fast boat ride through the gorge.  This gorge was infested with sharks and caves.  It was super cool and seemed to get more and more narrow the farther we went into the gorge.  At one point the "captain" took us into a cave that was super creepy and I thought this was where he killed all of the passengers and fed us to the sharks.  Needless to say, we ended up surviving.  When we got back, I went to the beach while everyone else hiked to a suspension bridge.  The Indian Ocean was so so so choppy that day and the waves were crazy!! Children were still playing in the water though so I took a plunge into the water and immediately and thought someone was stabbing me with pins and needles.  No one was, I was just literally freezing to death.  That water was that cold.  I guess it was a good thing I ended up not swimming in it because the waters were super shark infested.  After the beach we packed up again and traveled to our destination for the evening: Big 5 Country: Addo.  We stayed at a gorgeous orange "farm" that evening where we had awesome rooms that were not dorm settings.  This was Pedro's second night of having a room to himself and the 8 girls split up into three rooms.  The rooms had a country decor with a giant fire pit in the back.  Up the road was the restaurant, pool, and in-ground trampoline.  Of course I showed off my trampoline skills.  We layer on the trampoline then and went star gazing.  I have never seen stars as amazing as this.  It was like we were looking at the whole galaxy.  We even saw a shooting star!! After another delicious traditional South African dinner, Pedro, Rachel, and I went for a frigid swim in the pool.  

The view at the park and the Indian Ocean I attempted to swim in.

The swim platform I attempted to swim to.

When I thought we were going to die.

Melodi and me.

Last thoughts before my death.

Rach and me

The moment we saw the shooting star... Pedro didn't see it due to his obsessive picture taking.

Day 5: While everyone was on a early morning safari, Ali and I slept in as we have already been on one like that.  After a leisurely breakfast, we drove around Addo Elephant National Park looking for animals for about 3 hours.  We saw a ton of wart hogs, elephants, monkeys, karoo, zebras, and birds.  We also saw giant snails and giant, ugly beetles that keep their eggs in the elephant poop.  So if we saw poop on the road, we had to avoid it as it was unlawful to run over it.  After an abundance of animals, we went to Wilderness and stayed the night in our only actual hostel, again on the beach.  After claiming our beds and making them looked slept in so people didn't steal your bed, we had brick oven pizza and celebrated our last night there as well as Selena, the girl from Switzerland's, 22nd birthday.  I sang taylor Swift's song "22" to her all night long.  She loved me that night.  I also met a Chi Omega from Tennessee!!!!  She was sitting next to me at a picnic bench and said, "Are you a Chi O?" I looked at her in a crazy way thinking "How the hell does this girl know that I am from America, in a sorority, and in Chi Omega??"  She said that she saw my Chi Omega pillow on a bed in the hostel and thought that I might have been the owner.  I guess Chi O's have a 6th sense of knowing when you are in another Chi O's presence.  Due to the high number of strangers in the room that night, I reverted to my porch bed ways and I put a butt hut up on my bed and promptly got many weird stares, but they couldn't see me at least :).

Wart hogs: they are so top heavy that when they eat they have to kneel down so they don't fall.

Monkeying around.

BABY ELEPHANT!!!!

Beautiful blue bird.

Kelsey, Mo, and I were the only ones in the back.  We were in the van way too long.  Things were starting to get weird back there.  We raged while everyone slept and played 101 ways to die on the Garden Route... yes, we were that bored. 

Day 6: Our last day started late and we went to Mossel Bay where we ate lunch as close to the water as possible.  We then drove the long 6 hours home to Stellenbosch.  Over all, this was an amazing trip and I do not think we could have found better people to travel the Garden Route with.  It was hard getting back into the swing of things when classes started and I never though I would say this, but I missed my dinky bed here in my dinky room.  

Our group at the end of the trip... an amazing experience! 

Hope all is well in America! 

xx kCl