Hi again,
Sorry it has been awhile since the last post. This past weekend and week were incredibly busy.
Hogsback Roadtrip! (Hogsback is said to be the place that inspired JR Tolkein to write Lord of the Rings, this may or may not be true..nevertheless it is beuatiful with lots of mountains and waterfalls):
We went on our first weekend away trip. The five of us (Taylor, Lindsay, Heather, Katie and I) rented a car and left for the 3-4 hr drive early Sat. morning. We came home Mon. evening. Monday was a national holiday so we did not have class. One thing we noticed on the way there was that instead of worrying about deer crossing the road, you need to look out for Tortoises (we saw a huge one) and monkeys (we saw a few..Possibly baboons…they were pretty big)!
We went to the Terra Khaya backpacker first. It is an eco-friendly place that is run by a few people who are basically hippies. They were pretty cool people. The location is great. It has a wonderful view of the mountains; it was so quiet and peaceful there.
During the day we went to another backpacker, Away with the Fairies. Lindsay and Taylor signed up to do a trail race, while Heather, Katie and I decided to just walk. We met a girl on the hike named Tamsen; she is from Bloemfontein, SA. She was really nice and fun to talk to. The hike ended up being a lot longer than expected. We were supposed to be going a 5k but we missed a turn and ended up doing a 10k. It was super pretty and we saw lots of mountains and waterfalls. A lot of people who were there said that the waterfall “Madonna and Child” was the largest they had ever seen it (probably because it had been raining for the past four days. It was so beautiful. After the hike we got ready to head back to Terra khaya, only to find out that someone had locked the keys in the car. That turned out to be a hassle. After much stress, frustration, and lots of panic and phone calls, we convinced Shane (the owner of Terra Khaya) to come pick us up. Shane came about an hour later (30 min. later than he told us) and then proceeded to have a drink at the bar before he drove us home. We rode in the back of the bakkie. He drove super fast. It was terrifying, yet the moon was huge (the largest in 14 years) and the stars were bright. We got back, ate the communal dinner (which was good), played cribbage and went to bed.
The next morning we woke up early to watch the sunrise over the mountains. We got up at 5:30ish…the sun rose at 6:30ish…we were upset. But it was so peaceful and beautiful. After getting the car key fiasco figured out, we went into town and looked at some art shops. With all five of us in the car we bottomed out a few times. We ended up scrapping a plastic flap off the bottom of our car. We panicked. Some random guy came and asked if we needed help and then he called some of his friends over to help. Soon we had about 8 guys jacking up our car and crawling underneath. One of the couples we met at the first backpacker also saw us and came over to help. They discovered that the flap had come unscrewed but they didn’t think anything major was wrong. (Random side note…when we went to return the car we told the guy what had happened and he just said “oh ok” and put an x in the box next to no damages on the receipt. We were not charged anything extra for it.)
On Monday morning, we woke up early again to watch the sunrise (it rises really quickly…one minute it was still down, I went to the bathroom, came back out and it was already up!) We decided to go on a short morning hike before heading back to PE. Little did we know we were setting out on a 3.5-4hr hike. The trail soon disappeared and we were left climbing up a slippery rock scramble. It was so exhausting. I realized I am not in shape at all...even with all this walking.
-The rest of the week has been very busy and stressful because of all the homework we have. We ended up needing to make 2 late McDonald’s ice cream runs for motivation and celebration throughout the week. I am now happy it is the weekend so we have a little time to relax…however I should get back to my homework so next week is not as stressful.
Hope you are all enjoying the snow back home. I miss you all. See you in a few months (I can’t believe my trip is about half way over almost!).
Madonna & Child
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