Frontier Weekend on an Afrikaaner’s farm

Warning…it’s a long one J hehe

                We had a group excursion this weekend.  We drove about 3-4 hours to an Afrikaaner (basically white South African) family’s farm.  They welcomed us into their home as friends or family and not as total strangers.  We stayed with two different families, both lived in super nice almost mansion-like houses at the foot of the Winterberg Mountains (3^rd highest in South Africa…I think).

The weekend was filled with many fun adventures…instead of going into all the details I will bullet some of the bigger things we did:

-feed an Eland

-saw a sheep get inoculated (given a vaccine…one guy from our group got to give a sheep a shot)

-hand-milked cows and tried milk straight from the cow…it was super warm…don’t think I am a big fan

-climbed some huge rocks, beautiful view!!

-swam in a river

-saw a sheep shearing demonstration

-rode in a “bakkie” (4x4 truck) up a mountain as far as we could and then climbed the rest of the way….pretty sure this mountain kept growing. Every time we would make it to what we thought had been the top, it would turn out to be only another ledge on the ever growing mountain.  What we saw once we reached the top made all the heavy breathing and lung aching worth it.  It was gorgeous.  I decided I am living by either mountains or an ocean when I get a house at some point in my life.

-had a picnic in the mountains

-ate a ton of delicious food, some new, some not…also ate wayyyy to many desserts

-went to their shooting range and shot a .22 caliber rifle….and hit the can target both times! They were the closer targets but who cares! It was my first time ever even touching a rifle!

-saw an elephant rifle…it was super loud…and powerful…the bullets were R150 each (about $21/ bullet)....and it could kill an elephant (hence the name) J ...it is the largest rifle there is that is not used for military purposes

-apparently became fearless of bugs…now when I see a bug that is annoying me (such as sitting on the table near my food or flying in my face), instead of freaking out, I just reach out and grab it.  No big deal.  Apparently I just got over my fear of bugs overnight…it was and still is super weird and kind of confusing to me how and why it happened. J

-went on a night ride on the bakkies… We saw a few kudu, but not much else because it was super windy.  I still loved it though.  I just enjoy the fresh night air and the stars.  I wanted to camp outside for the night. 

-my alarm on my phone died…woke up to the flies buzzing in my ears at the perfect time though

-went on a hike to the location of what used to be a waterfall but now (since there hasn’t been much rain) is just a fresh mountain water hole.  When we got to this water hole, we were told that there were these mini-crocodile animals in it…they are the type that don’t bite….ha that made us feel really safe.  We were expected to go swim across it.  Also it was super rocky, muddy and slippery.  Everyone was apprehensive at first, but Manus didn’t really let down.  He just pointed the way and told us to go.  We slowly started to get in the water, freaking out and swimming around.  We made our way across to another set of rocks and then had to swim through a deeper water hole.  It was fresh mountain water…very cool and refreshing.  It was kind of scary to do…and at times I felt like I was going to get hurt because I would slip on the rocks, but we made it.  I am glad Manus pushed us to do it….it was so cool and such a great and unique experience.

Overall...amazing weekend...super fun...now I am exhausted and have a TON of homework to do. ugh.  Better go work on that :(
Have fun! Bye.