Finished my exams. Finished my thesis. I'm done with college and it's an awesome feeling. But I'm leaving Rhodes today which is not so awesome. I can't believe how fast this semester went by, and I'm going to miss everyone here so much. Thank god for Facebook. I've got two weeks of solo traveling ahead of me: Kruger Park (for game drives, hoping to see the Big 5!), hopefully a day in Swaziland, and then an 8 day tour of Mozambique. On the 21st I start my journey home. I've got a day to spend in Frankfurt with Jess, a couple [View Full Entry]

---

---

Some videos I've taken over the semester... [View Full Entry]

---

---

Since I was missing graduation, I decided that I needed to do something awesome. And that something awesome ended up being skydiving. Jess joined me and we did it in Grahamstown, so it was cool to fly over the city we’ve been living in for the past four months. Everyone’s been asking me if I jumped by myself - hell no. I was attached to someone that knew what they were doing haha. The only real instructions we had were to “maintain the banana.” Basically when we first jumped out of the plane, we had to keep our arms crossed, head [View Full Entry]

---

---

After the Drakensberg, I moved on to Coffee Bay where I met up with Jess, Tracie, and Kerry. Coffee Bay is in an area of South Africa known as the Transkei Wild Coast. The rural region lives up to its name, and I loved how different it was than anywhere else I’ve been. The landscape was dotted with round mud huts, most a blue/green color. And we had little kids lining the road as we passed to wave at us. Most tourists in South Africa look out for the Big 5 - lion, leopard, elephant, rhino, and cape buffalo. Here they [View Full Entry]

---

---

I spent my time in the Drakensberg at a really nice backpackers called Sani Lodge. They had free chocolate cake, so they’re pretty much my favorite place so far. The first couple nights I roomed with David (Austria) and Vreni (Germany), and they’re in South Africa volunteering with orphans and disabled kids. The three of us went on a guided hike together called “In the Footsteps of the Bushmen.” Our guide took us up a mountain, where we were able to see three different rock painting sites. It’s estimated that the paintings we saw were around 2,000 years old. Most of [View Full Entry]

---

---

A couple weekends ago I went camping with the Rhodes Mountain Club. We went to Hogsback - a beautiful area of mountains and forest, which supposedly inspired Tolkien to write Lord of the Rings. The name comes from the shape of the mountains: they look like the backs of hogs (apparently lol). We hiked up Hog 1 and camped at the top. I was excited that we were right next to a couple streams where we could refill our water bottles with African mountain water (don’t worry Mom, it was safe!) The trail we hiked was covered in these beautiful orange [View Full Entry]

---

---

This weekend, I went to Storms River with Tracie, Jess, Caitlin, Emily, and Wayne - the driver from the Gaol. The village is located just outside Tsitsikamma National Park, and there are a ton of cool hiking trails through the forest. But the major reason for our trip was to jump off of the Bloukrans Bridge. The third highest bridge in the world, it crosses over the Bloukrans River and is also the site of the world’s highest bungee jump. At 216m tall (around 710 feet), there’s about 7 seconds of free fall, and apparently the drop after the first rebound [View Full Entry]

---

---

We arrived in Cape Town, our final destination, on Monday night. We stayed for five nights at Carnival Court Backpackers. It’s located on Long Street, which is one of Cape Town’s major nightlife areas. The hostel had a bar that was also open to locals and our room was right next to it, so it was pretty loud til 4 or 5am every night. It was good for meeting interesting people though. Like Brett, a marine from Texas who spent time in a military prison. Or Benji, a South African who repeated the phrase “you strike the woman you strike the [View Full Entry]

---

---

Mossel Bay was our next destination, where we stayed at Mossel Bay Backpackers. This was one of the nicest places we stayed at, and I just loved the way it was decorated. Everything was pretty blue, and the bedrooms all were named - we stayed in The Shark Cage haha. And I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that the toilet seat had a picture of a dolphin painted on it. They were also incredibly generous with their internet, which I am eternally grateful for. On our first afternoon, we walked along the rocky beach, spotting tons of cool shells, starfish, and sea [View Full Entry]

---

---

The drive to Oudtshoorn (pronounced oats-horn) was absolutely beautiful. It’s located in the Swartberg mountains, and the views as we drove through them were incredible. We ran into a little bit of accommodation trouble, because there was a huge Afrikaans festival going on and everywhere was booked so we ended up staying in a different hostel each night we were there. The first night was at Oasis Shanti, which was really nice. Oudtshoorn is famous for its ostrich farms, and they fed us ostrich eggs for breakfast (well, one egg between a bunch of us - one ostrich egg is equal [View Full Entry]

---

---