5...4...3...2...1...bungy!

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19th March, Nature’s Valley, Garden Route

Hey hey hey!!! How are you guys doing? Hope all is well!!
So... it would seem i’ve gone and broken my foot, which was a bit silly and wholly inconvenient! It was way back in Coffee Bay, surfing. I caught a wave and surfed the white water all the way to the shore and stubbed a toe hopping off. It hurt like hell at the time but I didn’t get a bruise or any swelling to show for my pain so I figured it would soon pass. It didn’t and has eventually swollen. Obviously a responsible person would have seen a doctor by now but there are so many things that I want to do that I’d not be able to if I were in pot. So I’ll get it checked out in cape town if it is still causing me grief, in the mean time I’ll have to ignore it, it’s worked fine so far!!!

Anyways, I’d just arrived in PE when I last wrote. It turned out to be everything I had hoped Durban would be. We stayed in a pretty fancy hostel that could easily have been a four-star hotel which was absolutely fantastic. It did have the vibe of a hotel mind, so no parties and a little more than a cursory nod from the other guests. The weather was so so hot for the four days we were there, we spent quite a bit of time in the pool. It had been the first pool we’d come across in which the deep end was deep enough for me to disappear so it was nice to swim and tread the water. Should help with the whole surfing thing! PE itself is a beautiful mix of architecture and culture. Colourful Mosques stand between the huge air conditioned malls and the huge bricks and pillars of British buildings. The beaches are long and golden and the sea in clear and warm. As we’ve found with each city we’ve visited there wasn’t a great lot to do, but we wandered along the seafront dipping in and out of the malls, shops and craft stalls. We happened across a pretty big complex called the boardwalk at the northern end of the Summerstrand (the rich bit) which we visited twice. I managed to replace the trainers the ants had stolen! Billabong were having a half price sale so I scored a sweet set of Element trainers for less than £20. Sweet as a nut!

Part of our bus package entitled us to a township tour in PE. It seemed silly to miss it as it was free so we were driven around the city and townships by a local guide. It wasn’t exactly great!! The guide was good fun but told us so many facts about every inch of the city that not one of them quite made the transition to long term memory. I’d bought an Element Tee that had the SA colours in the logo and our guide mistook it for the logo of the corps, a political group that has broken away from the ANC, Nelson Mandella’s Party, the current Government. I don’t honestly know a lot about who is favourable in SA politics but our guide seemed a little worried that my tee might get me into trouble. It didn’t at all, but he had me a little worried too. (needlessly so, I’ve since seen the Corps logo and it looks not a thing like my tee.... what an idiot!) Anyway, the highlight of the tour was a brief visit to a township school. The school was run on a tiny budget that didn’t even stretch as far as chairs and desks and until recently had been run without electricity. Pretty much everything that the school had came from donations, furniture, computers and even the uniforms were provided for the poorer children. It was uplifting to see just how much the school had achieved from the generosity of others. The children were happy and fed at least one nutritious meal a day. Detention meant having to stay after school and work on the grounds or build furniture. I don’t suppose it’s really possible to estimate the value of education, especially in an undeveloped area such as the one we found ourselves in. But it was fantastic to see so many children given the opportunity to learn and enjoying it.

After 3 days of a little luxury and an unspeakable incident in which I broke a toilet (i’ll tell you another time) we headed south out of PE towards Jefferys Bay, the home of surfing in SA and considered by many to be the best right hander in the world. Putting up the tent again after 3 days of en-suite, double bedded luxury was a little depressing! We stayed in Island Vibe, a backpackers with a reputation as the place to party in J-Bay.
J-Bay is also the home of the factory shops for Billabong, Rip Curl, Element, Von Zipper, Quicksilver, Nixon and just about every other brand that would have made my 16 year old self happier than a pig in the proverbial. I have to admit the excitement did cause me to regress a little (a big little) and I indulged like a kid in a sweet shop! My dress sense has since also regressed to that of my 16 year old self!!! I look like a billboard for surf brands! It was so cheap it would be rude not to!! Seriously, Von Zipper Sunnies for £20.... genius! Plus they matched my new VZ cap, ha!!
Friday I grabbed a surf lesson in the kitchen window, a beautiful beginners surf break right in front of our lodge. The water was warm and clear and the waves were unbelievably good. The instructor was also a cool guy who helped me advance my technique a little more. In the Afternoon I walked across the town to the famous supertubes. In hindsight I wish I’d taken my camera. The waves were amazing 6/7ft tubes that broke forever. There were three surfers out and I sat on the beach and watched in awe. I did plan to go back the next day with my camera but somehow it never happened, plans never quite seem to work out! T.I.A! We spent the night in the bar, the hostel was fully booked and the vibe was awesome. Rebecca was on form on the pool table and lasted half the night playing winner-stays-on. She beat some horribly smug French Canadians which was fantastic. I’m yet to meet a French Canadian who isn’t unbearable! I’m positive there’s plenty but they’ve eluded me this far! We drank late into the morning with an Irish guy, a group of English surfers and a couple of really funny guys from PE. The details of the night are a little hazy, the Irish guy definitely passed out in the bar!! I out-drank the Irish!! They can have the rugby!!!

Saturday I was up for slightly fuzzy surf, the waves were forgiving though a little smaller and fewer than the day before but still really good fun! I’d rented a board rather than pay for a lesson so I was a little more adventurous and paddled past the break and caught the bigger waves as they rolled in, a fair few of them sent me flying. Thank god for leashes, I’d not be nearly as brave if I wasn’t attached to my board! I’d need armbands!
After the surf and a much needed fry up I bumped into a couple of English guys and spent the whole day chilling out and talking with them in the sunshine. We were joined by more and more folks and discussed just about everything you can imagine! It was a really nice afternoon. After all those hours in the sun 3 of us wandered down to the beach and swam in the sea to cool off. Without a wetsuit it was freezing! The waves were huge too, we were duck-diving every 20 seconds or so! After 15 minutes we felt like we had been in a fight and lost - badly! We staggered up to the hostel to eat from a braai and began of the beers again! The vibe was great and a little more chilled out than the night before. We headed to bed about midnight to be up for the bus the next day.

The sun rose and we were headed for Stormsriver, a lodge called DiJembe buried deep in indigenous forest, encircled by the beautiful Tsitsikamma mountains. I’d spotted the lodge from a sticker on the back of a toilet door in Jo’B and been looking forward to it ever since. Dijembe being the drum i’m so fond of... The backpackers was so laid back, horses roamed the garden, hammocks swung between the trees and there was nothing but the dust of dirt roads for kilometres. We spent the remainder of the morning taking it easy, Rebecca was suffering with a migraine and happiest napping in the hammocks. By afternoon I’d grown a little restless so wandered off in search of an adventure. I managed to find a national park, signed myself in and picked up a map and found a pleasant looking 10km hike down to the river and back. It was about halfway down to the river I decided to browse the info on the map (i was looking for exciting facts for the blog...) and discovered the park was famed for it’s leopards and snakes. Oh dear... not exactly what you want to hear all alone in a forest! Fortunatley, i saw very little wildlife on account of the huge, densely planted trees that provided me with some shade. The river was beautiful and clear enough to drink from. After a quick paddle I returned through even denser, darker forest, praying there were no leopards! I’d decided i’d grab a mountain bike the next day and head all the way to the rivers mouth with my camera. The night was spent in the bar with a great group of people, talking far more than drinking, playing pool and sharing stories, jokes and anything else that came to mind.
Monday came around and I headed out in search of a bike to hire. Upon finding a rickety old GT in need of much repair I set off on the 22km ride to the rivers mouth. The first 5km was a fantastic dusty downhill with long sweeping bends and tree roots and rocks galore, providing plenty of opportunity to get both wheels skywards. It felt pretty good to be back on a bike! The rest of the way was slightly harder work, I’d decided to get photographs on the way back in the hope the light would be a little better, as it had been the day before. I never did get the photo’s I’d wanted! Instead I got myself completely lost, with the help of an Israeli and a Canadian I’d met along the way back. The problem was the route came back on itself in a d shape. Having explored the river mouth and dared to venture across the terrifying wire bridge that traversed the two sides of the gorge I somehow missed the turn off the circular route and pedalled my way back to the ocean. As pretty as it was, I really didn’t need to see it twice! It was having missed the turn off for the second time that I met my fellow cyclists and allowed them to convince me that they knew the way. Error. We ended up pedalling somewhere way off our maps and finding ourselves back on the main road, the N2, about 15km from where we started. My 22km ride slowly became a 45+km ride, with a broken foot and an even more broken bike! All good fun though! Got the bike back into the shop just as they closed and headed back to the lodge as the rain began to fall. The rain didn’t relent and by the time we were hungry the lodge was totally without power and we were all huddled around candles in the bar. I donned the 50p poncho I’d acquired in Lesotho and made the 2km walk into the village in complete pitch black. I couldn’t see as far as where to put my feet! Fortunately the village had power, unfortunately the only place providing food as a very posh looking hotel. I wandered in sporting my poncho (it was bright red...) and everyone looked up from their snails and caviar, looked at each other and grinned. Felt a little silly really... ha! Managed to get burgers and chips to takeout and headed back to eat them in the dark! A couple of girls took pity on me and offered me a lift, but by that point i was as wet as I could have been and I don’t think they would have appreciated a wet seat so I politely declined, nice of them though! We spent the rest of the night in darkness, playing pool and chatting in the bar by candlelight. After the bike ride I was ready for bed by ten. Camping in the rain... hooray!

Tuesday arrived and the rain relented for our journey south to Natures Valley. Completely irrelevantly to most of you, but on the bus I listened to the last song on Clarity by Jimmy Eat World, I’d forgotten how amazing that outro is!!!! Give it a listen!
Anyway! Natures Valley was much the same as Stormsriver, though the hostel is much bigger and spread over a huge area. We spent the day taking it pretty easy, though we ventured to the local farm shop for lunch. We arrived about 2 hours after a calf had been born and enjoyed toasties whilst watching the calf stumble around on its spindly legs trying to find an udder. It was pretty cute!

I’d been looking forward to a curry for ages and the hostel cooked a fantastic lamb curry for supper. We ate with a Chinese man who travels the world selling fibre optics and a German girl who is working her way north the route we’ve just travelled. She invited us along for a hike the next day, though I was planning to do the bungy. I fancied a glass of red with my curry, the hostel only sold it by the bottle, Perfect! I Spent the rest of the evening sharing a local cabernet sauvignon with the German and Chinese, decided I’d hike with the German and stay another day for the bungy. The Chinese man was also a keen photographer and he showed me how to photograph the stars. There were a million stars in the sky, we were so remote that there was no light pollution. Turns out that a 30 second exposure gives just enough time for the stars to burn their way into the sensor, dead impressed with this I spent a lot of the rest of the night trying to build tripod out of books, ashtrays, twigs and anything else I could find and got a couple of not-too-bad shots! Ended up staying up pretty late sharing stories, was a nice night.

Wednesday I was up early and spent the day hiking through natures valley with the German girl, I don’t know if I ever did learn her name, but if I did I’ve since forgotten. The walk was a fun scramble through the valley, just after mother nature had unleashed a storm on it that had washed away any path there may have been and pulled a good number of trees straight out of the earth. From the bottom of the valley we headed up and over the side towards the beach. Quick stop for lunch and then across the beach for a swim in a lagoon. The lagoon was stunning - warm and huge! We swam around with the fishes for a while then continued up across the beach and up the cliffs to the a lookout point. We were hoping to see sharks but didn’t manage to see any, the views were spectacular though and it was so peaceful up there! I would love to have been up there when the whales migrate south along the coast.
The hike took pretty much all day, the German turned out to be great company and is also heading to Cape Town Jazz Festival in April so we agreed we’d catch each other there.
Back at the lodge Rebecca had met a girl from somewhere near Grimsby and we spent the night laughing about Brid, sharing wine and generally having a bit of a giggle, was good fun! Couldn’t convince anyone to come along for the bungy though, so I was to do it alone, a thought that haunted me as i wandered off to bed.

And as soon as I awoke. I was full of nervous energy all morning and listening to the liveliest songs my iPod could provide, dancing around and drumming on anything and everything! It seemed to take forever to get to midday, but it eventually did and we set off. Rebecca came along for the ride but refused to jump. So myself and one other guy, an African ventured out along the bridge to do the silliest thing either of us had ever done. He got to go first, seeing him disappear off the edge was horrific! My stomach turned over and my legs gave up on me! Still, they strapped me in, carried me to the edge and 5...4...3...2...1... BUNGY!!!! 0 to 120km/ph in a couple of seconds, 4 seconds of freefall and the rope tensioned and dragged me skywards again, leaving my stomach hundreds of metres below me. Boing!! Up and down and up and down and up and down!!! I’ve never ever in my whole life been as scared as I was up there! Every instinct I ever had in every inch of me didn’t want me to throw myself off a bridge! It was amazing though! I had so much fun I would happily have jumped off again. Well, once my bodily functions had returned to normal...

After that we headed back to the tranquillity of the lodge for a lie down then headed out to a fancy looking cafe for lunch. They did serve Ostrich and Springbok, but I can’t bring myself to eat either just yet! Boks and Bucks are so pretty! I can’t imagine farming them for meat!

Thats all for now, heading a little further south tomorrow to Plettenburg Bay, where all being well me AND Rebecca will be doing a skydive!


The only other bit of news of note is that just after Rebecca files out of cape town there is a 3 day trance festival over Easter weekend! Chris, there’s change from £20 for the tickets! Get yourself there! 6,999 people will be waiting to party with you!!!
check it out! http://www.intothevortex.co.za/parties.html#competition

I have a few more pictures of the last few days and a video of the bungy i'll try to get up in the next few days, but for now i'm going to kick back in the sun!


Lots of love

xx

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