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Tuesday Aug 10, 2010

A surreal memory of an oak tree

Half way through the trip I went along the Garden Route,  which is the the stretch of land along the South Eastern coast of South Africa. I went with four other volunteers with the company Marula Travel.

The first day was a lot of travelling, but this was my favourite day of the tour, because it was like travelling through a lot of different countries, the views were amazing and the sights I saw through the window of the minibus had to be one of my favourite parts of the whole trip. We stopped off at a farm during the day, where we went on a ride along the lake, it was a deserted area, and the boat was more like a raft. The man and his dog manning the boat, they served us food, homemade pumpkin pie, homemade chicken pie...basically more food than even I could manage...I am known for my large appetite. We rode along with our legs lying in the water. It was a lot of fun.

On the first night we had reached Mossel Bay, and stayed in a backpackers. We got a cheap meal nearby and played in a kids playground at the back of a restaurant, until the actual children showed up and we had to leave!  

The next day driving along some road – I have no clue where, it was a bit surreal because we were looking for an oak tree – or a tree that looked like an oak tree. The reason  was because it was the place where we would find a track down to a rock pool. The track was pretty nonexistent, and consisted of lots of rocks and scrapes along the way, but the rock pool was amazing, in the middle of nowhere swimming among murky moss (and I really don’t know what else) was a lot of fun!

We then visited a reserve where we went on a quad bike safari, the safari itself wasn’t too impressive because we had been on a previous safari which was one of the best around and this one was limited in its funds and land, the owner was so enthusiastic for visitors and the accommodations were beautiful but he had little custom and was struggling with his dream, which was really hard to see. It had so much potential but lack of advertising and money was really frustrating for him. A few weeks later our guide found out that he had sold up and it was under new management.

The weekend was capped off going and watching Izzy one of the volunteers, doing the world highest bungee jump, I wanted to...I really did...hmmm, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it, but later that afternoon I did do a skydive, I text my mum about ten minutes before the jump telling her and then went up in a plane and jumped out. I have a serious phobia of roller coasters, which all my friends have given me a lot of stick over now I’ve jumped out of a plane. I was rewarded for being so brave by breaking my hand on the landing which then cost me 1500R to fix, basically £150 I didn’t have. But it’s a story to tell!

Posted by Natalie ( 6:33 PM )
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