BUNGEE, ELLIES & WINE

So I am basically an eip fail at blogging (at least since I’ve been home) but I needed to do one last post about my final adventures because I knew even if I’m the only one who will ever go back and read this…well I’ll want to know about the World Cup!

So after cage diving, Farley, her brother Coop and I went on the garden route. The garden route basically entails driving along the southern coast of South Africa from the Western to the Eastern Cape and stopping at all the beautiful beach towns along the way. It’s one of the largest tourist destinations in the country (right behind Kruger National Park) and most students take the trip over a long weekend for skip a week of classes to travel. Well, we didn’t really have this option because the world cup was starting on Friday and we wanted to be back the day before for all of the pre-game festivities, so we basically did the garden route on speed. We drove 6 hours to Plettenburg bay and stayed overnight at a random backpackers and then drove home the next day in the afternoon. I know you’re probably thinking we’re crazy but we had to do the garden route because we wanted to go BUNGEE JUMPING!!! The world’s HIGHEST bungee jump is off of Bloukrins Bridge, just past Plettenburg along the Eastern Cape and we had to do it before we went home…

The drive to Plettenburg was one of the most beautiful drives in the world, the landscape along the coast was continually changing. Farley drove the entire way (stick shift on a car without power steering, I definitely would have crashed) but I sat up front and played DJ and the 6 hour drive went pretty quickly. We drove through mountains, along cliffs, by the ocean, through vineyards and farms; the atmosphere was constantly changing with each turn we took it was fantastic and beautiful. We passed safari parks and ostrich farms, along with random coffee/art galleries, and plenty of small, quant adorable little beach towns. We stopped at elephant land, and played with elephants. Farley and I even got to feed milk to a baby elephant, but she kind of took the bottles out of our hands and fed herself, still so cool. We walked around with the ellies for a little and learned about how they came to the sanctuary. After an hour or so we got back in the car to continue the drive to Plett.

When we reached Plett we went straight to our backpacker’s, dropped our stuff and went downtown for dinner. We walked around but it was kind of a ghost town because it was chilly and the middle of the week-not exactly tourist season? We went back to the backpackers and hung out in the bar/game room for a few hours, met some random people who were in SA for the world cup then went to bed early. The next day we went to bungee! The jump is over a gorge, it’s 216 meters high, the highest in the world! To jump, you go in groups to the bridge, where they bind you at the ankles (and place a safety thing around your chest incase the ankle bind would break) and then you pretty much just jump off the bridge and fall…really far! Basically it was absolutely amazing. I’m pretty sure I screamed the entire way down. There is a DJ at the bridge who plays really loud hip hop music, so Farley and I were dancing and being crazy just getting pumped up so we wouldn’t be scared but when I went to jump the DJ actually cut the music and I had to jump to DEAD SILENCE. No one else had to do this so I was absolutely terrified, I felt like the world was having a moment of silence for me or something creepy like that. But once I jumped I forgot about being scared and just took it all in.

Besides the music thing I wasn’t scared at all, just really excited. After being just feet away from great whites I don’t think I could be scared of anything, its pretty awesome. So yes, you might think I’m crazy but I would totally do it again.

After bungee we went to monkey land, which is a reservation for rescued monkeys (or monkeys that people previously kept as pets but were seized by animal protection services…) we walked for an hour and saw lots of adorable monkeys and then it started to rain so we sprinted to the car and drove home.

Overall, the garden route was definitely a success, it was so much fun. Of course I wish we could have driven to more places but I got to bungee and that was the sole reason for going  and let’s face it, coming home to world cup madness was way better than beach towns…

Wednesday I woke up really early to go wine tasting with Suzanne through Stellenbosch. We went to 4 different vineyards, including a Champaign winery that actually made the Champaign which Nelson Mandela drank when he became president, and Barrack Obama drank at his inauguration…it was delicious. The day was a lot of fun. We started at 9:30 AM, but luckily our first stop actually gave us a tour of the vineyard, I learned how wine was made and then when we had our first tasting, we were also given some cheese, crackers, nuts and almonds and taught how to actually sample the wine. After that vineyard we went to a second tasting where the workers there were feeling generous so instead of giving us 3 or 4 samples we tried nine wines. Needles to say, after that stop we all wanted lunch and were feeling pretty silly. Still, we went to the Champaign winery, tried 5 or 6 more wines and then finally it was time for lunch.

We got lunch in the town of Stellenbosch, which is a really quaint university-town that reminded me of the New England. Suzanne and I found a cute little café to eat at, and then afterwards we explored for a little. After lunch we went to Spier, which I’ve been to before but it is by-far my favorite vineyard. We sampled 5 wines there and then got in the car and went home. At the end of the day I had tried over 25 wines, and it was almost 6PM. We were feeling quite exhausted from all the wine but it was almost the world cup so we had to rally…

That night I got dinner with my friends at our favorite Greek restaurant and then we decided to go to Stones for one last Wednesday night. Stones is a bar with lots of pool tables, and outdoor seating, a lot of study abroad students would go there Wednesday night because there were good drink specials. My friends and I went there almost every week but this would be a our last time going as a large group so it was a bit depressing. We ordered a lot of Black Label and then sat outside playing cards acting like typical American college students, still it was so much fun. After a couple hours we couldn’t play anymore because no one could focus so we went back inside to find the bar completely packed with tourists for the world cup. We ran around being crazy meeting people and singing soccer songs and then finally went home at some ridiculous hour, it was a very successful last night at Stones : )



http://www.faceadrenalin.com/aboutus.asp (BUNGEE!)
http://www.elephantsanctuary.co.za/cragshome.htm (elephant sanctuary)
http://www.spier.co.za/ (monkey land)
http://www.spier.co.za/ (spier winery)