The fourth week - Garden Tour

 

The fourth week all exchange students from Herschel and Bishops were going to travel along the Garden Route, which is passing a beautiful area between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth. Along the route we made a few stops to do all sorts of different, interesting and amazing things.  If you read my blog you will understand why this week was  so awesome, why these activities were the greatest experiences of my life.

 

Monday morning we went to school to get on our little tour bus. We met our tour guides:  Ismael, Neacail  and Mrs Stein from Herschel, who also joined to us. We were all very excited and ready to start our adventure.  But first we had about 7 hours’ to drive before we would reach Oudtshoorn. During the trip our main activities were eating, chatting, dancing and singing. Our Spanish language skills improved rapidly, since the Chilean exchange students spoke a lot Spanish. As we drove through little villages and towns our tour guide told us some interesting things. Oudtshoorn is known as “the ostrich capital of the world”, because here you can find the world’s largest breeded ostrich population. We stopped at Cango Valley and visited Cango Caves. We took the "Adventure Tour" with an experienced tour guide. The first cave was very impressive and huge with wonderful stalactites on the ceiling. It was named after a farmer, Van Zuyl's, who in 1780 discovered this cave. I think the second chamber was the most beautiful one, with incredible formations of  stalactites and stalagmites. Each formation has got a fantasy name like ‘Tower of Pisa’ or ‘Crystal Waterfall’. We also passed through many small halls. The special light effects made our tour mysterious.  We went through the "Tunnel of love" and the most difficult part was to go through the "Devils chimney". It was a narrow path 3 meter vertical up and not wider than 40 cm. It was quite scary to climb there but it was all together a spectacular tour  to discover the "underground wonder of Cango Valley".

 

Van Zuyl's chamber

Crystal Waterfall

We were happy when we arrived to Kleinplas Resort and we could rest and swim. We had a very delicious supper there. There were two ostriches at our resort. It was fun to feed them.





Ostrich farm

Tuesday morning we started very early and we visited the Safari Ostrich Farm. Here we learned some history about this huge bird, got to feed them and eventually sit on them or ride them.  We were also able to stand on some ostrich eggs without breaking them. The trick is that you only can manage to do that if the eggs are on sand, because this way the weight is distributed over a larger area.



Standing on ostrich eggs

After that  we went to see more animals at Cango Wildlife Ranch. This is a nice park with lots of different animals such as cheetahs, leopards, tigers crocodiles and monkeys.  We had a great time there. First we got an informative tour about wildlife in Africa and watched a show. Then we got possibilities to do different activities such as stroking different animals or to do croc cage diving.  It is an unforgettable  experience to stroke a cheetah. It is funny to feel that that the black spots on the cheetah were much softer than the blond fur. It was exciting how the lemurs walked on your shoulders, we took quite some pictures here. My most interesting experience of this day was the cage dive with crocodiles. It is very impressive to be only a few meters from these huge animals under water. Later on we went to a little supermarket to buy some food and suddenly there was a power cut. We could not even pay or leave the shop, because the doors were automatic and they were closed, so without electricity it was not possible to open them. It took at least 20 minutes before we could get out of the shop. But this little incident did not destroy our fun at all, because who wouldn't want to be locked up in a supermarket, where all the food is? When we drove through  a beautiful nature area to Knysna. We could swim had dinner in a nice restaurant. 

Cheetah stroking

Playing with Lemurs



Croco cage dive

Wednesday morning we got up early and after breakfast we left for the Elephant Sanctuary "Knysna Elephant Park". This park has been open for about 20 years and all elephants have their own name. Here we had the opportunity to feed these giant animals, walk hand in hand with them and we got a detailed tour in the park. We could also enjoy an elephant back ride. We could sit on the back on the elephant together with a guide. You really feel yourself very small next to these big elephants. After this program we visited ‘Birds Van Eden’ and Monkey land. It is a big park with a long  bridge where monkey’s just walked and jumped around, eating your shoelaces.

Walking with elephant

Elephant riding



In the afternoon we had the opportunity to zip line across the Kruis River in the Tsitsikamma Falls Adventure Park.  It has eight different zigzag cables and the longest one is more than 200 meters. We tried all of them. It was amazing, because we were 50 m above the water and we had a wonderful views: waterfalls and the Milkwood forest. It was not scary at all, just fun. We had a nice dinner in a local restaurant at Plettenberg Bay. There we could enjoy a beautiful sunset.

 



Ziplining

Thursday was definitely the most spectacular day, because we were going bungee jumping! But first we stopped at Tenikwa Wildlife Centre and we got an interesting tour along Carracals, Leopards and Cheetahs. It was very nice to walk so close to these big wild cats. Then finally we headed to the The Bloukrans Bridge, the world's highest bungee jump bridge - 216 meters high. The bungee jumping company says: "Regret is forever and fear is temporary." When we were walking to the starting point I was kind of nervous, but when I was ready to jump I was not afraid anymore. The first part of the fall was the scariest because I couldn’t feel any air, but after that it was coolest feeling which I have ever felt. The adrenaline worked his magic!  I could feel the rope pulling me back and I went up en down. I could see the beautiful mountains and also the Indian Ocean. Everything was upside down of course, but it was just incredible! After the jump everybody was very happy that they did it.

We are ready to jump



The Bloukrans Bridge
 

 

Friday morning we started very early, because we went on "open vehicle safari" to see the wild life of Africa. We could see different animals: giraffes, zebras, springboks, lots of antelope species and a wild cat. Once we got back to our lodge we had breakfast and packed our bags to travel back to Cape Town.

 

This was one the best weeks ever in my life. Everything we did was such an amazing adventure. This was an unique experience which I will never forget, thanks to our excellent tour guides and to Mrs Stout.

 

Fun together