South-Africa Exchange 2013: Week #7

As soon as we arrived in Cape Town on the 22^nd of February, we left immediately again because friends invited us to go on a boat tour around the Waterfront! It was great to see the Waterfront from a different perspective, especially with the beautiful weather.

The next day, the whole Holland exchange group went to the Biscuit mill market again, but this time for lunch. The food was amazing! Missing Europe, I even had a delicious hot Belgium waffle with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. We spent the rest of the afternoon swimming and relaxing at Tessa’s house, while we made our plans for the evening. We decided to go the Waterfront again, where we had dinner at Spur (bacon and cheese burger!) and went to the movies where we saw Life of Pi. We still had enough time until our host parents would pick us up again, so we decided to go for a ride in the Wheel of Excellence. Unfortunately, you could barely see a thing since it was dark, but it was great fun though, and it was nice to be finally able to talk a whole night in Dutch. J

Sunday was filled with packing for the Garden Route Tour, and we also went to a restaurant called ‘Babylonstoren’ for lunch, where I had one of the best meals in my life. I ordered a green salad as a starter, trout as a main and a panna cotta as dessert. See the pictures provided! After lunch, we walked around in the gardens for a bit before going home again.

Monday was just an ordinary day of school, and I finished packing. The next morning, all the exchange students assembled at Herschel at the fountain, ready to leave for a five-day-trip. The trip was organised by a travelling company called Ilios Travel, which I can highly recommend! We all got into a van after the driver and tour guide introduced themselves. We covered a lot of distance this day, all the way from Cape Town to Oudtshoorn, a town also know as the ostrich capital of South Africa. On our way, the tour guide, whom we could call ‘dad’, told us interesting stories about our surroundings and we made lots of stops, to enjoy views or go to the Cango Wildlife Ranch. This ranch is located in Oudtshoorn, and it has loads of animals to look at. We saw crocodiles, bats, birds, tiger cubs, lions, cheetahs, a white tiger, and much more.

After we visited this ranch, we continued our tour to the Cango Caves, also located in Oudtshoorn. In my opinion, these caves were very impressive since they were huge! Full of stalactites and stalagmites, our tour guide showed us around the dark caverns. These caves had been used as homes by our ancestors thousands of years ago, and were rediscovered in 1780 by a local farmer.

When we walked out of the cool caves into the boiling heat again, the van took us to our hotel, called the Opstal Country Lodge where we sat around the swimming pool for a while before having dinner. All the girls shared one house, with four bedrooms and a living room, and (of course) we stayed up till late chatting and laughing.

The next day, we checked out of the hotel, packed and went to an ostrich farm nearby. Unfortunately, since almost everyone of the group disobeyed to one of the silly camp rules we couldn’t ride the ostriches and had to wait for an hour. After this, we got into the small bus again that took us to the town of Knysna, located at the coast.

We visited the Waterfront, which is about a hundred times as small as the Waterfront in Cape Town. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed walking around here, before we got onto the ferry that took us across the Knysna Lagoon. At the so-called Featherbed, we got off the boat and a huge tractor with about 6 carts behind it took us and all the other tourists up the hill, one of the two heads of Knysna. We had great views from here, and walked back to the Featherbed again, where the boat was waiting for us. We went back to our hotel again where we freshened up for a bit before going to the Waterfront for dinner, in a cute fish restaurant called “The Ocean Basket”. (Great sushi!)

On Thursday, I woke up by the sound of pouring rain. After breakfast, we went to the Knysna Elephant Park. Even though we were walking outside in the rain, it was great! We could stroke, hug and feed the elephants. And I promise you; the feeling of an elephant trunk taking an apple from your hand is something that you will never forget!

Feeling cold, I ordered a take away coffee before we got back on the bus that took us to the Bloukrans Bridge. The bridge spans over a 216 meters deep gorge. We all had the opportunity to bungee jump from this bridge, but unfortunately I had to promise my parents that I would never do this, so I had to wait and take loads of pictures while the others jumped down.

At lunchtime, it hadn’t stopped raining yet, and we were all feeling hungry. We went to a restaurant called the Peppermill where we had a yummy lunch before going to the Birds of Eden. The Birds of Eden is a huge birds aviary, you really had the feeling you were walking in a jungle with all those exotic birds surrounding you. I sometimes even had trouble with seeing the cage! Some parrots could also talk, so we had very Deep Meaningful Conversations with these colorful birds.

After this outing, we went back to the same hotel in Knysna again before going out for dinner to a local pizzeria.

On Friday, we spent our morning at the beach whilst swimming in the warm Indian Ocean, while three of us were skydiving. After they shared their super cool experiences with us, we went to the Garden Route Game Lodge where we would stay overnight. We went on an evening safari, and saw lots of animals; elephants, giraffes, cheetahs, a meat-eating male lion, and a waiting-till-her-husband-was-ready lioness. We also saw loads of springboks, wildebeests and rhinos. The only problem is that the battery of my camera went dead just when we got to the lions, so the pictures from that moment on are not my own.

When the jeep dropped us off again at the main lodge, we rushed inside, hungry and wanting to have dinner. The food was awesome! Again, I ate so much that I felt like I could explode, but that’s what exchange is all about! Realizing it was our last night of the trip already, we spend the rest of our evening relaxing together on the chairs next to the pool, while gazing the stars.

Saturday morning was filled with packing and preparing ourselves for a long drive back home again. That day, we drove for about 7 hours, and we stopped at Cape Agulhas, which is the most southern tip of Africa. Yep, I can tick another thing of my bucket list again! We bought our lunch in a supermarket, and Pieter and I decided to do it the Dutch way so we bought bread, ham, cheese, salad and ‘La vache qui rit’. We prepared our sandwiches with my razor sharp pocketknife in the moving van on a bumpy road, trying very hard not to cut ourselves. Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea after all… Nevertheless, the sandwiches were great! J

In Somerset West, a small town at the edge of the suburbs of Cape Town, we made our second stop, to visit a cheetah park. At around 5.30 in the afternoon, we finally arrived at Herschel again, and we all went home.
I had the quickest shower and change in my life, because 5 minutes later I was ready again to go out for dinner at Moyo, where I had lunch on my first Sunday in South Africa as well. When I got home again, my bed was screaming so loud for me that I even had trouble with brushing my teeth. Luckily, I had a great night of sleep and dreamed about the busy, mind-blowing trip with all my friends and slept in till late next morning.