Thurs/Fri: Safari in Kruger National Park

The following are all of the entries I wrote each day of our adventure tour. Get comfortable because there is quite a lot... Probably the last post at least until NY.

I'm not really sure what day it is, or really where I am, but I know we've done some awesome stuff. For my own memory I'm going to recap this all as briefly as I can, though it's hard to briefly describe an African safari. On Thursday we had to leave the backpacker at 9am for our 12:15 flight to Joburg. We all said our goodbyes to Shannon, Shelby and Speach. Shannon even cried a little bit which broke our hearts, he ended up as kind of a big brother to us all. We asked Speach to play our fav songs for the last time on the hour ride to the airport, which in case I forget them was 'I will love you till time stands still' by Liquid Deep and 'Jezabelle'.

Once we arrived in Joburg we found our tour guide Goose (yes, as in Top Gun). Goose is a good looking Australian surfer type who absolutely refuses to wear shoes and walks everywhere barefoot. I know, I don't get it either.

We left straight from the airport headed to Kruger, a solid 6 hours away by bus. We made a few pitstops for food and potty, and I got dinner from a South African burger joint called Whimpy. I have seen these everywhere, kind of like the SA equivalent of Wendy's maybe. I ordered a veg burger and it was quite the surprise: the patty was potato, and about 3 bites in I finally found some colorful bits resembling a vegetable. And the fries were pathetic and unsalted. NEVER AGAIN. KFC is huge here, if I am forced to fast food again it will be that.

Now that I am here I have a newfound appreciation for Cape Town. It is so brown and flat here, and every few miles you find some random patch of fire burning the grassy nothing. According to Goose, "stuff just burns here," leaving whole patches of char. We saw a good deal of it in Kruger too, but more to come on that. However brown this place may be, the stars make up for it. Maybe it's just because of the change in hemisphere, or the lack of giant American city lights, but the stars here are indescribable. Though I know nothing about astronomy, even I can tell they are different. As soon as the sun goes down the bus rides get surreal, and I have found myself watching the foreign stars while listening to any live DMB album I have, which is apparently the perfect soundtrack.

During our time at Kruger we are staying at Timbavati resort, which is actually a fenced off area in the wilderness with a bunch of 2 person huts called rondawels. They are large round rooms with a bathroom and thatched roofs. It is probably the most amazing accomodation I have ever stayed at--that's one way to start off the tour. If we stayed in these the whole time it would be fine with me, they are so unique. Also even though it's fenced baboons, impala and wharthogs still find their way in. I never saw a wharthog but I was the first to point out multiple impala and monkeys.

And to imagine that at the time we thought this was awesome. Now having spent an entire 12+ hours on safari in Kruger, one of the most famous game reserves in the world, those no longer thrill me. Before even entering the real park we were freaking out over impala, wharthog, and zebra spottings. We left for the park at 8am in our open safari vehicles, and with the windchill it was frigid. We saw the basic animals mentioned, as well as ostrich and springboc (noms) up until about lunch. And as you may or may not know I have a new appreciation for birds afer my vertebrate zoology class last quarter and have been noticing "cool African birds" everywhere we go. My lovely James House group knows this well, and during the morning safari they would yell "bird, Natalie!" every time they spotted one. As annoying as that may have been, I saw some really interesting, colorful African birds. Most of these were hornbills, which we constantly refered to as Zazu after the Lion King. Acutally quite literally all the animals we saw we tried to refer to using their Lion King names or roles. It never got old.

After lunch we found an amazing herd of elephants grazing, and they started to make their way near the road to eat. We must have sat there for at least 20 minutes and taken probably a few hundred pictures each (all of which probably look exactly the same). There were even a few baby elephants in the group, which were too precious for words. We spotted some giraffe eating acacia and latex trees, which are such cool looking animals up close I'm still excited about it. Then from a distance we saw a white rhino, croccodile (yum), hippo, and water buffalo. So by midday, after 8 hours driving around Kruger we had seen 3 of the big 5: elephant, rhino, water buffalo, missing lion and leopard. But those were for sunset...

We stuck with our family of 9 from James House and went on a sunset safari soon after. The rest of the group went in a truck of 20, and we split off from them right after entering the park. Our driver was a man named Phillip, who was mellow but still constantly joking with us. As 9 lovely ladies we asked him to take us off roading, which surprisingly he did. We ended up on a 'closed, do not enter' dirt road a few minutes into Kruger watching the sunset. Then we stopped, and Phillip took a few pictures of us in and out of the car--all this after we had been warned we would not ever be let out of the car for fear of lions or other predators at sunset. Talk about an amazing photo op, we love Phillip. After that we are driving down this road when I say, "how cool would it be if a giraffe or something just popped up out of no where." And I swear to you not more than a minute later the road curves around and we stop dead because there is a GIGANTIC GIRAFFE STANDING RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD STARING AT US. There was a gigantic singular gasp from the entire car, and we immediately, simultaniously whip out our cameras. We sat there for a good 5+ minutes taking pictures of the giraffe frozen no more than 15 feet directly in front of us, with the African sunset off his right flank. Called it, right? Then we drive towards him and he akwardly mosies off to the side, then cautiously swings around to watch us pass. We named him Leonard, and he is still by far the best part of our safari. Thank God for off roading with Phillip.

The rest of the night was not as lucky. We never spotted any lions, which haven't been spotted for the last week. But there are only about 1,000 lions in a park about the size of New Jersey (or Isreal, or Wales), so the chances were slim. We did spot something called a serval that Phillip aptly described as a "baby leopard," which is apparently an incredibly rare cat to see. As are hienas, of which we saw probably 5 or 6. By the end of our freezing night out in Kruger we had even seen so many elephants (including countless babys) that we were jaded to the point of "ok, yep, elephant, moving on..." Never thought I would ever get tired of elephant sightings.

So although no lions, for one [loooong] day we had an amazing safari. Without a doubt everyone has to do this at least once in their life. A bunch of locals kept driving through in their everyday cars (since there are paved roads through the park which you follow), as if they were taking the family around Yellowstone or something. Can you imagine just going on safari for kicks during the weekend? Crazy thought.

Sat/Sun: Kloofing in Blyde River Canyon

After Kruger we are staying in the Blyde River Canyon area in little 4 person houses called challets. Today we went down into the canyon to spend the day kloofing, which is I think the Africaans word for canyoning. Now if you're like me and haven't heard of canyoning, here's what it actually is: the most extreme hiking ever, generally including climbing, wading, and multiple cliff jumps. We hiked through this beautiful lush canyon bottom following a creek, and in order to continue on the hike we had to do 4 cliff jumps. The first was right at the beginning just to get us wet and used to the cold, and we hopped off a small rock into a deep pool of the creek. It was about as cold as you would imagine it would be, and we were only wearing swimsuits with tennis shoes, athletic shorts or leggings, underarmour tops, life vests and helmets. Thank goodness for the helmets and vests otherwise this would have been a hell of a lot harder. We hiked the entire 3 hours wet like this.





After the first pansy jump we did about a 10 foot jump, then a 12-15 foot jump. We then climbed down into and through a cave, which was entirely dust. It was exactly like being inside a vacuum bag, and we got absolutely covered in dust due to our sliding down most of the cave on our butts. Thankfully we followed this up by immediately hiking to a waterfall which is probably the most epic shower I have ever had. Then another half hour down the hike we came to the last jump, about 35-40 feet. Erica and I were not planning to do it, though we were both tempted. It took about 20 minutes of convincing by everyone including Goose to finally get us to jump. I really truely was not going to do it until Erica finally worked up the guts, said "Oh f*ck it" and walked off the edge. Then knowing I couldn't be the only one to wuss out I walked right off after her. One of the girls got it all on video. I cannot believe I did it, though I took a hell of a lot of encouragement, I'm still pretty proud. However I now definitively know that I do not like heights...

Mon/Tues: Cradle of Mankind and elephants in Magaliesburg

Monday morning we got up early to finish the laundry we had started the night before. There was only 1 token left to use the laundrymat, so we hand washed our shoes and muddy clothes in the bathtub hoping to dry them later in the dryer. But of course, TIA (This Is Africa) so as a rule none of that could work out as planned. We stupidly started with the shoes and pretty much clogged the bathtub with water. As it would no longer drain I hand washed 3 or 4 items of clothing at a time in the sink, then rinsed it all off in the shower and hung it to dry overnight. I was literally praying before bed that the tub would drain overnight; thankfully it did. Then the nearby dryer wouldn't work, so I trecked all our clothes up to the next facilities, which we almost couldn't find again. And by then end of it all our clothes and shoes still were not dry... Like I said, TIA.

We bussed 6 hours to Magalisburg today, and by the end of the ride we were all seriously sore from kloofing. Everything hurts, especially my quads, upper body and back. I liken it to yoga, where it's tough but not overwhelming, but you really feel it the next day. Based on the soreness of my arms and back I would safely say that kloofing ended up being more wet rock climbing than anything else.'

Wed/Thurs: Magalisburg

I don't really feel like writing much about this place. It was kind of a mix and match of a lot of different activites. We visited the Cradle of Mankind where they have discovered some of the oldest early human remains called Astrolopithicus africanus. As a bio major I already knew why this place was so significant and was pretty excited to go through the cave where they have found the oldest complete skeleton of A. africanus, named LIttle Foot. But important or not it ended up being kind of boring. Then we checked out a huge local market where we were all constantly harrassed by every single merchant. I was seriously overwhelmed and didn't really enjoy it. Finally we finished the day at Lisedi cultural village, which is kind of like a mini Disneyland to showcase South African cultures. We saw recreations of villages and dances from the 5 major tribes of South Africa. After working with the kids in Cape Town I have a special place in my heart for the Xhosa. Especially since they have the awesome click language.

The next morning was much more memorable. Before our drive out of Magaliesburg we all opted to go to a local elephant sanctuary. We got to hang out with 3 of the elephants. They had us each brush them, feed them, even walk them by holding their trunk in our hand. It was precious. Then we finished by getting awesome elephant kisses, which was kind of like a giant moist vacuum on our cheeks.

Thurs/Fri: Horseback safari and caving in Swaziland

As I type this it is 12am Friday morning and we are en route to Mozambique after a crazy day in Swaziland. We knew going into Thursday that it would be by far our busiest day, and boy were we right. All of us definitely got our exercise in today. We started (as usual) at the butt crack of dawn, 6:30 am wake up in order to leave for breakfast by 7. But getting to breakfast from our rondawels involved a decent 15 min hike through the safari park to the rest stop/restaurant in the middle. We saw plenty of zebras and wildabeast grazing while the sun was coming up over the Swazi mountains, which are now pretty common place. I never thought I would get used to seeing zebras.

Immediately following breakfast we left for our horseback tour of the game park. Thank goodness I opted for the beginner horse group since I haven't ridden for probably a decade. We got to have a nice relaxing walk through the savanna. My horse was named Lizzy, and she was pretty stubborn but still knew exactly what to do without me doing much. She only spooked once, mostly because the guide horse up front was super skiddish and she got freaked, but I held on for dear life and pulled her back pretty quick. Afterward my knees were so stiff I couldn't unbend them for a while and had a hard time walking straight. I'm getting so old...

After a rather uncomfortable hike back down to our rondawels we packed up, made some lunch, and then got cornered by an ostrich. Yes, really, this is my life. Briana and I were in our hut, which has a split farm house-like door, when Julia from next door came running into our room. Apparently she was on her way to the communal bathroom but there was a giganto ostrich in the way. Then the ostrich kind of followed her and came to check out our room, and all of a sudden we see an ostrich head pop up over the bottom half of the door. We filmed the encounter, which was pretty entertaining as long as it didn't try to get in. Then while I kept it occupied at the door Julia hopped out the window and scurried to the bathroom. The stupid ostrich didn't leave for a good 15 mintues, when she finally decided to move on to harassing the girls next door. The wildlife here is insane, though I would take an ostrich over baboons any day, those things are crazy.

After our hike back to the restaurant half of the group--the nervous group, myself included--left to go caving through a nearby mountain. We drove for about 45 minutes and hiked for another 45 in full jumpsuits and helmets. At the time it was pretty brutal, but we had no idea what was to come besides crawling through a cave. Though I wouldn't really call it a proper cave, it was more like a bunch of large granite boulders that were stacked all over the place for miles and miles, and we had to crawl up, down, and through them. It was without question the most intense rock climbing I have ever done. The hardest part was the first hole to get into the cave, called the Key Hole. It was about 3 ft high by 1 ft wide, and we had to go in feet first, wedge our whole bodies between the rocks while the bottom fell out and shimmy our asses down 3 ft until we hit ground. Let me just say wedgie of the century. But we had been told that was the smallest passage--that is except for the tunnel.

Goose had told us about the tunnel, saying it was about the length of the bus and about 2 ft wide by 1 ft high. He recounted that you army crawl through all of it and wedge yourself over a rock akwardly in the middle, somehow flipping your body around in the process. So we were thinking this was going to get really ugly and claustrophobic, but we still opted to try it. And I guess by try it I mean do it since there really isn't another option once you get down there. We got held up as one or two girls freaked out or got wedged in there funny, but it was really only 2 tight spots and a larger tunnel in the middle. Probably no more than 10 ft long which was kind of a let down, but Goose's exagerations have made everything scary we've tried seem way less terrifying once we get down to it.

The guides were really helpful in telling us where to put our feet, how to turn our bodies to fit through crevases, pulling us up ledges. I tried to stick in the back with one guide named Wandile who reminded me of a grown up Thobane from back in Cape Town. Wandile was one of the nicest people I have met so far, and was super eager to help us. At every tricky spot I would stop and ask him how to get through or jump down or climb up, and more often than not he would climb down and tell me to step on his knee or even lowered my feet down with his hands. Thank goodness for Wandile.

Another advantage of sticking in the back was all the girls going through ahead could scare away the spiders. Apparently some "arachnid, not a spider" (according to our group leader) is endemic to these caves. Something about them not having a head and thorax combo made them "not a spider", but I saw two on my way up and let me tell you it was a freaking spider. I could get through the small spaces, around the giant cravases, and shimmy up the boulders, but I did NOT want to be down there with those spiders. But besides those there were plenty of bats hanging from the ceiling which I thought was pretty awesome. Since it's winter they were all in a state called torpor, which is kind of like a cold hibernation for them except they can wake up. So whenever walking through a bat area we had to be super quiet, but I think we still woke a couple because I saw some flying around all pissed off. There was one hanging on a wall all by himself that the guides had named Jeffery because he is a Jeffery's Horseshoe bat, then at the end we saw another one all alone on the wall that they called Jeffery's brother. Loved the bats.

To finish off the crazy, jam-packed day we hiked back down from the caves in the dark and went to the nearby geothermal hotsprings. These pools are called the cuddle puddles by nearly everyone, and I'm sure you can guess why... Luckilly we were at a private hotspring where there was less cohorting, and there our group of nervous nellies got to eat copious amounts of pizza and beer all from in the 100 degree pool. We all agreed that this was one of the best nights yet. The second group of not so nervous ones went in the cave after us and didn't show up to the hotsprings for hours. By the time they arrived and were eating I was the pruniest I have ever been, but so relaxed. I think I spent a total of about 4 hours in the hotsprings, and hopefully that means we'll be a lot less sore tomorrow. But probably not.

Having just left the hotsprings we are now crashed out on the bus for an overnight trip to Mozambique. We have to first stop at the border out of Swaziland and the border into Mozambique, which will hopefully go smoothly since we prearranged for visas. Our program somehow managed to negotiate the visa fee down from 600 Rand to only 300, and we had to fill out our apps and turn in our passports to the embassy bright and early this morning. But supposedly this will save us about 6 hours at the border and keep us from being interrogated individually in Portuguese by border patrol. Go figure why Mozambique is so intense, it's a pretty third world country and I feel like not a lot of people are dying to get into it. I'm guessing the gov isn't the best, though I know nothing about it. Regardless we should be in Tofo in about 10 hours, which after our all day adventures I will hopefully sleep all the way through.

Sat/Sun/Mon: Snorkeling, surfing, and sunning in tropical Tofo, Mozambique

Today, our first day in beautiful Mozambique, I snorkled in the Indian ocean with giant whale sharks. I can't really believe I'm doing these things, today was pretty surreal. To start off, the ride into Mozambique was apparently pretty eventful, except that I slept through absolutely all of it. After getting through the less than secure border and back on the bus around 2pm we all took whatever otc meds we had to fall asleep. For me that meant 2 Dramamines and I was out like a light. And while we were all passed the hell out, 2 different strangers tried to sneak onto our bus (unsuccessfully) and we got pulled over 3 or 4 times by local police. However the police here are unashamedly corrupt and can easily be bought off. According to Goose the first stop was around 4am, and the noticably drunk cop literally took them around the back of the bus and said "Ok you give me presents now," meaning cough it up. So Johan, our South African driver extraordinaire, whips out a wad of 100 Rand bills and starts flipping through them in front of the cop. Then he slyly slips him a 20 Metica bill (worth about 80 American cents) which the hammered cop thinks is 200 Mt and then happilly lets us go. This was only one of apparently multiple encounters, which I cannot believe I didn't wake up for.

Mozambique is stunning and tropical with incredible beaches. But Goose was right, it is shockingly third world; in his own words "one of the most third world countries in the world." I still have yet to see an actual building here, absolutely everything is either a modest brick house or more often grass huts. Yes, really, grass huts EVERYWHERE. No plumbing, no electricity, no clean drinking water. Our hostel looks like a Hilton compared to the grass hut township we are next to. This is real Africa, not the movie set idea that we all imagine. South Africa seems like the States compared to this. But the weather and the beaches are so incredible. If any of these beaches were in the US or Australia or somewhere they would be too packed to move, but here they are literally deserted. Not even resorts or beach homes around the water, just giant stretches of white sand that you can access from right off the barely paved road. If this weren't Mozambique I would live here in a heartbeat.

Upon arrival into our awesome challet style hostel we got ready almost immediately for our sea safari. This was planned for tomorrow instead, but the weather and wind were perfect so we had to do it when we could. Apparently a sea safari means looking for and snorkeling with whale sharks. I have heard of whale sharks before but didn't know much about them. They are the largest fish in the world, not real sharks, and completely harmless since they are filter feeding planktivores. Turtle Bay, where we're staying, has some 13 resident whale sharks that you can spot by giant shadows they cast in the water on sunny days. As our group seems to do out on the water, we again got lucky in our sightings. The guides were literally teaching us how to snorkel correctly when Briana yells "whale!," and a mama and baby humpback whale break the surface not 10 meters away from us. It was INCREDIBLE. Then no more than 5 minutes later our guides tell us to get back in the water while a whale shark swims under us. This thing was huge, at least the size of a school bus, and directly below us as we snorkeled right above it. They look like they're not even moving, just gliding effortlessly through the water while we're all exerting ourselves to keep up. It slowly made its way to the surface to feed, and at its crest the tail fin popped up directly next to me and I got kind of nervous because of its size. There were another 3 or 4 baby shark-like fish swimming right behind it at all times, which was pretty awesome to watch. We found this fish probably another 2 or 3 times, then moved on to find more. We didn't see much else, and mostly just got a really bumpy, crazy fast ride in a rather small boat. It was absolutely terrifying. But to swim with whale sharks in the Indian ocean was worth it. I still can't believe this is real life.

Today (Sunday) was our surfing day. We left for the same place we went on our safari from to go for surf lessons. There we broke into groups of 8 and assigned each group a time for their lesson. My group wasn't until 2:30 so we walked about 20 min down the incredible beach to the market we've heard so much about. But based on what we've seen so far this market was pretty pitiful. All I wanted was a beach towel to lay on and a sundress to go out in tonight. No luck on either front, though I did buy a cool bag. Fortunately we had Claudia with us since the language barrier was significant enough to make any bartering difficult. Claudia then would break into Spanish which is close enough to Portugese to be understood. I had such a good time listening to her and then hearing them respond in Portugese, back and forth, and with my Italian I understood most of it. Thanks to her we got some pretty good prices. We love our sassy latina.

On the walk back down the beach we popped into a place called Dino's Beach Bar. Apparently this is one of the Top 5 beach bars in the world (I don't know who decides that thought...) and the major hang out in the area, not to mention an internet cafe. So I ordered a crazy strong margherita and checked gmail and fb briefly. And even after almost 2 weeks of no contact I STILL didn't get any good messages (with the exception of Little Nat and Kaitlin, miss you both too). Claudia had almost a dozen emails from her parents asking her if she was a live. You know what I got? Spam. Thanks guys, maybe I shouldn't come back after all. I think I'll start building my grass hut on the beach now.

After a lunch of fresh prawns and baracuda (new fav fish by far) we were finally up to surf. And of course the sun was now gone and the wind was really starting to pick up. We debated briefly postponing it until tomorrow, but would rather have the free day. So we got in cold rash guards and had our little lesson on the beach right as it started to sprinkle. Then we took turns going out into the surf with the 2 instructors, and they would push us when a good wave came by. Since it's the Indian ocean the water was incredibly warm, I could have stayed in it all day. But the surf was picking up and I took far too many big waves to the face getting out in it. After 4 or 5 attempts I still couldn't stand up. At one point I surfed in on my knees, but that was as far as I got. On my last turn I managed to get both feet under me but fell off as I tried to stand. They make it look so easy, but it is one of the hardest things I have ever tried. Not to mention that I no longer have any skin on my knees or the tops of my feet. I am going to come back with the most destroyed legs ever, it already looks like someone beat us all right in the knees after kloofing, caving, and surfing.

Afterwards Briana and I swam in the big, warm surf for a good hour more. I freaking love this ocean. But tomorrow we have a free day and I have signed up to go surfing again, believe it or not. I am going to get up if it kills me. Or cripples me, whichever happens first. It was between that or scuba lessons; is this place awesome or what? Then Monday morning before leaving for Maputo in the afternoon I am going horseback riding on the beach basically at sunrise. See, I told you I might not come back.

Right now we are getting all dressed and ready to go grab dinner as a group at Dino's. Then hopefully we'll stick around until it picks up and get to party with the locals. We're a pretty tame group so we'll see how it goes...



Dino's was ok. Long street was better. Not many people showed up so we basically had a huge group dance party until Goose walked us all home at midnight. See, I told you we were tame.

At least that was what I thought this morning before hearing about all of the goings on that I somehow missed. Goose said it was one of the most stressful nights out he's ever had, which is significant seeing as he used to lead the Australian tours--one big 2 week party. I guess while I stayed in the middle of the bar hanging out one girl had her nose accidentally rebroken, another girl refused to leave, about 15 girls snuck off to go skinny dipping, some random woman tried to get us to go to another club, and I'm pretty sure half of the group peed behind palm trees on the insanely long walk back. I don't know how I missed all of this. But it made for good stories today.

First thing this morning we headed back to the beach for our free day. I tried some surfing lessons agan and managed to stand up 4 times! And now I am in so much pain, absolutely everything is sore. Full body workout. I also ended up with some awesome rashes on my knees, thighs, and elbows from the wet board; let's just see how much I can trash my legs this trip...

The rest of our amazing free day was spent laying out near the beach and chilling with all the dogs around this place. Some have owners, some don't and are just beach dogs. They are literally our guard dogs and love to walk with you down the beach, especially at night, and will escort you all the way home. I have been told that they are also racist and will bark and chase any black people they come across while taking you home. Interesting, right? I'm living with Briana at this hostel, and last night she went down to another girl's hut to check on her. When she left to come back to our hut there was a dog waiting outside to walk her home, and it literally showed her the way back to our place when she got lost in the dark. Then the dog came in and sat at the foot of my bed for 10 or 15 minutes. It was fantastic.

Alumni

I don't really want to write this post since it'll be hard to follow the shark diving. We started with new kids on Monday who were supposed to be ages 16+. We expected about ages 16 to 18 but most are 20+ including one 25 year old. The first day was hard (as expected), made even more difficult by the fact that I was leading it. That meant I planned the games, ice breakers, timing, topics etc and helped keep us on track. But not knowing even how many people were going to show up meant I had to wing a lot of it.

In the end only about 7 people showed up, 5 girls and 2 guys. I think the same was true of today as well. They are all interesting people who want to go on to bigger and better things, which I hope we can help them with at least a little bit. But I get the feeling that they are past this material. Some already have kids, test regularly, know the material. That combined with the fact that we only have 3 days to get to know a very limited number of them, versus 5 days with a bigger group last week, means we won't bond with them nearly as much as our last kids.

Thankfully some of our favorites from the last group, which we have started to call our alumni, have come back Mon and Tues after school to visit. Vuyo and Massi go to the primary school across the street and are the first to show up. For the most part they just sit with us while we have our discussions or planning meetings after class, mooch off the left over bread and sandwiches provided by James House, and comment about us to each other in Xhosa.

Monday after Vuyo and Messi showed up so did C'Ko, Mandla, and Azile. We were so incredibly happy to see them, there were hugs all around. Then Mandla sat next to me and whispered "We came to see you, Natalie." I laughed at him and said of course they did, thinking he was kidding around. Then he followed with "we have a job for you." After our discussions finished I asked him what my job was, and he went over to C'Ko's backpack and pulled out a Life Sciences workbook, which he brought over to me open to a diagram of an eye and asked me to help them with it. I was THRILLED, I can't believe they actually remembered that I said I would help them with their bio homework. And then of course right at that moment our ride got there to pick us up. So I gave them the answers for 2 or 3 of the basic parts of the eye for them to label, and they were left to look up the rest on their own like their teacher assigned. C'Ko came back today and I asked him to show me his homework, which he finished no problem. Then when I asked what he wanted to do upon graduating this year, he said he wants to go to UCT and study medicine. He's planning to start applying for bursaries (scholarships) soon. I can't tell you how much I want that for him, he's so smart and friendly and could do so much in life.

After class Monday our group leader took about half of our group to the Cape Town waterfront, which I didn't realize was a gigantic mall. I found a great Nikon there for a good price, and we did some shopping for sweats and sandals to bring on our adventure tour. We leave for Joburg Thurs, and after that the 2 week tour of eastern South Africa, Swaziland, and Mozambique begins. I'm exhausted just thinking about it. If only our alumni could come too.

Photo cred Tess

Predation

I'll make this brief. Cage diving was AMAZING. Way better than abseiling. We got up at 4am, got picked up at the house at 4:30 and drove for 2 hours to the area with sharks. Everyone slept but me as Tess and I were getting bounced around in the back seat on the bumpy roads. It was dark so we couldn't see squat but on the drive back the South African countryside is beautiful. At least what I saw of it, we slept most of the way back...

We got to a place called Gansbaai, ate breakfast and the skipper briefed us. Then we hopped on the boat and headed out on the water. The sharks have moved closer to the shore so it was only a 15 boat ride out. On the way out we witnessed what they call an Antarctic skewer, where a few black seagulls flew next to the boat and they held chum out for them to grab. Black seagulls are way more awesome than normal ones.


On the way out we saw a common dolphin out in the distance, and on the way home we saw a whale. As if all that wasn't fortunate enough, a total of 11 different great white sharks showed up for us to dive with. Then soon afterwards the skipper yelled "predation on the right! Predation on the right!!" and we watched a great white hunt down a seal. At first it looked like a big foamy chaos, then a small loan fur seal flew out of the water and soon after a great white did the same right behind it. It was incredible, the biologist in me was loving it. Jackiy and I were on the deck cheering for the seal, yelling at him to swim faster. Finally it kind of stopped and one of the crew said the seal got away by swimming behind the shark. We were pretty thrilled.

The diving involved 8mm wetsuits that kept us fairly warm (at least at first) and a giant iron cage that tied to the side of the boat. 5 of us went in at a time, and would stand in the cage at the surface while they poured chum juice and threw bait off the side of the boat. Then the bait guy behind us would yell "Down down down down!" when a shark came around. This was our cue to take a breath, duck under the water and grab a bar to hold ourselves down and watch the shark swim by. Like I said, we saw 11 different great whites come by, they only got the chum bait once and for the most part would just meander by when the bait guy pulled the fish away from them. They were super chill, only one got a hold of the bait and rammed into the cage--I was not in it at the time, but it was awesome to watch from the top of the boat.

The first hand experience:

In all we spent about 3 hours on the boat and saw just about everything there was to see. The crew kept telling us how lucky we were. We decided it was because one of our girls was on her period;she was worried she would attract the sharks, which apparently worked out well. If you ever get the chance, you absolutely must try this.

*All photo creds Catherine, video Ashley