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...