Don't drink the water...

Well its been an interesting past week or so, that's for sure.

When I last left off, I was at the Windemere hanging out by the beach. The following Sunday we moved into 'ISP accommodations,' meaning it was supposed to be the start of our projects, but since mine is in a school, and schools are on vacation until today, the 10th, I couldn't really go to my ISP site yet. Erin was in a similar situation, so we both have been staying at the SIT house together (with Seth on most nights too). As a brief re-cap of the week, I spent most of it in the house, bumming off of the free internet, procrastinating on doing anything truly productive, and hanging out with Erin (and Seth most of the time). On Tuesday we went into Durban for the day and ran some errands at the Workshop and went to Victoria Street Market and the Mosque. Both of those last places always amaze me. There are so many different people and so many different vendors and colors and smells! Its hard to put into words.

On wednesday Erin and I went to see the Lorax with Smu. It was good to get to see her and mama again, and the movie was pretty good! Very funny and entertaining. Lots of singing. Splendid. Thursday was another do nothing and procrastinate day. I was supposed to start/finish an essay that was due today so I wouldn't have to worry about it, but that didn't really happen.

Friday was the start of a grand adventure. We like to refer to it as 'the most hastily planed camping trip in the history of South Africa.' Erin and I left the SIT house around 1:30 to catch a 2:30 bus out of Durban Station. Lugging huge backpacks, a large tent, and a few bags of food, we eventually made it to the station where we met... wait for it... SETH! Obviously. After a short wait, the bus arrived, we got on, and made it to Port Shepstone! That was the easy/planned part. We had banked on their being a local cab company that we could magically get the number of and call to give us the ride. After about an hour and a half or so we finally got the hold of Owen, who said he would send someone to drive us. Andile showed up in an old, beaten up car, we put our things in the trunk, climbed in, and were off. We got to the Oribi Gorge Hotel, about 16 kilometers from our final destination when our driver pulled over to ask someone if there were any gas stations around..... We all took a look at the dashboard and saw there was about an eighth of a tank of gas left. Great. We finally got a ride, and now its getting dark and we have no gas. Joyous. Needless to say, we finally made it (not sure if Andile made it back to town, however), and we were able to set up camp in the dark, start a fire, and eat our delicious canned dinner. Oh, and our "fire pit" was a big bowl type thing out a stick so it was at a comfortable cooking height. Convenient, right? Actually not, because it had NO BOTTOM. Wondaful. We made a bottom out of firewood and put the charcoal on top, and managed to cook dinner before the fire burned completely through the bottom.

That night was probably one of the longest ones I have ever experienced. It was freezing, the ground was hard, the tent was small, and we accidentally oriented ourselves so that our heads were slightly downhill...

Ok this is getting long winded, so I will try to tell the rest of the story with mostly pictures. The next morning the tent very quickly transformed from a freezer to a sauna in about 15 minutes after the sun rose. We escaped ASAP and made breakfast (porridge!) over the fire. The plan for the day was to hang out at the game reserve, and the following sequence of pictures will depict our day. It would have included large amounts of walking, but these two Zulus, Thuli and her companion whose name we never learned, gave us a ride to the suspension bridge and down the road! We only had to walk a little further to some viewpoints, and then the 12 or so kilometers back to our camp site.

Along the way we got to see some animals! These two were my favorite, for obvious reasons.

After a short drive we were at the suspension bridge with an amazing view of the gorge!

facing any fear of heights that we had at the other end of the suspension bridge!
The platform was a little wobbly to say the least.

After the suspension bridge we set of on our own to walk to some viewpoints. Found these flowers on the way!

Another amazing view of the gorge. So spectacular!

So happy that I skipped the whole walk back! Jokes, but I was really happy!

On the way back we stopped at the chapel with this abandoned house right next door.
So much to explore!

All in all it was a very successful day. The zebras started it off right and made us so happy, and everything was so green and lovely that we had huge smiles on our face all day. We enjoyed another canned dinner (no, I'm not being sarcastic), and got ready for bed (we tried to bundle up better and make better pillows, as well as re-orient ourselves to facilitate sleep. Nonetheless, I woke up at 3am extremely claustrophobic and needing to use the bathroom, so I attempted to leave the tent for some fresh air. After being outside for 30 seconds, I looked to my right, saw a hyena/dog/wolf/creature, which started barking/howling/growling/hissing at me, so I immediately unzipped the tent and actually dove back inside. That was enough excitement/fresh air for me!

The next morning, after our porridge, we thought it would be an excellent idea to walk 16 kilometers down the road to explore oribi gorge, only to have to walk 16 kilometers back afterwards........ Yeah in hind sight it was a pretty dumb idea. We made it 8 kilometers before we were starting to come to this realization. We finally made it, and it was so worth it.

The view from the top of the gorge. I think this was called Baboon's Castle!

Enjoying the view :)

Baboon's castle from the bottom of the gorge! It was a rough climb down.
The sign said only 170 meters, but neglected to mention that it was all rock climbing.

We made it down and found a nice rock by the waterfall to have our lunch!

Seth and I decided to climb some rocks to the top of the waterfall while Erin rested!!!

Unfortunate mishap at the top lead to a little bit of a bloody leg....

But on the plus side it got us a free ride back to the game reserve,
so we didn't have to walk another 16 kilometers in the dark!

Ok, so a quick blub about the post title. We got to Oribi Gorge and we paid for admission for hiking, and the lady noticed we were carrying our own water bottles. The lady was very quick and adamant about us not filling our bottle up from the tap. Oops. Thats what we had been doing at Lake Eland this whole time.... We hadn't gotten sick yet... yet being the key word. I tried to ask her if that was for the entire area, and she didn't give me a straight answer but told me to go into the restaurant to the bar if we wanted a refill, otherwise we would be in the bathroom all day. Seth and I just kind of looked at each other skeptically.... It turns out we didn't have to refill and that the Lake Eland water didn't make any of us sick, but everyone telling us not to drink the water only reminds me of the Dave Matthews song, "Dont Drink The Water," and after I cut my knee open, I laughed to myself as I sang, "Don't drink the water, there's blood in the water." Oops!

We finally made it back, and exhausted we bundled up again to prepare for another long night.

Unfortunately it started to rain, and our tent wasn't the most waterproof thing out there. Although we did find out that it was pretty dang airtight. Each night we had woken up at about 3am breathing extremely heavily. I would be breathing almost as fast as if I had just run a race. After cutting open my leg, I suddenly woke up out of breath, with a headache, and thought that it was infected and the infection had moved to my lungs and was about to reach my heart. Never fear, this wasn't the case. The cut was fine, but in the morning we did finally realize that the tent was suffocating us. As soon as we opened the door, our breathing slowed and our heart rates returned to normal.

Clouds over one of the lake on our last rainy morning.

The rain was a nice ending to our trip. In a way it was nice that we weren't baking, but it made it freezing even during the day time, not to mention that our feet were perpetually wet for the entire day. Packing up camp was relatively easy despite the rain.  Andile came back and picked us up to bring us back to town -- that part went much smoother than before. We ordered some fries and mielie (corn on the cob) from Nando's so we could sit in there and eat other snacks and stay warm and out of the rain (we were completely out of money otherwise we would have probably gotten more food). At 1:45 we headed over to the bus stop, a random gas station. The bus was supposed to come at 2:15, and this was supposed to be even easier than the cab ride. 2:15 came and went.... no bus... then 2:30... no bus. I tried calling their phone number and their after hours number.... no answer.... then it was 2:45... still no bus and no answer. Ok, so we're going to be stranded in Port Shepstone on a public holiday, we're going to each lose R110 that we already payed for the bus ticket, AND to top it off we are freezing and its now pouring rain. FINALLY we got through to the bus company, just as we were starting to call our friends back in Durban to come up with an alternative route home. The bus had just run into a delay because of the rain and was on its way. Phew. Big relief. I'm sure you're all happy to know that we made it safely back to Durban.

It sure was an interesting weekend. Looking back it was a lot of ups and downs. Extreme situations. Pure joy and utter happiness as well as lying miserably in the tent and bleeding profusely from my knee. It was kind of like a real life hunger games/quarter quell, with a different terror at every hour of the day, or at least the night. One hour is suffocation, one hour hyenas, one hour freezing temperatures, one hour deadly rocks.....SWEET! Would I do it again? Probably not without a car. I definitely want to go back with a car some day so that I can do more and see the rest of the park and reserve that I didn't get the chance to since it took so dang long to walk everywhere. All in all it was an amazing weekend with two amazing friends, and although it sounds cheesy, its an experience I will most likely never forget.

I've started my ISP period, finally. I'll update you all on that more in my next post.
Salani kahle (stay well, everyone)
<3