Cape Town: The Garden Route

Well, it's been a while since the trip to Cape Town, but it was one of the best trips of my life. It's time to write about it.

As an entire group of thirty we took off from Port Elizabeth and traveled the Garden Route to Cape Town, which is one of the most traveled routes in South Africa.

We started off west on the N2, and set our sights on one of the number one things most of us have looked forward to in South Africa: bungee jumping at the worlds highest bungee jump at the Bloukrans River. We only had a few minor hiccups getting there, including an expensive traffic stop, but we made it there later in the morning.

The set up of the bungee scene is amazing. The bridge is situated over a ravine with the Bloukrans river 216 meters (709 feet) below. The bridge is impressive both aesthetically and architecturally. We grabbed out gear and waited for the first half of us to jump, since their bus made it to the bridge before we did. We sat at the Face Adrenalin cafe and lounge where a television screen provided an up close view of the platform under the bridge, and the balcony outside gave us a clear view of the entire bridge and jump. Watching them all, it was pretty intimidating, but even more exciting. Eventually, it was the second groups turn to jump, and I was to be the first. Here's some pictures of my jump:

Bloukrans Bridge

A portion of the second-group jumpers.

Getting harnessed up.

Walking out.

Approaching the edge with the help of the staff

Immediately after the jump and....

...at the bottom of the fall.

The next stop was to be in Knysna (nyz-na) for lunch and a short walk on the coast. The walk was the most beautiful coastal scene of South Africa I had seen yet. Knysna is one of the top tourist destinations in all of South Africa.

The opening to the bay in Knysna

Lunch was very good and partway through a few of us guys snuck out and over to the local microbrewery, where Mitchell's beer is brewed. The place had some amazing beer, and we bought large samples of all eight beers for only 25 rand (~$3.00) total. Our director found us eventually and helped chug a few of the samples so that we could hurry up. We were holding everyone up.

Next stop, a very brief one, was in George. It was cool to drive by the NMMU- George Campus. We stopped to take some pictures of the coast and the mountains along the way here. On the left is a photo of the coast, looking north. From the same spot, a photo looking to the South with a set of a train tracks crossing an estuary and running along the coast.

From here, we turned off the garden route and headed inland to Oudsthoorn, where we would spend the night. Immediately when we arrived in Oudtshoorn we went to an ostrich farm where a few of the smaller people under 75 kilos (roughly 150 pounds) had the chance to ride them. We checked into our lodge for the night, and played a quick game of ultimate frisbee with our tour guide and finished up the night with a meal of springbok and kudu at a local private game reserve. In the morning, we went caving in the Cango Caves, caves that has been home to humans as far back as the KhoiKhoi and Bushmen.

Panorama of one of the largest rooms in the cave.

 Almost all of the students took the opportunity to do the adventure tour, which took us through some very, very tight squeezes. Sometimes we only had about a foot of width to work with. I didn't expect it to be so intense of a tour at all, but it was really fun.

Our last section of the trip took us to Cape Town. We arrived at sunset, which was beautiful in the shadow of Table Mountain and within the city.

I wouldn't see Cape Town in its full glory until later a few days later. That night, we went to the Cape Town Jazz Festival, the biggest jazz festival in Africa. The jazz was awesome, but even better was the Atmosphere concert. Atmosphere is an underground hip-hop group from Minneapolis that many of us had listened to for years. It was really cool to talk to Slug, the main rapper, after the concert. He thought it was cool that we were all the way from Minnesota. We were all pretty excited to be in Cape Town and see Atmosphere, so a lot of us were feeling the effects of the previous night the next morning.

That morning, I had noticed that some pain in my lower left leg had gotten much worse, and it was difficult to walk. I walked myself over to a pharmacy and asked the pharmacist if he had any cream for my red swollen leg. He looked at it and noticed the two dots in the middle of the swelling, and told me it was a poisonous spider bite that I needed to take care of right away by seeing a doctor. The tissues and protein in my leg muscle was being digested by the venom, and if it were to spread it could be very dangerous.  After much confusion and frustration trying to get a hold of a doctor, we ended up in the Emergency Room. I was pretty hesitant about going to the hospital after what I had heard about South African hospitals, especially public ones. This one, however, was very nice. It was the (private) Christian Bernard Memorial Hospital, named after the South African physician who performed the first successful heart transplant in the world. The doctor prescribed me a course of antibiotics, antihistamines, and painkillers. Thankfully it was healed up a couple weeks later.




Thankfully, I didn't have to miss our trip to the Slave Lodge Museum, which was very interesting. The very strange thing about South Africa is that they imported their slaves from other parts of Africa. The history of slavery in South Africa has many strange parallels to slavery in the americas. After the museum, we made the 2,100 climb up to the top of Table Mountain, recently named one of the new wonders of the natural world. Four of us guys made the hike in just under fifty minutes, but we paid for the speed on top. We were exhausted. The view of Cape Town was absolutely breathtaking. Words cannot describe what we saw from on top, and pictures will never do it justice.

Panorama of Camps Bay looking Southeast.

Next post: Cape Town Part Two

Cheers,

Isaak