Storms River Village: A Place Where the Laughter Never Stops

This past weekend we rented a compact car, stuffed 6 people in and drove a couple hours to the highest bungee jump in the world!!! This is the second time that I've done it and it never gets old! This time, I wanted to do something really cool - I wanted to do a handstand on the edge and launch myself off face-first, but they wouldn't let me pull that one off. So instead I tried to do a corkscrew as I jumped off the edge of a bridge, which was kind of a pitiful attempt... Oh well, if there's a third try, maybe I'll get it right. 

Then we drove about a half hour down the road, and found a little village to eat lunch in. It tuned out to be Storms River Village, the happiest place on earth. They (I kid you not) had a 50's style American diner With vintage cars, jute box, and pictures of Elvis and Marilyn Monroe EVERYWHERE!! They even had Elvis's Jumpsuits and Marilyn's famous little white dress with wigs and hats to dress up. It was wicked fun!

After lunch I got to drive the rental car!!!! It was the same as driving in the states, except I was on the wrong side of the car, and the stick shift was on the wrong side of me, and I was supposed to keep the car going down the wrong side of the road. The road was empty, so I started messing with the guy who rented the car by driving for a second on the right side.... He jerked the wheel back and didn't really see the humor in it. 

We drove to a zip lining place and suited up:

We got to zip line across a river, over waterfalls - and you get to go really fast!! It was amazing! So much fun!!

Then we stayed in a Backpacker's Hostel in Storm's River Village. We walked into town to watch the Ireland vs South Africa rugby match - which was a really close game, and we were the only ones there cheering for Ireland. When we got back to the hostel, there was a bonfire and a bunch of people from all around the world. We played a giant game of charades. It was really fun and the night was so clear and beautiful, that I slept in a hammock out under the stars!!! Turns out you can still see Orion down here.... No one seems to be able to point out the southern cross to me though! I swear I am going to find it before I leave though!!!

Then next morning we went back to the diner for a real American breakfast, which is hard to find over here. Turns out French toast is actually New Orleans toast - I never knew... Then we very slowly started making our way back to Mossel Bay. We drove along the coast, and stopped at a water front quaint little town with lots of tourist shops. There was no beach access there, so we kept going. 

We saw a sign for Buffles Bay and though that was a cool name and maybe there was somewhere we could stop for lunch. There was a restaurant, but they also rented out canoes to go up and down the little river they had there - needless to say, we never made it in the restaurant. We started out heading up the river and went until we were dragging the canoes through shallow spots more than we were paddling before we turned around... Then we headed down the other way and in deeper water had gladiator battles with our paddles.

Which evolved into just trying to push eachother out of the canoe

 Which ended up sinking the canoe more than once...

After a quick change we hopped back in the car and tried to find one last epic adventure before reaching home... We though we found it when we stumbled upon a place called McNasty's Pub and Grill, but alas it was closed. We made it back to Mossel Bay with out much else to say other than BEST WEEKEND EVER!

Awesome Vocab from Around the World

Over the past month I have been hanging out with a lot of Brits, Aussies, Southerners and just normal people and I've picked up some great new vocab that I have been trying to integrate into everyday conversations... Here are a few of my favorites:

Skull = Chug - ex: "I'm so hungover; I need to go skull some water"

Sunnies = Sunglasses - ex: "Where did I put my sunnies?"  "on top of your head"

How you going? = How are you doing? ex: "How you going?"

Half-Seven = Seven-Thirty ex: "We need to be ready to leave for chumming at half-six" (Side note: South Africans use this one a little bit differently where half-six would actually be 5:30 which creates a lot of confusion around these parts)

Pissed = Wasted - ex: "He was so pissed last night"

Heaps = SO MANY!!!!!! more than lots and lots and lots - ex: "Aw, you're heaps beached, brah"

Cheers = Thank you - ex: walking through a door that's being held open for you: "Cheers"

Pleasure = Your Welcome - ex: when you thank the waitress for bringing your meal she says "Pleasure"




Arvo = Afternoon - ex: "How you going this arvo?"

As = Really/Very - ex: "its flat as out there" or "that's sweet as, brah"

Singlet = Tank top

Jumper = Sweat Shirt - ex: "My jumper smells like chum. Can I borrow yours?"

Hanging = Hung over - ex: "Last night was too much fun; I'm hanging, man"

Boot = Trunk - ex: "Will you grab the chum bucket out of the boot?"

Cape Town

We were supposed to go to cape town this weekend, but on Tuesday they let us know we would be leaving Wednesday morning at 5:00. I packed Tuesday night after I played and won trivia (I didn't contribute much - it was all my teammates). On Wednesday morning I woke up, made myself 2 pb&j sandwiches and 2 pb and banana sandwiches, ate some cereal, and crammed myself into the last seat in the van. 

The drive took about 5 hours, but on the way was the most amazing classic African sunrise! There were trees with flat tops and the whole sky was bright orange, then an even brighter orange orb broke the horizon! It was so so so cool! and so so so pretty!

We came over a ridge and Cape town is just sprawled out below. Its right on a bay and has huge sky scrapers and is nestled right up next to Table Mountain (which I plan to climb next month with one of my friends here). Its really a beautiful sight. 

We went to the waterfront first, and parked right next to where the World Cup Soccer Stadium was. We walked around there for a bit and then went and got a behind the scenes tour of the Two Oceans Aquarium. Which was awesome!!! They have a huge circular tank full of rays and ragged tooth sharks, a tropical section with eels and a tiny turtle and a tank full of clown fish with a bubble you could crawl under so it was like you were in the tank. They also had a really cool kelp forest. They took us on the roof of the aquarium and you could see the giant plunger that gave the kelp forest its tides and we went down to the launch site for divers going into the big circular tank. 

Then they took us the the culture lab where they grow all of the food cultures (sea monkeys and such) and they had a tank of new baby sea horses that were smaller than a fingernail!!! Cutest thing ever!!

From there we drove an hour to Simon's Town where we went to Shark Explorer to get our gear for the next day's dive. That took a while because there were like twenty of us who all needed gear, but then we went down the road to the Backpacker's Hostel where we were staying. We walked down to a waterfront restaurant and had a delicious meal and then crashed to get ready for our dive the next day. 


We took two boats: one was the shark explorer and the other was a ducky (a boat with inflatable sides attached to a real hull). We left the bay and followed the coast til it ended, seeing a whale on the way! We past the southern most tip of Africa and headed towards Antarctica. A little over an hour later and we were chumming for sharks.

Nothing but a seal showed up, so me moved to a spot where a bunch of fishing boats looking for yellowfin tuna were hanging out. The guides set out their chum bucket with a tuna head attached and fished while we waited for some sharks to show up. They broke out some food for us and while we were eating the main skipper, Steph, hooked a >70 kg tuna! It was huge!! It took a lot of fight, swearing, and requests for a brandy for Steph to bring him up, but finally the two other guys were able to gaff it in the head and pull him on board. They stabbed it in the heart to drain the blood and use it as chum. The amount of blood that came out of that fish was unreal!

The sharks started going crazy and we decided it was high time we were under the water with them. We were in about 700 m of water There was absolutely nothing around us but a whole lot of water. They attached the chum bucket to a buoy so it hung about 5 m under the water and we stayed around there and let the sharks swim around us... It was AMAZING! there was one shark that started swimming towards me and I just stared him down. But he was just coming to say hi and gave me a friendly kiss on the cheek. One of the diver's actually got it on video, but I don't know how to upload it... It was so cool! There was another one that was swimming right above me and I held my breath so my bubbles wouldn't scare him, and he swam fight into my head, and knocked my hood back. 

We got back into the boats and froze in the wind and the spray for our two hour boat ride back to the harbor. After that we went back to the hostel to shower and get warm. We went on a grocery store run to get food to grill at our braai (South African word for barbeque) We didn't end up eating until after 10:00 and everyone was pretty exhausted, but a few of us managed to make it down the street to one of Simon's town only bar. We made some friends from the Argentinian Navy that taught us a new dart game. I was so so tired though, and had to go back after one beer. 

The next day we woke up and went to cape point, which is sort of the edge of the world. There's a lighthouse there that we hiked up to and then we hiked down to a little beach that was right there. It was beautiful!!

After that we went to a place called Boulder's Beach where there is a colony of Penguins. I really wanted to take one home, but they didn't act as cute as they looked. One of them bit a guy in our group and drew blood and they make really annoying noises. I still tried though. 

After that we drove started our drive back to cape town... There was a storm just sitting on the top of Table Mountain, and we were driving right towards it. As we headed up the hill there was an awesome double rainbow that we literally drove through! We ran right over the pot of gold, but our driver refused to stop. 

It was out of this world, then the rainbow followed us for about ten minutes! coolest thing ever! then there was a beautiful sunset and we got back to Mossel Bay around 11:30 pm and went to bed so we could work the next day. 

CAGE DIVE

On Sunday morning we went onto town for our cage dive. We all had to sign wavers so they can't be held accountable in case we were eaten. And then they gave us a safety briefing and made us watch a promo video. Then we walked down the hill to their boat. Their boat, the Shark Warrior, is really really nice. 

We rode from there right out to Seal Island. It was only a ten minute ride in the Shark Warrior. Almost as soon as they started chumming a great white showed up. He was pretty small and had a satellite tag.

Not too long after that another bigger shark showed up...

Six people were allowed in the cage at a time. I got in a wetsuit and goofed around and took pictures until the first group were told to get out...

There was a good bit of cage out of the water, so we didn't need scuba gear or anything. The wetsuits were pretty thick and really buoyant so you had to pull yourself down with the cage. I tried to stay down as much as I could using my new free diving skills (My record so far is swimming 75 meters without a breath). But the would yell "down" if the shark was coming for the bait and your head was out of the water. After a couple minutes and a couple of passes by the shark, he started coming right towards the cage. The bait roper pulled the bait head just in front of his face, leading him on. And he ran right into the cage, right where I was!!! So crazy and cool. Such an adrenaline rush! I had had my fingers wrapped around the outside of the cage (They had told us beforehand not to do that for this very reason) right before he rammed us. He hit us pretty hard and I may or may not have screamed underwater. The girl next to me in the cage (Who is the one in the picture up there)

Cheetah Walk and World's Tallest Bungee Jump

Today, I got up at half five as my British friends say, jumped out of bed already in my day's clothes and scarfed down a quick breakfast. I got in the van with a bunch of other new interns and watched the sun rise over the beach and mountains as we went winding down the coast. We drove for about an hour and half before turning onto a dirt road where Tenikwa, a Cheetah conservation place was located.

Half of the interns piled out of the van and met our guide. we watched a 5 minute video about cheetah's and then headed out to their enclosure. The guides went in first and harnessed and leashed the Cheetahs. Then brought them out. The 4 guys in the group went with the boy cheetah, Shaga. and the two other girls teamed up to let the female drag us around. Shaga took off running, and the boys had to follow, he didn't go very far though. They had two leashes on them and usually the guide had one leash and one of us had the other one. If the cheetah started acting up, which happened a few times, the guide took both leashes.

And if we were in a spot where he knew she was going to behave, he would let two of take the leashes. We walked around for about 45 minutes and spent a lot of that time with them sitting on the top of a hill resting - where we could sit beside her and just hang out with my new cheetah friend! So so so cool!

First day of Chumming

Today I went on my first chum trip. I woke up at 5 to skype my parents (like 8:00 pm their time), ate breakfast and were in the car just after 6:30 am. We got to the dock and couldn't get one of the engines to start, so somebody had to drive out to help us. Of course it started right up for the guy they had to wake up to drive to help us. Go figure. So we drove out to the spot - it was about a half hour boat ride. 

There were 5 interns on the boat and a person in charge assigning us jobs. One was on chumming, one was on photography, one was on data, one was on the bait rope, and I was on spotting. I had to climb on this platform on top of the boat and watch for any sharks to show up. If they did I had to tell the bait roper which direction they were coming from. The bait roper holds a line with a buoy (pronounced boy by most of the people down here - which is very confusing because most of the time its not a boy in the water, its just a buoy) and a tuna head on it. When a shark shows up they are supposed to drag the line away from the shark so the photographer can get a shot of the fin (used to ID individual sharks). The chummer had a bin of sardines and other little fish. He would fill the bin with buckets of water, stomp on the mixture to mash up the fish and then dump the fish water back into the ocean. The data person took data on when the shark showed up, how big it was, and any distinctive markings. 

We chummed and waited for about three hours, only pulling up the anchor to move once. The whole time we were in sight of shore, probably only a couple hundred yards off. I had pretty much given up hope, had eaten most of the food I had brought, and was kind of zoning out (bad idea for the spotter) when I looked left and to my surprise and excitement saw my very first great white shark!!!!!! 

So I had to yell to the spotter which way she was coming from, keeping the buoy in the center of the clock. My problem was I put myself at the 12 instead of the 6 where I should have been, so my clock was upside down and I was yelling the wrong directions. 

But after I pointed her out, the bait roper could see her and wasn't really even listening to me. Oh well. 

She didn't really want to play with our bait anyways, she just made a few appearances, circled the boat a few times and then peaced out. We had to leave too because it had taken her so long to show up. 

Overall it was a pretty successful trip. We stopped by Seal Island on the way home, and the smell of hundreds of seal and their poo laying in the sun all day is overpoweringly nauseating.... So so so so so so gross! People were gagging and eyes were burning and we didn't even get that close.

 

My Month of Training in Anchorage, AK