October 6, 2007

Happy Birthday Mom!
This morning we woke up and headed off to the Tsitsikamma National Park for a short two-day stay. Denny was our driver again, which meant that it would take us an one and a half hours to get there, rather than the full two hours! We made it to the Tsitsikamma Falls Adventure Park where we were going to stay for the night, and Greg (the owner), brought us to the bunk house and we were able to choose which rooms we wanted. Greg reminded me of Mr. Tikalsky because the looked the same…and they have the same name! Seven of us girls all piled into one room with two sets of bunk beds and three twin beds. I slept on top of a bunk with Brenna, Kasy and Ashley were below us, and Christy, Laura, and Katherine were in the three bed. After we picked the beds and dumped our bags, we went to meet Greg in the equipment room to get our harnesses for the waterfall zip line. Greg and Elliot, his partner, got everyone fitted and suited up in the harnesses and off we went with our hardhats, and gloves to the slides. Greg did a quick demonstration of how to operate the zip line (such as starting, stopping, breaking, emergency breaks, and what to do incase you got stuck in the middle of the slide). Lucky me, I was the first to go! It was a great time! We went over a stream and then we passed over three waterfalls. It was very peaceful swinging along the line, and I never felt scared or thought that I was going to fall. We went on eight different slides: 1.) Kejabooms was 96 meters long, 2.) Amber Pool was 89 meters long, 3.) Lizard Rock was 85meters long, 4.) Gravity Junction was 41 meters long, 5.) Otter was 94 meters, 6.) Rock Pigeon was 165 meters, 7.) Puff Adder was 211 meters and was the longest slide of the day and we weren’t allowed to use breaks as we were crossing, and 8.) Gravity Junction again to cross back on the other side of the waterfalls.

When we got back from zip lining lunch was ready to be served. We had chicken chowmein and it was delicious. After lunch, the clouds started to come out, so we grabbed our fleeces and we hopped in the Kombi to drive to the National Park for a hike. When we got to the park we were told that the hiking trail to the suspension bridge was closed due to a fire, so we were not able to walk very far. We did find a trail that led down to the water and we started climbing the rocks and waves were crashing all around us. Carrie and I really wanted to go into a cave to take a picture, but that required some skills due to the timing of when the waves would come crashing into the area. We had to time it in between waves so we could hop from rock to rock because when the tide came in the rocks get covered by the water! We ended up making it across, and Brenna, Kasy, Laura, Ashley, and Katherine followed! We all were posing in the cave for Brenna to take a picture and all of a sudden a huge wave came into the cave (in the meantime, the waves would fall four to five feet short of where we were standing) and this wave had a lot of power because it came right up to us and buried our feet in water! After a few screams and lots of laughing the picture was taken and we all had to time the jumps back to the larger rocks! We spent two hours at the park and then made our way back to our Backpackers to get ready for dinner. While we waited for the fire to get hot, a bunch of us sat in front of the fireplace reading and warming up. For dinner we had a braai with every sort of meat that you can think of! Alex and Christy were in charge of cooking the meat while the rest of us got other food ready. We all ate as a group and it was delicious! After dinner we all sat around and talked. We decided that it would be fun to play mafia, so I taught everyone how to play (Alison Frank would be so proud of me!). We played four rounds of Mafia and of course we all got a little too competitive! We had to call it a night before anyone else lost their tempter over the heated game! We crawled into bed and all said goodnight. I woke up twice in the middle of the night and had a flashback to my first year of college because Christy woke me up with her snoring!