October 7, 2007

We woke up to pounding rain, beating against the roof! This was not a good way to start the morning because we had a tree top zip line adventure planned. We all crawled out of our beds and went out our rooms for breakfast. We had cereal and granola, oranges, eggs, and toast! It was very delicious! After eating breakfast we had an hour before we were due to leave, so Tonya, Alex, Leslie, and I played a game of hearts. In our last round I had a ton of hearts and the Queen of Spades. I had been getting trick after trick, and it was the last time around and my lead and I only had the Queen of spades…when I took the trick and started going through my cards I realized that I “shot the moon” so all of my points when to everyone else and I won the game! It was pretty exciting, especially since earlier in the game we were talking about how hard it was to shoot the moon! Anyway, we all ran in the rain to the Kombi and we made our way to the Tree Top Canopy Tour. We got there and we were given rain coats and we went through the harnessing process all over again. This time we were given thicker gloves, because their brake system is different from the one at the waterfall zip line…we had to stop ourselves with our hands! At the other place we had a handle bar that we pulled down to break and stop but this time we had to drag our hands and pull down with our palms to stop. This was a little tricky because it was very wet and rainy, so there was a few times that Johnny (one of our guides) had to pull the emergency break on us so we could stop before crashing into the platform and the tree! We went on ten different slides through the canopy in Tsitsikamma. It was raining the entire time, so we didn’t get to see too many birds and we didn’t see any monkeys, but there was one bird a Knysna something. It was a green but when it flew from a branch to a different tree it had beautiful red wings! It was so cold by the time that we were done and our jeans and shoes were sopping wet! It was so nice to be back in a warm Kombie without a wet raincoat. We drove back to where we were staying and we had lunch. Then we all went to change into warm and dry clothes, which means that I wore my pajama sweatpants, my new polar fleece that I bought, and socks with flip-flops! It was quite a comfortable drive and I read my book the entire time. I would sit there and look at how many pages that I read and I was amazed to look at my watch and see that we had been driving for an hour and almost home to PE!

When we arrived back in PE we all went into our rooms and put on comfy clothes, I brought out my slippers and got all cozy and situated with my computer and I spent the rest of the day blogging, adding pictures to my site, and checking emails. I called home and talked to Mom and Dad, and I also got to talk with Marcus and Aunt Sue and Uncle John as they were stopping over on their way home to Omaha! After we got off of the phone we went on Skype and we got to see everyone at home! It was so nice seeing everyone!