I hope tomorrow is like today

It took me a while to get around to this post because I had an unfortunate incident at the beach this weekend where my phone got stolen from under my nose by some evil beach riffraff. I had to enter a code from google to re-start my account due to suspicious south african activity I guess. Luckily my friend Kalilah had an extra one and she let me borrow it for the remainder of the semester. Now I'm back in action and connected with the universe again.

To pick up where I left off, our journey took us next to Knysna, another small town along the route, that boasted a rich history of washed up Ostrich Dynamos and Elephant Parks. The weather turned sour and when we stopped to pick up groceries in the supermarket, Parker misnegotiated a corner and the cement tore a chunk of tire off and some of the rim off. It's definitely so much harder to drive on the wrong side of the car and road in a parking garage and we learned the hard way. I'm my father's daughter and avoiding rental car company accident fees runs in my blood. We were worried about the tire blowing out if we continued to drive on it, so we took the car to an auto shop and had them throw the full size spare on the car's normal rim. For about $10 a piece we managed to avoid paying a couple hundo for a new car tire. To sweeten the deal, we bought 2 rand superglue to reattatch the piece of rubber to the tire in the back from the Happy 5 Rand Store.

Feeling a little buzz kill from the near auto death, we decided to leave Knysna and push on to Wilderness. On the way, we stopped in Victoria Bay where we suited up and swam in the cool waters of the Indian Ocean against the most stunning backdrop. After relaxing in the sun for a while, we found a hostel situated 4 kilometers away from the main drag at the top of a mountain called The Wild Farm. We arrived to beautiful weather and an old man showed us to a cabin where we would be able to stay the night. A panoramic view of the ocean and surrounding woods made me sure this would be my favorite place I'd visited without a doubt. We drove our fixed up buggy to town and ate some italian food while researching our plans for the next day.

When we woke it was onto Plett where we found a cool surfer vibe and a fun hostel called Albergo Backpackers. I was surprised to meet Marlee and Kalilah there that evening as they were riding the baz bus down the Garden Route. Marlee had bungee jumped, zip lined and played in an elephant park that day. After swimming at Victoria Bay, I was excited to freeze my face off again and despite the less than perfect weather, I managed to wrangle Spencer into boogie boarding in the ocean with me. Getting down to the beach was the first adventure as the woods were dense and the path beset with difficulty. When we emerged from the understory, a perfect beach with bluest ocean, black rocks and olive sand came into view. Parker brought his nice camera to take pictures of the ocean and climbed up on a big rock to photograph. We were havign such a good time on the perfect-for-boogie-boarding waves that we didn't notice a whale an its calf in our proximity, breaching out of the water and floating lazily by the shore. Luckily, Parker managed to catch it on his film! When Spencer and I became aware of the whale we called it a day on the boogie down, but it was an amazing time. We returned to the hostel to warm up and braai with the rest of the crew staying there the night.

A good meal, some good drinks, and we were back on the beach for a while longer to soak up some ocean air. We almost didn't make it make because of the impossible path, but it was worth the climb.

We said goodbye to Marlee and Kalilah the next day as we moved on to Jeffrey's Bay. On the way there we were slated to stop at the Bungee Jump to make my worst nightmare a reality. Since I was very young, I can remember being afraid of heights. I was the only kid in 6th grade that didn't complete the ropes course during outdoor ed. I've been talking about doing this bungee jump for a month now, and I knew there was no way I was getting out of it. When I climbed into the car Parker asked me to open the glove box for something and I was given a surprise: a smirnoff ice. The tradition of icing goes as follows: if someone gets you to reveal a smirnoff ice they've hidden, you must get on one knee and chug said bottle. Being that I play by the rules, I took my punishment outside the Albergo backpackers with a smile on my face-- and later was thankful for it because it took the edge off right before I flung myself off the highest bungee jump in the world.

I didn't feel nervous until I started to walk across the bridge. I broke into a cold sweat. I felt the smirnoff ice threatening to reappear in my mouth and perhaps projectile into the ravine. The boys charged down the cage built underneath where bungee-ing people walk to the platform. The footing is a sparse mesh, so if you walk fast enough it looks like there's nothing there at all. I began to plot ways of getting off the bridge, but the guide was behind me. Spencer grabbed my hand and pulled me down the walkway at one point when I slowed my roll to turtle pace.

Once on the platform, I entered a haze. The feeling inside me can only be described as "despair." The look on my face can only be desribed as "about to face death by a firing squad." Luckily, your imagination doesn't have to take you far, there's a video that captures every tremble which I will post on the internet as soon as I can. Spencer and Parker jumped first... I thought I would have more time but before I knew it they were binding my legs with 2 pieces of foam and a single rope. The harness around my chest was only for sitting me up after I jumped and would not be attached to anything. They stood me up and helped me to the platform. I breathed in, I breathed out. They began their countdown and I kept my eyes closed lightly. 5, 4, 3, without any option I bent my legs and sprang from the plank. Then I felt myself falling away from the men holding my arms, my eyes opened, I was soaring. I was shocked that I had jumped of my own free will. For around 1.5 seconds I thought I'd just committed suicide. Luckily, my free fall was around 6 seconds and I had a complete lack of thought and sound for about 4.5 seconds as I plunged towards the ground, completely unaware of the cord that would be saving my life.

My legs caught and I swung smoothly underneath the bridge, rebounding and falling again in the world's 2nd highest bungee which I was ready for this time. And just as quickly as it began, it was over and I was bouncing shallowly up and down by my feet kilometers above the earth. I became acutely aware of the strap around my ankles. It felt like it was slipping. The blood rushed to my head. All of a suddent I realized: this is real. I felt the biggest emotional swing of my life to complete panic. The spider came down to collect me and I was, for lack of a better description, paralyzed with fear. He sat me up and I closed me eyes as he removed and added clips to my body. If I opened them, I probably would have belligerently accused him of trying to kill me as he was unclipping me to pull me up. He tried to make small talk with me, but I was completely unresponsive. When I finally got pulled back onto the platform I kissed the earth and declared that I would never do that again. I'm so glad I did, but it was once in a lifetime.


After bungee jumping, I knew my day was going to be amazing. We all lived, afterall. After running into a few exchange students we knew on their way to bungee we gave them some words of encouragement and moved onto our next destination: Jefferey's Bay or "J-bay."

More later...

Love from the girl with a Game Theory Exam tomorrow!


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