Garden Route

In this update of my blog I will tell you all the ins and outs from the garden route. As this was one of the most amazing things I have ever done I will try to tell you in as much detail as possible to give you a slight hint of the things we have done on the Garden Route.

Day One

Our trip started on Monday the 13th of February. We had to meet at Bishops at 7:45 where the BOKBUS tour van would take us on our 5 day journey through the Southern and Eastern Cape. When I arrived, all the girls were already there but we were still waiting on some boys. We decided to go to the chapel to attend to the assembly. When we came in the chapel, all the guys were staring at us seeing that they go to an all-boys school and barely see girls. We sat close to the back where we were not too much of a distraction. The Chapel was white from the inside with a high ceiling and an organ at the back. They said their prayers and the choir started singing. This assembly was not that much different than our assemblies, the main difference is that our assemblies our held in the theater where Bishops assemblies are in their chapel. After assembly all the boys had to go to classes and we as exchange students had to go to the van where we would be leaving any minute. Miss Stephens, the teacher who was going with us, decided it would be nice to have a Herschel mascot which turned out to be a pig. We, the girls, got really excited seeing that this pig was adorable with its pig flappy ears and cute curled tail. Obviously, we had to give it a name which was not that easy seeing that everyone wanted to call it something else. Call it after someone’s boyfriend or give it another ridiculous name but eventually everyone agreed to call it Piggy Oink. We put our bags in the trailer and settled in the van, turned the music on and put our snacks on our laps.

We first went to a place where we could see African penguins. They were really cute but we were told not to come too close because they bite. Some of the guys were scaring Pipa (exchange student from Chili) by saying that they will go for the eyes first but that didn't bother her, she was absolutely in love with them and if she could, I'm sure she would have taken one home. We only stayed here for about half an hour and left straight after everyone had done their business in the bathroom. Our second stop was at the Southernmost Tip of Africa and the lighthouse nearby. Everyone went up in the lighthouse which was quite scary because the stairs were very steep. After everyone had taken their photos, which took quite a while, we went off again, this time to the game farm where we would be going on a game drive and spending the night. When we arrived, we only had time to put our bags in our s-person hut because the guides were ready for their drive. This was my first safari ever and I really enjoyed it. I was in a truck with Julia (exchange student from Hong Kong), Lourents and for about 10 other visitors. There were blankets in the car to keep us warm which was quite necessary when it got darker. The first animals we saw were rhinos. There were three of them, two adults and a baby. They told us that these were white rhinos which we first didn’t believe seeing that they were covered in mud. After everyone had packed their cameras back in again, we continued our search for some more animals. The next animal to see was a female giraffe. She was standing in the bushes having dinner and enjoying the last bit of sun. The driver told us a giraffe’s tongue has an average length of 55 cm which is quite impressive. Lourents spotted a lion further away and we quickly drove to the lions territory. The lions are kept separately seeing that they need at least 80 hectares of land for themselves to naturally live in. we had to go through two gates to enter the lion terrain. The driver told us these lions are quite aggressive, especially the male lion, and said that’s why we couldn’t get too close to them. We could see both lions but at first they were quite far apart. Eventually we could see the male lion walking to the female lion and once he made it till her, she submissively lay down on her back to show him her respect.  We drove out of the gate again and continued the game of hide and seek. On our way we saw some buffalos, blue cranes  and springbok. A bit further to the back of the game farm, we spotted a cheetah feeding on a carcass. The cheetah had a big red scar on his back leg. A buffalo had attacked this cheetah and almost killed it. It was stabbed on both sides of its body and was just very lucky when the buffalo was pushed off him by one of the game farm jeeps. It took almost 8 months until it was fully recovered and the scar is still visible even though this accident was for about a year ago. The sun was almost down and it was time for us to go back and have dinner. Unfortunately we didn’t see any elephants but the next day we had another opportunity to see them. We were sitting at a long table with the entire group and had real South African food which was delicious. I tried some ostrich neck which was the first time in my life I tried ostrich meat and it was surprisingly good. Everyone shared their stories of what animals they had seen and showed their pictures. After dinner half of the group, including me, decided to go and swim in the pool. There were two pools, one appeared to be freezing cold and the other one was luckily heated. Miss Stephens came by and told us we had to get out and go to bed. The moment we got out of the pool we realized how cold it was and some of us forgot their towels so they were standing in the cold, shivering, waiting to get a towel. We quickly put on some clothes and ran to our huts to take a warm shower.  I shared my hut with Lotte and we were told this was our own night of luxury and I have to agree with that. The bed was amazing and I fell asleep straight away.