We stayed in Knysna for the night but didn’t spend time in the town instead opting to head to Plettenberg Bay where there were fab waves and even better carrot cake (with pecan nuts - YUM!).
We spent a few hours at a nearby sanctuary for wolves but it was a bit odd as they were Canadian Timber Wolves so hardly native, although there were wild dogs there also and it was interesting to see them up close. The wolves were much bigger than I expected them to be
and they weren’t tame by any stretch of the imagination and this alpha female was particularly nasty and on the odd occasion rushed the fence snarling if we got too close.
Apparently wolves are often crossed with dogs here in SA and they had a few crossbreeds at the sanctuary. The result is a tamer animal that looks like a white or cream coloured German Shepherd but much bigger. The sanctuary was well kitted out for kids (or any animal lover?) with a great array of animals from topi and jackals to pigs and donkeys. It was just my sort of place J and even more so when I came across an enclosure with about 20 rabbits in it.
We just continued to cruise along the coast line that afternoon and, at the moment, the pace is far more relaxed than down through Namibia and Botswana etc where serious kilometres needed to be covered. With only eight of us and two crew it’s a really nice sized group which means we can be a bit more flexible, call the shots on what happens and its more like a proper holiday. I’m almost ashamed to admit that we’ve not used the tents for over a week now as the hostels and backpackers are quite cheap.
From Plettenberg Bay we headed to Storms River in the Tsitsikamma National Park via Natures Reserve which is a small village in amongst yellow wood forest close to a stunning beach.
another reminder of home for me
It was heading out of Natures Valley on a very winding road that we connected with a tree branch. We were on the beach looking out and managed to duck the branch but the truck copped it with force. Immediately afterwards I popped my head up to look and had Euan not dragged me back down, I’d have copped another one. Poor Pat thought someone had been decapitated and the look on his face was classic when he stopped the truck and climbed up to see if we were OK. The road was pretty narrow and we had another near miss with another truck who gave us nowhere to go.
On the main drag to Port Elizabeth we passed over Bloukrans Bridge, a huge concrete structure on that traverses a deep ravine that runs down to the coast, and stopped to have a look at the bungee jump operation there.
The Bloukrans Bridge bungee is the highest in the world at 216m and while both of us questioned the rationale behind jumping in the first place, we decided we should do it at least once and this seemed as good a place as any to do it.
We had already opted out of the bungee jump at Victoria Falls, partly because I wasn’t well but more so because it didn’t seem very professionally run so this was the next option. I’m not sure how many of you have done a bungee jump before but no one had actually talked me through what happens and I’d have liked to know beforehand! So, here goes. Obviously its no big deal, we’re hardly making history but if you’re never done one before or watched it, you might be interested to see what happens and it might help the decision to jump/not jump.
I don’t mind heights at all but Euan maintains that he is scared of heights (although he can’t pull that one on me anymore) and both of us sweated in sympathy (me from my feet, Euan from his hands) from just watching the others jump at Vic Falls which is only ½ the height. You have to fork out a silly amount of cash (US$90) before signing your life away, then they send you off to get harnessed up. Bungee jumpers are now given a harness (I don’t recall a full harness being used when I watched years ago) similar to an abseil harness presumably so there is a backup line to the bungee in the event it falls off the ankles(?). The bungee platform is in the middle of the Bloukrans bridge and there is a 260m walkway underneath the bridge before you reach the jumping spot. The walkway is metal mesh that you can see through and as the ground drops away quickly you don’t exactly get any more comfortable the further you walk, plus the fact that every time a vehicle goes over the bridge it seems to flex.
Once on the platform (which is really just the concrete arch of the bridge), you wait until you’re called up and in the meantime, watch other people get kitted out and get more and more nervous before they jump. The guys there are brilliant with quips, jokes and assessing who was chilled and who was freaking right out and needed their mind taking off the jump. It’s a really tightly run outfit that puts your mind at ease (unlike Vic Falls which was a far more ad hoc operation!).
Once called, you sit and they wrap these pads around your shins and then another chap comes along with the straps that actually connect you to the bungee cable. There was a primary (that was only connected to the bungee) and a secondary (that was connected to the bungee and my harness)
and both were looped tightly around the red straps that bound my legs together.
They don’t actually connect you to the bungee until you’re close to the edge, albeit behind a strap but I was paying close attention to what they were doing, no matter how many times they’ve done it before!! I wanted to see
and was fine up until I reached the edge of the bridge and saw what was below.
Oddly enough, I wasn’t shaking, had no butterflies in my stomach but was genuinely terrified of jumping - it goes without saying that jumping off the edge of anything high enough to kill you is, quite simply, bloody unnatural.
The guys push you but only enough to make sure you go off the edge (or they’d go too!)
and once you’ve jumped all you can hear is the whistling of the wind as you’re falling and seeing the ground coming up to meet you – it’s a good 5-6 seconds of freefall and it seems like forever
We spent a few hours at a nearby sanctuary for wolves but it was a bit odd as they were Canadian Timber Wolves so hardly native, although there were wild dogs there also and it was interesting to see them up close. The wolves were much bigger than I expected them to be
and they weren’t tame by any stretch of the imagination and this alpha female was particularly nasty and on the odd occasion rushed the fence snarling if we got too close.
Apparently wolves are often crossed with dogs here in SA and they had a few crossbreeds at the sanctuary. The result is a tamer animal that looks like a white or cream coloured German Shepherd but much bigger. The sanctuary was well kitted out for kids (or any animal lover?) with a great array of animals from topi and jackals to pigs and donkeys. It was just my sort of place J and even more so when I came across an enclosure with about 20 rabbits in it.
We just continued to cruise along the coast line that afternoon and, at the moment, the pace is far more relaxed than down through Namibia and Botswana etc where serious kilometres needed to be covered. With only eight of us and two crew it’s a really nice sized group which means we can be a bit more flexible, call the shots on what happens and its more like a proper holiday. I’m almost ashamed to admit that we’ve not used the tents for over a week now as the hostels and backpackers are quite cheap.
From Plettenberg Bay we headed to Storms River in the Tsitsikamma National Park via Natures Reserve which is a small village in amongst yellow wood forest close to a stunning beach.
another reminder of home for me
It was heading out of Natures Valley on a very winding road that we connected with a tree branch. We were on the beach looking out and managed to duck the branch but the truck copped it with force. Immediately afterwards I popped my head up to look and had Euan not dragged me back down, I’d have copped another one. Poor Pat thought someone had been decapitated and the look on his face was classic when he stopped the truck and climbed up to see if we were OK. The road was pretty narrow and we had another near miss with another truck who gave us nowhere to go.
On the main drag to Port Elizabeth we passed over Bloukrans Bridge, a huge concrete structure on that traverses a deep ravine that runs down to the coast, and stopped to have a look at the bungee jump operation there.
The Bloukrans Bridge bungee is the highest in the world at 216m and while both of us questioned the rationale behind jumping in the first place, we decided we should do it at least once and this seemed as good a place as any to do it.
We had already opted out of the bungee jump at Victoria Falls, partly because I wasn’t well but more so because it didn’t seem very professionally run so this was the next option. I’m not sure how many of you have done a bungee jump before but no one had actually talked me through what happens and I’d have liked to know beforehand! So, here goes. Obviously its no big deal, we’re hardly making history but if you’re never done one before or watched it, you might be interested to see what happens and it might help the decision to jump/not jump.
I don’t mind heights at all but Euan maintains that he is scared of heights (although he can’t pull that one on me anymore) and both of us sweated in sympathy (me from my feet, Euan from his hands) from just watching the others jump at Vic Falls which is only ½ the height. You have to fork out a silly amount of cash (US$90) before signing your life away, then they send you off to get harnessed up. Bungee jumpers are now given a harness (I don’t recall a full harness being used when I watched years ago) similar to an abseil harness presumably so there is a backup line to the bungee in the event it falls off the ankles(?). The bungee platform is in the middle of the Bloukrans bridge and there is a 260m walkway underneath the bridge before you reach the jumping spot. The walkway is metal mesh that you can see through and as the ground drops away quickly you don’t exactly get any more comfortable the further you walk, plus the fact that every time a vehicle goes over the bridge it seems to flex.
Once on the platform (which is really just the concrete arch of the bridge), you wait until you’re called up and in the meantime, watch other people get kitted out and get more and more nervous before they jump. The guys there are brilliant with quips, jokes and assessing who was chilled and who was freaking right out and needed their mind taking off the jump. It’s a really tightly run outfit that puts your mind at ease (unlike Vic Falls which was a far more ad hoc operation!).
Once called, you sit and they wrap these pads around your shins and then another chap comes along with the straps that actually connect you to the bungee cable. There was a primary (that was only connected to the bungee) and a secondary (that was connected to the bungee and my harness)
and both were looped tightly around the red straps that bound my legs together.
They don’t actually connect you to the bungee until you’re close to the edge, albeit behind a strap but I was paying close attention to what they were doing, no matter how many times they’ve done it before!! I wanted to see
and was fine up until I reached the edge of the bridge and saw what was below.
Oddly enough, I wasn’t shaking, had no butterflies in my stomach but was genuinely terrified of jumping - it goes without saying that jumping off the edge of anything high enough to kill you is, quite simply, bloody unnatural.
The guys push you but only enough to make sure you go off the edge (or they’d go too!)
and once you’ve jumped all you can hear is the whistling of the wind as you’re falling and seeing the ground coming up to meet you – it’s a good 5-6 seconds of freefall and it seems like forever
and ever….
and once the bungee kicked in, it felt like my brain was coming out my ears (on the video footage I end up holding my head). I kept my eyes open and was genuinely terrified the whole way down only to be bounced up and to go through it again. Once the bouncing stops and my brain had decided to stay put, I was left dangling upside down until someone came down to get me before being winched back up to the bridge. Being suspended about 100m above the ground feeling like the rope is going to slip off your ankles is also quite a terrifying feeling.
Once I got winched back up, I really had to restrain myself from grabbing the platform to drag myself back onto semi-solid ground but once there, I wasn’t letting go in a hurry!
Euan was the last to go and was unsurprisingly a bit jittery –being last to jump can’t have been pleasant and I held back on telling him how terrified I was until after he’d jumped. He looked almost happy before he jumped
and surprised us by executing what was one of, perhaps the, best jump of the group
Some peoples legs just collapsed on the edge and they kind of fell off with a bit of a push from the guys. You really have to FORCE yourself push out for a straight dive or fall all floppy and bent like a rag doll.
I was so glad to see Euan hauled back to safety (its quite traumatic watching the one you love jump off a ledge!)
and we both agreed that once was enough but on the walk back I was still in the “no way, never again” space but and Mr Closet-Adrenalin-Junkie Macfarlane seemed to change his mind!
I didn’t get the same adrenaline rush that I got when I watched the lion chase in the Serengeti but if I feel like being truly scared out of my wits then I’ll go bungee jumping again. Euan likened it to living the nightmare where you are falling, falling, falling then you wake up. He said, unlike in the nightmare, it didn’t seem to have an end so he shut his eyes half way down. It does give you a buzz – I don’t think you’ll find many pictures where everyone in it is smiling so broadly (Pat at the back didn’t jump but he always looks like that)
Just down the road from the Bridge we stayed at Storms River which is a small place just outside the Tsitsikamma National Park. We were at a great backpackers outfit called “Tube ‘n Axe” (surfie terms perhaps??) and, with two nights there, we managed to do some hiking along part of the 42km Otter Trail, one of the most acclaimed hikes in SA. The trail we followed wasn’t really a trail but was more rock-hopping than anything else. I LOVE that sort of stuff! The coastline is pretty wild and if you fell in the sea you’d be hammered on the rocks for sure (I’m giving the pic scale at the end of the point)
Our destination was a waterfall about a 30min scramble along the coast and, looking at the photo, you would never know that about 10m away the surf was raging and battering these huge ragged rocks
The clawless otters that live in these parts are elusive so we got a fright when this chap popped up in the water below us
He was very cute and not scared of us at all, coming right up to the edge of the rock I was on, peering up at me out of the bubbles then rolling on his back to get a better look
The swell was pretty violent from the waves just on the other side of the rocks and a couple of times he had to dive quickly to avoid getting slammed into the rock face and then he must have had enough as he disappeared. I kept my eyes peeled looking for him to no avail
I think we were super lucky to have seen him as one guy had worked there for nine months and only seen two otters during that time.
It was in this lagoon-type pool thing that we saw the otter and the swell was so unpredictable with one massive wave churning the water up to the level of where I was standing looking for the otter.
2 comments:
Kate and Euan!!!!!!!!
I am SO glad you have been down to Nature's Valley, Tsitsikamma and the Otter trail.....it is honestly my favourite place in the world!! And I am So jealous that you got to see a real otter!!!!! We missed those while we were on the trail in May! And I am very impressed by your brave bungee skills!!! Kate your description is brilliant (and scary ;)!
Lots of Love Guys, enjoy the rest of SA!
Nadine.
I Concede, yours are definitely bigger than mine. I would NEVER EVER do something like that, way way too chicken,. HAts off to you both, I am very impressed. Must have been one hell of an adrenaline rush tough.
Ladi
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