Wilderness Barbie Day 2: Dandy Dangling

We awoke to find out that Avril’s sick mother had passed during the night. Lauren, Miles and I felt terrible. The night before during our games we were discussing how awful it would be if she died while we were away for the weekend, and were hoping with all of our hearts it wouldn’t happen that way. We insisted that we should return home, but she insisted that she stayed; she said she needed to clear her mind and prepare to deal with everything, so we hesitantly agreed. We had breakfast and on our way we were.

The first stop today was the Tsitsikamma canopy tour. We were going to zip-line through a huge jungle’s canopy in Africa. How cool is that? It was so much fun, and very cool. The guides were very friendly and helpful, and we all enjoyed ourselves a lot. I’m so glad we got to do it! We were quite high up for the majority of the tour, and it was definitely an adventure to firstly learn how to zip line, and then learn to avoid branches and have fun. I hope I can do that again somewhere cool (: This was only prep for the big upcoming challenge though; the bungy jump!!

The bungy jump is off of the Bloukrans Bridge, which is the highest bridge in the world at 216 meters high, or roughly 708 feet! It is possibly the scariest thing in the entire world. Probably more so when you know you’re about to jump off of it and you go to the lookout and can see all the way to the bottom; mountains surround the bridge, with a river at the bottom that runs right into the ocean. I was absolutely terrified. For some reason I was under the impression that I would be strapped by my chest for the bungy jump….don’t know how I got that idea because you clearly leap off of the bridge tied by your ankles. I had been preparing myself for the chest strap before I even left for Africa….only to have to prepare myself for the ankle in 20 minutes! I don’t remember the last time I felt so sick.

As we walked to the middle of the bridge along a grated walkway attached to the bottom of the bridge, I was getting more and more terrified. It was horrible to look down and see everything below your feet. Lauren was holding onto one of my arms, and we were both clinging to the railings on the other side of us. I felt like I was walking to my death. Nature and I get along SO fabulously. As we arrived, loud music was playing, like we were in a club, clearly to get people in the mood to jump off of a bridge haha. Miles’ name was called to jump first, out of the group of about 25 or 30. Lauren’s was next, and they said they would announce the rest after. They were both panicking, and I was too even though I wasn’t called yet! As Miles was getting his ankles strapped together, I was shaking and getting so scared, and as he leaped off of the bridge, I had to bite my hand to not cry. It was just so wrong to watch him do that!! And as Lauren prepared to jump, I did the exact same thing! It was so hard not to cry as I watched her disappear under the bridge somewhere. I ended up being like 15th to jump. And, before it was my turn, they were gathering up the people that had already jumped to take them back so that the area wouldn’t be too crowded, which would have left me alone without Lauren or Miles. At the pure thought of that, as I was already terrified beyond explanation, I just burst into tears. Luckily, they gave in and let Lauren stay with me. I don’t know what I would have done if they hadn’t let her stay.

As they were strapping my ankles up in preparation to bungy, I was shaking and getting extremely scared. They walked me to the edge of the bridge until my feet were half way off. My arms were around both of the “experts” shoulders, and all I could do was look down and see how far I had to fall. I began to tell them I couldn’t do it, and they brushed it off and counted down from five, “five, four, three, two, one, bungy!”. I thought they were going to push me, because I clearly couldn’t throw myself off, but they didn’t, so at the end of the count, I was still standing there lol! They said, “okay, let’s try again”, and counted down from five again, and gave me a little push. Because I was so terrified, instead of leaping forward like I was supposed to, I simply went with the push they gave me, and Miles described it looking like the wind simply blew me off; I fell feet first, which isn’t “supposed” to happen. It’s a lot smoother when you actually leap forward head first, because that’s the way the bungy takes you. Instead, I just did a huge flip in mid air. But, I was busy hyperventilating so it’s not like I really noticed anyhow.

It was the strangest thing I have ever experienced in my entire life. The bungy twists you around so I could see mountain, sky, river, ocean, bridge all mingled together; I was totally disoriented. Once I reached the “bottom” of the bungy length, it brought me back up, and for a second you feel like you’re free falling because there is no pull from the bungy; the most terrifying feeling ever!! It brought me up a couple more times, progressively lower each time until I was hanging upside down (still hyperventilating by the way) waiting for somebody to lower themselves and bring me back up to the platform. Those few seconds just hanging there felt like an eternity. Finally, a man was lowered down and attached himself to me to bring me back up. I was SO glad to be on solid ground again. I was still kind of in shock and disbelief that I had actually done it, so I ran into Lauren’s arms, as she was waiting for me to do so anyhow. We took the walk back across the long and scary bridge, and ordered our videos and pictures from the jump. I can’t wait to see them!! I probably look absolutely nuts haha (:

We continued on our way to the Knysna Elephant Park. It was a petting zoo of sorts, which was really cool. African elephants are the largest type of elephant in the world, and we got to be right there with them. We were given a bucket of fruit to feed them; the elephants picked the fruit up with their nose from our hands and brought it to their mouth. I didn’t do this—I was a little too grossed out. I can only go so far! Lauren and Miles fed them though, and then touched them and got pictures with them. They were SO huge! I found out that elephants are incredibly smart, and the trainers had them in line. If they did something they knew they weren’t supposed to, all the trainer had to do was make a noise, and they refrained the behavior. It was quite impressive. Our next stop was a lagoon tour on a cruise boat called the John Benn. It took us to the “two heads”; two mountains that come together like heads but have a small pathway between them to get to the other side to more land. The cruise was about two hours and was very beautiful. It was just about sunset time as well, so you can imagine how pretty it was. The five of us also had a really great talk during this time, so it was lovely.

We went to dinner at a famous chain restaurant here called the Ocean Basket. Marion is an avid whiskey drinker, and so wanted one with her meal. The restaurants license had expired, and was in transition from the department to the physical location, and as you may know, alcohol cannot be sold until the license is physically there. Because of this, they were offering free glasses of house wine, but Marion didn’t want wine, she wanted whiskey. She argued with the manager for a while, who at first refused to give it to her because he would get shut down if he sold it to her, so she told him to GIVE it to her instead. He finally gave in, and served it to her in a tea mug so that nobody would know. It was so funny! Tea is very common here, so he brought her the whole set; the tea cup on a saucer, with a spoon on the side and a jar of sugar to go with it. It was hilarious to watch her drink her whiskey on ice out of this cute tea cup. Pictures were most certainly taken.

As we returned to our rooms, Marion let out a huge scream, and stood outside of her door. I hurriedly ran down the hall to see what was going on, and she exclaimed that there was a bird in her room. The other three quickly followed me, as we slowly opened the door to see what was going on inside the hotel room. We found a pigeon just sitting on the floor in front of the beds, with bird crap ALL over the floor, bed, pillows, and blankets. The cleaning lady left the sliding door open, so it must have flown in through the open space. Avril figured the bird to be hurt because it wasn’t attempting to fly out at all. None of us knew what exactly to do; Avril went to the bedside phone and called the front desk for somebody to come and help. A man came in a few minutes later, and tried to maneuver himself around the bird to open the sliding door open some more for it to fly out more easily. As soon as he did this, the bird attempted to fly, and its wings were flapping everywhere. Miles had the bright idea of videoing what was happening, so as soon as the bird flew up, Miles bumped the camera up towards the ceiling, I hunched behind Avril and screamed, Lauren got sympathetic and felt bad for the bird, Marion was in the bathroom peeing at this point, and Avril had a nonchalant comment; it was SO funny. Once the bird was officially out of the room, Avril and Marion were brought to their new room. Another man came to bring them some more blankets, and as he was leaving, Marion said thank you and asked what his name was. He said “Phila”, and Marion responded, “What a dangerous name”. None of us besides Avril understood what was going on at the time, but Avril completely chuckled. Once he was out of the room, they explained that Phila is a very derogatory term for penis in Afrikaans that isn’t used often. This man was Xhosa, so he didn’t know what the joke was either. Oh man, what a long and crazy day.