Day 1 - Caves, Ostriches, and Buffalo Bay

I’M HOME! After an amazing 10 days on the road I’m back in Stellies… happy to be home but already missing the sound of waves crashing on the beach. There were so many fun things that happened in the last week and I don’t want to leave stuff out so I’m going to take it one day at a time. So here’s Day 1 on the Garden Route.

We left Stellenbosch at 5am on Saturday morning and began our five hour drive to Oudtshoorn. Our first stop was the Cango Caves, which were full of chambers, stalactites, and stalagmites. The rock formations are hundreds of thousands of years old and were incredible to look at. We went on an adventure climb through the caves (check out the picture below of my roommate Casey) before leaving for the ostrich farm. Oudtshoorn is known as the ostrich capital of South Africa – over 1,000 of them are slaughtered every day in this one town alone. We learned quite a bit about these crazy animals from our tour guide – their leather is the second strongest in the world behind kangaroos, their eyeball weighs twice as much as their brain, and their kick is powerful enough to break a human in half. We got to see a baby ostrich breaking through his shell before watching a few of our friends ride them around the farm (that's me feeding them and Pablo riding one in the pictures below).

After another 2 hours in the car we arrived at Buffalo Bay Backpackers. None of us were expecting to stay at a place as awesome as this. We all jumped out of the car and marveled at the views because the lodge was literally located on the beach. Check out the website and the pictures below for a little taste of this beautiful lodge. We spent the afternoon relaxing, enjoying the sun, and exploring the beach. Eventually we had a delicious dinner that was cooked and served by the owner. After dinner everyone was just hanging out when Hestea, our resident director, quietly asked all the girls to gather outside. We followed her down to the shoreline where she proceeded to give us a short speech on self-worth and self-respect that culminated with her saying, “as women we need to stay interesting… so I’m going skinny dipping!” She immediately threw her clothes into the sand and ran for the water. It didn’t take long for the rest of us to follow suit and within the next couple minutes there were 35 of us running into the ocean. The water was so refreshing and it felt like we were in a movie. It was a perfect way to end our first day on the road. We were all so tired and most of us were asleep before midnight.