It was 8:15 on the morning of Day 6 and I was awake and eating breakfast before my alarm went off. I was scheduled to spend the morning surfing with 9 of my friends and I was really excited about it. I had tried surfing twice before with a friend, but this would be my first time taking a lesson. We put on our wetsuits and walked out to the beach where our boards were waiting for us. Our instructor, Dale, went over the basics and then gave us 20 minutes to catch some waves just lying on our boards, no standing up yet. Then we went back to the sand and he taught us the final couple steps and we had about an hour to work on putting the whole thing together in the water. It was an exhausting two hours in total because each time you caught a wave that brought you to the shoreline you had to carry your board back out until you were waist deep again. I had a really great time and was able to ride several waves to the shore, granted they weren’t very big.
Afterwards we had 10 minutes to put dry clothes on, get in the vans, and head to the dunes for sandboarding. I was also really looking forward to this activity, but it wasn’t quite as cool as I expected. On my first run down the dune I tried to turn on my heel side, as I would on a snowboard, but I just ended up falling on my butt. The sand was really hard and it was nearly impossible to do anything besides ride in a straight line down the hill. The main slope that we used was pretty small, but walking back up each time became difficult as we were all wiped out from surfing. Regardless, it was a neat experience and I’m really glad I did it.
Once we got back to the beach house I ate lunch, took a shower (I still have sand in my scalp though), and napped until dinner. After eating I hung out in the living room/kitchen of our house, listened to Hestea’s “end of the Garden Route” speech, and got into bed pretty early.
In addition to all the amazing activities I participated in this week, I really enjoyed getting to know our drivers better. Aside from Hestea there are 5 Stellenbosch undergrads/grad students who drive everywhere and take care of us on the road, and this was our last night with them. We see them around campus and hang out with them periodically, but the Garden Route trip is the bulk of our time with them, and now it was coming to an end. Hestea made a nice comment about each of them in her little speech and we all thanked them for the time, effort, and love that they put into the week. In the morning I would be heading a little further up the east coast with 23 other students, but the drivers and the rest of the crew was either going home or doing their own weekend trips, so this marked the end of our official Garden Route holiday.
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