A while ago an awesome guy named Val English came out to visit from Northern Ireland. Apparently he's from Portstewart. He stayed in George for 2 weeks and while he was here he got involved in loads of the stuff OAM is doing. He's a recently retired pastor so he knows his stuff and we had the privilidge of having some lectures with him over the 2 weeks. He also spoke at the local youth fellowship a couple of times and gave devotions in the morning. He was a top class guy and it was a pleasure to get to know him. Before he left he even went out and bought us all bibles, in his favourite translation - the English Standard Version, which is a pretty solid version.

This is more of a typical week. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are usually the same, with Thursday being open for different lecturers each week. Friday, the blue square is for a recreational activity. This week we headed up to the nearby Strawberry Farm, and played golf afterwards.

Jeff is an American. One of my favourite books is The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne; and much to my joy when Jeff takes the lectures we actually go though that book, and the lectures become even more discussion based than usual. He asks us to read a certain few chapters in advance, and then come with questions, and we debate stuff. Its awesome. Vicky is Jono's wife. Jono is the main guy in charge of Life Academy. Thus 'Vicky's Place' is the same as 'Jono's Place'. As of recent she has begun to teach us to cook. This has been fantastic as I haven't a clue. This week was Easter, so Sports Academy on Monday, and Blanco on Tuesday were cancelled because apparently the kids don't come on holidays. Kidstop continued however, in fact much stronger than usual, so we used our free time to help out a bit extra there.

Joy is Vicky's Mother. Marthinus is a hardcore adventurer who takes us kayaking and rock climbing and abseiling etc. Monday morning is super chill. We have devotions in the morning, and then while the staff are having a meeting we give their office a once over. 'Chores' are just general housekeeping- Cleaning toilets, raking leaves etc.

As you can see, activities often switch about. But there are set slots which things fit in to. You kinda know what the week will be, but you never know how it will play out. Its good like that.

Left: Admin Office | Right: House (and communal banter area)

By the side of the house. My room is the left window.

Kitchen

The dining section of the main lounge area

This room is used mainly for meetings by the staff guys, or for lectures with us.

There is a little 'bonus house' called a flatlet out the back of the main house

There are also 3 bathrooms: 2 with toilets. And 4 bedrooms, with enough beds to sleep 16. Since there are not 16 of us, or anywhere near it, I have a room all to myself. Although recently the door handle broke, leaving me locking inside for a grueling 5 minutes. Since my rescue, I’ve had to put a door stop in so i can leave it ajar, lest I become once more trapped within. Ive also discovered that its much easier to simply leave my clothes and belongings strewn across the room, rather than in any particular arrangement. Well, easier once I’m done with them, not easier when I need to find something.

We’ve got a tv too. But South African TV is horrendous. 60% soaps, 30% WWE, 10% Oprah. Adverts every 1o minutes, with 70% of the adverts being those crazy frog-esque “text this number and get a ringtone” adverts. The rest are about insurance. It hurts to watch tv. Hurts my soul. Food is cheap here though, you can buy a full apple pie for a quid, so I often spend my free time just munching on stuff instead.

Our hike ended at Calitzdorp Spa. Where we would spend the night, and the following two days. Our campsite was awesome. Henry’s family came up on the evening of Hike Day 10. His wife, and three kids. Henry owned a very cool caravan. It had loads of ‘bits’ that slid out and fitted together and stuff. After taking these out and putting up a tarpaulin roof, we had a nice little living area with tables, a stove, a fridge, a freezer and sink, (probably other stuff too) that all slid or folded out from the side of the caravan.

Mitch and Henry assembling the living quarters

After we had showered and changed clothes, we went to explore the resort. The first thing we found was a swimming area. There were three pools here, each filled with water pumped directly from underground springs. The largest pool was as one would expect from a swimming pool. Big, filled with warm water. Nothing too special there. Well, the water wasn’t actually heated at all. In fact it was cooled, quite a lot. The water from under the Earth is roasting hot, so it had to be cooled to make it bearable for swimming.

The aforementioned 'large pool'

The second pool was quite different. It wasn’t cooled all that much, in fact in may not have been cooled at all. It was ridiculously hot, to the extent that never was a person found in it. It hurt to even touch a toe into the water. I can’t think of why it was such as it was, but such as it was, it was. We left that one alone.

Check the steam coming off the warm pool, imagine how hot the hot pool is.

The third pool was larger than the super hot pool (which was about 2m by 4m) but smaller than the larger, normal pool. Temperate wise it was also between the two, with a leaning towards the hotter. This pool took a bit of getting used to, and sometimes it was a bit too hot to be comfortable in. It wasn’t so much a swimming pool as a floating pool. You were just meant to soak and relax in the hot water.

I didn’t dry myself after swimming, I simply walked the 100 or so metres back up to the caravan and I was dry by the time I arrived, such was the heat of the day.

We then discovered a set of cement tennis courts. When we played here later I decided to play barefoot, since I had completely written off everything I wore during the hike, including my boots, and I thought it impractical to play in sandals. Turns out I should have gone the sandals route- within about 2 minutes of playing I discovered a large blister on each foot. Large may be an understatment, they were each about 2.5- 3 inches in diameter. Pretty much the whole ball of my foot was a massive blister. Still, I played for about 2 hours. Contrary to my first assumption, it didn’t really hurt that much and I was able to get around pretty fine.

While sitting relaxing in the evening, having a Braai (delicious barbecue food makes a very welcome change from the meals on the hike) and chatting, we noticed some Springbok (the South African national animal) just walk on by. They were seemingly just allowed to roam on through, along with peacocks and all kinds of crazy cool birds.

After dinner we discovered the roman bath. The roman bath is a bit hotter than the warm pool. At first I found it hard to bear and had to keep getting out, but walking up after I felt awesome, apparently the spring water has cleansing properties and for the next half hour I felt all tingly and cool. Over the next few days I would often go to the roman bath sporadically throughout the day, since it was just 100% free time.

I had a great time staying at Calitzdorp Spa, and it was great end to the gruelling hike. It was also very nice to be able to interact with other actual people. Thus ended our trip. Time to go back and get on with the gap year program.

We left and walked up the Olifants river. We had been following the Goeritz thus far, but at our campsite it splits into two and our path was along the Olifants. It was hot today again, but then its hot every day, it wasn’t unbearable. The note told us to follow the river until we reached a building, where we were to inquire for our next directions. The route was cool. The guys had taken all our junk so our bags were very light, and the river was blocked with boulders, on average about 3m high. I had all my energy back and I had a great time climbing and jumping all over them. This lasted pretty much until the river kinda died. It dramatically reduced in size and the path opened up to desert as we exited the valley. As we walked we keep a look out for a this building.

Then we saw a structure, but then another one. As we walked we saw more and more buildings appear. They seemed to be houses. We decided to press on forward and just see what happened.

We found our way onto a road and soon reached a building. We asked inside if a man named Henry had left a message for us, telling us where to go next. He had. Turns out, however, the message wasn’t “Go walk 10 miles that way,” but more like “Just walk on over there to that caravan”

See, the building was the entrance to a Spa Resort named Calitsdorp Spa. Henry had rented a caravan spot and set up a caravan and four tents. The spot came with a water supply and had a braai pit (BBQ) with stone tables and seats.

Its not a house, but its a massive step up from nothing

It also had toilets about 15m away. Not just toilets in fact, showers. Freaking showers! Before we left for the hike we’d been told to pack a small bag with a change of clothes and toiletries, these had been brought up here. We could wash and change clothes- for the first time in 10 days. The hike was over. We were free. Consummatum est.

It is finished

When I finally did rise, I was only up about 1 minute when Henry arrived. He told me that we would be finishing up today at about 2pm. This was great news as I had forgotten whether or not we were planned to be sleeping here again tonight.

After Henry left I went to lie down on a rock to pray. A while later I heard a noise. I turned round to face the origin and saw a figure slowly emerging from the river. I didn’t have my glasses, and since day 2 my contact lenses had been unusable, so I couldn’t identify the figure. Logic and reason told me it was Henry, since we were in the midst of the wilderness. However as the figure drew closer I realised it looked very different to Henry.

It was Jono! The guy in charge of Life Academy. Apparently he had driven out here till the end of the road, then hiked the distance across to where we were staying, and he had brought gifts! He came all the way out here to bring us delicious food and tasty treats for after our fast.

After speaking with me for a while and sharing some of his abundant wisdom, he went off to look for Mitch. He returned about 10 minutes later, waved, and then proceeded to walk straight back into the river, fully clothed, and then just swim away down the river. Awesome stuff.

So a few hours later I got up to leave. I had to pack my things back into my bag; this little task that I had so easily performed in the days previous took me around 10 minutes. To escape, I had to climb up over some boulders. I had found it very hard to even walk yesterday, it was inconceivably harder to climb. I had about 100m to travel back to the main campsite.

In the time walking back I realised how mentally weak I was, in addition to my physical weakness. I though of Jesus, when he spent his time in the wilderness. I had been destroyed by the 2 day fast. Even before the fast, with the emotional vampirism of having to trek through horrible terrain under a scorching sun, I had noticed myself abnormally susceptible to ridiculously weak attacks by Satan that wouldn’t have come anywhere close to cutting the mustard back home. Jesus had fasted for 40 days before Satan came up at him, to still be able to muster the mental strength to resist after that is very impressive to say the least. Sitting on a sofa, by a warm fire, logic says its impressive. But having experienced even just a tiny bit of the physical and emotional degradation for myself, I can see in a new light what a feat it was. Its a feat to even remember the verses Jesus did, let alone be able to tactically use them against very persuasive arguments.

When we arrived back at camp, there was bread baked for us beside the fire. There was a tin of jam, and one of condensed milk. We also found 2 litres of fruit juice. But Henry, Jono, and even Mitch, were no where to be found. We sat down in the shade, expecting them to appear. We chatted for a while and relaxed in the knowledge that the fast was over, but we didn’t eat. We were waiting for Henry et al. After about 45 minutes we decided to check around for them, this was when Tracy found a note by the fire, which we had previously missed.

We learnt from the note that the had gone on ahead. Jono had actually left for home, he just came to bless us with food. Henry and Mitch had continued to the end. We were to feast here today, sleep here tonight, and then leave and continue up the river the next morning.

The note also said not to eat too much, lest we be hit with indigestion. We neglected to heed its recommendation and went ahead and gorged ourselves. As predicted, indigestion followed soon thereafter. When it finally dissipated about 15 minutes later, I decided it would be a good idea to munch some more. In a cruel, undeserved and completely unexpected twist of fate, the indigestion returned.

The indigestion was uncomfortable, yes, but to be honest it wasn’t really too bad, it just meant you had to try not to move. It didn’t really spoil the joy brought by the scrumptious food. Yummy stuff. We went to bed more than satisfied.

Henry had told us he would come at around midday to check up on each of us and have a little chat.

When I woke up I reached for the flask I had filled up with water from the river. In actuality, the water was disgusting and nasty, but in my condition it actually tasted quite refreshing.

I got up to go refill it from the river. This is when I noticed how incredibly weak I had become. Lying in my bed, I had felt ok; but when I had to actually use some energy I discovered I didn’t have any.

After walking just 10m from my bed to the river I was done. I struggled just to fill up my flask, and then slumped there for about 10 minutes before I gained the strength to get up again to walk back to my bed. When I did reach my bed I collapsed there and fell asleep for a few hours.

I woke up at about 10am and struggled over to my bag. I grabbed my bible and went off to some shade to read some. That was pretty much the order of the day. Henry arrived as promised, its a sad day when seeing someone for a few minutes is the highlight of the day. I was so incredibly weak that I couldn’t even make up some game or challenge to fill the time.  I found its really easy to find a comfortable way of reading while lying down. If by ‘easy’ you mean ‘impossible’. It also gets uncomfortable reading while sitting up,  so today was filled with fidgeting- attempting ceaselessly to get comfortable. But with abundance of time to read, ponder and pray, I learnt and figured out some good stuff.

So, we all got up and were led off by Henry to our individual places. Luckily, Henry had picked places with shade in the morning and evening (cliffs, trees etc.), and a flat piece of soft ground to sleep. My place was an area beside the river about 20m long, 10m wide. It was mainly sand, with some ‘rock shelves’ coming out from a cliff on the other side of the sand from the river.

I imagined that the lack of food wouldn’t really be too much of an issue. I had done a 24 hour fast the day before I left NI, and that had been a full and active day. I would imagine I could do 48 hours, without much exercise at all, without too much bother.

After always being on the move, and having different scenery each day, this would be my only view for the next two days.

I occupied myself with carving my spoon some more. My spoon was made from a stick I picked up from the ground, and as I tackled the various different meals I discovered shortcomings in a number of areas. It was a work i progress and I thought now I might have time enough to perfect it. After I got tired of that I grabbed my bible and started reading.

Hours past and the sun started to set. I began to get my bed ready but noticed soon that because we were in a high walled valley, once the sun starts setting its not long before its pitch black. I scrambled to get everything together and get into my sleeping bag. Its tough sleeping on sand, because you have to be super careful not to get any sand in the sleeping bag, otherwise you’re in for a night of constant uncomfort.

There had been many times during the climbing parts on the earlier days that I thought “If I fall here, I could die, or at least break some stuff.” Luckily today was devoid of anything more than some large boulders. However I was so exhausted from the weather that I found each step a challenge and fell about five times through simply ‘being floppy’ when trying to step up boulders.

However, with lunch time came a change in luck. Just as we got up to start walking again after having lunch,  (which consisted of a cereal bar and a small bag of peanuts and raisins) Henry pointed ahead at a place he claimed to be our camp for the day. We couldn’t believe it. It was only just past midday, how could we have reached our goal already? But Henry was adamant that we only had a few hundred metres left to go.

Little did we know we only had to reach that corner.

So we reached our camp mid afternoon and as a result had a good few hours to spare before making dinner. Today though, we had the best meal of the whole hike: Samp (dried corn kernels) and beans, with mashed potato, in Chakalaka (spicy) sauce.

The fire, one pot with the meal and the other with boiling water for making tea. Mitch is pouring in the Chakalaka sauce to complete the dish.

Today was fun, it was nice to have a day full of rest and relaxation, especially when the start of this day seemed to promise the exact opposite. We had plenty of free time to just mess around at the campsite.

I'm falling off a cliff! But I'm strangely happy about it.

We spent a while talking together and debating things etc, and then Mitch and I decided to occupy ourselves by setting fire to a small, dead tree we found.

]]> http://browner.wordpress.com/2009/04/11/hike-day-6/feed/ 0 Browner hike-60 hike-83 hike-81 hike-66 hike-74 http://browner.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/hike-day-5/ http://browner.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/hike-day-5/#comments Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:00:21 +0000 Martin http://browner.wordpress.com/?p=114 ]]> Today Henry told us he had scouted ahead and discovered we could shave off hours of walking by cutting through a valley, instead of following the path of the river. This news was even more welcome today as the sun was up in the high 35′s again.

The valley used to be a river route, but the water has since dried up and we found some cool rock formations while walking through. This one looks kind of like L'Arc de Triomphe, only about half the size.

When we got out the other side and back to the river, we found another area where the river widened and deepened, making swimming possible. I also took this opportunity to wash my shirt for the first time in 5 days. The sun was so hot today that I only needed to leave it open on a rock and it was fully dry in about 15 minutes. After the swim we decided to hang about in the shade and take a break like yesterday, instead of trying to battle our way through the heat.

We weren't the only ones enjoying a swim: we noticed a turtle.

We didn’t have much further to walk after that. The shortcut really helped us out. Our campsite today was like a hotel compared to the others. The sand here was pure- it didn’t have sticks, stones and faeces in like yesterday’s. There was fantastic soft, cushy grass to sleep on. The scenery was beautiful too- there were massive towering cliffs on the other side of a second swimming pool

This pool was far larger than the one we swam in earlier: it was about the length of a normal swimming pool, and far wider. The water was still just as cold, but I found that the act of swimming warmed me up sufficiently. Henry, Mitch and I ended the day by swimming around for a while while the others made the fire. A great, relaxing end to a pretty enjoyable day.

Taken from beside the campfire, a hill runs down to the water, then about 50m further, on the other side of the water are these cliffs. Pretty cool scenery for the campsite.

You never know how hard the walk will be until you start and discover the terrain. Today the ground was largely flat and grassy.  We also had portions of the river that were shallow that we could walk through Sooner than we thought, the sun was directly overhead and we started looking for a place to take our 3 hour break. We found a great tree and collapsed down.

We didnt leave until after about 4 hours. Before long we discovered today’s next surprise: after only walking for about 15 minutes we came across a farm. We found that Henry had also found the farm and had been hanging out with the residents since before we stopped for our break. When we arrived they offered us comfy seats and lemonade. Jurassic Park! It was great to be able to experience normal life again, if only for a while.

The farmer then gave us a ride in his pickup for a distance that would have taken us about an hour to walk- another unexpected bonus. Before too long we were at our camp for the night. Previously I had enjoyed only the evenings, around the fire at the camp. The actual hiking that takes up most of the day has been quite a chore. Today, however, I enjoyed with the whole day. If every day of the hike was like this it would be cool.