Adventures through the Cederberg

[Smiley73]

 

Can't really place this one, but I think it was on the first day

 

 

Where the path ends and the climbing begins...

 

 

I'm at the top of the Cederberg!!! Well I'm not in this photo, but I got there, eventually

[Smiley73]

Day 15:

 

The last day of hiking, the second last day of Epic, what will later turn into Father’s night, all will happen today. As you may have realised our group is within a few kilometres of our stop at Sanddrif, Unfortunately we can’t arrive there before 12:00, otherwise Mr. Court said that he would drive us back and make us walk a far distance again. So we mostly lazed about in sleeping bags till about 9am which is pretty late in hiking terms.

 

As you may remember there is a tradition with the guys who walk through our route, that tradition being to walk into Sanddrif in your jocks, weird tradition, yes, I can’t imagine how they made it up, but it’s a fun idea at the least. Some strict adherents of this tradition insisted that they would walk the entire way to Sanddrif, which a mildly disturbingly large group of people did, my own decision as to change closer to Sanddrif, mostly for practical reasons of backpack chafe and sunburn.

 

So we were off from the Maltese Cross parking lot (where we slept last night), all the way to Sanddrif. The path was nice and flat and we could even recognise landmarks from when we were around Sanddrif at the beginning of Epic. Me and guy walked with Damon who had some seriously messed up toes, which I will refrain from describing for those with fragile sensibilities, but they looked pretty damn messed up.

 

The walk was pretty easy and we stopped at a bridge where the farming land around Sanddrif really started (a little bit ahead of a small star observatory/telescope thingie). At this bridge the rest of us disrobed to our jocks (boots and hats/buffs on of course). The walk was actually pretty fun in a weird way. We passed farm workers and people in cars just waving, I remember someone suggested hitchhiking, but the rest thought it a bad idea to do it in our jocks. We actually arrived in Sanddrif at 11am and hour earlier than we were supposed to and I was half expecting us to get driven back, but Mr. Court let us on through after some picture taking (which I probably won’t post, ever, even if Ozzie does ever put them up).

 

We walked down a junction, one way leading to the bungalows we were in at Sanddrif and the other one leading to a campsite. The campsite had nice grass, shade, toilets, everything you could want. Our group passed out here and lazed around. Of course we made sure everyone put on at least some pants, there were other people around. People were eating the last of their snacks; I shared some tuna with Guy, the tuna donated by others of course.

 

At about 12 or 12:30 one of the stooges who helped us up Sneeuberg walked down to take us to Maalgat again. I jumped once from the top jump to quickly wash as much dirt from my body as possible. I didn’t land in the water right with a lot of force coming onto my lower back, which put my body into shock for the next 3 minutes or so and made my back hurt for about 1 and a half weeks after that. Otherwise I swam around till we had to come back. While we were gone the other group had arrived at our campsite, not to mention my brother’s group was staying in the bungalows.

 

That night is Father’s Night, which basically means your dad (or other significant male figure), comes down to meet you, not to mention you braai, tell him about the Epic etc. So we all waited around for the dad’s to start filtering in, my dad arrived pretty early and we hugged and he got out food and drink and I was in my happy place with both, which is when he got out the cake, which was chocolate with masses of icing, which again put me in my happy place. It out everyone else in their happy places as well, when I brought it out, it was a frenzy, like seagulls trying to attack your food at a seaside fish shop, although I was spared from trampling and people became more civilised as the shock wore off, then my dad drove off to meet with my brother and to bring him to our side to braai.

 

Father’s night was great, good food, swapped stories, we even did a little report back thing with Mr Court, with our dad’s with of course. So apparently our group now holds a record for being the first full group ever, in the history of both the Epic and Adventure Course to make it up all three of the highest peaks in the Cederberg. Other groups had done it but at least one member hadn’t made it up all three, either because they were scared or because of an injury. SO that gives a sense of accomplishment.

 

Tomorrow we leave the Cederberg and drive back home, also I’ll use that as a sort of Epilogue and as a time to describe the other big things that happened on Epic that we heard before leaving.

 

 

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

... but i don't want it to be over...

[Turin Turambar]

This has been great Smiley. now it is nearly over

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

i thnk we need a re-read.

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

... and you should really put this all together and turn it in for extra credit...

[Turin Turambar]

I concur.

[Smiley73]

... and you should really put this all together and turn it in for extra credit...

 

Extra credit, to who, to what subject? We don't do extra credit here ayway, and I'm not big on sharing my writing, the only reason this really works is because it works through the great big anonymous internet

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

suck up points, to whoever organizes these things.

[Smiley73]

suck up points, to whoever organizes these things.

 

Again while a legitimate thing t do I don't feel very comfortable putting out something this personal out there, 'cause I guess the teacher would put it up on the school site or something

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

fair enough.

[Smiley73]

I guess I should get the last post up before I die

[Smiley73]

oooh yay

[Smiley73]

Day 16:

 

I woke up early this morning to be ready to leave at six. Today we drive out of Sanddrif towards a smallish town called Citrusdal, where we would meet all the other boys not to mention get some breakfast given to us at the church we would meet at. I actually had a nice laugh coming into Citrusdal as there was just a convoy of 4X4’s (the kind able to handle rough conditions and the ones that aren’t) coming into this small town. I’m sure we caused quite a fuss.

 

The breakfast was great, the food was great, and the story telling was amazing. One thing that did get everyone’s attention was Apex Blue (the other group in Apex, my brother’s group) who had gotten a mass punishment, greater even than the guys who smoked cigarettes, hell their punishment was even worse than what the weed-smoking guy got.

 

I’ll keep the details out, because I don’t know, boys do weird things to keep themselves occupied but this really wasn’t that bad. Anyway the food there was great and meeting up with everyone there was really nice. Plus there were Cokes, big Cokes. Otherwise we had some speeches from our headmaster and the teacher in charge of Epic before we dispersed into our cars and went back home.

 

I didn’t arrive home for a while we actually drove around in the city for a while and I had the weirdest feeling of being enclosed, I felt weirdly uncomfortable having sat in a car for two hours, that I was driving around two lane streets with houses so close, everything was so close, it’s hard to explain.

 

All those cuts and scratches have healed by now, now real lasting harm done to me. What did take some time to get used to was late nights. My body clock made me feel tired as soon as the sun went done, which was fine on Epic but at home with light available anytime? Well I guess it was mildly annoying, but that too vanished in a few days.

 

YAY done, any questions?

 

Sorry for the intense lateness :P

 

 

[Smiley73]

Day 16:

 

I woke up early this morning to be ready to leave at six. Today we drive out of Sanddrif towards a smallish town called Citrusdal, where we would meet all the other boys not to mention get some breakfast given to us at the church we would meet at. I actually had a nice laugh coming into Citrusdal as there was just a convoy of 4X4’s (the kind able to handle rough conditions and the ones that aren’t) coming into this small town. I’m sure we caused quite a fuss.

 

The breakfast was great, the food was great, and the story telling was amazing. One thing that did get everyone’s attention was Apex Blue (the other group in Apex, my brother’s group) who had gotten a mass punishment, greater even than the guys who smoked cigarettes, hell their punishment was even worse than what the weed-smoking guy got.

 

I’ll keep the details out, because I don’t know, boys do weird things to keep themselves occupied but this really wasn’t that bad. Anyway the food there was great and meeting up with everyone there was really nice. Plus there were Cokes, big Cokes. Otherwise we had some speeches from our headmaster and the teacher in charge of Epic before we dispersed into our cars and went back home.

 

I didn’t arrive home for a while we actually drove around in the city for a while and I had the weirdest feeling of being enclosed, I felt weirdly uncomfortable having sat in a car for two hours, that I was driving around two lane streets with houses so close, everything was so close, it’s hard to explain.

 

All those cuts and scratches have healed by now, now real lasting harm done to me. What did take some time to get used to was late nights. My body clock made me feel tired as soon as the sun went done, which was fine on Epic but at home with light available anytime? Well I guess it was mildly annoying, but that too vanished in a few days.

 

YAY done, any questions?

 

Sorry for the intense lateness :P

 

 

[Crimson_Ayla]

What was your favourite part?

 

You can has points next month too :)

[Smiley73]

What was your favourite part?

 

You can has points next month too :)

 

yay pointses! umm between the solo and my birthday