Monday, March 30, 2009

Klein Karoo- Canyon Walk Pics

Some Pictures of the canyon...











Klein Karoo-Genora Pt. 1

Two weekends ago the Washington College students went on our third trip with the fearless Ashwin. We traveled about 3 hours into the interior of the country to an area called the Klein Karoo or Little Karoo. Its similar to New Mexico back in the states, a semi-arid desert. This was the land of many Boer settlers in the 19th century and is heavily Afrkaaner. We stayed on a working sheep farm called Genora. The first day Ashwin led us on a canyon walk that was a little more than a walk but it was really cool. We followed a river that carved through the canyon. At one point we heard these loud barking noises echoing through the canyon and we look up on the cliffs and ten or so baboons were barking at us and running along the cliffs. The river was high and we had to wade through it at most parts. After 4 hours we emerged dusty and tired and we headed for the small town of Nieu-Bethesda and stopped at a small brewery for lunch. We had some great dried Kudu sausage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudu) with local cheeses and bread and of course the home made beer.


The Farm


Monday, March 16, 2009

Amakhala Game Reserve

So I went on Safari this past weeked...it was awesome. We stayed at Amakhala which was about 45 minutes from campus. Our visit included a afternoon game drive, a morning river cruise and a morning game drive. We stayed at Leeuwenbosch Lodge which used to be a farm and was straight out of "Out of Africa". We saw all kinds of animals including giraffe, zebra, antelope, impala, springbok, elephant, white rhino, black rhino (one of only three thousand in the world), cheetah, ostrich, gazelle and others. The whole experience was unreal. We had a guide named Heinrik who took us around the whole weekend in this giant Land Rover. Everyone had a great time, some pictures will be up now. Ill add more in the future. One of the girls in my group, Valerie, has a photo site up and here is the link with more photos from the weekend... http://www.flickr.com/photos/herebelions/ ... CYAA

(l to r) Valerie, Nouria, Josh, our guide Heinrik, Katie, me, Alice

Elephant


The valley

herd of Giraffe

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Port Alfred

Yo Yo Yo... over the weekend we all rented a car and drove to Port Alfred for a night. It was my first experience driving on the left-hand side of the road. It was also the longest time that I had driven a manual car...only stalled 3 times the whole weekend. Anyways, we drove there, met up with a friend of a friend at this culinary school in Port Alfred. Beach was nice, the town was pretty deserted as its no longer high season. We didnt have a place to stay so we looked around town for a hotel with vacancy and found the shadiest/scariest hotel ever...the Ferryman's Inn. The place was 100 years old and pretty run down...it made for an interesting night of night terrors. We hit up a bar called the "Snorting Grunter"...enough said about that. On our drive home we stopped to visit the giant Pineapple. More to come soon.



The Giant Pineapple


The haunted hotel




Our sweet ride