Garden Route: And then we never saw her again.

So, I spent the last three days with my fellow interns driving part of the Garden Route, which is a long stretch of South Africa that starts in the Western Cape and goes through into the Eastern Cape and Kwa-Zulu Natal, two other provinces. We started out from Cape Town and stayed in a town called Oudtshoorn on Friday night and stayed in another town called Sedgfield on Saturday, then came back today. Here's a map:

We actually made it all the way out to Tsitsikamma National Park and also stopped in Plettenberg Bay.

On Friday, we headed out at about 8:30 with our rental car (Avis gave us a white VW Polo, because for some reason they trust a bunch of 20/21-year-olds with nice cars. Weird.) We made it out to Oudtshoorn and stopped in at our hostel by 2 pm, then hit up the Cango Wildlife Ranch.

We had to go through a guided tour of the ranch, which includes cheetahs, lions, tigers, antelopes, snakes and crocodiles. It's essentially about conservation, because a lot of the exotic animals (like tigers) are in danger of going extinct because of habitat destruction and poaching. Public Service Announcement: Help these animals! At least don't hunt them. Or burn the forests where they live.

Anyway, the real point is, WE GOT TO PET SOME WHITE TIGER CUBS. We paid extra for that, but how can you pass up that opportunity? They weren't as thrilled with us as we were with them, but they allowed us into their enclosure and sat down for a while to let us pat them. THEY WERE ADORABLE. For everyone who knows how much I love baby animals, you can understand how excited I was about this.

The others petted the cheetahs, but I had something else in mind: giant snakes. I got to hold a roughly 100-pound albino python named J.J. and I was so happy. He didn't even feel alive; he just felt like a heavy plastic weight over my shoulders. He tried to wrap his tail around my neck once (for perspective on how big he was, I could barely put both hands around him) and I was like, "J.J. stop trying to kill me." He also wrapped his tail around my leg as I was leaving, and he is strong, so it took me a minute to shake him off.

After our animal encounters, we got dinner at an incredibly Afrikaaner restaurant--Oudtshoorn, from what I can tell, is an Afrikaaner stronghold--and headed back to our hostel, Karoo Soul. It was the nicest hostel I've ever been in, and I kind of wish I could live there.

We headed out early on Saturday morning, because we needed to get out to Tsitsikamma National Park because Abby, Lauren and Nina had planned to bungy jump off of the world's highest bungy bridge, which is out there. Zach decided he wanted to go ziplining in the Tsitsikamma Forest, which left me with nothing to do. I checked out the Park's information center and found a brochure for a hiking guide named Danny. I called him up and asked if he was doing anything that day, and he was like,

"I didn't have anything planned for today, but we can go hiking! I'll pick you up in ten minutes."

While it may seem like a terrible idea to go off into the woods alone with a man you've never met, I did it anyway, because I am the master of doing potentially dangerous things. As it turned out, Danny is a really nice guy. He's actually Swiss but met his wife in South Africa and moved down here for her about 12 years ago. He became a tour guide because his European education didn't apply here, so he had to find a job he was qualified for. And damn, does that guy know about trees. I learned so much about trees in two and half hours, you guys don't even know. Ironwoods, yellow woods, Black Witch Hazel...I also learned about the soil and sediment of South Africa, i.e. why plants grow the way they do. The second part of our hike was on the old National Road built in the 1800s, which is now just a dirt road. Danny told me about the elephants that had found their way around the gorges before humans--all herds of elephants in the area migrated the same path for thousands of years, which is how humans were able to navigate Tsitsikamma. It was a really fun hike and I learned a lot. When my friends came to get me, they told me that when they had left me at the Info Center for Danny to pick me up, they were like, "And we never saw her again." Thanks guys. I love you too.

We headed back through Plettenberg Bay and to the Afrovibe hostel, which is basically the best party hostel in South Africa. There were shenanigans, but for once, I wasn't involved. I went to bed early because I was tired. Today, we headed back through Cape Agulhas, which is the southernmost point on the African continent. So now I've actually been to the southernmost tip of Africa! Woo hoo! It was a beautiful drive through the backroads of SA--there's so much open land, but it's also really mountainous. It's just a beautiful, beautiful country.

The road trip was amazing, all in all. Not just the cool stuff I did at Cango and Tsitsikamma, but just roadtripping around SA with my friends was really fun. Thanks guys (especially Abby, who did most of the planning)!