Gap Year Experiences

An incredible 3 months!

Friday 25 April 2008

To everyone on the Jan 2008 Experience, I hope that you have all arrived safely in the UK (including Maddy who took a slightly longer route home with 4 separate flights!). I haven’t written here since first landing in South Africa and a great deal has happened since then! I’m now sitting in the Cape Town office after catching a few last waves at the beautiful Llandudno where I pictured all of you learning to surf and reminisced over the last 3 month trip, which has finally come to a close...........Driving back with Vince in the Pepper van from Jo’burg to Cape Town was very strange with an absence of singing and laughter from behind us. Being back in Cape Town without all of you has also been very odd – everyone has been asking how you all are, including the barman at Caprice (Hattie!). Rossinigre says his restaurant hasn’t been the same without you guys nipping in for breakfast and afternoon cake! It is actually unbelievable, the impression that all of you made on all of our friends here in Cape Town, especially seeing as you were only here for 3 weeks!

Thank you again to all of you for very kindly organising that surprise picnic for Vince and I in Jo’burg and presenting us with our “Pepper Survival Kit” picking out various jokes from the trip which was very kind and extremely amusing – the worrying thing is that you all summed us up to perfection! It was an absolute pleasure travelling through South Africa with all of you and I will have long lasting memories! Thank you for all of your farewell blogs and for your various comments (http://www.experiencejan08.blogspot.com/) – now it is my turn!

Annie I will seriously miss your stories and jokes, even if they were slightly drawn out! I hope that you have an unbelievable time out in Australia – keep up the surfing and let us know how it’s all going. I look forward to continuing to be your personal chauffeur in the UK!

Enzo (Eel) I will definitely miss you as a partner in the war against flying bugs and driver ants! It has been incredible fun travelling with you and I look forward to many more good times this summer down in Cornwall!

Genna thank you for lending Vince and I your emergency wooden fork for our return journey – one of the strangest survival tools but I am pleased to say it is very useful in inbred cafes in the middle of South Africa! Awesome getting to know you and make sure you keep in contact with us!

George (Timone)…..what can I say! I don’t think I will ever get bored of you rocking your head back, laughing and saying “it’s 5 o’clock somewhere in the empire” as you reach for a crisp gin & tonic with a squeeze of lime! I look forward to many more with you in the years to come!

Harriet when I first spoke to you over the phone, you gave the impression that you were going to be quite restrained on this trip – then I witnessed you paddling into barrelling waves, flying behind a Mastercraft speed boat, launching yourself out of a plane at 12,000 feet, scuba diving with sharks, touching 4 ton elephants and firing high calibre rifles! Good luck with everything and see you soon!

Miss Madeleine I didn’t think I would ever meet someone that was more peculiar than myself but I think I’ve finally found one! In all seriousness I’ve never come across anyone that is always in such high spirits – nothing phases you and I am so glad you decided to stay on for the entire 3 month trip, it has been a pleasure travelling with you. Good luck with the sailing this summer – you will definitely be visited in your kingdom on the Isle of White!

Last and most definitely not least, Marisa! You have been sorely missed by everyone. You were always laughing and playing practical jokes which never grew tiresome. I hope that you are having an incredible time working on your yacht in the Caribbean. Make sure you come and visit us when you return.

Thank you to all of you again for making this such a special trip. I am flying back to London this evening and once again very sad to be leaving this fantastic country. I look forward to speaking to you all very soon,

Johnny x

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Some photos from the game reserves!

Friday 25 April 2008

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The beauty of the African bush

Monday 21 April 2008

My humblest and most sincere apologies about the long long delay since my last post!

The Game Reserve section of our trip has now been and gone and it has been the most incredible 2 weeks! We spent our first week at Loskop Game Reserve, an incredibly beautiful area based around the stunning Loskop dam. The bush camp at Loskop was amazing, with generator power at night and a fully stocked bar, which was a great bonus. We spent half the week learning about tracking and the other half on a photography course. In between all this there were frequent boat and game drives where we saw everything from zebra to hippo and loads of bird life as well as all the amazing bugs and insects that live in the park. The sunsets over the lake were absolutely incredible and the stars at night were as bright as anywhere I’ve ever been.

The tracking module involved us going out as a group each day and examining the various tracks and spoor in the bush. We spent 5 hours one day tracking rhino on foot through the reserve. It was an incredible experience walking through the bush with a guide following fresh rhino tracks and trying to locate them. The photography module was just as interesting and everyone learned a huge amount with a bit of theory and a lot of practical outings into the bush and on the dam. The scenery and animals made the perfect setting for some great photography from everyone. The camp was incredibly comfortable and we ate like kings with a big bonfire every night accompanied by a few cold beers and George on the guitar.

The following Friday we moved to our second reserve where we stayed in a bushcamp out in the open. There was no electricity there which made it absolutely amazing at night around the fire under a beautiful sky! The showerwater was heated by a fire and the shower itself opens up onto the most beautiful view of the bush. It was truly out in the middle of nowhere with elephants occasionally coming through the camp at night. We started off with a survival module, where everyone learned the basics of staying alive in a survival situation, where “dieing is not an option” and it ended with half a day of building our own shelters in the bush. We then moved onto a dangerous animals module involving tracking some of the potentially dangerous animals in the reserve. It started with the group helping the rangers in the reserve delivering food to the local elephant herd. An incredible experience that involved them being surrounded by the elephants. An experience way better than skydiving according to George. See the pictures that I will upload in the next few days! Along with the elephants we also got up close to a rhino and its little calf as well as seriously close to a pride of lions. The last 2 days were spent on rifle handling with a lot of safety and some target practice in which the girls completely showed up the boys with their sniper skills. Annie came out on top by a long way with some scarily accurate shooting! As I mentioned, an incredible 2 weeks! Today was the last day of the trip with a great weekend in Joburg behind us. More about that in my next post in the next fews days..right now I’m off to bed to begin recovering from a crazy 3 months…

Vince

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Some horses, not many fish and lunch behind a waterfall

Friday 4 April 2008

I’m now sitting in the city that never sleeps, Johannesburg. We are here for one night before we head up to begin our 2 week game reserve programme tomorrow.

We left Durban on a huge high after watching the mighty Sharks defeat the Queenslands Reds in a full KingsPark stadium. As I mentioned in my last post, KingsPark is always an amazing experience and it lived up to its reputation with a great atmosphere during and after the match. On Sunday morning, we woke up to the perfect send-off from Durban. A 6 AM surf at NorthBeach saw us finding some perfect clean waves, a great way to end off the Durban surfing camp. It was awesome to see how everyone has not only improved with their surfing but how enthusiastic they are about it. The stoke of surfing has really affected a lot of the group! The one image that stands out in my mind of our last morning in Durban was Enzo hooking into a perfect 4 foot wave and riding it almost into the beach, An incredibly impressive display from someone who first got on a surfboard less than 2 months ago!

It was a bitter-sweet goodbye, but eventually we have had to leave the coast and head inland. Our first stop was a horse ranch in the southern area of the Drakensberg mountains. This is an incredibly beautiful area and we spent a couple of days there, horse-riding, fishing and enjoying the amazingly peaceful surroundings. From there we moved into the central area of the mountains where we managed a great hike to a waterfall. We had our lunch on a ledge behind the waterfall looking through the curtain of water. (pictures coming soon!) We left the mountains this morning and are about to head out for a bit of dinner and a few drinks in Joburg, before leaving civilisation behind for a couple of weeks in exchange for the beauty of the African bush and its wildlife. We will be out of touch for at least a week so there will be no more posts till then but I’ll write again as soon as I can so check back next week to see how our game reserve programme is going!

Cheers

Vince