Day 6

Today was our last day on the safari and our first night in our new home for the next seven weeks. It is hard to believe that we left home a week ago. In some ways it feels like yesterday and in others it feels like we have been here forever now. I got up this morning and did yoga on the beach. It was amazing. I wish that I could do that every morning. Mauri cooked us breakfast this morning, scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast. We were definitely sad to say goodbye to the “Island Vibe” hostile, but we were very excited about the day ahead. I didn’t get much sleep last night. Even though the hostile was a lot of fun, it was also kind of like trying to sleep in the middle of a frat party. There were definitely a lot of party animals staying there. Most of them were camping near the beach.

The big thing that we did today was visiting Crags Elephant Sanctuary. This was hands down one of the most amazing experiences that I have ever had in my life. We had the opportunity to walk with an elephant. This consisted of putting our right hands behind us palm down then the elephant would grab your hand with its trunk and walk hand and hand (umm, hand and trunk) with you. It was so incredible. I walked with an elephant named Thandi (Zulu for love) and Aaron walked with Marula. Thandi is at the sanctuary because she was born without tusks and cannot dig for her own food in the wild. Our guide told us that some elephants are evolving to not have tusks due to the fact that so many of them have been killed for their ivory. Marula and the other elephant, Jabu (Zulu for happy) are both there because they got their trunks caught in traps. Elephants use their trunks for 70% of their breathing, so in order to survive they had to literally rip their trunks from the traps. Now they are missing the tips of their trunks. All of the elephants at the sanctuary are treated extremely well and live in an environment as close to natural as possible without them living in the wild, and all of them would not be able to survive on their own in the wild. It was such a neat place. We learned a lot about elephants. Moms carry their babies for 22 months; African elephants lose their molars six times, after the sixth time they cannot eat and therefore die of starvation (this usually happens around 70 years); elephants burry their dead with branches from trees, they even remember where they did it and return their after a year (so cool!). Aaron and I got a good close up look at Thandi with one of the guides. We got to touch her trunk and see how it works (it is made out of lots of muscle), we touched her ears (their ear hole is in front of the big flappy part, we had no idea), we touched her feet, we got to see her molars, and we touched her tail (the hair on that thing is as hard as plastic, it is amazing). Thandi is 16 years old, Jabu 19, and Marula 18. These three are a family. Marula is the leader, so Thandi and Jabu follow her and do whatever she does. They will sleep wherever she decides to sleep, eat when she eats, follow her on trails, it is quite incredible. They are very smart animals. After we learned more about them Aaron and I both got a turn riding Thandi. Imagine riding on a gigantic horse, then multiply that image by at least ten…that is what it is like to ride an elephant. It was so awesome, we loved every second! While we were waiting for our ride we saw a very fluffy bunny hanging out in the grass by the elephants. She was a domesticated bunny, but she gets to hop all over the farm! It made us miss our little Hermione at home  We ended up buying a piece of art work that Thandi had done. It is her foot print on paper that is made from their dung! Ew…but also so cool! All of the proceeds went to feed the elephants at the sanctuary, so we were happy to buy it. It is very neat and will have a special place in our home!

Aft the sanctuary we ate lunch with our group for the last time. Mauri tried to explain cricket to us because South Africa was playing New Zealand at the time. It seems to be an extremely confusing game. We still do not have the hang of it. We drove back to Knysna and said goodbye to everyone. It was great to meet everyone on that trip. We had a very good time and did so much that we never would have done on our own. Mauri was the best guide that we could ask for, and we could not have asked for a better group of people to travel with. They are now headed back to Cape Town.

So, finally, we are at our new home for the next seven weeks. It is a rather big house overlooking the town of Knysna. We are currently sharing it with five other people, but one girl is leaving tomorrow morning, her name is Carol (from Scotland). The other people here are Catherine, Nicole (from Switzerland), Oriel (from Holland), and Jess (from England). Everyone seems very cool. I think we will have a good time with them all. We met Sharon, she is our contact person while we are here in Knysna. She was extremely helpful, very very bubbly and talkative, and will be a good person to take care of us while we are here. She showed us our room. We are staying in a separate part of the house with our own bedroom and bathroom. We will share the kitchen and TV room with everyone else. Unfortunately, we have to walked outside to get to that part of the house. We each have a ring full of keys because every door has to be locked and then every door has a gate that has to be locked. We definitely feel secure in here! She said that Knysna is pretty safe, but they take lots of extra precautions since we are all from out of the country. She said the thing to worry about the most was letting the monkeys in because they will destroy everything. Apparently it happens a lot. Monkeys are cool, and I can’t wait to see them on our porch, but I don’t want them destroying my stuff haha  We learned a little bit more about our placements, but we will know more on Monday when we actually go there for the first time. We are both SO excited to see what we will be doing and meet all of the people that we will be working with.

We all went to a big town market for dinner. Every Friday Knysna hosts this market, and we both think it is a great idea to bring back to Bloomington! There were lots of different nationalities of food represented, bug bonfires, live music (even though it was a guy playing guitar and singing with a beat machine…and it wasn’t very good ), and people everywhere. It was a lot of fun. We shared a bottle of wine from South Africa. Aaron had fish and chips from England and I had chicken peri peri from South Africa. It was a good time. We went to a cool local bar called the Swing Café afterwards for a couple drinks. They have live music there on Saturdays, so I have a feeling we will be there a couple times. Aaron and I came back early because we are beyond exhausted. Our home is in walking distance to everything, so that will be awesome. Bed time…we are so tired.