Safari!

This weekend we went to Addo and we spent four days exploring that beautiful area.  The first day that we were there we went to a big cats breeding place and I got to pet a full grown Cheetah!! We walked in to its enclosure and pet it, not on a leash or anything.  It was amazing.  We also got to play with lion cubs!! It was super cool! We went to a reptile place after which was also pretty cool, and we got to hold snakes. 

The next day we drove around Addo Elephant Park and got to see tons of elephants roaming wild and they came super close to our car! We also saw 3 buffalo super close to our car along with tons of warthogs, Kudu, and zebra.  It was an awesome day.  

The day after we went on this hike/walk where we ended up at a waterfall and there were a few of us, including me, that climbed under it and slid down the rocks through it.  Keep in mind that it is winter here so the water was absolutely freezing.  But it was fun and you have to do as much as you can while you are here.

The last day we went canoeing down the Sundays River and had a blast.  It is South Africa’s fastest rivers, however it was not very fast at the portion we were at, however it was still beautiful and canoeing is always awesome.  However, I managed to canoe Sally (my awesome roommate) and I in to an Acacia bush.  Please google the Acacia bush, it has massive thorns, and over the four days in Addo, me and that bush became the best of friends, and I still have scratches.

Overall, this experience was freaking amazing and it was wonderful to see yet another beautiful part of this country. 

Cheers,

Erin Fitz

Sorry it has been so long!

Life here has been crazy busy and we had a storm that knocked out the internet on Thursday and it just got back up yesterday. 

Two Saturdays ago we went to Plett for the first time, which was very interesting.  It is a little tourist town, near the beach, and since it is currently winter, there were not very many tourists. 

Sunday we went on potentially the best hike of my life.  It was Robberg Island and it was sunny and quite warm. We hiked around this island and we could look down and see the crystal clear ocean.  We saw lots of seals and I really wanted to see a Great White Shark, but sadly we did not see one.  On our way there the VW van we were traveling in broke down, so it meant that we missed the true low tide.  This then made the latter half of the hike really tricky, because the rocks that we were scaling, were starting to be covered in water.  I fell once (surprise surprise) but it all worked out ok.  There is a point out there where the waves crash in the middle of the ocean, like you cannot see anything besides the waves crashing and rolling perpendicular to the coast line. It was a beautiful view, and I do not believe I have ever seen something so breathtaking. 

For the next week we finished the houses and they turned out pretty dang fantastic.

This past weekend was a huge storm, with something like 6 inches of rain in two days, most of which came in one day.  There was so much standing water on the ground that we could not walk to our tents with shoes on.  Everyone just carried socks and walked up to the main area or back to the tents bare footed and put their socks on at their destination.  It ended up being pretty chill but a crazy storm. 

This week we started working with our NGO’s and so I started out by painting the Rugby clubhouse, and have now moved on to working with Piet who runs and started the Rugby club and was a police officer for 17 years.  He is a great person to work with and we actually work really well together.  I have tons of interviews set up for the next week with current police, coaches, and members of the community and I am also going to help the people here organize and better manage their community watch program.  I am super excited for that and I think it will greatly benefit the community. 

We leave tomorrow morning for Addo nature reserve, where we will be until Monday night.  It is our safari!! So excited and we get to visit a place where we can hang out with the big cats! It is going to be amazing and I will take lots of pictures. 

Africa time gets some getting used to; life is crazy hetic so nothing gets done on time.  If you are leaving in 20 mins, in reality it will be closer to an hour. 

The food here is fantastic, they spoil us so much and feed us so well.  I am for sure going to miss having braai every Friday!

It was 25 degrees here today and it was insanely hot! It was nuts.  Clear blue skies and blinding sunshine. Some winter they have here.  However, it is supposed to start raining again tomorrow.

Cheers,

Erin Fitz

Holy Bungy Jump!

I just did the highest bridge bungy jump in the world.  It was so amazing!! I have video and pictures to prove it.  Apparently when you are up there your body takes over and does what is natural, because you are supposed to jump out, away from the bridge with your arms held out at your side.  However, I go to jump and I end up jumping with my hands over my head and I pretty much dive off the bridge, not jump, dive.  It was an amazing experience. 

Much Love,

Erin Fitz  

What a week!

We started out this week working on renovating two houses that are back to back, so what we would call a duplex and we are still not done.  To improve these houses we are basically patching up the walls, repainting, filling holes, and putting new flooring in.  However, this seems simpler than it actually is.  We first have to take putty knives and chip off the paint that is flaking off the walls and make sure that the rest of the paint is on well enough to paint over and not just flake off.  It is super time consuming and in some of the rooms there is oil based paint that is brutal to work with.  After chipping we have to sand the spots we chipped to make it smoothish.  In the rooms with the oil paint we have to sand the entire room to make the primer stick to the walls.  We then scrub the walls with sugar soap, then apply primer and then paint the walls.  This was all the walls in the house and also outside of the house.  The ceiling of these houses is the corrugated metal and you have to brush the roof to get all the soot off and then you do two coats of cement and then at least two coats of primer.  It is brutal work but the group of people we are working with are awesome so that makes it better.  Glenrick and Daniel are the two men that are helping us and other than that it is just our group working.  There are many things I have learned in the repair of these houses:

-         Cement leaves burns in your arms and at some point I am going to have to man up and dig the cement out of those burns.

-         Primer does not come off unless using turpentine, meaning I am covered in white primer that is giving no sign of giving up.

-         Coal burning stoves ruin a house especially the paint inside. 

-         I am good at cleaning/dealing with ceilings so much so that I am now in charge of doing the kitchen ceiling, which is a crap job.

-         Doing anything with somewhat liquid materials and ceilings sucks. 

-         Painting is fun.

-         Putty knives can be used to the point that they no longer have edges. 

-         Breathing in dust masks is not fun. 

Overall working on the houses is fun, even if it is freezing cold. 

The first few weeks we were here the weather was awesome, it is just now starting to get cold but it warms up a tad during the day.  It rained on Wednesday but only in the morning so it wasn’t too horrible. 

4^th of July in South Africa was kinda nice.  We had a reason to celebrate and the staff here made delicious burgers and chips (fries) for us.  It was freaking awesome.  No fireworks or family but lots of fun still. 

Speaking of food, it is freaking amazing.  I have not yet had a meal that wasn’t delicious and I even had fish! We have a braai every Friday night, which is a massive BBQ.  They feed us so much it is crazy! We even had a professional chef come in last night and make our meal. 

We are going in to Plett tomorrow, which is the big town about twenty miles from us.  We are also doing hikes every Sunday, which are always beautiful.  I think I love everything about this country. 

I have figured out what I am going to do research wise.  The plan right now is that I am going to work with the rugby program, which happens to be run by a former law enforcement officer, and I am going to be studying how sports deter youth involvement in crime. 

I learned a new game here called Patonk.  It is similar to Bocce ball but with different rules.  I will be bringing it back to the States because I absolutely love it! It is awesome.

We are currently having a wine and cheese night.  I will at some point learn my wines!

Cheers,

Erin Fitz  

Settled at Rocky Road!

We are all settled in to Rocky Road and jeez it is beautiful here! I am sleeping in a tent that is on a covered platform, but there are beds and electricity in these tents.  It is super nice.  The area around here is absolutely beautiful, like I do not know how to describe it, it is so beautiful.  I do not think I will ever get used to the wildlife here though, whenever you go to the bathroom or are walking back to your tent you have to check to make sure that there are no baboons, ya not kidding, freakin baboons.  Yesterday a few of us got up early and ran and on the way we saw baboons, cows, horses, tons of monkeys and a dog.  It was intense, those little monkeys are not nice at all!!

We visited the village of Kurland, where we will be working and it is going to be great to be there.  There is quite a bit of poverty however they are not solitary, it is a community.  It would be like my own neighborhood back home, but with different living accommodations. 

This place is so indescribably beautiful. We went on a hike today and saw the most gorgeous beaches and just surrounding area that it is amazing. 

I have so much to say and yet it’s so hard to describe it. 

Cheers,

Erin Fitz

P.S.  Good luck on your swim today little Fitz. I love you and I am sure you are going to kick butt!

Made it Safe and Sound! 

But boy is that plane ride brutal.

 

So I am safely in Johannesburg, with the rest of my group.  We all rolled in at various times yesterday.  I and quite a few others were in before 11 AM and so when we got back we hung out for a bit and then walked a few blocks to China Town, no joke! It was pretty much just like any American China Town, we had some good food and then walked back home.  At which, we tried to stay awake, which was insanely hard, but we did it.  We had a delicious dinner at the hostel which was potatoes, chicken legs, veggies, rice and gravy.  Then we all pretty much went to our room (which is a room of 8 bunk beds) and slept. 

This morning was our first full day in Johannesburg and we saw lots! We went to Nelson Mandela house, the Apartheid Museum, Hector Peterson Museum, and stopped at various other places.  We also drove through Soweto which is a town outside of Johannesburg which is very improvised.  We also stopped at the stadium for the World Cup in 2010! It was a long site seeing day but worth it. 

They drive on the opposite side of the road here.  Stop lights are called robots.  The exchange rate of Rand to Dollars is currently around 8.5 rand to the dollar.  This makes pricing very weird because something like a sandwich will cost around 30 rand so you think you are spending quite a bit of money when in reality 1000 rand is around 120 dollars.  Other than that things here are going awesome! It is nice and sunny during the day and at night it gets COLD! But currently we are a ways above sea level and when we are in Kurland we will be at sea level so it will not be quite as cold. 

Tomorrow we will go to one last museum and then we will go straight to the airport to fly to Port Elizabeth and from there we will drive a few hours to Rocky Road.  

Cheers,

Erin Fitz

And I am off!!

I have packed and repacked, my bags weigh what they are allowed to weigh and I have my passport.  I could not be more excited right now! I will fly from San Fransisco to London, where I have a 10 hour layover, and then I fly to Johannesburg.  I am lucky that both my flights are overnight, so somehow I need to sleep on them.  But keeping myself entertained for 10 hours in an airport is gonna be interesting or not.  

From Johannesburg, we are there for a few days, we then fly to Port Elizabeth and then drive to our new home at Rocky Road (http://www.rockyroadbackpackers.com). We will be there for the duration of the trip and that is where I will post my next update at!! 

Erin Fitz