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