I love adventure. I love being spontaneous. And I love being
with people.
Its easy to get settled into some sort of routine while
homeschooling and functioning as wife and mother and, if I think about it, its
not often that I get tested beyond my comfort zones. Recently I’ve had a couple
of opportunities to be a little more adventurous outdoors and have loved it.
Dieter’s cousin, Melissa, and her family are holidaying just
outside George at the moment and her parents treated us 4 adults to a CanopyTour in the Tsitsikamma forest on the border between the Eastern and Western
Cape along the Garden Route. Regardt and Melissa chauffeured us for the 2-hour
journey from George to Tstitsikamma Village and that in itself was pretty
relaxing! Speed limits are between 80 and 100km/h most of the way, so it made
for a really slow, peaceful ride.
At midday we joined 4 other people as our tour began with
some indemnity form signing and a short slide show about what we could expect
of the tour. We were then nicely kitted out with harnesses, helmets and rain
jackets. (It was a grey, dark day with rain threatening at any time, but it
only drizzled briefly at one point and didn’t stop our tour). Our 8-man group,
together with 2 guides, then hopped on game-viewing style truck and were
transported to the edge of the forest. A short walk down hill brought us to the
first tree and the tour began.
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| Melissa, Regardt, Diet and I all kitted out and ready for action |
There were 10 zip-lines/fufi slides in total, cleverly built
into the forest without damaging any of the trees and at one point we were 30m
up in the air. The longest slide is about just over 90m and they build in
length and speed as one goes along. The guides are responsible for clipping
each person onto and off the zip-lines (there are 2, one is a safety line) and
all we had to do was sit and slide – and stop ourselves when getting to the end
of the line. One glove had a thick piece of leather on it specifically to be used
as a break, and one stops by just pressing a flat-hand down on the line.
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| Regardt and Melissa up high and loving it! |
It was great fun! Being in a group meant that we had to wait
for each person in the group to finish one slide before starting the next one,
but it also meant that it was quite a relaxing journey. We had 2 people in our
group that were a bit ‘out of their depth’ but everyone did very well! The
youngest girl in our group was a 12-year old girl, and her Dad must have been
the oldest person in the group – the things parents do for their children,
he,he!
It was all over too quickly and I had great fun doing each
and every slide. We had a lot of fun enjoying each other’s achievements too!
Dieter was very cautious at first, using his brake almost from the beginning
and stopping long before the end of the line – which meant he had to pull
himself to the end. He was less cautious on the 2nd line and even
more so on the 3rd and then he got into the ‘swing’ of things! He
too really enjoyed it all! Regardt is experienced on zip-lines and he could
have done another 30 or so, he enjoys it so much! Melissa was stretched beyond
her comfort zones but did amazingly well and said she really enjoyed it too.
So, all round, it was a fun outing!
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| A self-portrait, up in the trees, having a great time! |
The worst part of the whole tour was the 600m climb back out
the forest to where the truck was waiting to take us back to the base. It was
steep and hard work and I had to stop a couple of times to try find some extra
oxygen ….. my heart beating wildly! It was hard work and was a bit of an
anti-climax to the whole experience. When we got back to base and had taken off
our safety gear, we sat down to a light lunch of toasted sandwiches and tea and
watched snippets of our tour on the TVs. It was so funny seeing ourselves in
action.
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| All kitted out and ready to go - showing off my 'hand brake' ... |
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