For over a year we have been talking about going camping, like
actual camping with the young adults we work with. Well it finally happened, and as any good camping trip goes there were some problems which makes a stupid story. Here is the stupid story followed by some lovely pictures courtesy of Clayton who is one of those people who likes to take pictures.
The day started warm and sunny, the man who had planned the entire camp was about 16 hours away and had left us with a rough mental map of the way things were supposed to go down. There was just one thing that we forgot to factor... we were going camping.
We were waiting at the starting location for some laides that we were going to give a ride to, they were intended to arrive at 2:00 so we could start our 3 hour trip. Unfortunately they did not arrive until 3:30pm already setting us back an hour and a half and putting us in danger of hitting rush hour traffic the Friday before a long weekend.
Our next stop was to pick up someone in an area called Allendale, usually about 30 min away. However on the way the GPS decided to stop charging, the USB adapter for our music quit and we were swimming in the the ocean called rush hour in a city of about 10 million people.
Our intended destination was a petrol (gas) station where we would rendezvous with our contact. However we arrived at the wrong station and spent another hour twisting and turning our way through the thick traffic.
We successfully picked up our man and then headed another hour north to pick up some more people. Everything went well with that thanks to Google Maps and then we turned west to travel another hour or so to arrive at the entrance to our campsite at 8:00pm.
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| Our approximate route |
Unfortunately the gates to our destination closed 30 minutes prior and the gatekeeper was tempted to prevent us from entering until the following morning. However after some persuasion he agreed to grant us entry pending the arrival of the rest of our camping party.
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| Photographic entertainment as we waited |
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| ...actual wait time |
The final 6 campers arrived and we drive 8km further to our base camps. Setting up the tents went well and just as we had finished it began to pour rain.
END OF PART ONE
BEGIN PART TWO
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| Just before breakfast |
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| My first time with wild South African animals when I was not protected by a fence/car/tribal spear thrower |
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| The whole group just before departure |
After those first few exciting hours of typical trouble. We had nothing but fun as we hiked, played board games, played soccer and enjoyed each others company. We did get spoken to about our noise level once or twice but on what good camp do people actually keep quiet the whole time?
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