BUNGY! (For really reals)

I finally did it. For those of you who have been keeping careful track of my adventures, you may remember my trip to Storms River and the Bloukrans Bridge for a shot at the world's highest bungy jump.

You may also remember me weakly excusing myself from doing the actual jump due to certain financial technicalities. I left Bloukrans with the paltry achievement of a quick zipline, and vowed to return one day to complete the job. My promise to myself was fulfilled rather unexpectedly yesterday.

For the past two days, I've been on the road between Cape Town (where I attended the totally rad Coke Zero Fest) and Grahamstown (where I'll be attending my totally boring graduation ceremony). I've been travelling via minibus with my brother and a couple of friends, and I was quite pleasantly surprised yesterday morning when I heard that we'd be making a quick stop at Bloukrans to throw ourselves off a bridge.

Ahhh, my old nemesis.

People say that your second bungy jump is always the most scary, because you know what to expect. After doing my first one and having the opportunity to reflect on all the indescribable sensations I felt in just a few short seconds, I can see why that would be the case. If you haven't done a bungy jump before, there's almost no way to truly explain how it feels.

Yeah, it's scary. You can try psych yourself up for it and do your best to clear your head beforehand. But in that moment when you first look over the edge (the bungy cord holding your legs in place like a python with a foot fetish), all courage inevitably melts away, and for a few precious seconds the only words going through your head are “holy crap”.

Good so far ...

... OH ****.

Fortunately, the gentlemen at Face Adrenaline are rather experienced when it comes to last-minute-willies syndrome, and they only give you about five seconds to ponder your potential demise through fally-squishy. No, really. They start the countdown as soon as you get to the edge, interfering your “holy crap” train of thought with a brief “waitwat” before you get 'helped' over the side.

Thank goodness I remembered to give the horns. They makes me look just a tiny bit badass instead of plain terrified.

Something that I have discovered from doing stuff like this: everybody has a unique “OH CRAP I'M GOING TO DIIIIIEEE!” noise. For some, it may be a high-pitched squeal. For others (like totally badass action heroes and stuff) it's a deep, throaty “AAAAAAAAAAAH!”

For me, it's invariably a rather intriguing “YAAAAAAAA!” sound which tends to mix the two extremes. I've screamed in the same way while cruising on rollercoasters and riding on giant chickens.

“YAAAAAAAA!” Seriously, though: note how I've retained the badass horns.

Here's the funny thing, though. After about the first two seconds of freefall, my screams cut out and gave way to a sort of quiet shock. Other jumpers that day reported the same thing: the breathtaking beauty of freefall mingled with the threat of an imminent demise pretty much just took away one's voice. Sound gives way to sensation: in a few short seconds, enough adrenaline to intoxicate a baby elephant gets pumped into your system. It electrifies your body, speeds up your heart rate and boils your blood in a way that cannot otherwise be experienced. That, combined with the invariable sensation of organ displacement when accelerating downward, brings a unique physical and mental state which causes you for the briefest moment to feel pretty damn alive. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the “thrill” behind death-defying joyrides such as this.

Once your freefall is over (and you've rebound, fallen again and then bounced about a little bit), you're left hanging upside down in the gorge for about half a minute while somebody is lowered with a harness and complicated hook things used to hoist you up again. Aside from the understandable rush of blood to the head and the unfortunate risk of dizziness if your bungy cord happens to be spinning around too fast, I think that the strongest impact on me during that upside-down hiatus was the complete and utter feeling of isolation.

The gorge was completely silent. We're talking about a silence that you don't encounter when you're in civilisation. Heck, it's the sort of silence that you often can't even find in nature (damn noisy animals and all). Literally the only noise to be heard was the occasional creak of the cord, and eventually the sound of blood pumping into my head. Even my breathing seemed muted.

I was stuck in the middle of nowhere, with no way up or down, removed not only from society but from the very earth itself. It was amongst the most amazing thirty seconds of my life.

Durr hurr.

I was eventually brought back up. In the picture above, my left hand is actually clutching a ceramic necklace-ornament-thing that I'd procured in Oudtshoorn. I'd forgotten to take it off before the jump, and about halfway down my second bounce I realised that it was hanging down in front of me and grabbed on to it (my dear little brother, watching my jump via CCTV, thought that I was trying to suppress a hurl).

It was a cast of the African symbol for “nyame”, or “immortality”. I decided that it was worthwhile holding onto it as a life insurance policy.

... of course, in looking for a suitable link for this symbol on the Web, I've just learned that the actual meaning of the symbol is “sack of cola nuts”. Go figure.

Azi owes me fifteen bucks. Also: Coke Zero Fest.

So. Today, I finally had a chance to pick up my digital pen and scribble up a fresh new report of my adventures. And boy, do I have stuff to write about! I've been hyping up Coke Zero Fest on this blog for more than a month (and planning my attendance since the beginning of this year), and on Monday, 13 April I finally had the chance to attend it.

I'll start off by saying this: no matter what else I blabber on about, it's of utmost importance for everybody to remember that a certain friend of mine owes me R15. I bought her a beer at Coke Zero Fest and she never paid me back for it.

13/04/2009. Never forget.

Now, on to the rest of the stuff. Overall, Coke Zero Fest was absolutely freakin' awesome. I enjoyed the bands, I got to hang out with a nice range of friends and I walked away from the experience with about a gajillion free T-shirts earned from playing in a Guitar Hero competition.

Snow Patrol got a bigger crowd, but I bet they can't 5-star Sweet Home Alabama on Expert.

The bands were awesome. Zebra and Giraffe were the highlight of the locals with an absolutely stunning performance, and the other South African acts weren't far behind. Panic! at the Disco was fun, and Snow Patrol really gave it their all. Even Oasis managed to give an acceptable performance, suggesting that they probably took a hint from their Joburg reception.

There were also attractive women in Coke outfits handing out free drinks, pins, bangles and other assorted paraphernalia. This was a big plus.

Unfortunately, I felt that the organisation was a teensy bit on the “Extremely Crap” side of the crappiness scale:

(1) Two international bands pulled out. Probably nothing that the festival organisers could have done, and I wasn't actually interested in them anyway (who the hell is Red Jumpsuit Apparatus?), but it's the principle of the matter.

(2) No passouts were allowed. At first I thought this was just a warning to not drink too much alcohol. Oh-ho no! As soon as I entered the festival grounds, security tore up my ticket and ushered me further in, with no hint of giving me something as simple as a wristband to keep track of my entry. This meant that I had to stay inside the festival grounds or lose my place in the concert of a lifetime. And I NEEDED to go out. I ended up having to call a connection on the inside to get this crap sorted out. Thank goodness for networking.

(3) They have something against cameras. Recorders I can understand. Videocams I can totally see as not being cool. But picture snappers? The last time I checked, most musicians didn't have to worry about the rampant piracy of photographs Unless I'm totally missing out on something.

(4) They have something against devil sticks. Apparently, they're potentially as dangerous as most firearms. I tried to explain to security that I'm not a complete moron, but it didn't seem to work. Eventually sorted this out with a little help from an insider again.

Despite these setbacks, the venue was definitely prime rib:

(Insert cheesy nature comment here)

I spent time in a glorious place, got to hang out with my dear brother at a rock concert (Hi wittle brudda!) and sang along to “Champagne Supernova” within a crowd of drunk people. It doesn't get much better than this.

A hike up freaking Table Mountain!

Yesterday, I took a hike up freaking Table Mountain! For a geek of my calibre, this is no mean feat. Before now, the only sort of intense vertical walkabout that I've ever been engaged in has been a vigorous ascent of Devil's Peak to reach its old military block house. And said peak is quite thoroughly and quite mercilessly put to shame by Table Mountain with regards to both pain and gain.

“Skeleton Gorge”? Who in their right mind wants to walk up a trail with a name like that?

I shouldered this monumental task with two of my friends – brave and noble men who were willing to face rocky perils and unspeakable horrors in a quest for Bragging Rights and Really Good Views. Our expedition started in the Kirstenbosch Gardens, situated at the base of the mountain.

Our nemesis looms in the distance. Also, two noble friends.

The climb quickly became steeper. We were soon in a rather thick forest, hopping up stairways and the occasional inconvenient boulder. Good enough so far: no direct sunlight and a well-worn path to keep us on the straight and narrow.

“We're going on an adventure, Charlie!”

Then, all of a sudden:

“You're screwed now.”

After a few hours of hiking, we actually wound up getting lost on Table Mountain. It's hard to believe, I know. It looks so endearingly flat when viewed from the bottom, after all. But, dear reader, this is merely a trap set up by the spirits of the mountain to lure helpless tourists and hiking noobs to their doom. That, and I totally suspect that it was a bad idea for the tour guides to scrawl direction arrows on rocks that any mischievous little urchin could easily pick up and move.

We eventually got back to the beaten path, though. And our detour was admittedly kinda adventurous.

This is my wallpaper now. I just look so badass.

Of course, no matter how worth it the climb may have been we were pretty much dead by the time we finally hit the summit. We came grossly underprepared, and were extremely dehydrated and possibly suffering from a little too much sun exposure after four hours of supercharged stairstepping. We technically satisfied the safety requirements for a hike between the three of us, but Table Mountain doesn't seem to accept group deals. A protip, kids: when they say “bring two litres of water”, they mean PER PERSON.

We ended up taking the cable ride back down. It was amusing enough, but we weren't really paying for a ride or a view at that point. We just wanted to spare our bodies from further pain and humiliation.

A good day in all. Now I can veg out with a clear conscience for at least the next three weeks.

Wrapping up Oudtshoorn (Read: long overdue blog post)

So, after getting around and doing a whole bunch of stuff at the arts festival in Oudtshoorn, I've finally caught up to my own shenanigans and can take a bit of a blogging breather. My lack of a suitable Internet signal in Oudtshoorn was rather aggravating and caused me and my laptop to have a bit of a row, but things are all good now and I'm happily blogging away from my fortress in Cape Town.

By spending a whopping four nights in town, Oudsthoorn has officially been my longest stop in the Garden Route backpacking trip, even topping my three-night stay in Knysna.

And for two out of four, I snuggled up inside this tent:

The one at the back. I call it “the blue dwarf”.

Note to self: tents suck. At least I invested in a jolly nice sleeping bag, but it's still not all that preferable to, say, a jolly nice couch. You're basically sleeping on the ground. Sure, there's a few layers of plastic and warm microfiber fancymabobs that allow you to pretend that you're not sleeping on the ground. But no, really: you just are.

My fortress of solitude. And discomfort.

I don't mind the size of the tent (I don't really intend to share it with anyone in the near future), but I really do wish that there was an affordable way to guarantee comfort that's a few levels above “horrifically abrasive rock”. For now, I'm improvising with stuffing dirty clothes under the mattress. But this does, of course, mean that I end up sleeping on dirty clothes. Hmm.

Camping gets a firm 4/10 for me. It admittedly affords me far more privacy than I've actually had in the last three months. It's also cheaper than most other solutions: I got the tent and bag for just over R350, so a week of camping instead of dorm beds means that it actually ends up paying for itself. And it's an absolute lifesaver when there's nowhere else to sleep anyway.

But for the love of giant chickens, I do not want to sleep like this if there's any other realistic options at hand. Ever. That is my final word on the matter.

And so, to wrap up my blatherings about Oudtshoorn, I'd like to show you one of the prettiest sights in the area: the Outeniqua Pass between Oudtshoorn and George.

Now imagine seeing this with your eyes instead of through a crappy camera lens.

It's a fantastic view that's offered to anybody travelling between the two locations – there's even a few lookout locations along the pass where people can pull up their vehicles and admire the view a little.

And with that, I say bye-bye to Oudtshoorn. I'm glad that I had the opportunity to visit.

Kunstefees highlights

Writing this blog post is almost embarrassing. One: I only spent about one and a half days at the KKNK in Oudtshoorn. I probably have one of the least thorough assessments of this event in the history of ever ever. Two: there is way too much stuff going on. It's impossible to dictate all the cool things I did and saw in a mere 36 hours. So I offer you a few humble highlights so that I can at least rest easy in the knowledge that I made some sort of half-arsed effort at documenting my experiences.

First on my List of Cool Things™ is the music group Zamar, who deliver a sound which I shall simply describe as “gypsy music stuff”. I'm a bit of a musical heathen, so don't ask me for any proper definitions.

Tell me that this doesn't look gypsy. I dare you.

I first heard these guys while I was sitting in an Oudtshoorn cafe (sipping mineral water and pretending to be posh, of course). Their sound immediately grabbed me and I was moved to sit down and chat with them after their performance.

Zamar consists of a bunch of Stellenbosch students who decided to get together and make something a little different from the run-of-the-mill Afrikaans pop music and doof-doof-doof club sounds that have pretty much saturated the local market. They've been touring the country for some time now, building up a fan base and even winning awards for their performances at events like the KKNK. Not only are they different, but their lack of emphasis means that they're effectively language-neutral, so pretty much everybody can enjoy the music.

Also, they have a rad Website. Much respect to a group who knows the IT haxx.

Now, music aside: one of the main drawcards for the arts festival (in my opinion) was the open market filled with some of the most absolutely cool stuff in existence. And by that, I mean loads of awesome food. And super-cooled relaxation tents with built-in water sprays.

It was pretty funny when they switched the valves to the “knockout gas” setting.

But seriously, you find some recipes in all this madness which are probably unique to the festival: stuff like mint-flavoured nougat, mint-flavoured pizza cones and mint-flavoured baby elephants. You know, the good stuff. I broke my noodle diet once again to sample some of these wares. It was glorious. Budget-killing, but glorious.

As it so happened, I was carrying my devil sticks around with me at the time (let's all say it together now: not a tool of Satan) and a little birdie told me that there was actually a stick juggler wandering around the KKNK market. I enthusiastically hunted said juggler down in the hopes that I could bump into El Rondo again.

I ended up running into another juggler instead. His name was Nico, he had a shop in Knysna and he recognised my sticks as El Rondo's work, so we sat down to chat for a little while. Our conversation brought to my attention the harsh reality of festival markets everywhere: if you're even a paltry two stalls down from the high-traffic paths, you're going to get screwed over for customers. A pity: I tried out some of the sticks myself, and they were pretty well-made.

Enough sticks to choke a giraffe. The moral: buy sticks, save giraffes.

In closing: I totally got to ride in a Toyota along an off-road hazard course.

AWESOME.

Enough said. Post over.