Cederberg Camp

Everyone was looking at our very last week of camp with mixed feelings. We were very excited, but also scared to see that our exchange was coming to a near end when this week would finish. Anyways, we left from Bishops again, with all the exchanges and Bishops post-matrics. The bus trip was very nice, talking to everyone on the bus and having lots of fun. We had to drive about two hours, until we arrived in an area called ‘the Cederberg’. It’s a fairly dry area, where not many people live. The people who do live in the Cederberg are mostly farmers. The bus stopped in the middle of the area and our mountain bikes were taken out. We had to mountain bike the last part to the camp. This last part was about 25 kilometres. It was very hot and tiring, but really nice. I’m not sure if I like the landscape of the Cederberg, with everything being so dry, but it was nice to cycle through nature. As soon as we arrived at the camp, we jumped in the water, with our clothes on. That’s how hot we were! That night, we had to make our own dinner, Dutch oven. It was fun to work together with everyone. When it became dark, we went to a little place where we watched the stars. One of the teachers had a laser light, and he showed us all the figures in the sky. We spent the night talking in our tents and slept not too late.

The next morning we were divided into two groups, each doing different activities for the day. Our activities were visiting a local farm school and going on a tour with the ‘Leopard Trust’. The local farm school was about five minutes from our camp. We were going to spend the morning with the kids, playing games with them. We each took a few kids with us to play games and draw pictures with. It was a really nice experience. The difficult thing was that the kids couldn’t speak English, their home language was Afrikaans. I tried to speak Dutch to them, but they didn’t seem to understand much of it. At the end of our visit, the kids sang some beautiful songs for us, and danced along. It was such a nice experience. We had lunch at the camp and around 4 o’clock we had a tour with the Leopard Trust. The Leopard Trust is an organization in the Cederberg, caring for the leopards. The head of this organization took us around the area, showing us the traps for catching leopards and trying to make us aware of life in the wild. He did this by showing us some tracks of animals, and making us listen to the sounds of nature. It was a long walk, and we didn’t see a single leopard. This wasn’t very surprising, because the Leopard Trust ranger himself had only seen seven leopards in the nine years he’s worked for the organization. We spent the night in the camp.

The next day, we were doing the activities that the other group had done the day before, and they were doing our activities of the day before. We spent the morning on top of a cliff, and abseiling from it, and afterwards we went to the Stadsaal caves to view the paintings that Bushmen had made. It was a really nice morning. We had lunch at the camp again and prepared ourselves for the solo night. We were going to spend the night ALONE in the wild. Each of us was dropped alongside a river, with a sleeping mat, a sleeping bag, a pillow, a gas fire, a pan with pasta, and warm clothes. I had the most beautiful spot. My bed was on a little hill under a tree, looking out at a little beach and a river with a small waterfall. I was very close to the other four people who were dropped in the same area, so we could walk to each other whenever. We had to cook our own dinner on a gas fire. It was such a good experience to be alone in the wild making your own dinner. It was actually quite nice. After dinner I went to see my Chilean friend, Pipa, and she was cooking her dinner with Lourents, whose gas fire broke. We spent the night talking on my little beach, also with another Chilean girl, Sofia, and a Colombian girl, Dania. It was a lovely night, with a very bright moon and stars. It was a little disappointing that one of the post-matric boys had to tell us that the animals were on the move in this kind of moonlight... But we survived.

The next morning when I woke up, I was so cold. My whole sleeping bag was wet from dew. Luckily, we were picked up soon and taken back to the camp. I was looking forward to a hot shower so much, and I was let down when I was in the shower and no water came out. We had a long day in front of us, hiking the highest mountain in the area. It would be a nine hour walk. It turned out to be not that bad, and actually quite fun, even though it was very hot. At five o’clock, we arrived back at the camp, and I was surprised that everyone, including myself, had a lot of energy left. We started a party around the camp fire, with singing, dancing, laughing and talking. It was a lovely night. We reviewed the week with our teachers, and everyone had to stand up, while people could say something nice about them, or something they learned about them during this week. We ended the week with many new friendships, a lot of new jokes and a good feeling. On this last night, I put my flag down for everyone to sign it. This was so sad, knowing that I was almost leaving... That night, some people stayed up until sunset the next morning, but I didn’t make it. I fell asleep around 4:30.

At 8 o’clock, we were woken up and I immediately ran for the shower, before the water was finished. We had a quick breakfast and put all our stuff into the bus. On our way back to Bishops, we had lunch at Spur with everyone. Spur is a very well-known restaurant in South-Africa, serving typical food. We made our way back and everyone started to get very tired and boring on the bus. When I got to Herschel, a big surprise was waiting for me... My MOM! I knew she was coming to South-Africa, but I wasn’t sure if she would be at Bishops. It was so nice to see her again, and she got to meet all my friends.