Hogsback for Easter!

Sorry its been so long, but I just had the most amazing spring break of my life. It was technically autumn break here or aka Easter Holiday. The leaves are changing colors here incase you were wondering, but it is still really hot during the daytime, it just gets chilly at night. So after my botany test which was on Thursday, I got ready to leave for Hogsback and Port Alfred for the weekend. This was going to be my Easter break so I wanted to keep myself busy instead of getting homesick. Firstly, we went to Port Alfred in our tiny Toyota Yaris. We went sand boarding down these huge dunes for the afternoon and I fell quite a few times. It was a lot different (easier) than snow boarding, but it was very easy to pick up a lot of speed down these hills. Port Alfred was beautiful, it is only about 2 hours outside of PE and it is a very quiet and peaceful town. It seemed like it was predominately white and you could definitely see that the area had money. We stayed at Kowie Backpackers for the night which was a nice tiny house that made you feel at home, and yes they had a TV! I took Nyquil the first night because I hadn’t been feeling well from the Frontier Trip and wanted to get better before we went to Cape Town. I pasted out around 830pm and didn’t wake up till the next morning. Once I woke up I joked about my phone being missing and I couldn’t find it. Long story short, someone came into our room in the middle of the night an swiped my phone from right next to my head. I was without a phone so I used Chelsea’s to call my mom (it was 3am at home) to tell her to cancel my phone account otherwise who ever took it could run up the bill and minutes are super expensive! The police came and took down a report, but I know that I’ll never see the phone again. I got a new one a few days after and it is even worse than the one I had before. After Port Alfred, we made our way to Hogsback, which was the trip I had been wanting to do since I’ve came to South Africa. I am not a big Lord of the Rings fan, but this is the place were J.R. Tolkien was inspired to write the series. I could see where he got his inspiration from; it was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been too. The next two days was filled with a lot of hiking and I can’t even describe how beautiful the place was. There was even a bath tub situated on the side of a cliff where people could actually take baths! So cool! The waterfall we hiked to was amazing and it cooled us off after a long hike. Some people from the local community were getting baptized as we were passing by which was cool to see. Check out my pictures on facebook or I am going to post some to this blog as well. We saw almost every waterfall in the area and had the most amazing Easter dinner. It was a chicken stir fry with loads of veggies and a lot of chicken. (Mom and Dad I would have loved your dinner even more!!!) I enjoyed the weekend very much and it was the best possible Easter I could have had away from my family. I am sad that I missed the holiday with my family, but I had good company the entire weekend and I got to talk to my parents on that Sunday too! I can’t wait to go home and find all the eggs my parents hid for me and hopefully have a few bottles of Hershey’s waiting for me too!!! ---A chocolate milk would be a nice coming home present! haha ;) I am separating this blog with the Cape Town blog since they were two completely different trips. For now!