hello from the Drakensberg Mountains!

wow ok 10 minutes to type, eeeee!

so mom came in eshowe along with some amazing care packages! thanks! so we went to a traditional healer in eshowe which was a little creepy, but it was cool to see the contrast between western medicine and traditional healing. then we went to an oraganization called Zulu fadder which was basically playing with these adorable kids for about 2 hours, sadly all of these kids have llost parents to AIDS and the region has one of the highest infectiona rates in the world. about 60 of the kids there had AIDS already, which was pretty mindblowing. then we traveled to rocktail beach which was SO MUCH FUN! we got to see a leatherback turtle come up on the beach to lay her eggs and then go back out to the ocean. to walk along the beach at night and come upon the turtles as so many others have for generations have was an almost spiritual experience, of course that m,ay be the marine biuologist in me talking :) we also went snorkling! which was super fun, we saw an eel and we saw lots of fish, then we said good bye to the indian ocean and the parents to head out to the drakensberg mountains. let me tell you, it's nice to see some mountains FINALLY. yesterday we hiked up sentinel peak and saw the second higest ( alititude wise) waterfall in the world at about 10,000 feet. it was a really hard hike but it was rewarding as well :) anyways i''m not going to get internet until i get home but i jsut wanted to post one last quick update, see you all in bozeman on the 16th. it's been a great adventure. until next time :)

~allegra

Eshowe

wow it seems like ages since my last post!

so we went surfing. i now have a new found respect for world class surfers, because it is so hard! (and doyle, you could tell reef i didn't die from the worlds lagest white shark population) i got up once for a short, but victorious, 2 second ride to shore haha. maybe i'll just stick to boogy boarding. we went to the Billabong outlet, and we should all be sponspered by billabong because of how decked out we are in gear. we enjoyed our last few nights there and then moved onto Mdumbi. a small !Xhosa village along the coast, we stayed in a backpackers. our room had tweleve beds and we all joked that we looked like madeline all lined up in our sleeping bags. the weather was been continuously rainer, so we all just snuggled up in our sleeping bags and listened to the rain, with some classes thrown in of course. we had some talks with the people who ran the backpackers and met some people who worked with TransCape, a microfiniance program out of Mdumbi. we also went for a cultrual walk in the village and got to try on tradtional clothes and some other activites. some mixed feelings about the tour... anyways we also had a run in with some very drunk college boys that included a note thrown in the window at about 10:30.
Dear Girls,
you are all so BEAUTIFUL, we know your teachers are strict but you only live once.
meet us somewhere tonight?
write a response and throw it out the window
love Just, Mat and OC

obviously, we got a few laughs out of that as our teachers read the note and as we plastered our ears to the door to hear what they were saying to them. currently the note is taped to the cieling of our truck :) haha.

now we are in eshowe were we have seen a traditional healing ceremony, had a talk with a woman who runs an aids clinic and the parents arrive tomorrow! i get to see my mommy :):) i'll be home soon, and i won't be in touch the last 7 days, so keep in touch till then! miss you

~allegra

jeffery's baai!

so i'm in jay bay. one of the best surf spots in the entire world. life doesn't get any better than this. so where did i leave off, capetown? and my packages! they were amazing, thank you to all of you who sent me food and letters, i have been enjoying my snacks from home soooooo much. lets see, after cape town we went to a town along the coast called Hermanus, and it's one of the best places in the world to see southern right whales. the future marine biologist, lets just say, was very pleased indeed. we sat around on a hill for a bit watching for signs of whales, and saw a few breaching although they were a distance away. then here's the ironic part, the group of students who flew with us out of Dulles airport on september 2nd was also there! i specifically remember asking them to do the hokey pokey on our scavenger hunt thinking "oh we're never going to see them again, why not?" goes to show me, the world is a very very very small place :) that night was our last night next to the atlantic, and it was the first day genneieve was traveling with our group. although we all miss whit, gen will be a great addition to the group. that night i went to sleep with the sound of the ocean, and i couldn't have been happier. Then we drove to Tsitsikamma National park to begin our backpacking trip. The campsite was right near the ocean and i sat out on the rocks for a bit before bed listening to the crashing of waves and waiting as the tide crept closer and closer. the sea churned gray, and the clouds rolled mimicking the violent ocea. waves crashed against the rocks, trying to return them to the watery depths and the water slowly coroded the rocks. the next morning for breakfast a mother and calf humpback whale swam by us as we ate breakfast. and right before our eyes one of them breached. truely amazing. my first whale breach in the wild. in africa. with TTS. nope, doesn't get any better than that. we hiked in to the park with our big packs, very hard but totally worth it when i saw the green roof of our cabin over the rise of the hill. a small pool of water was at the bottom, and we sat resting our aching feet in the cool water. the water tumbled over rocks and painted them orange because of the minerals in the water. hiking over the next few days we had our day packs ( our big packs got transported to the next cabin) but the hiking was still long days out in the african sun. tsitsikamma national park could be straight out of The Sound of Music, the mountains are green, and flowers dot the landscape. in other places it's similar to a rainforest next to a shallow stream. our days were filled with snacks, sterilized water, trail games,blistered feet,sunscreen and the best smores i think i've ever tasted :). now i'm in Jay Bay, and i think tomorrow is surfing day? lets see how that goes. the parents meet up with us soon in Eshowe, so on that note all bozemanites can drop off letters and what not to the condo by this weekend and i'll recieve them soon!

live in the moment. life is short and sweet

~allegra