Thursday 7 June 2012

Week 9 - Sedge Field - Personal


It is difficult to describe the unique atmosphere are sense of shared culture that makes Annie’s Cove such a unique place to live. We have developed into a kind of diverse (slightly dysfunctional) family to which Lynsey and I are becoming more attached to by the day! With Easter (Spring break) here, it was a strange feeling to see everyone disappear one by one to begin their travels – a sad reminder of what it will be like when we leave for good in a few weeks time!
With Annie’s becoming emptier by the day, Lynsey, Ryan, Shannon, Matti and I decided to make the most of our free weekend before we went our separate ways for our Easter travels. Lynsey and the girls stopped off in Plettenberg while Ryan and I drove a little further to Sedge Field, not before picking up an unexpected friend along the way.

A group of our French and German international friends decided to cycle from Port Elizabeth to Cape Town without any training and only allowing themselves 6 days to complete the 750km journey! I can’t say I was surprised when our friend Yohann phoned us to ask him to collect him and as bad as I felt for laughing I couldn’t help but giggle a little when he described his injuries with broken English as a ‘bleeding ass’. I think Ryan and I could have future careers in the rescue service! We were both happy t have another friend to share our travels with.

Sedge Field is a small coastal town with magnificent views overlooking the ocean. There are no pictures that can fully describe how fantastic the scenery is. Unfortunately on Saturday the beauty of the Sedge Field was somewhat clouded when a young South Korean guy from our backpackers was drowned at sea. Him and his friends had just returned from a wedding and intended travelling around the country for 3 weeks. Although I only talked to the guy once, it was difficult not to feel emotion when seeing the faces of his friends and girlfriend as they realised that the search and rescue efforts were not being successful – a sad reminder of the dangers of the sea and how fragile life really is!
Despite the sad incident, Ryan, Yohann and I tried to keep our spirits up. We met some other travellers, some from South Africa and some from the Netherlands and it was interesting to see how our views differed so much – we discussed everything from religion to cultures to the meaning of life! (we tried to keep things very casual ha!). One thing we all agreed on though, was that all of us had travelled to different parts of the world but hadn’t taken much time to travel, discover and explore our own countries. This is something that has become very obvious to me while I have been here and is something I am going to change when I get home! I think it is a shame not to see your own country before going further afield. 

Next week Lynsey and I travel to Cape Town to meet our friends from Stanmillis, Ian, John and Emily! We’re both VERY excited!! I know that there will be plenty of adventures to be had during our travels and I’m sure it will make for interesting reading!

Ian, John and Emily, adventure is waiting!!

Glenn

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