Ziplining!!! (with Brent Favre) (well, kinda ...)

Hey kids!  Happy Monday!

Sorry I didn't write last week but Cape Town was hit by its first real heat wave, and, oh ... y'all ... I really am a Minnesota girl.  Whereas some people adore the heat, I just wilt.  I'm sure my Salvadoran peeps would be most disappointed with me, but I ... I just can't.  When it's 100 degrees (36/37C) in my apartment during the day (and 90 at night!) and there's not a single breeze ... UGH.  I don't feel like doing a damn thing.  I lay there, panting, dreaming of snow, air conditioning and American ice cream.  (Sorry South Africa, but your ice cream is generally disappointing ... I think they use vegetable fillers instead of cream and Crisco-like ice cream is not my thang.  But I digress ...)  

Anyhoo, enough whining.  I'm trying to come up with ways of dealing ... like a minimum of 3 showers a day and siting in front of a fan with a wet towel wrapped around myself, Elvis style!  So on Saturday, we decided that another day trapped in our oven-like apartment sounded like the 7th level of hell and we decided to rent a car and go ...

ZIPLINING!!!!

We had never really considered doing it before, but we googled "activities, Western Cape, South Africa" -- it popped up and we were like, "why not?!" 

It was in a part of the Western Cape we had never been before, the Skurweberg mountains, an area known for its amazing rock formations and scenery.  It was about a 2-hour drive from Cape Town (I'll post some of the pictures of the road trip tomorrow) in the town of Ceres.  The company is Ceres Zip Slide Tours.  The tour consists of 8 slides, totalling 1.4 km -- it's the longest Zipline tour in Africa!

WOOT!

The day was absolutely gorrrrrrgeous!  And the terrain was absolutely breathtaking.  We were zipping above huge canyons, a winding river and small mountain pools:

 

And then, to make the day even more interesting is the 3 other people that were in our group.  It turns out that we were ziplining with a South Africa sports superstar, Corné Krige, captain of the Springboks (SA's national rugby team) in 1999, 2002 & 2003.  In U.S. terms, I guess he'd be like a Brett Favre, retired but still young and very loved around here.  All the Zipline staff were like, "do you KNOW who that is?" And of course, we silly Americans had no clue!  He was there with his wife & 3 kids. We spoke quite a bit with his wife; he was much quieter, but they were both really nice and their kids were uber cute and so brave!

We didn't want to be all up in his face when he there with his family ... but we did manage to sneak one picture:



Anyhoo ... Sports heroes and all, it was such FUN.  Fun in ALL CAPS, FUN!  Definitely felt like a kid again!  The first line was kinda scary ... but the next seven were just pure exhilaration!  The lines ranged from just under 100 meters to almost 300.  Some were slow and you could stop in the middle and enjoy the scenery, and others were so fast you lost your breath and got to the other end before you realized what happened.   

 

At the end, I looked over at Aaron and said, I could do this ALL day.  And I really could have.  I'd highly recommend Ceres Zip Line Tours.  The price was pretty reasonable and all their staff were really great and gave us a day we won't soon forget!

Ok kids, I'm off to take my 2nd shower of the day ... be good and I'll post some more pictures of the road trip laters ...