Fear is temporary, Regret is forever.

I don't really know where to start. Last week was the most crazy insane adventure that most could never have the opportunity to experience in a lifetime and it was packed into five crazy days for me. Started the week off rough Monday morning waking up 10 minutes till we had to be on the bus(4:50AM) probably because I didn't get to sleep until a couple hours earlier trying to finish my laundry for the week. Flustered. To say the least. But there was a lot of those early mornings still to come and I just had to keep a good attitude and realize the amazing things ahead of us each day. So we aboard our "Africa Adventure" bus, or pretty much the size of a dumpster truck that literally sits at least 6 feet off the ground. The week consisted of driving up the "Garden Route" which is up the Eastern Cape and staying in different hostels along the way. Our final destination in total was I believe 11 hours away, although we split it up well, it felt like we were living out of the bus. Our first stop Monday was the Cango Caves. I thought this was just going to be like going into caves in Kentucky where you look around for a little bit and leave. But this was very different, we didn't just have the typical tourists tour, we were scheduled for the "adventure" route. This ended up being a lot cooler than I expected. We made our way deep into the caves weaving through tight places that I seriously shouldn't fit in including the "Tunnel of Love" in which we had to turn our body sideways and squeeze up through the cave and then there was "Devil's Chimney" where we had to crawl this hole the size compared to the size of the little dog holes some people have on their doors and then immediately get vertical and army crawl/squirm/climb up this hole that didn't not get much bigger for at least 15 more feet upwards and then we still had to army crawl to the "Postage Dropoff" which was the smallest opening that we had to squeeze through and it went right into a little slide after that you just slide down on your belly face first. The caves were so much fun. We drove in the big green bus some more after and continued the bonding time which would be constant on the bus throughout the week playing card games, jamming to some music, and my personal favorite was our game of karaoke and the rules of that game is someone else has to pick your song and you don't know it until you put headphones in and you turn the volume all the way up so you can't hear yourself and then just get into it and jam. And I was chosen to go first... which provided for some great entertainment...we then went to the ostrich farm which was a lot fun basically because it was just hilarious. For example, our guide picked me and two other guys to go into their little fenced in area and we had to put the food in our mouth and see whoever the ostrich picked to kiss, well I won, but that didn't end up being the best because she caught some lip and not all food, she was a biter. It didn't hurt too bad though, more funny than anything else because I wasn't expecting it because we had just done something similar with a small gentle ostrich. And then people 165 lbs and under had the opportunity to ride the ostrich, needless to say I didn't make the cut, but it was really funny to watch and I got some good videos. So we then make our way to our first hostel which was surprisingly really nice and right on an awesome beach. This is where we met up with the other adventure group who had done some of the things we would be doing later on in the week and swapped stories. This would lead to a long night of drinks and laughter around a campfire they had out in the sand in the back area of the hostel bar. Another early morning...wake up 5 minutes before I'm supposed to be on the bus, once again. 5:55AM. We get on the bus and go about half an hour till the Neisner Waterfront which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful places in South Africa, which really says a lot. Snapped some photos after climbing up on some rocks as the waves crashed against them. I'm still attempting to wake up at this point. But it was an incredible landscape and it was such an awesome moment to take in and reflect. After this we got back on Big Green and our next stop hours away was zip-lining. This was no normal zip-lining. There was 8 different long zip-lines with the longest being 216 m that literally went right over a waterfall. It was lightly raining at this point, but I think it made the experience even better for some reason. For lunch, we went to Jeffery's Bay, also known as J-bay, which is the surfing capital of South Africa with huge waves. We then made our way to Addo National park where we went on a night safari game drive where we saw a lot of Khudu, elephants(including some baby ones), foxes, owls, which was all really exciting because our guide had not guaranteed us to see anything since it had rained earlier that day. We were bummed we didn't see lions because we heard the group last week did even though it was really rare. But we had a morning game drive as well. This one was 10x better than the first. We saw zebras, warthogs, more khudu and elephants, and then we came up on 3 lions laying out in this pasture. Our bus went crazy and we were all excited because the attitude of the morning was disappointment we hadn't seen lions. These lions just laid there perched. We then notice to our right, a pack of red-hartebeest(fastest animal in the park, antelope looking) approaching the lions. Even our guide was getting excited because there hadn't been a kill ever sighted in the park. This standoff lasted at least 30 minutes as the head antelope was tempting the lions and ran up ahead acting brave and then quickly turn back at the slightest flinch of the lion. This was way cooler than watching "Planet Earth" since it was happening right in front of our eyes. The kill never occurred, but it was still quite the sight to see something of that nature happening naturally before you. This would be the start to one of my favorite days of the week. From here we left and were schedule to go play soccer with some kids in a local community that was near the bridge we would be jumping off of later that day. We got to the field and there was some miscommunication and the kids weren't there unfortunately, but everyone was okay with it because apparently it was a legitimate high school team that destroyed the other groups. Instead, some of us played our own game while the other half of the group did yoga? haha one of our TA's on our bus is a yoga instructor and would causally get some of the bus doing some yoga stretches spontaneously throughout the week. I did not join. Okay, only once. So now after all that nonsense, it was time. Time to jump off the world's highest bungee bridge! To be honest, the whole day I was more excited than nervous. This was a huge attraction to the trip when my friend was telling me about it last year. Some people on my bus were not as much as excited as they were really scared and nervous. Some girls were even in tears when they got up on the bridge. But some of the shirts they sell say "Fear is temporary, regret is forever." This can be applied to many areas of life, but it really helped some people get through that fear and jump. We only had 2 people on our bus that didn't do it. The other bus the previous day had everyone jump. Some of videos are priceless of the girls who were about to pee their pants. (Funny story: a random girl that wasn't with the our group had literally peed her pants while she was on the bridge getting harnessed up). As for my jump, I hop up to the edge, they have the music blasting, I'm dancing and smiling to loosen my nerves, as the guys hold me, I ask if I could look down at my death before I jumped. And then they did the chant "5, 4, 3, 2, 1..BUNGEEE" and they guide you(slightly push) off the bridge. I've never experienced such a moment of silence in my life. Everything was still. Except for me plunging down into the canyon underneath me. It was the most adrenaline I've ever experienced. I enjoyed every second of it and would do it again in a heartbeat. I have a video and pictures for evidence too. We went to our next hostel which was one of my favorites with a bar, pool table/foosball, a fire and just a really cool environment for everyone to hang out. Thursday morning was our day to go play with the elephants! The only problem was the weather. It was raining and not letting up very much. We were all really disappointed when were were told we would not be able to ride them like all the other groups had done because of the rain. But we were still able to walk them by their trunks and feed them,  and watch them do tricks. I wanted to be able to say I rode an elephant, but it really didn't ruin my day. The rain finally let up after we left and we were scheduled to take a dolphin cruise but that had to be cancelled because of the weather as well. This ended up being a blessing in disguise because everyone said they could have gone without seeing the dolphins saying they can do that in the states, and instead we go to Tenikwa: An African Cats Farm. Basically it was a farm with leopards, cheetahs, caracals, servals, and many more different breeds. And for the most part, we didn't just look at them through a cage, we were able to go in and pet some of them. I was able to pose behind two cheetahs for a picture. The leopard was the most entertaining for me. He was in a fenced in area and our guide would take us around and get the leopard all hyper and he would come and jump on the fence at us, which scared some girls but he did this multiple times and I thought it was awesome. The leopard was so fast and its spots are gorgeous, I even got to pet its side as he rubbed against the fence one time. So the cat farm ended up being a great alternative. We arrived back to the same hostel we stayed in the first night seeing everyone from the other group again. This was another really fun night. There was a community room where we had a short meeting and then we watched a lot of everyone's bungee dvd's while having some drinks before dinner and it was hysterical seeing some of the faces on people right before they jump. Friday. Last day. But I was so excited for shark cage diving. And the weather was perfect for our last day. The other groups had terrible stormy weather when they went out leading to multiple people getting sea sick but ours was calm with beautiful skies and no one got sick. We got in our wet suits looking all sorts of goofy, especially when I put my goggles on. I drop into the cage. Never did I think I would get this opportunity in my entire life. This seems crazy to me, I am usually uneasy about the deep ocean just for the very reason of sharks and here I am swimming with them. I was apart of the first 5 in and we had sharks swimming right in front of our face and even had one charge our cage and the nose came through the cage slightly was inches from my face. WOW. This was by far my favorite part of the week even over bungee for me personally even though its so hard to compare everything I had done. There was extra time after everyone had gone and so me and some others hopped back in and had some great views of a shark coming at his bait that they were luring him with and he rattled up against our cage even more. When he actually did get the bait, he wouldn't let go, and one time they literally couldn't get the bait from him from like 5 minutes and he was dragging it under the boat so it felt like we were about to tip. Craziness. I loved everything about it. That was the end of our adventure week unfortunately but it ended on a great note and I still had an amazing weekend to come with the rugby game and skydiving Sunday. The rugby game Saturday was crazy! The majority of us students cheered for the local Cape Town Stormers and they were playing the Pretoria(northern South Africa) Bulls. We had jerseys and face paint and our adventure guides that we had gotten to know put on a "brye"(barbecue) for us which consisted of some good food and brew. It felt like a game day in Athens and all the Springbocks and Bafanas (our two groups of 50 separated on adventure and service week) were all back together again. The game itself was so much fun and a good group of us managed to make our way down to field level seating literally right in front of the action. The Stormers barely lost with one crazy play at the end coming up about 5 yards short, but it was still an awesome time and I felt like the biggest Stormers fan in the stadium by the end of the game. Sunday would complete the craziest week of my life. I jumped out of a perfectly good plane 9000 feet in the air above Cape Town. What a rush. The free fall for 40 seconds was the most amazing feeling in the world. I feel insane and so incredibly blessed to have had these opportunities this past week and will never forget a moment of it. Even though I wrote a novel in this, I feel like I could never be descriptive enough to really capture the essence of everything I experienced.

 Hostel the first and last night

 5,4,3,2,1...BUNGEE!!!