X-Games Training

Due to my personal lack of extremeness since I have arrived in Cape Town, I decided to go all out this weekend with a series of crazy stunts and activities. Rest assured, no one was seriously injured in the making of this super-extreme weekend.

The weekend began like any other, with a sunrise and a fight or something outside the apartment between our loud neighbors (not InterStudy affiliated). Yet, despite the inconvenience that it caused to my sleep, it guaranteed that I wouldn’t sleep through my alarm and miss the first, and most ultimate, adventure of the weekend. This is after all my last weekend of summer before school starts on Monday.

Rising early, I made my way to CocoaWahWah… essentially the American embassy in our neighborhood. Today was no different with about 80 obviously American students getting coffee and breakfast before starting the trek. Soon enough, the whole group of us made our way up the street towards campus (high on the hillside) and nearer to the summit of Devil’s Peak. You see, in the center of the Cape Town urban area are Table Mountain, Devil’s Peak, and Lion’s Head, all soaring high above the city… we were attempting to climb the most ominously named. It started off easily enough but eventually the trail turned into some small cliffs that we had to scale up, and the small cliffs turned into large cliffs that we had to avoid, and those large cliffs that we had to avoid eventually led us to the top. There were parts of the trail that were literally a few feet wide with hundred foot drops off the side… it was a truly epic quest to even live to tell the story. At the summit, high above the city, it was much colder and really windy but the view was spectacular! And, as if our legs weren’t tired enough, we began the descent, which if you’re not a big hiking person is really rough on the knees and ankles, and body in general. We still managed to find our way to the bottom of the mountain with many injuries and few casualties.

The following morning, the body was not feeling to great from the hike, but the weekend had to continue. The next adventure led Grace The Carpenter, Natalie, Taylor, and myself to Muizenberg to surf for the first time evahhhh! The train takes about 30-40 minutes and drops you off literally meters from the white sands of the beach and the crisp waters of the Indian Ocean. We hired a lesson from a local surf shop in addition to some wet suits and longboards, and we were ready to rip. First, we had to learn how to rip, which was no doubt a fun thing for the locals to watch. Soon enough however, we had the four of us riding waves and dodging the suckers on boogie boards! More realistically, we were probably still pretty hilarious to watch. Still, by the end of the lesson each of us had stood up and had an above water tweak session at least once, and we were all ready to come back and improve ASAP.

Well, that’s just about at epic as things get… until next time!!!