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post 3 - written 23rd October
….well it just so happened that all the rumours about the chicken man in the township were true, it was very tasty. The swimming was also good on my rest day, or at least it was until the thunder and lighting came. The thunderstorms here are the most incredible I have seen. On Tuesday a group of us came extremely close to being struck by lighting on the way back from climbing and the thunder was so loud we ended up literally jumping to the ground. On the walk back to base we hitch hiked which involved standing on the back of a pick-up/small fire engine and holding on for dear life while it struggled to stay on the road because of the poor weather. The next day we went back to inspect the damage the lighting had caused to a near by tree. Scary!
This past week has been brilliant, the climbing again has been amazing and has meant that I have managed to climb harder than every before. It has helped that I'm climbing with one of the best climbers on the trip so he's pushing me lots! I have also loved climbing in the heat and when its hitting 30 degrees by 9am I have had no choice in the matter anyway!
The area is very beautiful and you will see what I mean when you look at the photos of the waterfall - we climb to the right of it. The day we climbed at the waterfall was nothing less than eventful. The three guys I was with all got very badly stung by wasps and soon after I walked straight into a metal bar - I was unable to walk for a few hours after that. Not only this, but on the way back, we had to do commando rolls, scramble through used nappies and cross a river to get back to camp.
On Wednesday, I organised a trip for three others and I to go and see the animals in their natural enviroment at Kruger National Park. The animals were spectacular. I took a lot of photos (847 to be exact) and although there is some nice photos in no way do they portray the real beauty and mass size of the animals. As well as photos, I also took some video footage of the animals but I don't seem to be able to upload them onto my computer. We were so lucky to have seen wild dogs and the leopard as they are rare within the park.
For the first time on my trip and whilst at the national park, it had felt, just for an evening, that I was on holiday instead of travelling. I had gone for a lovely swim after seeing the animals but 309 minutes later 50 school children descended down to the pool. That evening I treated myself to an all you can eat buffet, during which we spotted some cheetahs and hippos near where we were sat. It was pretty cool.
Anyway, week three is over and today we are heading to a new climbing area called Eagle Mountain.
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