Diving deep and flying high

Good afternoon and a happy new year from a 24°C and 'mostly sunny' South Africa! Today marks four months since I left on my gap year to volunteer for Project Trust at OB so here is what I've been up to the past seven days...

This week has been our last full week in Cape Town so we've been making the most of it. On Monday we went to the Two Oceans Aquarium here in Cape Town, with two of the Zambia volunteers. It was a really cool aquarium to visit not only because of the variety of aquatic animals and the absolutely massive tanks some are in, but also because it was very educational. The aquarium has a huge array of research programmes that they are involved in along with doing a lot of conservation work. They're main conservation work focuses on seals, turtles and ragged-tooth sharks. The aquarium is also one in only a few in the world that also release some of their fish and sharks back into the wild. One statistic that's been stuck in my head since visiting is that each year around 700 people are killed by toasters whereas only around 5 are killed by sharks.

New years eve saw all the volunteers head to Kirstenbosch gardens to go see Jeremy Loops - a famous South African singer - perform. It was an amazing concert! We've also been to the Castle of Good Hope, South Africa's oldest surviving building. From 1679 onwards it has been involved in political, civilian and military life around Cape Town and has numerous artefacts to show for this. On the doors in the prison there's words and sentences carved into the wood by prisoners before they were sent out to Robben Island.

Another AMAZING thing we've done this week is a skydive!! We weren't planning on doing this when we arrived here in Cape Town but some of the Zambia volunteers were going to do it and asked if we wanted to join them. It was an incredible thing to do and I absolutely loved it. The views from over 10,000ft up in the sky were amazing and jumping out the plane and free falling was so incredible.

Friday saw us take a trip to Camps Bay. Don't be fooled at how inviting the water looks though - it was freezing!! I'm definitely missing the warm Indian ocean. Yesterday me and Talitha took a walk to Bo-Kaap, a former township and now one of the most photographed areas of Cape Town due to its colourful houses. We also did an escape room yesterday! It was themed as a pirate ship and we managed to complete it with 1 minute and 43 seconds left!

We're leaving Cape Town on Wednesday and I'm definitely going to miss this city (and the washing machine we have here!) but I can't wait to get back to OB.

Photos for this week, in order, are of the aquarium including a board showing the issue of plastic in the ocean but specifically plastic in gyres. The aquarium had a lot of information about this issue. And one of some Knysna (the next town to the right of Sedgefield) seahorses - we were super excited to learn that these lived in the water near us. They're the only seahorse known to live in estuaries but they were also the first seahorse to be classified as endangered. There's also a picture of the concert, a lot from my skydive (don't think I'll be able to stop talking about it for a few months), a few from Camps Bay, Bo-Kaap and one of Scott playing chess with someone who lives here. (Scott won!)

Enjoy the photos,

Rachel :)