Random Happenings 7/24

Here’s your chance to hear some random stories that I’ll hopefully think of while telling you these two stories I remember now.
A. Last Sunday, Billy and I climbed Mooihoek. It ended up being about the dumbest, yet most fun situation possible. We left around 12:15pm, meaning we skipped lunch, which we’re not technically allowed to do… but it’s the only way we would’ve had time, and with time running out here, I would’ve never forgiven myself if I’d have lived next to three mountains for two months and only climbed two of em. So we skipped lunch. Billy and I are pretty quick people, so what took the other group about 45 minutes to walk took us 20; the mountain only SEEMS close: it’s actually a little ways away. Then, we climbed up the front side, which in and of itself isn’t dumb, climbing the front’s fastest, the dumb part comes later. Just so ya know, Mooihoek is very likely the steepest climb you could do without a rope and still be comfortable. So it was a difficult climb. Once you near the top, the mountain actually flattens out though, so the climb gets easier once you’re nearly to the top. The issue then is “where is the TOP?” The top is flat, but very slightly slanted, so Billy and I walked ALL the way around to try to figure out where the TOP top is. Whether we were right or not, we were on the TOP at some point. In walking around the outside of the top of the mountain we likely added another mile to our trip; it’s a VERY large mountain. In fact, it’s so big, that we decided that we think it’s probably the tallest mountain in the area– at least till you get near Lesotho. So yes, kind of a dumb situation walking around to find the top. Then we had lunch, but naturally, on a mountain, you have to eat near a ledge, so we found one. Despite there being a whole side of the mountain that is 75% cliffs, it’s hard to find from the top, so we ate on top of a small one: much more comfortable this way anyways.
The dumbest part of the trek came when we were going down. We decided that since we came up the front and we had plenty of time, we wanted to see what the backside looked like: so we went down that way. Unfortunately, the mountain is slanted as such that you can only see a max of about 100 feet down at a time (the mountain’s about 800 feet above the base I believe), so we did some hiking around to try and find where we THOUGHT we could climb down and not run into random 300 foot cliffs. Finally, we hit some luck and randomly got yelled at. Not that we were in trouble, but apparently Andrew, Tara, and Amy were climbing up the backside and saw us, so they yelled to us. Our saving grace there was that they obviously knew how to get down that way since they came up that way. The dumb part is that going down that side is super hard because it’s just PACKED with trees and those stupid super thorny bushes. Going up is easier because that’s the direction plants grow, but going down is just awkward and painful. Plus, we were kinda lost. Despite our pains, it turned out much better going down the backside, because we got to see the most MONSTEROUS ostrich I’ve ever seen– and just driving around here, you see many ostriches at the farms. From a distance (halfway down the mountain) I thought it was some person shaking out the biggest blanket I’ve ever seen, but it was just a funny ostrich with its wings out. We got as close as comfortable for a few pictures, then walked on.
I’m still not sure if the next part is dumb or just entertaining. The sun was starting to go down, and we still had time, so I mentioned that if we followed the road that we thought went all the way behind Everest, we’d be able to see the sunset– but the road only went halfway. I don’t know why we thought that, because it’s obvious now that we could’ve seen the road if it continued, but hey, some of these roads are mostly overgrown. Luckily, we followed some antelope trails around to the side of Everest where the trees finally receded and we could walk unimpeded through the grass. We barely got to see the sun almost set before we realized we only had about 20 minutes to get another mile around and down the mountain we were behind before supper. We ended up actually having time to drop off some stuff at our cabin before going to supper though, so it all worked out. It was just uncomfortable almost accidentally missing a second meal that day. So yes. So ends story A. Much longer than I intended: I guess that’s what happens when I’m sick enough to not want to leave the cabin unless I need to.
2. Ostriches. Sometime last week, one of the ostriches on base finally showed up. We were overjoyed to finally see it. So overjoyed we kinda semi-chased it with our cameras cuz it kept walking away as we got closer, so it was not very photogenic. But after it finally broke that streak of hiding, it’s now hanging out near the cabins. It’s slightly disturbing, yet hilarious. A few times I’ve been walking back to the cabins and either chased it a little away from where I was walking, or just stared at it in confusion from its transition from weeks of hiding to apparent friendliness.
Today was one of the best ostrich moments though. Well truly, it started yesterday. Yesterday, one of the ladies walked into her cabin bathroom and after a couple seconds decided to look out the window only to realize she had a peeping tom: the ostrich was standing IMMEDIATELY behind the window. Today, as my cabin-mates and I were walking out of the cabin, we met up with the other guys from the other guy cabin and Derek said “Hey, you guys should look out your bathroom window.” In my head I immediately went, “NO WAY!” and proceeded to run around so I could see behind our cabin and sure enough, there she was, just standing there behind our cabin. Kevin whipped out his camera and Derek raced inside our cabin to look out the window. Kevin then started recording, I approached it from the side, then Derek flew open the window and we both screamed and the ostrich ran awkwardly away, as they do. The best part was that Kevin got it all on video, but it that’s not all: we followed the ostrich because we were actually heading that direction. At this point, we guys ended up in two groups: mine was heading more directly towards the ostrich so we were still screaming and flapping our arms to scare it away, the other group was taking a different path. In doing so, we ended up herding it the direction we were actually walking until finally it ended up between the groups. Suddenly it just ran towards the other group for no real reason– not very far, but enough to make Kevin and Dereck run away. Watching Kevin run away from an ostrich made my day: the funniest thing I’ve seen in a LONG time.
C. I don’t actually remember any major/entertaining stories so I’m going to stop now. Plus, I just wrote two long blogs in a short time.

Have a lovely time.
Love,
Ben