Hi all, the blog is going to have to be stopped now I'm afraid. My Dad is critically ill in hospital. I'm back in England now and have seen him. Due to losing my phone if you'd like to speak just mail me your number so I can ring you. Cheers guys.

oll
posted by Olly at 1:01 PM

Phil, just checked my comments and saw your two! Rah! nice one bruv. Let me know flight numbers etc. so I can come meet you at the airport but mail them direct to me so I don't lose them! ahahahaaaaaaa, it'll be class seeing you out there!
posted by Olly at 2:13 PM

Well things certainly are on the up. Clyde and Brenda have been wonderful. I'm now situated in the granny flat which is cool. So nice to have a bit of space to myself following 2 months of dorm rooms. Other than that not much to report really. Just been hanging around in G-Town. This weather's crap... all storms and rain (lets hope the cricket final's rained off before it hits 25 overs!). Been out to some of the haunts in town. The Rat and Parrot is still standing and still pretty rank but amusing none the less. A new place has opened up too which is awful but we still went there anyway. My feet are finally starting to heal as I've not been in the sea for a few days (really missing it actually... gonna have to head for the coast soon). The Nomad tour's looking dicey too. Apparently the one leaving on 2nd of April is full and the one on the 6th is nearly full. Plus time's becoming a factor to get back down to Cape Town ffor then. Also I still haven't sorted out my visa which expires on the 30th. Exactly a month too early. Not sure weather I should claim ignorance at the airport or what. Hmmmmm.

PHIL!>>> are you bloody coming to Singapore or not. Con's told me no then yes whereas I've only heard a no from you. Please let me know as I'll probably sort my visa out here if you are. Wouldn't like to get arrested on the way to Singapore if it'll screw up meeting you and Dad!
posted by Olly at 2:05 PM

This was actually written on Friday not Sunday

So I had to leave Island Vibe (surfers place). Nightmare. Baz-tard Bus turned up 2 hours late due to two flats so I only got to PE at midnight to find we were at war. Great. The weather in PE was grotty so decided to get to Grahamstown ASAP. So the next day I went looking for the Greyhound office. Kindly woman at the backpackers told me where it was but neglected to mention that branch had shut down at the end of Feb due to it being placed in a somewhat dodgey area. So there I am walking about looking for something that no longer exists feeling less than safe. Eventually got information leading me to believe it had moved 5 minutes up the road. Haha... I misheard. It was actually 5kms up the road. So I walked and walked (on bruised feet.... there are rocks at the bottom of the ocean!) until I decided there was nay chance of finding it. In my wisdom I decided to sack it off and head back to hostel. Alas my sense of direction failed me. I ended up on this long road with no turns off it which slowly turned me until I was going completely the wrong way. The question was to keep going or turn back (bruised feet and rain threatening only complicated matters). Well I chose the former. Eventually I came across a group of OAPs who were hiking (yes I'd ended up that far from the city centre) and figured they were rather unlikely to mug me. It turned out the were going my way so I walked with them... only after they'd all had a good chuckle about where I was trying to get to and where I was actually heading. They were really sweet though and gave me a lift back to the hostel. Also the walk was really nice too so that turned out alright in the end.

The Greyhound was only going to be found with the aid of a taxi driver so that's how I got there in the end. It took ages on the bus though as there's loads of road works into Grahamstown at the moment. That meant I only arrived there after dark and Grahamstown is a touch more sinister than the last time I was here. Anyways, I found the hostel at last and booked in. Now this place is called the old gaol. It was a jail until 1975. Although its now a hostel I guess it must be a listed building or something as they certainly haven't rennovated since 1975. Haha, got a dorm to myself though so it wasn't all bad.

Seeing as how I was in Grahamstown I thought I'd check in withClyde and Brenda. I didn't want to pay a surprise visit though so I went to look for internet facilities this morning. It's a public holiday. Nothing's open. So I thought I'd check in my wallet for their number. Oh no, hang on, that got nicked. Last resort, find someone with a Nokia phone or charger and ge the number off that. To my dismay, two emptied bags later shows that has either been nicked or left somewhere along the way. Aaaaaaaargh. When will the run of bad luck end?

I've walked up to Clyde and Brenda's this morning though and been offered the granny flat at the back of the house so things are on the up.


posted by Olly at 1:58 PM

Alright. Bloody hell. Just been robbed. Bugger. Luckily there was no confrontation. I was out surfing with a few people and my jeans were in the car. Some robbing bastard nicked 'em and the instructor's trousers. Unfortunately I was going to pay my bill for this place today so I had about 80 quid in there. Bollocks! And they nicked my cigs aswell. Gutted. Any comments concerning the question, 'why did you take your wallet to the beach?' will be ignored. Hind sight is a marvellous thing and basically I just forgot to take it out. Silly me! The only bonus is that they left my cash card and bus ticket. I've got a crime ref number so I should be able to get the cash back on insurance (hopefully) oh yeah and they nicked the maglite too.... Arrrrrrrrrrgh, won't be able to see in the dark now! Haha.... anyway, if that's the only robbery I experience I'll be quite happy. Like I say at least there was no confrontation etc. And I certainly won't take my wallet to the beach again. Check this out.... Cheese!
posted by Olly at 11:45 AM

Right, just a quickie. Last day of surf school today then on to PE. Should be a larf. Really don't want to leave here though but gotta keep movin'. Anyways, erm, want on surfari yesterday to a couple of spots. St Francis Bay (if you build a house there it has to be white with a thatch or black roof... looks class!) and Seal Point... Haha, that was quality. Had a really good surf. Think I'm getting the hang of it now. I need to keep doing it though, very similar to skating. Strakkus, get yer arse in gear and come to NZ for that surf holiday you're always on about.
posted by Olly at 7:45 AM

Alright, the photo thing's fallen through a bit coz it costs a packet to use a comp for that long so you'll have to wait until I find access to one that's free. Shouldn't be too long. Also I'd like to add that I'll probably not bother with the blog for a few days (woo hoo I here some people shout) as I can tell you what I'll be up to already. Wake up 7.30ish, have breakfast. Start surfing at 10 finish about 12 or 1. Have lunch. Sleep or get in the water again. Wake up. Shower. Have a few beers. Bed. Repeat all of the above. So there you go. Not a bad life really. Only other thing is that I've torn my feet to pieces and the wounds are turning into what I think is called sea sores or something similar. A small price to pay really. Au revoir.
posted by Olly at 3:20 PM

Hello again. Second day of surf school completed. Ouch I hurt everywhere. It's getting me fit though which is good. Oh yeah I've got some pictures developed today and having them put on CD tomorrow so you can all have a look at some boring, fairly crap (as its only a disposable camera) photos. Woo hoo.... until tomoz

Phil - Definately sticking to the Singapore plan. I'll be flying out of here on the 30th of April and in Singapore 12 hours later. Have you spoken to Dad about it yet?

Mum - Really sorry to hear about you not getting the full circle thing. Head up though!

Jess - No more crap e-mail's please only good quality ones

Jabez management team - you've all been very quiet... no messages?

Bell - Have you heard what Andy P's doing? Follow suit!
posted by Olly at 2:10 PM

Island Vibe is indeed a good place to be. Very much fun to be had by all. Just joined a week long surf school (or academy as they prefer to refer) which should be a laugh. I'll just see if I can find pictures of this place somewhere on the web... hold tight..... here's a few. click this just an idea of where I am.... larvely. I've met up with Kate again. Hhahaha, a water bomb just popped on her bed. Good job there's no lollipop ladies out here hey Con and Phil, or I might have got told off. Hahaahhahahahahhahahhahahahahhahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhahahahahha. Sorry, found that far too amusing. Anyways, enjoy NZ Oz today and lets hope the Kiwis do it.
posted by Olly at 6:56 AM

Y'all alright. Island is good.... hahahahaha
posted by Olly at 11:21 AM

Well, that's the end of storms river. It's been a good laughhere but I have to move on. Interesting people I've met, Tamara (Dutch, lovely but attatched to...) Paul, from Portsmouth, v. funny chap. Tim the Oz who climbs ridiculously big mountains for fun. Couple more English and then the rest were seppos. Quite funny though. Carl the barman's just walked in and looks rough as. V. Funny. But anyway, enough of talking about people you don't know. The night before last a few of us went to the quarry to taste the rrrreal Afrrrrrrrrica (Afrikaans accent there) which was pretty cool. The stars out here are incredible. Yesterday not much happened but it was nice and relaxing. Then last night was another theme night (first night I was here it was pirate night). Hunters was the call of the day (or night) so charcoal was used as war paint and then general hunting paraphenalia donned.

This morning I felt a little worse for wear but went on the tree top canopy tour. Nothing like zipping about 30m up to clear the head. I've bugger all to do today now so I'll just wait around for the bus to get here at about 7. Then it's on to J-bay for a week of surfing.... nice....
posted by Olly at 11:42 AM

Haha, I'm in storm's river now at Tube 'n' Axe backpackers. This place is mental. Last night was a braai (third night on the trot.... Come ON!) and the theme was pirates, so we all got charcoal over our faces in pirate stylee. The beer flowed and much fun was had by all. Today should by rights have been a wash out but instead a few of us went down to the beach and hiked to a waterfall. Good crack. Jumping in off stupidly high places too. Haha, I went the highest (whinging bloody ozzies) Snorkeling was done aswell, all good fun really. Tomoz is the tree top canopy adventure.

Kate, I've lost my phone charger so I can't switch the bugger on. I'll only buy you that beer if you have the certificate to prove adventure. See you in J Bay?

posted by Olly at 3:54 PM

Incidentally, The paragraphs are all messed up in that long blog that's just been sent out yesterday to my trusty subscribers (26 now and growing all the time!) so a bit of detective work may be needed to make it make sense
posted by Olly at 11:51 AM

Hey guys, bit of a shady post but just a couple of tech things. Many thanks to Robyn (the star) for sorting out the comments so you can now leave all those comments you've been dying to put on.

Also I don't know if I've pointed this out before but blogger's been acquired by Google (you know that search thing... I'd never heard of it before... haha) but anyway if you type in Oll Burdekin, lo and behold there I am.

Very tired today as Dave snores. Many a pillow got lobbed at him last night from the oz guys in our dorm but he kept up his pig impression without a break. Shame though, he felt really bad about it today (and for those of you who have shared a room with me on ocassion know I can identify with that feeling... haven't snored once since I've been here tho... weird!). The braai (barby) was a good crack last night. Many a drinking game played but civilised none the less. Kate and Dave are off today but I'm stopping on for another day as Plett is lovely. Bought some snorkel gear today so aquaventures can be had at will (and no cost). Movign on to Nature's Valley tomoz evening but probably only spending a night there. Then on to Storms River. Home of the highest bungy in the world... and no I probably won't be before you ask. Never know though.
posted by Olly at 11:41 AM

So it appears that blogger doesn't enjoy really long posts. Hence why that last one was split into three. Very messy. Anyway, that's all well out of date now. The yesterdays, tomorrows etc. now bear no reference to reality.

I've been to Knysna (very ttouristy fairly rank place but the hostel was cool so I ended up staying there a few days). Erm not much else to say about Knysna apart from... Brad, if you useless southerners go there, go to Al's nightclub, its really really really really good... honest. Haha

I'm now in Plett. Woke up this morning to find the sea at the bottom of my bed, it's quite a nice view from the hostel ceiling to floor window. So been on the beach today, went into town as me Dave Kate (who's birthday it is today) and four oz blokes are having a barbie tonight. Should be good. Might get up for sunrise tomoz... seeing as how tthe sunsets are fantastic.

Well, gonna have snooze now, see you laters.
posted by Olly at 1:28 PM

Well wwe found the waterfalls and they were quite cool. Just swam about and climbed rocks and tried to catch lizards and fish w\bare handed (I'm such a kid). After that we headed back and it took us about half an hour to get back to the canoe on the trail (as opposed to the eons it took us to get to the waterfall).

So yesterday was the real adventure day. They call gorge walking kloofing here for some odd reason, but imagine my delight (for those of you familiar with the toot phenomenon you can imagine how much delight the word kloof gave me!) This gorge was right up in the National park and called Kaimans Gorge. Because of being in the Natty Park the outdoorsy place we went to was the only one that had permits for this particular (haha) kloof. So we drove up (our guide was a guy called Wayne) and then it was a 45 minute hike to the (haha) kloof. Now wetsuits are designed for for keeping you warm in water. They are NOT designed for hiking in the baking sun. Needless to say after 45 minutes of uphill work I reckon I'd lost enough liquid to significantly alter the depth of the stream we were to (haha) kloof down. Kloofing is class though. You just scrabble down stream occasionally jumping off rocks and swimming when you can. The jumps were superb (each one calling for a loud 'kloooooooooof'. From 10 to 25 feet. Oh yeah and we had three waterfalls to navigate. They were even higher so a bit of abseiling was required. It was all a right laugh. On the hike there Wayne had pointed out that we had to keep watch for pissed reptiles(... legless... snakes... oops Partridged a bit there!) Well after saying that I had to find out poisonous facts. Haha, we saw one of the buggers too. I n a rock pool below, regulating its temperature. One of the most poisonous pissed reptiles in SA, theres no anti venom for it either! After many a Steve Irwin impression Wayne decided the best course of action was to overtake it. Nice one Wayne! So then any green thing we saw (blades of grass floating about etc) put the shits right up me. The gorge was unbelievable though. At one point the walls towered about eighty metres above us and the gorge itself was only about 1.5 metres wide. Stunning stuff. Haha, when the fear of the snake had abated I then rembered the film Deliverance. Had to keep a beady eye out for rednecks (Squeal like a liddle piggy bouy!) haha.... most amusing, but I was the only one who had seen it so I got a few funny looks when I felt the need to start redneck / pig impressions.

Well, that's the end of the wilderness adventure. Its on to Knysna now . Oh yeah sorry this is so long but I had a lot to say. Shit and I haven't included any pretty pictures either. Oh well.



posted by Olly at 1:22 PM

After arriving I'd been talking to this seppo (septic tank... yank) on the bus and he was stopping at the same place. So we decided to go for a swim in the river. The nature trail was a bit of nightmare so after finding a decent swimming spot we decided walking down the river would be better. Now I'd made a couple of errors here. For some dumb reason I'd taken my cigs, lighter and wallet with me. God knows why. So I had to swim down the river with my T-shirt wrapped around my head, my EI hat on and one hand in the air holding the stuff I wanted to keep dry. One handed swimming ain't easy. Needless to say I was knackered by the end of it.

We got back and two posh English blokes were determined to to have a good time in the bar. So they decided we all had to play charades. Girls v boys. The girls won but only by default (we kept helping them out... they weren't very bright... haha.... jus' kidding).

The next day I was in search of more adventure. So me and the Seppo (Nick his name is) went to book some at this outdoorsy place. Having booked a gorge walk for the day after we also got a canoe, paddled up the same river until we couldn't go any further, then got out to walk to some waterfalls. Now the trail here wasn't the best (or we're just stupid bastards) but we lost it. So the logic was if there's a waterfall up stream then if we walk up the stream we'll reach it. All well and good but the it took us about an hour to get 100m. The rocks were slippy as and really treacherous. Eventually the best course action was agreed to get back to the bank and through the jungle until we found the trail again. So Indiana Oll set off. Now these banks were a little more than steep and after about two seconds I lost sight of Nick. I got quite a way up and still no trail so I admitted defeat and scrabbled back down, covered in shite and knackered. Nick wasn't there. Where could he be? So I shouted and heard from way up the bank, 'haha.... I've found it!' Bollocks he'd found the trail. So I had to go all the way back up. Turns out I was about 2 metres away from it before I turned back. Typical.


posted by Olly at 1:22 PM

Just finished writing this post and it's bloody long so you might want to read it in two sittings (I know how semi literate most of you are... haha just joshing!) But it is a long 'un... shite it's even longer now... Aaaaaaaaah it keeps getting longer.... oh just read it!

Morning all. And what a wonderful morning it is (that's to be in the most sarcastic tone one can muster on a morning like this.) You'll all be pleased to hear that your jealousy can be put to one side as the weather is dull, grey and muggy today. Pretty grim. I was going to go to the beach but there ain't much point when it's weather like this. Anyways, I have six hours to kill before before the Baz Bus comes to get me to take take me to Knysna.

As for what I've been up to for the last few days, I've been in Wilderness. Sounded like a place where adventure could be found rather easily and I wasn't wrong. Firstly I got the Baz Bus here (and no, the driver wasn't called [apply scouse accent] Barry[cease scouseness]... much to my dismay, but he was called Brian... pretty funny in itself). Here was where I made my first error. When looking at maps of Britain I have some idea of how far things are from each other, whatever scale the map. However, South Africa is a considerably larger country. So after setting off from Cape Town at 8 am, 8 hours later I arrived at Fairy Knowe Backpackers in wilderness. Watched Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon on the way so it could have been worse. Anyways, Fairy Knowe is really nice. Set on a farm with horses, chicken-type things and a massive pig (called Clarissa)... oh yeah, and a dog which I'm sure is showing the first signs of being rabid... it's insane. So the place is really quaint. The dorms are set back from reception (which has a bar, pool table, guitar, kerosene lanterns, bonfire every night... haha, and connect four... still a champ at that!). It's set in the middle of a National Park consisting of wetlands and forest. It's basically just beautiful. The town itself comprises of about 3 restaurants, a kiwk spar and... err.... that's it.


posted by Olly at 1:19 PM

yesterday I wrote a massive post. Then blogger failed on me! Wonderful. Just what I needed. It cost an arm and a leg at that place too. Not a big disaster though as I saved it to my hotmail account. So now I've found a cheaper place and hotmail appears to be down. Sod's law. Anyway, although this place is cheaper it's gonna take about 7 hours to do anything as this is the slowest connection I've ever had. slowly beginning to think technophobes have a point
posted by Olly at 9:15 AM