Wednesday, 26 July 2017

Wednesday 26th - Banana Plantation


Well what a day! With our last day coming to a close, we are Braaing the night away with good company.

This morning we spent our time at the Banana Plantation seeing the other side of the story of the many women who work away from their families to provide for their families back home. Cathy and her team spend one day a week at the plantation providing basic essential medical care to the workers of the area and their residential children. The team played with the children and our brief time there put smiles on all of the little faces we encountered.


From leaving the plantation the team split into two groups to go to an Elephant Sanctuary and a Reptile zoo, the two teams had an amazing time, with my high light being reciprocation of a big sloppy elephant kiss to the neck and walking in tandem with them. We were able to touch and get a real perspective on the size of the magnificent beasts.

Love Ryan.

 Our team of Me (Harry), Bobbie, Jack, Dom and Brian visited a reptile zoo in Hazyview, although some of the group were very nervous about some of the snakes, monitors and lizards they would see the experience turned out to be a great one. After a light introduction to the zoo, only seeing a few bearded dragons and large monitors the real fun started when we came across the tarantula pen. One of the highlights of this was seeing the Brazilian Bird Eater Spider. Its sheer size was hard to comprehend even with it staring us all in the face. We then moved on to see some of the snakes the zoo had to offer. The snakes included Western Diamond Backs and Puff Adders before coming face to face with the infamous Black Mamba which luckily, we did not encounter on the roads of South Africa. The real fun for me however started when we arrived back at Mercy Air where we received a trip in two of the aircraft the charity owns. Me, Jack and Dom travelled in a plane of our own with the others travelling with Paul in a larger 8-seater Kodiak, As the avid pilot that I am,

 I jumped on the chance to fly the plane… or steer it at least. The views from the aircraft were incredible and every single one of the team loved our trips in the sky, we then landed to enjoy a final night together as a team, ready for our flight back home tomorrow.

This therefore brought to an end what was not only an incredible day but the most amazing trip of our lives. Every day has presented new challenges but together we pulled through and became stronger as a team. The people and the places will never be forgotten by any one of us and I, as well as the team are thankful for everybody for supporting us through this incredible journey, we love you all and we’ll see you very soon to tell you about the amazing individuals we have met on this trip. Thank you once again.

Love Harry

Fin.