The Mantis and Moon

Next stop was Umzumbe and the Mantis and Moon backpackers. This was another lovely backpackers place set in lush forest surroundings that bleed down to the beach (although the weather wasn't great for us, so I didn't get to explore the beach at all).

Here we just relaxed again, not doing much. One of the nights we had a really interesting chat with the German owner of the place, and the previous owner who was visiting for the weekend. Both guys were passionate 'lovers-of-life' who knew from a young age exactly what they wanted to do with their lives, and so, to a large extent, had pretty much achieved all their life goals.

I loved the German guy's story about a really spectacular surfing poster that he had had framed and placed in the bar. He said he had seen the poster when he was a young kid in Germany, living hundreds of miles from the sea, but he had just looked at it and immediately said to himself that he was going to ride huge waves just like the surfer in the picture. Of course, he didn't just say that to himself, he 'believed' it, he 'knew' he would ride huge waves. So he'd kept that poster and naturally, years later, that was exactly what he did, and he became a professional surfer. Now his dream was simply to own a cool backpackers lodge near some great surfing and spend his time relaxing and enjoying life - and of course, since he always believed he would, that was exactly what he was doing. I really love when I come across people like that, it always gives me a faint glimmer of hope for the future of humanity. Sadly of course, it doesn't really happen very often, but it's still good to know that there are one or two left out there!

We did have a day trip to the Oribi Gorge where we watched a number of people do the Gorge Swing (YouTube video here). If I'd had a Mr. Mullins or a Mr. Hanno with me I'm sure I would have done it, as I'd loved the one in Victoria Falls, but without Ezeria to give me a kick in the ass I didn't bother doing it here.

We did a couple of short hikes in the area though, one of which lead down to the bottom of the gorge itself. After waiting for a while we got to see a couple of people jump while watching them from below, but the view wasn't as impressive as I thought it would be (they didn't really get close enough to hitting the ground!).

The gorge has a couple of cool overhanging rocks that allow some tricks-of-the-eye photo opportunities - i.e. where it looks like your sitting casually right on the edge of a thousand foot drop, when actually there is a ledge just a few feet below you. There were plenty of spectacular views and genuinely mad shear drop-off's all the same though.

On the morning we were leaving the backpackers we met a young South African lad over breakfast. He told us he was trying to make his way south, and when we offered to give him a lift some of the way he jumped at the chance. Half an hour later we were all packed up and on the road south again, this time with our young adopted local boy - Luke (aka The Duke!).