A look into our adventurous weekend
The weekend started very early on Friday night. Everyone met up and packed up for what we expected to be an extravagant, fun filled weekend. Although making many stops, we made it to Port Elizabeth at roughly 9:30. From there, we had a few personal errands to run before our first adventure of the weekend.
Our first stop was the Kragga Kamma Game-park. This was filled with many wonderful moments, which started with the sighting of a couple rhinos, zebras and a couple Giraffes. Next in line were the fantastic lion and cheetah, who both had their own enclosures. After a couple hours of that, we decided it was about time to head to the St Columba’s Scout troop meeting to settle down before a busy Saturday.
After joining St Columba’s for their programme, we decided to visit the neighbouring troops before calling it a night. So off we ventured to the troops of, Sunridge and Walmer. After the late-night adventuring, we turned in for the night at the St Columba’s Scouts hall.
The next morning was spent preparing for the long day ahead of us. It started with us vigorously looking for shopping malls for food for the rest of the day. Eventually, towards the latter parts of the afternoon, we made our way to Crossways farm village where the Night Hike was officially being held.
After formalities, we found out where the bases were and how the Scouts were going to hike, and at 5 o’clock, it was time for opening ceremony. Once that was finished with, we went back to our patrols and figured out where we wanted to be dropped off and which base we would choose first. We were left with nothing but a map, a compass and a page ready to be stamped with flag stamps. So off we went, deciding which base would be the best to go to and which ones we would go to thereafter. As we went to different bases, we had to do certain tasks that would earn us a certain amount of points, depending on the difficulty.
Some bases were simple, some were not so. The best type of bases were the ones with flags there, all that had to be done was take the stamp that was located near the flag and stamp our piece of paper, making life easier and quicker for ourselves.
As that was happening, the rest of us were enjoying our time at Base 3, where we had a fairly difficult task for the Scouts to do. We were visited by many groups (and adults) during the night. It was a good way to test leadership skills and see teamwork in action. And at 5 o’clock the next day, it was time to pack up and head to home base.
Whilst the base helpers got to relax and de-stress from an exhausting night, the Scouts were tasked to do a log book and hand it in. This was also handed in with our stamp collection and points done by bases through the night. Once the pointS were totalled up, we were thrilled to find out who was the winning patrol of the hike. This was all revealed through closing ceremony as St Columba’s were found to be the winners of the weekend.
Once closing ceremony was finished, there were only formalities holding us back from hitting the road and heading back to East London, not without many stops however.
That concludes our trip To Port Elizabeth, we are excited to re-visit soon and hope this is more of a common occurrence.
2nd Gonubie Scouts Troop