The Rhodes Big 5: five events that every Rhodes student has to attend at some point during their varsity career. These are:
1. Trivar
2. Oxbraai
3. Fish
4. Boatraces
5. ...I can never remember what the fifth one is. If anyone knows, please do enlighten me.
This holiday I finally managed to make arrangements to go to Oxbraai :D and it was certainly worth it. For the non-Rhodents and non-Eastern-Cape people among you, Oxbraai is essentially a massive braai that takes place in Bathurst in December every year. Students rock up, put up tents, drink way too much and just generally have an epic party. Thanks to my holiday job as an elf in a Christmas Grotto (don't ask...) I was able to fund my trip this year.
I arrived in Bathurst with my friend, K, and a group of his friends from East London. The queue of cars was scarily long but moved quickly, and before we knew it we were inside. After a couple of minutes of driving around aimlessly, we found a spot to park and set up our iconic red tent (it was iconic because the colour made it easy for us to find it again :P ). I was the only girl in a group of about four guys and so I mixed myself some Coke and vodka (om nom nom!) while they downed a few cold beers. Apparently, warm beer is the devil and they'd rather have no beer than drink it hot. To prevent such a disaster, we had about three cooler boxes filled with ice stacked in the back of the bakkie. In fact, there was barely enough room for the beer.
We found out pretty soon that the little sunshade attached to the tent was not going to be enough. As the area of shade shrank we moved closer and closer, until we were sitting with our knees touching and one guy was forced to move his chair into the actual tent. As the heat got worse we decided to take a stroll, drinks in hand. K, his friend S and I wandered among tents for a while, greeting people we knew and becoming steadily more sunburnt. Drink was flowing, there was a truck filled with foam nearby and someone was blaring music with heavy bass. It was fantastic.
During this walk I bumped into my boyfriend - who I was supposed to be sharing the back of a bakkie with (get your minds out of the gutter) - and spent most of the rest of the time with him. We also walked around for a while before stopping to chill with a friend of his. This friend had the right idea; he'd brought a gazebo, hubbly, camp chairs, a mattress AND even a couch. Yes, a proper couch that you would find in someone's living room. For a while we sat on the couch, smoking cherry-flavoured hubbly and trying not to fall asleep. After a bit more wandering we returned to doze on the mattress, half-listening to the conversations around us.
1. Trivar
2. Oxbraai
3. Fish
4. Boatraces
5. ...I can never remember what the fifth one is. If anyone knows, please do enlighten me.
This holiday I finally managed to make arrangements to go to Oxbraai :D and it was certainly worth it. For the non-Rhodents and non-Eastern-Cape people among you, Oxbraai is essentially a massive braai that takes place in Bathurst in December every year. Students rock up, put up tents, drink way too much and just generally have an epic party. Thanks to my holiday job as an elf in a Christmas Grotto (don't ask...) I was able to fund my trip this year.
I arrived in Bathurst with my friend, K, and a group of his friends from East London. The queue of cars was scarily long but moved quickly, and before we knew it we were inside. After a couple of minutes of driving around aimlessly, we found a spot to park and set up our iconic red tent (it was iconic because the colour made it easy for us to find it again :P ). I was the only girl in a group of about four guys and so I mixed myself some Coke and vodka (om nom nom!) while they downed a few cold beers. Apparently, warm beer is the devil and they'd rather have no beer than drink it hot. To prevent such a disaster, we had about three cooler boxes filled with ice stacked in the back of the bakkie. In fact, there was barely enough room for the beer.
We found out pretty soon that the little sunshade attached to the tent was not going to be enough. As the area of shade shrank we moved closer and closer, until we were sitting with our knees touching and one guy was forced to move his chair into the actual tent. As the heat got worse we decided to take a stroll, drinks in hand. K, his friend S and I wandered among tents for a while, greeting people we knew and becoming steadily more sunburnt. Drink was flowing, there was a truck filled with foam nearby and someone was blaring music with heavy bass. It was fantastic.
During this walk I bumped into my boyfriend - who I was supposed to be sharing the back of a bakkie with (get your minds out of the gutter) - and spent most of the rest of the time with him. We also walked around for a while before stopping to chill with a friend of his. This friend had the right idea; he'd brought a gazebo, hubbly, camp chairs, a mattress AND even a couch. Yes, a proper couch that you would find in someone's living room. For a while we sat on the couch, smoking cherry-flavoured hubbly and trying not to fall asleep. After a bit more wandering we returned to doze on the mattress, half-listening to the conversations around us.
The boyfriend and myself chilling on the mattress. Our photography skills are shocking, I know.
When it became dark we went to get our food, which consisted of a slice of bread, half a potato and WAY too many slices of ox meat (incidentally, an ox is a castrated bull. Am I the only person who didn't know that??). Having now eaten too much and drunk too much, we ran around a bit more generally making nuisances of ourselves. Actually, a lot of my night was spent staring absent-mindedly into space while my boyfriend found trees to pee against. If I could, I would have done the same; the Porta-Potties provided for the girls became increasingly disgusting as the night went on. We finally fell asleep around 3am and woke up at about 5:30 to the sounds of people moving around. Like most of the others, we left Bathurst by 6 and headed to Grahamstown for Wimpy breakfast, sleep and a much-needed shower.
While I didn't get quite as wasted as I'd thought I would, I still had an epic night. From chilling on the couch to eating plain bread rolls to getting slightly lost somewhere in the dark with the boyfriend, it was an awesome adventure. Would I go again? Definitely, but I'd do a few things differently. 1) I'd bring the Jammies girls with. 2) I'd bring a really big tent and shade cloth. 3) I'd bring a LOT more alcohol.
So...who's keen to make next Oxbraai even bigger? :D
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