12 Days Of Summer Camp

Day 6

I wake up to a once again heavily raining day and get to the hall for breakfast. Today was the fourth day in a row I had toast and butter for breakfast because I refused to use the gross dishes that they never washed. Seriously, the dishes were never washed. It was our responsibility to wash and clean dishes after we used them and of course, the people in my class just rinsed it the dishes with water (no soap) and put it on the rack because no one could be bothered washing the dishes. But, I, unlike my fellow classmates, came prepared for this eventuality and in my suitcase, packed paper plates and cutlery. Pretty smart huh? That means I don’t have to wash the dishes, I just throw my plate in the bin (usually with the food still on it).

The camp director then makes an announcement that today’s activity will be rock climbing. As already mentioned, its bucketing outside but that doesn’t stop camp Nether from causing a serious injury to a school student! I’m sitting in my chair, baffled by this.

“Did I hear him wrong?”

I think to myself. Then the guy continues to say

“We’re actually not supposed to take students rock climbing while it’s raining, but the forecast for the rest of the camp is pretty bad so we might as well just do it today”

That’s really great, in other words, we might as well just fly someone to the nearest hospital today.

So I prepare myself for what could be a fatal injury and make my way down the massive 90 degree hill knowing the way up is going to be SOOO much worse. I put that out of my mind since I’ll probably be taking an ambulance up there anyway. I get down to the rock climbing walls and I can’t see more than 5 metres in front of me because its raining so bad. Lucky you don’t need to see that far while rock climbing!

The instructor unfortunately, was not chicken n’ cheese, but some random guy which was unfortunate because I may have enjoyed this activity a lot more. He starts to tell us how to put our harness on in the shed where all the canoes and other equipment is stored. As he explains how to put on the harness, I feel something itching on my foot, but scratch it away like it was nothing. Unfortunately, it was not nothing because after I “scratched it away” it started to sting.

“This can’t just be an itch can it?”

I slowly pull the bottom of my pants up and see something crawl out and onto the floor. I screamed and someone stepped on the bull ant for me.

“Yeah you really shouldn’t have stepped on that ant”

I look at the instructor and see him looking at me

“Why not?”

“Because when you kill one of them, they release a smell that alerts all other ants to come to them”

This was coming from a rock climbing instructor.

Well, since this was an all-girls class not one person remained in that shed for about 5 seconds after he made that comment.

We then had to finish off the tutorial in the rain and my leg was stinging really bad but I still was forced to rock climb.

The instructor picks a random person to do the demonstration on how to rock climb and he “randomly” choses me. I’m sorry, was almost having my foot severed not punishment enough?” That’s a little dramatic but you get the point.

So he attaches me to the rope or whatever the technical term for that is, and I begin to climb. Despite the rain and lose rocks that weren’t nailed to the wall properly (and so caused your foot to slip off) I think I did pretty well…. Until the instructor thought it would be cool to scare me into thinking I was falling by releasing the rope controllably. The “controllably” aspect of the joke went horribly wrong and I was 2 centimetres from touching the ground when I thankfully, stopped falling. Everyone stared at him and he mumbled something along the line sof

“Misjudged the weight”

I never thought I was overweight until that moment. Thanks!

After we finish rock climbing and surprisingly, no injuries have occurred, (apart from a bad case of rope burn up against someone’s leg, my bull ant bight and my fall scare) the same instructor offers to take us back up the hill in his truck.

“SWEET”

I thought, this camp was finally getting better. All 15 of us cram into his truck and he starts driving down the dirt track. Just before we reach the bottom of the hill he makes an extremely sharp right turn.

“Well this isn’t the right way back”

I thought to myself. He starts recklessly driving around a field because apparently it was supposed to be fun. Everyone in the truck seemed to be having fun until the people in the back of the truck almost flew forward when he braked because there aren’t any seatbelts there. He kept driving and just after almost driving the truck into the lake that he braked just in time to miss, he drove us back to the actual camp site. After that, I didn’t know what was better, taking the truck or walking up the 90 degree hill!

What a day, I went to bed and even with my foot still stinging, tried to fall asleep.

Hope you enjoyed the sixth chapter! Don’t forget to comment about some of your bad camping experiences.