Kontiki 2011

The end of March always signals Kontiki is coming and this year the theme was “Kontiki visits Rome”. This year we decided to compete in all of the competitions and build a raft and shore camp. As usual we never do anything boring we decided to host a brand new girl scout troop on their first ever Kontiki. 1^st Edenvale girls have been going for three months and didn’t have the knowledge of how to do run Kontiki effectively so we decided to help out and teach them.

The raft was run by one of our scouts and consisted of 6 Adiero girls and 2 1^st Edenvale girls. The raft had a different design to what we have usually built but it worked well and provided a lot of shelter for the girls. The raft crew did very well and managed to complete the raft and get it on the water where they did very well in the mobility challenge.

The shore camp also consisted of Adiero and 1^st Edenvale girls and they all did a great job. Everyone got there on Friday and started to setup camp. This was successful as we managed to almost finish the beaver challenge and the 6m table on Friday. Edenvale managed to learn the dress up on Saturday morning and they all enjoyed doing our dress-up of the Latin scout verse. The rest of Saturday consisted of teaching Edenvale how to build a campsite and the cooking competition where the PL of shore did a great job and made really good food.

One of our favourite events on shore was the STA (Spare Time Activity) where we had to create a chariot that the emperor would want to ride in. The girls had lots of fun decorating a trailer and dressing themsleves up to look like emperor, queen, driver and slave. Well done girls for ebing so creative.

All in all Kontiki was a great success as we came 16^th overall with raft coming 14^th and being on the reserve list for chairman’s and shore coming in 29^th. This was very successful for us as we got to teach our younger scouts how to teach and teach 1^st Edenvale how Kontiki works. We hope that they have learnt a lot and will come back next year by themselves and do a great job.

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Kontiki prep camp

This year we held Kontiki Prep camp at the hall so that we had all our equipment at our disposal. We started during scouts and build our beaver challenge. This was slightly challenging as it was raining and so it had to be built inside...on tiles. The girls learnt a lot and really loved the idea we had and seeing in action was very exciting.

Saturday was spent teaching everyone how to build the gadgets in camp. This was very successful as each gadget was built and refined.

As with most of our prep camps there were lots of discussions about how to build and how to refine certain gadgets and these discussions results in very useful and very funny ideas.

Kontiki Prep this year was very good and we are prepared for Kontiki and hope to do well (as always)

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Meeting - 14th January

Back to scouts!!!

So we've started scouts again and the meeting last Friday was really chilled. The meeting was spent playing games, catching up on holidays and discussing Kontiki. Everyone had a great time just catching up with friends. The Kontiki discussions produced many ideas (some hysterical and some actually worthwhile).

Basically this was the perfect way to start a hectic term and we hope that it will produce many great times and great memories..bring on 2011!!

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Cederberg 2010

Over the December holidays two of our girls went on the Senior Scout Challenge which is held in the Cederberg mountains in the Western Cape. The adventure is 11 days long and involves hiking around the Cederberg mountains to different activity bases.

The weather for the hikes varied between scorching heat of 35 degrees and constant cold rain for two days so we got to experience every aspect of hiking.

The hikes themselves were challenging by incredibly beautiful. Rock formations like the Wolfberg Arch (seen in picture) can only be seen by hiking to them. The challenge came in that we were hiking over mountains most days and we only had topographical map to guide us.

The activities were great and various: 4x4, paintball, pizza making, orienteering, dutch oven cooking and gold panning, to name a few. These were great fun as some of these things we don't do in normal scouting.

Over all Cederberg was an amazing experience that challenged most of our scouting skills and determination and we would like to see more of our girls attend the next one in 2012.

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Kate's 1st class camp

Kate held her 1st class camp over the weekend of the 23-24 October. It was a great camp with fun and relaxing. The girls really enjoyed it as the got to go on a camp that was not a competition but was about just having fun - which is what it's really about anyway.

They arrived on Saturday morning and set up their tents and shelters and build a table ('cos you can't just eat on the floor). Kate taught them some of the basic knots and lashings and then they were challenged to build a tower out of kebab sticks and string that could hold a glass of water. The girls did a great job and designed four different towers to test the strength. Each tower was tested with a glass of water and each one held it very successfully and, knowing us, that wasn't the end. The breaking capacity if each tower was tested and this was lots of fun to see when the towers would fall over.

The girls then made chicken curry and bread for supper which was enjoyed by all. When it was time for bed the girls climbed into their shelters only to be met by the rain so the shelters were abandoned for a dry night in the tent.

On Sunday morning it was time to pack up and go home after a great relaxing camp. Well done Kate on a great camp!!

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Meeting - 15th October 2010

So this week we did some backwoods cooking - such fun!!

The pathfinders made fires and discovered how much wood you actually need to keep a fire going. Once their fires had simmered down from the huge bonfires that had been created they cooked there boerewors. But as this was an Adiero meeting, nothing is very boring, we cooked the beorewors inside a banana skin in the fire. This meant that the girls didn't have to hold the beorewors over the fire which is always ideal.

Conservation stove

The adventurers made their food composed of mince in gem squash which was also placed in the fire. The adventurers also cooked on conservation stoves. Conservation stoves conserve the heat as all the heat is directed towards the pot. The adventurers made rice (in 20mins) and a sauce for their mince.

Everyone had lots of fun and enjoyed some interesting backwoods food.

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Compo camp Aug 2010

This year was the first time that the Provincial Camping Competition was held and both of our patrols attended. There were a total of 17 patrols in the competition form Randburg, West Rand and Southerns districts. The camp was run at Saddle Creek and run according to West Rand competition rules.

The patrols did very well. Bats came 7th over all and Crocodiles came 9th overall which is great for a first compo camp. Bats were also 3rd overall in cooking.

Well done to all the girls that attended!!

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