On Thursday nights we have our 2-hour weekly meeting, usually at the hall, with games, training, and activities like commando courses, fires and cooking, code breaking, competitions, building pioneering projects with ropes and poles, survival skills, and a lot more. We also get away from the hall sometimes to do night hikes, "wide games", orienteering or just a trip to Laserquest.
We run several camps every year. There's usually a week-long Troop camp in December for all the Scouts, a family camp in the Cederberg in April and some weekend ones. We hike on Table Mountain and stay in the Scout Hut or Appleton campsite - two fantastic places for Scouts to stay. Cape Western Area runs inter-troop competitions and some excellent training courses (including the PLTU - Patrol Leader Training Unit), which we take part in. Every two years, there's a 10-day Senior Scout Adventure in the Cederberg for the older Scouts.
Most years during April we take part in the Kon Tiki raft building competition (see photos), with a big team of Scouts, parents and supporters. On Friday we pack the truck and head for the Sea Scout base at Sandvlei. We build the raft until late at night, and get up at sunrise to finish the construction in time to launch at lunch time on Saturday. Then 6 people stay on the raft until Sunday lunch to take part in a competition with about 30 other rafts. We dismantle the raft on Sunday and pack up our equipment back at the hall.
During all these activities, apart from having a lot of fun, we also have an advancement programme for learning lots of practical skills, earning badges along the way, and progressively more leadership responsibilities as the Scouts get older.
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