South Africa

We were supposed to arrive in Cape Town on Thursday morning, February 17. The Cape of Good Hope had already proven to be just as rocky as it was rumored to be. Wednesday night I could hardly sleep from a combination of excitement about South Africa and fear of being thrown out of my bed. I’m pretty sure the ship was catching some air we were bouncing and rocking so much. When Thursday morning finally arrived, everyone got up, super excited to finally be getting to South Africa. Cape Town was the most looked-forward-to port for many people, possibly including me. I met my friends for breakfast and while we were eating an announcement was made that we couldn’t get into the harbor because of high winds. Great. They didn’t know when we would be able to come alongside so we just had to wait. Or no, I think at first they said they weren’t sure if we could get in. After breakfast we went outside because Table Mountain and Lion’s Head were in sight and Cape Town was already proving to be gorgeous. As we were outside taking pictures, the boat was rocking so much that the horizon would disappear so that for a while you would only see the sky and then it would rock back so that you could only see the ocean. The tables and chairs on the pool deck were sliding around it was so intense. And it was in fact really windy. Throughout the day we kept getting updates of pretty much no information. They said maybe we would make it in around lunch time. Nope. The crew cooked us a fun dinner as I guess some sort of appeasement for not getting to be in port yet. We had fries and ice cream for dessert. After breakfast I’d tried to take a nap but too much caffeine and way too much rocking for any kind of sleep. So I decided to shave my legs instead. Probably not the brightest idea considering the rocking but I avoided disaster. After lunch, my friends and I played games and listened to music and watched dvds, anything to try to make up for being stuck on the ship while it circled just out of reach of South Africa. I had a very low attention span for anything we did and even lower tolerance for being stuck with the same people all day long. It would have been a fun day under other circumstances and when we played some game (Cranium I think?), I learned that I’m good at spelling words backwards. They played movies for us in the Union, but I didn’t think I could handle being at the front of the ship with it rocking so much so my friends and I stayed toward the lower decks. We went to bed with the possibility of getting to dock in the wee hours of the morning. I woke up after a while and realized we were definitely still moving. At first I thought, “oh I thought I slept longer, I guess it’s not time to dock yet.” But then I looked at my clock and saw that it was after 4 and gave up any hope of being in port when I got up. I later learned that the South African port authorities or someone had just stopped answering us after a while. We FINALLY got in on Friday in the early afternoon.

After lunch I was in line to pick up the currency I had ordered and one of the field office staff people kept saying they had an extra ticket for one of the trips. It happened to be the trip two of my friends were going on to visit Robben Island so I decided to take it. Very spur of the moment but it worked out really well. I wasn’t on the bus with Stephen and Diane but when we got to the restaurant in a township where we were having lunch, I finally caught their attention and they were both really surprised to see me. The food we had there was some of the best food I’d had all semester. We had to rush though since the trip was originally supposed to start a lot earlier. We took a ferry to Robben Island and were led on a tour by a former inmate. I saw Nelson Mandela’s cell and some penguins.

Saturday I hiked Table Mountain with a group of about ten people. It was kind of like being on a stair master for nearly 3 hours. But it was well worth it. It was absolutely gorgeous and the air was so clean and crisp feeling. Our group kept getting smaller and smaller as people fell behind because some of the people needed to make it to the top in time to get back to the ship for an afternoon trip. I would have been the next person to fall behind but right when I thought I couldn’t keep up anymore, we were at the top. It ended up working out really well because that meant we got to stay there for a long time while we waited on everyone else. The top of the mountain had a café and shop. I ate some delicious pizza. Not sure if it was that good because of the hike or if it was just really good pizza. We relaxed for a while and took lots of pictures and then we took the cable car back down to the bottom. I should really start writing blogs sooner so I can remember everything I’ve done.

I think it was the next day that I hung out with my friends Russ and Alex. We went to the Two Oceans Aquarium which wasn’t as exciting as I’d hoped it would be considering it’s got animals from two different oceans. We saw some more penguins and they had really clever environmental signs. We only stayed there for about an hour and then we had lunch at a nearby restaurant which was delicious. I had seafood pancakes. After lunch we walked to the World Cup stadium. It wasn’t open for tours so we just walked around the outside and took a few pictures. Then we walked back to the waterfront to get a cab to the beach. I wanted to go to the one that I’d heard didn’t have wind, since wind is my least favorite weather. I forgot that it sometimes can be pleasant during the summer. But the beach was very pretty and only a little very warm. We were just sad that we didn’t have bathing suits or towels or anything to really enjoy it. We also had trouble finding a public access to get off the beach. Very strange.

One afternoon, maybe Sunday or Monday?, I went on a Semester at Sea sponsored trip to an orphanage and township. I wasn’t super excited about the orphanage part because it was mostly just awkward-hey look at these kids and don’t actually do anything. I really enjoyed the township visit part (except where we played soccer with some kids) because we biked and learned about a program called Yep! Clan. It was started by a guy from the township. You should look it up, I think their blog address is yepclan.org.za or something like that. It’s probably the best/most legitimate organization I’ve ever heard of.

The last day in Cape Town I went on a bus tour with 3 other girls. It was really fun and with the bus tour you can get on and off whenever you want so we stopped at the District 6 museum, the gold museum, the Castle of Good Hope, and a beach where we ate lunch.

The port was super clean and nice and touristy. It had a really nice mall and a huge ferris wheel and lots of restaurants and boats. That’s about all I can remember from my time there a month ago for now at least.