Cape Town!

Ok, back to the story of South Africa...



The three of us spent our last night in Port Elizabeth shopping, eating and drinking at a few restaurants, and I watched Ty and Neddie gamble at the Casino down the road from our asylum. Early in the evening, Neddie called to book our flights last minute on Kulula airlines, a less expensive domestic airline. Neddie handed me the phone in confusion, and I heard "Me Tarzan, You on hold", followed by a string of funny anecdotes and jokes to keep you attentive while you exhaust your pay-as-you-go minutes. I'm sure Kulula is the preferred airline of ADHD sufferers across South Africa. A day later, we would find ourselves boarding a plane with neon green seats and pilots who joked around with each announcement. I imagine the pilots weren't part-time stand-up comics but just practiced script readers, robbing the joy from the frequent flyer. Well, as long as the comics also knew how to fly...

We stayed at the 40 Winks Guest house in the Greenpoint area of Capetown. We were within walking distance of Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, a wharf lined with shops and restaurants. Every day, there were African drummers, stunt performers, old-man bands like you'd see in New Orleans, and tribal singers and dancers performing at the Waterfront.





Thankfully, the Rand-to-Dollar ratio was at an unusual low- from 7:1 down to 10:1!! Everything was so cheap compared to Dubai prices, it was unbelieveable. I bought t-shirts for $3-5, the same range I believe God intended for all t-shirts.

While hanging out at night playing cards, we began to notice a tv game show that would run several hours- the Brainbox. The show was a huge scam and an outrage to South Africans everywhere, but essentially each night a new host trys to get viewers to call in to solve a puzzle at a high cost per minute. Then they don't put the call through and charge you for it. Brilliant. It was always one simple puzzle but the solutions were impossible and rigged. People would call in with the craziest answers, but it kept our interest. The host would always get so frustrated and never seemed to understand why people weren't calling in! Here's a link with two of the puzzles and their answers.

We also went to Nelson Mandela's Prison at Robbin Island. We couldn't really understand what the tour guides were saying, but one had been a prisoner there. Penguins flooded the ferry landing area, which I didn't expect. The ferry ride back was quite rocky and most people got sick.

Back on shore, we took a cable car up to Table Mountain to see the impressive views across the bay and the city.









Later, Ty, Neddie, and I went to Green Market Square, the outdoor tourist shopping bazaar where you buy carvings and tapestries and the knick-knacks. I bought some wooden elephants and a wooden elephant mask "from" the Ivory Coast. Ty went a little nuts over the masks and ended up buying 5 or 6, and ultimately new luggage to get them home. They get you with the masks, because they come in male / female pairs. Even though they were inanimate and weren't REALLY a couple, it reminded me of Bruce from Pet World in Florence and how he wouldn't let you buy individual "show guppies" outside of a coupling pair.



Once everyone left me in Cape Town, I luckily met an American girl at breakfast who was on R&R from Iraq. We were the same age, wore the same brand of shoes, and both were alone, so we decided to spend the day together. It was fun to both be Americans living in the Middle East but with such different stories to tell each other. We took a taxi to Camp's Bay, a beautiful beach area surrounded by homes which rose up to the mountain edge. On return, I already started looking into real estate. The water was frigid- suddenly the penguins made sense.







We left the beach and went to Lion's Head. The mountain is supposedly shaped like a lion (I could never really see it, maybe just like those magic eye books), and what we hiked was the head. Because of its size and shape, you climb around the full circumference of the head, so you get to see 360 views. The climb turned from a wide dirt path surrounded by naturally growing bird of paradise to large rocks and boulders you had to pull yourself up on. Candice didn't think most of the trail was natural, but I tried to believe. We were worn out by the time we got to the top.








(We thought we were at the top until this point- then we saw this whole rest of the mountain. Candice almost bailed on me here, but I reminded her she was American military and that this should be nothing for someone like her. This is how I support my troops!)




The final thing I did was go to the Aquarium at the Waterfront. The aquarium had a very cheap entrance fee, but it was one of the best aquariums I've seen. I watched them feed the penguins and also the sting rays in the shark / predator tank. My favorite display was the kelp forest.









Lots more pictures in the link to the right! And hopefully more soon once I get the rest of Ty's pictures.

Places I missed and why I need to plan another trip:

Some of our crew got to go to Cape Point (I stayed behind so I could coordinate DHL and the gov't offices). Cape Point is a peninsula south of Cape Town where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet. Apparently, you can clearly see where the two oceans converge.



Baboons are pretty active in the area, and often torment or rob tourists. They also break into people's homes sometimes and ransack the place looking for food. I guess insurance plans include a clause for wildlife intrusions.

I also missed out on Stellenbosch vineyards and the Kirstenbosch botanical gardens. And whale watching and shark cage diving! Who wants to go?