Cape Town

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I can’t believe that I am down to less than a week here in South Africa. But in attempts to ignore that fact, I will continue recounting the fun I’ve had here, that you haven’t heard about yet.
So we left off when I had arrived in Cape Town. We had just left Mossel Bay, and after some issues with the Garmin (just one of the reasons that I love paper maps) we arrived at our hotel about 8:00 Thursday evening. Our hotel was quite snazzy, the Protea Hotel Fire and Ice. We had decided to treat it as an actual vacation and stay at someplace other than a backpackers for the four days in Cape Town (maybe could have spent my money better elsewhere but oh well, the AC was nice). When we got there, the girls and I went in search of food. We found a “Mexican” restaurant, and I use this term lightly cause they don’t exactly know Mexican food here. It was a cool atmosphere, but as usual, the food was disappointing. We have tried one other Mexican restaurant (or should I say the only other) in South Africa and found it quite interesting as well…
Anyways, after our bellies were full, we headed back to the hotel and to our beds. The next morning we headed toward the heart of town to the Green Market Square. Luckily our hotel was within walking distance of the main road, so it was pretty easy to get around. There were lots of the usual African crafts there and we did some damage, lots of souvenirs and gifts of plenty!
After hours at the market we had to get out! We had decided to hike “Lion’s Head” that afternoon and be at the top for the sunset, so we hit up the grocery store for our picnic supplies for that evening. We had heard that if you hike Lion’s Head on the night of a full moon, you can hike up during the day, watch the sunset, and then hike down by the light of the moon. So we had decided that, since we only missed the full moon by one or two days, we would hike it that Friday evening and do just that, surely it'd still be bright enough. We asked the people at the hotel how long it would take to get to the top, and while they didn’t know, they phoned the people at Table Mountain (which is right next to Lion’s Head) and they informed us it would be about 3 hours. We specifically asked if that was just to get to the top or round trip, and they ensured us that it was just to get to the top. Ready for a good long hike, and picnic packed, we took the hotel shuttle to Lion’s Head around 3:00 pm. When we got there we stood and gaped at where we would eventually make it to and began to head up. Right at the beginning though, there was a family that had just made it down. I asked the girl if she had made it alright and she said, “Oh yeah!” like it was nothin. We then asked her how long it had taken them (her parents were with her as well) and she said, “Oh just about 45 minutes to an hour”…great. So we were there at 3:15, ready to hike 3 hours to the top and be at the top for sunset at 6:30, not to worry, we had plenty of time. So we took our sweet time hiking up, stopping all of the time to hydrate and take lots of pictures, but it still only took us about 2 hours to make it to the peak and then we just had to sit… It was a really pretty view, so we ate our food and took yet more pictures, but a couple of the girls were getting quite antsy and even talked about heading back down before we’d seen the sunset! Crazy. But we stayed, along with probably 75 others who had hiked up that afternoon and enjoyed the sunset over the ocean, it was quite beautiful and of course I took hundreds of pictures. Have I mentioned how much I love the sunsets here?!?! I still need to figure out how to take pictures of the city lights at night time, though, cause it was such an awesome view from high up.
Then the plan was to hike down by the moonlight…right. We looked and looked and even by the time we finally made it down, there was no moon to be seen. I’m not really sure where it went that evening cause there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but it was not around. Luckily we found a group of some guys that were well prepared with multiple torches (flashlights) and were nice enough to escort us to the bottom. It probably would have been very interesting without the lights.
Since we made it back earlier than we had planned that evening (because it wasn’t actually 3 hours up) we decided to check out the night life in South Africa. We had a lot of fun but it was quite humorous. The first place we decided looked interesting, we marched up to the door and the bouncers all looked at us and smiled. One of them told me “not to be scared” and I assured him he need not worry. I guess he picked up the accent cause he said, “Oh, Americans, you all aren’t afraid of anything! You go have a good time”. Ha! So as soon as we walked in we could tell why he told us not to fear…we were the only white folks in the place! We got some looks but made some friends on the dance floor and had a good time.
Saturday we checked out the Aquarium and yet another market at the Victorian Wharf. The aquarium was fun and we got to watch them feed the penguins and the predator fish. There is a HUGE mall at the wharf, guaranteed you couldn’t make it through the whole place in one day. And there was also a little dock right outside of the aquarium where some Cape Fur Seals were hangin out. They were so cute and funny. There were some huge ones, whom I assume were the "parents", and they were just chillin and takin naps. Occasionally they would sit up and growl and grunt at the youngins and then just lay back down. The youngsters, though, were playing King of the Mountain on the dock and just barked and swam and fought the whole time we were there watching. The sad part was that some of them had plastic collar-looking things around their necks. I assumed that, because they were right next to the aquarium, these were tracking devices or something of that sort. But when we saw a bird with the little plastic piece, that is on the top of milk cartons, around its neck and beak we knew it wasn’t good. We told the people in the aquarium and she explained that they come everyday and cut those things off of the seals’ necks, and that she would immediately phone about the bird cause that was bad. You hear about these things all of the time, but to see it right in front of us was crazy. And the fact that they cut them off everyday, and there were four seals just that day sitting there with them around their neck, was mad. I mean how many of those things can there be if that many seals have them stuck on them every day? It was awful.
We also ate dinner in the wharf that night and enjoyed some great sushi.
Sunday, we were scheduled to take a tour of Robben Island. Because of the wind, though, our trip was canceled because they weren’t taking the boats out. We were all pretty bummed cause it was supposed to be neat. But instead, we trekked down to the bottom of the continent (not the very bottom but pretty close) and checked out Cape Point. We hiked to the lighthouses in the crazy wind and again…took lots of pictures. The old lighthouse was actually moved farther down the cliff and closer to the water, because when it was higher on the cliff, it obviously wasn’t visible enough because there were quite a few shipwrecks! The Lusitania was one of them. This place would have been fun to hike around for a day and there were multiple picnic places, but we weren’t there for that long.
Both Sunday and Monday we were going to do Table Mountain as well, but the wind screwed us on that too cause they closed the cable car. So instead we headed Monday morning down through some bay towns (that are still considered Cape Town I think) and to Simon’s Town to Boulders Beach to see the African Penguins!! The whole beach literally is covered in boulders and home to the African Penguins. They were so fun, just hangin out on the rocks and the beach. We saw a few lying on eggs and then some more “babies” but they were huge for babies! We wandered around checking them out and hanging out on the beach with them for much of the afternoon.
On the way back, we took the famous Chapman’s Drive. This road winds along the cliffs right on the ocean and is absolutely beautiful. Margot’s dad was a little unnerved by the drive though, so we didn’t get to stop at Chapman’s Point and take some awesome pictures but we took some along the way later. It was quite a view.
Well, after this it was through the winelands, along 62, and back to PE. So that will be in yet another installment of blogs. I am finishing up finalizing all of my classes at home and making sure everything is in so I can graduate, but I will get to it before I leave (I hope).

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Photos

Table Mountain
Never got to climb it, but this was a pretty nice view