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Published: April 8th 2008
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We arrived in Cape Town, our final destination, on Monday night. We stayed for five nights at Carnival Court Backpackers. It’s located on Long Street, which is one of Cape Town’s major nightlife areas. The hostel had a bar that was also open to locals and our room was right next to it, so it was pretty loud til 4 or 5am every night. It was good for meeting interesting people though. Like Brett, a marine from Texas who spent time in a military prison. Or Benji, a South African who repeated the phrase “you strike the woman you strike the stone” over and over because that apparently explains how much respect he has for women. While it was a cool place, it wasn’t in the greatest condition. The doorknob to our room kept falling off, and Jess and I managed to get ourselves locked inside the room two times in the course of an hour one night. The first time we were able to call someone to open the door from the outside; the second time we MacGyvered our way out with a screw and some nail clippers.
Climbing Table Mountain was the number one thing I wanted to
do in Cape Town, so I was stoked that the weather was nice enough for us to do it on our first day there. We took the route up through Platteklip Gorge - the “easy” route. We made frequent stops on the way up; it was really hot out and places with shade were hard to find. Took us about 2.5 hours to get to the top. Thankfully there was a restaurant up there, so we were able to get more water (and some ice cream haha). The view of the city was great, and I know my pictures won’t really give you an idea of how much we could see in every direction. We had to get to the pharmacy before it closed so in an effort to save time, we decided to take the cable car back down to the bottom rather than hike it.
Why did we have to go to the pharmacy? Well the next day Jess and I were going shark cage diving and given my previous boating performance, I thought it would be a good idea to buy some motion sickness pills. I was very apprehensive about the whole thing (because of the
sea sickness, I wasn’t even scared of the sharks haha), but figured I would always regret it if I didn’t at least try.
The boat was pretty big, and there were probably about 30 other people on it with us. We rode out to what is known as “shark alley” -the densest population of great white sharks in the world. Jess watched me carefully on the ride, checking to make sure I wasn’t turning green. I told her I was ok, and was really excited as we passed another shark diving boat and saw shark fins sticking up out of the water right next to it. We got to our diving site, anchored, and discovered that an anchored boat rocks back and forth a lot more than a moving one. So I threw up overboard. It was lovely. I saw at least 10 other people on the boat get sick too, but I was first haha. On one side of the boat was the diving cage and the bait line out into the water, and the other side was a row of us holding our heads in our hands the entire three hours. At least I wasn’t alone haha.
Shark cage diving!
Just kidding, took this at the aquarium haha Remember how I only took 10 pictures on the Seal Island trip in Mossel Bay? Two on this one. Two. Enormous, terrifying sharks all around me and I was too nauseous to hold my camera up. I am beyond bummed about all those missed shots. I did get to see a ton of sharks up close though, so at least I have mental images. Only five people got to be in the water when there was a shark around, so even if I wasn’t sick I wouldn’t have really gotten to do it anyways. I would definitely try it again if I knew I had pills that would actually work.
The following day Leslie, Jess, and I checked out the Two Oceans Aquarium down at the waterfront. We got there right at feeding time which was pretty cool. We also waited in line with a bunch of little kids to get inside the clownfish exhibit haha. The aquarium had this big campaign to try to change people’s views about sharks, because shark attacks are actually pretty rare and very few people die from them. They had this commercial running, and it showed a bunch of people at the beach,
screaming and running out of the water - a typical shark attack scene. But then it cut to the ocean where there was a kite floating in the water. “Last year 358 people were killed by kites. 4 people by sharks. Rethink the shark.” Pretty clever, and made me wonder how exactly people die from kites. So I googled it, and apparently a lot of people actually die at big kite festivals from falling off roofs chasing their kites, getting cut by sharpened strings, or electrocution. Go figure.
On Friday we signed up for the Baz Bus Cape Peninsula Tour, where we were joined by our friend Tarrah, a Canadian studying at Rhodes also. I was pretty stoked for this; we were going to get to see the penguins, ride bikes on the peninsula, and get out to Cape Point and Cape of Good Hope. My heart sank when our guide told us that the first stop we would be making was Hout Bay - where we would be doing a boat trip out to Seal Island (there are lots of seal islands, so this was different than the Mossel Bay one). But ughhhhhhh, why? I’d gotten my fill
of boats for this trip thank you very much. I sucked it up though, not wanting to sit by myself on the dock while everyone else did it. And even without having any motion sickness pills, I was ok! I think the size of the boat definitely helped, and that the water was pretty calm. Next stop was Simonstown, where we got to see the penguin colony. People usually picture penguins living in snowy areas but these ones live it up on the beaches of South Africa. They were really cute and I wish we could have spent more time there but we had to get on with the tour.
The drive along the peninsula was gorgeous, like every other part of the coast here haha. We saw a lot of baboons on the side of the road, and wild ostriches too which I was excited about. And it was great to get out and bike for awhile. It was a really windy day though (as you can see by my hair in a lot of the pictures haha) so it was a little scary, but luckily I wasn’t blown into oncoming traffic. Got to climb up to Cape
Point and Cape of Good Hope (they’re basically just pretty, rocky cliffs), which was sweet.
Also got to check out the Cape Town International Jazz Festival, a couple different museums, restaurants, botanical gardens, and shopping areas during our time in the city. By the last day we were all exhausted and ready to go back to Rhodes. We rode the City to City bus back home - a brutal 15 hour drive. South Africans apparently don’t mind stuffy/hot/smelly buses because no one would open a window the entire way. We also watched gospel videos for a good portion of the ride, and the people around me were clapping and singing along haha.
My trip was amazing, but I’m happy to be back at school. Also happy to finally be done blogging about it haha. Tomorrow I’ll hopefully have time to write about my trip this past weekend to Storms River, then I’ll be all caught up!
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Renee
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i love penguins!! so cool