Quick Adventure Catch Up

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April 3rd 2009

Published: April 3rd 2009

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Life Through A New Lens

From Rhodes Memorial

The view of the City from Rhodes Memorial

Well, as I promised, it is time to get everyone up to speed about what I’ve been up to. This may be condense and to the point though, because it’s already kind of late and we’re leaving tomorrow morning at 6:15 am for Kruger National Park!!!!!!!!

Well the week of March 23 was slightly uneventful, but it was good. Monday I finally met this guy named Sean for lunch. He has applied to William Jewell, and so we have been trying to get together for a while. That was good to finally get connected with him, and hopefully we’ll get together sometime after break. Then in the afternoon we had a pizza party with IES to talk about our home stays. Tuesday and Wednesday were not real eventful per say. Tuesday I had my chicken go missing from the freezer and Wednesday I had my first UCT exam, but it wasn’t hard at all. I already got it back.

Thursday, March 26 was a little more eventful. In the evening, UCT hosted a pre-election debate in preparation for the election. Susy, Lull and I decided to go to see what all the parties had to say. At the debate,

She's Living on the Edge

Susy likes to stand close to the edge of things and freak Caroline out.

there were representatives from COPE, ANC, ID, and DA. It was interesting, but as with most debates, after about an hour we were all done. I knew it was time to go when we all had our phones out and were sending sms’s (text messages) to other people, so we skipped out early. After the debate we headed to Café Sofia for the jam session, but since we were pretty early we decided to stop and get ice cream on the way. I may have steers ice-cream withdrawal when I go home. A plain cone is only R3.95, and it is WONDERFUL. It isn’t a sonic strawberry cream slush, but it’s great. At café Sofia we just chilled and I had some chai tea. Morgan met us there, and Lance had told me he would be there too, but he backed out because he was tired.

Friday morning I woke up to discover my towels that were out on the line from the day before were missing. That was fun to take a shower with nothing but a small hand towel to dry off with, but you gotta do what you gotta do sometimes. I have since been trying

Rhodes Memorial

Looking out over the memorial and the city.

to solve this mystery of how my towels went missing from the clothesline in the back yard, but so far I have not been successful. After classes I headed over to Alma and Susy and I hung out, made supper, baked a pie, and then hung out some more. She then ended up leaving with a friend and I stayed in Alma and did homework. Well, I wasn’t there for too long before some of my other friends who were at an event with the wine and culture club came home. They informed me that I could NOT do homework at 10oclock on a Friday night, and so I walked in the rain with Ben, Caroline, Lull and Ryan to Stardust. There we just hung out and they had a couple drinks while I worked on this huge water that Ben got me. He was concerned that I wouldn’t have anything to drink. Then Ryan walked me home while the other three stopped at the Pig and Swizzle to check on the NCAA tournament.

Saturday, March 28 was the highlight of my week. I got up early and Ben, Susy, Caroline and I packed up our backpacks and headed

Waiting

El Capitan waiting patiently (almost patiently) for us to finish goofing off.

up to upper campus. The ultimate goal of the day was to take on Devil’s Peak and then end our day at the beach. Well, on the way up our first stop was at the Rhode’s Memorial where there is a beautiful view of our part of the city. It is just a little above upper campus, and there is a path leading right to it. (Remember the fire started at Rhode’s Memorial?) Well to make a long story short, after Caroline and I tried to run up this mountain after Susy and Ben, we finally made it to the top. We made lots of stops along the way, and there were plenty of times when I got really light headed, but we made it. We kind of just followed trails and between Ben and Susy we had an adventure and made it to the top. It was pretty easy to see the trails because the mountain was burnt so they were all exposed. The top was so high up that you could see all of Cape Town and it was cold enough that we could see our breaths. Of course, Caroline and I were lagging behind, so Ben and

Better watch your step.

It's kind of hard to see since everything is burnt, but a few inches in front of my foot is a straight drop off.

Susy probably beat us by 10 minutes. This was the first time Caroline had ever hiked a mountain, and it was only my second. At the top we had lunch and just sat and talked. It was really great.

Of course, once you go up a mountain, you have to go down, so we headed down the other side to go to the beach. After almost being lead off of a scary drop off when we lost the trail, we finally found it again and safely reached the bottom. We came to a random road that leads up to the cable cars for Table Mountain, so we decided we would just walk to the cable car station to catch a cab from there instead of calling a cab and trying to explain to them where we were to come and pick us up. Cabs are always hanging out at the cable car station, so we figured it would be easy. Well, we didn’t get very far down the road when a guy and his friends who had been hanging out at the pull off where we came down from the mountain drove up and asked if he could bring

The Lion King

The return of Simba to the burnt Pride Land.

us anywhere, so we hitched a ride to the cable car station. We thought it was only a couple miles away, max, but it turns out it was much further. Well, as we were approaching the cable car station and thanking Frank for saving us, he asked us where our final destination was, and when he told him Clifton Beach, he offered to take us the whole way there because he lives down in that direction. Well, as we headed to the beach and we got to talking, he decided he and his friends could just come to the beach with us. Well, instead of going to Clifton, he brought us to this small private beach called Cosy Bay. It was just a ways down from Clifton, but it was surrounded by rocks, so there were no waves. There we just sat on the rocks and chilled for a while. It was fun, and it was so nice of him to offer to drive us around like that and hang out with us.

When we were done at the beach we had him drop us off at Camps Bay, and we went to Kauai for supper. There Ben and

Susy Q

Yeah, she's pretty happy to be running up a mountain right now.

I ordered two wraps and split them half and half because neither one of us could decide which one we wanted. After supper we sat on the beach and watched the sunset. It was getting somewhat chilly at this point, but it was gorgeous. Then we grabbed a cab and came home. We were all pretty tired at this point so we headed to our respective homes for showers, and the Ben and Susy came back over. We then walked down to Rondebosch and got hot chocolate at Coco Wawa. It was the perfect ending to a wonderful day.

Sunday, March 29 was my big homework day since I barely did any Friday and did none on Saturday. I got up early to do work, and then in the evening I went to church with Rachel and her family. Rachel is from Cape Town, and I met her on the wakeboard trip. She is really cool. Her mom came and picked me up at home, and then afterwards Rachel drove me home. It was more like church in the states, and I really enjoyed it. The pastor gave a sermon about the last part of the Lord’s Prayer, and

Keeping Moving

Some of the paths are burnt up, so we're following El Capitan.

it was one of those sermons that really make you think. I LOVE those. Then it was back to work.

This past week has been the end of the term (seven weeks) so it was lots of work followed by some play. Monday I had my history final, Tuesday I had an IES health midterm, and Wednesday I had to hand in my final paper for history. Now my history class is done, and I’m SUPER excited. I really didn’t like that class, and it’s great to have one less class to think about. That leaves more time for play.

Wednesday evening a bunch of us went to the Green Market Square for the Cape Town Jazz Festival kick off concert. It was a free concert, and it was crazy busy. The first group we saw was a guy who was a rapper, but his band was pretty jazzy. The second group was a big band group of old men. They were kind of like the Temptations and they had coordinated dances and things with their songs and sung in 5 parts. At the end of the concert, I was pretty tired, so I headed home with Phil

The Guides

Between the two of them, we always find our way.

and Bubba while many of the other people went out. It was a lot of fun though.

Thursday after class Susy and I had lunch and then we went to the beach. We decided to go to Muizenberg because it is closer, but the wind was so terrible that we couldn’t really lay out much, and it was too cold to swim, so we decided to walk along the beach. We walked along, picked up shells, talked and watched the kite surfers. It was a lot of fun. Along the beach we found a seal that we at first thought was dead but realized that it was breathing. We didn’t know what to do, so we asked a couple walking by if we could tell anyone. They told us that Seal Island is off the coast of Muizenberg, and people go out there and club and skin the seals. Sometimes a seal that gets clubbed will get away and they end up getting washed up on the beach because they just get tired, and you can’t really call anyone because the most they would do was kill it, so we left it alone. On the way back there was

Sugar Break

Caroline isn't happy that I took this picture, or that she's close to a drop, because she' afraid of heights.

a guy standing by the seal. When we got up to him he had his boot under its head so that it didn’t have to lay with its head in the water since the tide was coming in. He told us that the seals come from Seal Island, and they get washed up on shore. Then the currents are so strong that they can’t get back past the breaking waves and they get washed up onto shore until they can regain the energy to give it another go. He helped us to call Coastal Management but they didn’t answer because it was past business hours. Since we couldn’t do much else, he was going to go home and call a rescue service since he lived nearby. He said that it happens quite frequently that the seals wander to the beach and sometimes they will come around with a boat, pick up all the seals on the beach and bring them back to Seal Island. I hope that poor seal was OK.

To come back home, Susy and I saw the train coming while we were coming off the beach, so we had to run to catch it. We had

Two Worlds Collide

You can see where the fire stopped.

to get to the station, run under the road, go down the sidewalk a bit, go through the station, and run onto this train, because the next one wouldn’t come for another half an hour, and we were hungry. After a quick sprint and Susy almost pushing me down the cement stairs, we flew onto the train huffing and puffing and laughing and getting some really funny looks from the other passengers. We then got off the train a little early in Rondebosch and went to Coco Wawa for supper because we were running out of food since we are going to Kruger soon.

Today I had class, and then after class I went sea kayaking with Jo, Mel, Colon, Susy, Alex and Phil. We went on a 2 hour session, and it was a beautiful and perfect day for it. I ended up with the guide Tracy, and she and I were leading the pack. We didn’t see anything major, but I almost killed a jellyfish with my paddle, we saw lots of birds, kelp, plankton and a penguin. We didn’t see any whales or dolphins, but it was still a lot of fun. The only not fun

Here we go.

Our final destination is up and to the left, and we're getting ready to take on some rocks.

part was that I got sea sick and ended up chumming over the side of the kayak twice on the way back. I don’t like that feeling, but it happens I guess. Tracy was really impressed with me though, because as soon as I was done puking I would take a drink of water and then pick up my paddle again and continue paddling. She said that she has been with big men who have gotten sea sick and then end up just sitting there because they don’t have the energy to go on. So, even though I was sick, it was a lot of fun, and I’m glad that I did it. Since then I’ve just been hanging out at home and packing. It was a wonderful day.

Now, it’s time for bed, because I have a huge adventure ahead of me. I am not going to put pictures up right now because it takes a while, but I will take care of that after I get back. Keep posted to hear about my Kruger and Soweto adventures. I’m really excited about this trip and looking forward to not thinking about school for a few days. Check in