Paint Bucket Beer!

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Hello All!

I know I'm jumping ahead and I don't have time to really go into detail, but you must know one thing and you must know it now.

Today we went into the townships (shantytowns/hoovervilles/etc.) around Capetown. Yes, it was part of an official tour, but this tour is not like the "I rode a bus past Dustin Hoffman's house!" kind of tour. This was more like seven of us following a local into the homes and lives of people who had to build their own shacks, illegally, on government land all because of the racism of the establishment. Anyway, we can go into that later. What's important is that Stacey, Devan, Daniel and myself sat down inside a smoke-filled shack made of corugated steel, cardboard and scrapwood. We huddled around a fire in a bucket and shared benches with the local !hosa speaking people (The ! in !hosa stands for that clicking noise). We passed around a paint bucket filled to the brim with frothy delicious (somewhat sour) homebrewed beer made of ground maize and stuff. It was an experience.

And now we are off to hunt for whales and drive (on the wrong side of the road) deep into the early-starting night (we're really far south).

Oh right, and by the way, we flew into Capetown. You know, so we're not in Germany anymore. I hope that was clear. I know I kinda skipped that step. Another wonderful eleven-flight. That is, an eleven-hour flight immediately following our two-hour flight from Berlin to Heathrow.

In Capetown, one of the first things we did was go up Table Mountain, a giant flat-topped mountain that sits basically in the midst of Capetown. You have to ride a huge, very speedy, gondola thingy to get up (or hike but who the Hell does that?). When you're riding the thing, it rotates on it's way up so everybody gets a view in all directions. The mountain itself is also pretty incredible simply because you're looking out over the sea in three directions and are surrounded by very undeveloped land, all smack in the middle of a city. It's kinda weird. We also went out to Robben Island (South African Alcatraz) which is now a historical monument due to it's role as a political prison during the apartheid era. The tour of the island was conducted by a man who was actually incarcerated there for 20 years. Not because he killed anyone, or robbed anything, or jaywalked, but because he thought that maybe it wasn't right that his Africanness made him a second-class citizen. Interesting.

Right, but as I said, we must be off to hunt for whales in the early-starting night.

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Photos

Shebeen Style
These two guys politely shared this bucket of beer with us.

Stacey on Table Mountain
Interestingly enough, yellow is the only color that occurs on Table Mountain.

Professional Style Photography
In case you can't make it out, this is us traveling into the early night in search of penguins. That's me on the wrong side of the car.

We laughed too....
But then we seriously almost ran over some penguins.

Comments

[Rich]

Right at Home
I bet Daniel felt right at home in the "flavelas"! Paint Can Beer! Now there's a future enterprise for the Paddock Trio!