TIA (This is Africa)

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South Africa is a place where you can go and do anything that you want to do. Are you thinking, okay, but I can do anything I want anywhere I am? Maybe, maybe not. What I mean is that in South Africa you can jump out of a plane, sightsee as a tourist, swim with sharks, shop in high-end designer stores, build a house in a township, cycle in the wine lands, go to a soccer game, listen to the obscure, but awesome click language, buy an Aston Martin (3rd largest market for AM), go to the opera, study an ancient African culture, visit a flea market, do the highest bungee jump in the word, hike a mountain (Table Mountain), play with penguins, dine on crocodile and ostrich, ride an ostrich or a horse if you want to be boring…should I continue? Oh wait, do a safari, pass some time in beautiful gardens, learn their history about apartheid, watch American sports, ponder art in an art museum, go white water rafting, walk to the southernmost tip of Africa, give back through Operation Hunger or the Amy Biehl Foundation, or you can even just spend a relaxing evening at the movies. Are you worn out yet? Honestly the list never ends; I am pretty sure there are about 50 more things that I could list right here, right now, but if I didn’t already lose you, you would be gone after that.
So what did I choose to do in South Africa? You will just have to stay tuned to find out. South Africa was overwhelming (as hopefully you experienced or are still experiencing after my first paragraph), even if I had 4 months, never mind 6 days, I probably would not have been able to do everything I wanted to do. We had our contact Gavin at Cape-Extreme all confused because one day it was shark diving, the next it was bungee jumping, then it was if we leave for shark diving at 4 a.m. can we then go kloofing in the afternoon and how are we going to fit in kayaking to see the penguins on day five if we are hiking Table Mountain? I mean the lists are honestly endless and unfortunately we learned that in 6 days you cannot do everything; you cannot even break the surface.
On a different note, it was also overwhelming because the night before we arrived in our logistical pre-port, our directors essentially scared the living daylights out of us by telling us it was in the top 5 countries, in some cases number one, for murder, rape, HIV/AIDS, theft and other forms of crime (now aren’t you guys glad I considered shark diving, either way I was in serious danger). On top of all that my little guidebook tells me that the top four things to avoid include roads (watch out for the minibuses that serve as public transport or random car accidents, more later), the sun (really, are you kidding me, the ozone is more depleted in the southern hemisphere), snakes (great, my favorite), and feeding baboons (what?? apparently it happens so much that the baboons are becoming aggressive). So, shocker, the morning of Cape Town rolls around and I have absolutely no desire to get off the ship.
Well as much as after reading that you may have wished I stayed on the boat, I got off. My first day in Cape Town I had an FDP called Wine Production and Management. It was really interesting and I got to drink a lot of wine. Actually that part of it I did not enjoy that much, but I did taste a lot of it out of respect. Mostly I just think that wine lands are beautiful and I have always thought I would like to live on a vineyard, at least ever since I saw the Parent Trap. On the way out to Stellenbosch and the winelands our bus broke down and we had to wait on the side of the highway for about 30 minutes, but it wasn’t too bad; we hung out and enjoyed the view of Table Mountain. First we went to Backsberg Estate Cellars and later we went to Nelson Creek Estate Winery. Once we got out into the vineyard area, I felt like I could have been in Northern California, Napa or Sonoma (for those of you who have been there you can picture it like that); the scenery is very comparable. There is not too much more for me to say about these visits, we just tasted wine, learned about sustainability in wine production and their marketing strategies.
That night Jeremy, John, Katie, and I decided to go out for a nicer dinner, or out to find something edible. The ship food is becoming more and more impossible to consume; pretty much every lunch and every dinner we have pasta, some potato, fish, unidentifiable meat, and butter-steamed vegetables. After six days of eating this twice a day I need a break. So we had dinner and then headed out to meet some people in a bar. I was bored after about an hour or two and we headed back to the ship.
The next day we had originally planned to go shark diving, but after our short time in Cape Town, we decided that we wanted to have more time to explore and hit some markets. I was so busy doing activities in Ghana (which I loved) that I did get a chance to really explore Accra so I decided that I did not want this for Cape Town too. We started out the next day by heading to Harrie’s Pancakes for breakfast because I always need to try some pancakes everywhere; it similar to ice cream and a necessary for my comparisons I would be making. Here I had a banana and cinnamon-sugar-filled pancake. I was expecting it to be a normal banana pancake, like I make at home, but when it came out, it was actually a pancake wrapped around the banana, sort of like a crepe. After that we walked along the beach, past the stadium that is being built for the World Cup 2010, to the Green Point Flea Market. This was an outdoor-tented market with an eclectic choice of African souvenirs that is only open on Sundays, so I am glad we had some time to visit the market. I got a fat wooden hippo, mainly because I started thinking that “everyone has a wooden giraffe in their house, but how many houses do you go into and see a wooden hippo sitting on the shelf?” and so I decided that mine would be the first.
Following our shopping adventure in the market, we headed down to the rugby stadium to catch a football match (I’m talking about a soccer for all you Americans; why are we the only country in the world that has a different football?). Rugby is really the bigger of the two sports in South Africa, but football is still huge. We had to go watch it in the rugby stadium, of course, because the football stadium is under construction for the World Cup. We walked around for a while trying to scalp some tickets. We had found that the tickets cost around R25, which is the equivalent of $3, so we were prepared to pay little more. However, luckily, we found a man selling tickets on the road for exactly R25. We also noticed that our tickets said “grandstand” on them along with the word “complementary,” which we thought was pretty interesting. I guess a lot of people can get grandstand seats for free. Knowing now that our tickets were normally free and that the general admission tickets were about R25 we figured that we would be about four miles up and the players would look like little specks of dirt blowing in the wind, but we were nicely surprised to find out that this was not the case. Our complementary grandstand tickets led us to the shady side of the field (which most know ups the price of a ticket), about 8-10 rows back on the half line. We couldn’t believe we paid about $3 for the best seats any of us had ever had a professional sporting event. We were invited to sit with a crazy group of Johannesburg fans so we pretended to be for Jo’burg, as the locals call it. Actually on the other side of me, there were two girls who went to the University of Cape Town (absolutely beautiful university) that I talked to a bit; one was from South Africa and the other was from Botswana. Also one of the girl’s cousins played for the Cape Town Ajax, so really I just rooted for that fact that I was at a soccer game in South Africa. The energy was fantastic; I love how people in other countries have such an appreciation and love for the game. A lot of people think that soccer is catching on in the United States, but no matter what happens I do not think that it will ever reach the levels that it is in Europe, Africa, South America, and just about everywhere else in the world aside from the U.S.
Leaving the game was pandemonium; when we got to the game there were a lot of people, but the stadium was not by any means full. However, by the end of the game the stadium was filled to the brim and when the game was over all of these people trickled out into the streets at the same time. We walked down the street a ways to try to find a taxi and all of a sudden I heard this really loud smashing, banging sound and to be honest my first instinct was to run away fast because after everything I had heard about Cape Town (in pre-port) I was sure it was some sort of gang running down the street shooting people. This all happened in about 2 seconds and it probably only took me 5 more seconds to figure out that it was just a woman who had run over a curb and lost the bottom of her car, so pieces were rolling down the street as she was skidding to a stop. I think it is amazing that before coming on this trip, I did not have any fears of Cape Town, I mean I know that in any place we go we need to be aware and careful, etc., but I wasn’t all that worried about Cape Town specifically, but after one meeting on the boat I was scared out of my mind. I don’t know if I was rationally scared out of my mind or not (I mean I guess the statistics speak for themselves), but I cant believe that my first thought was that there was a gang running down the street killing people. I think that Cape Town and South Africa as a whole has faced a rough past (without question), but I think they are doing their very best to clean up their act and I think that we need not be scared, especially with the World Cup right around the corner. If any thing major goes wrong in South Africa before the games next summer, they could easily move the games right back to Germany and that would very quickly ruin the reputation that South Africa has been working hard to build up. This does not mean I recommend walking around at night alone or anything, but I do not think that everything you hear about S.A. should deter you in any way from going there. As I said before there is so much diversity and just so much to do and see, you can’t miss it.
Anyways so we finally found a taxi and made it safely back to the V&A waterfront area. The V&A is where the ship was docked and it consisted of a mall and many free standing upscale shops and restaurants. This is where I spent the next day; I felt like I needed one day to wander around and have some alone time since we are constantly surrounded by people on this trip. It is impossible to find a quiet space that is just yours on the ship and in most of the ports you have to be with at least one, generally a lot more than one person, so I took the day to have some me time. I am a person who according to the Myers-Briggs personality test, is exactly in the middle of the extrovert and introvert scale, which means that I like being around people and having a social life, but I also very much value my “me” time. I did a little shopping, had lunch, and finally talked to my parents for the first time since I have been on this trip!
The next day we decided to hike Table Mountain. I had started feeling sick a couple days before this and of course woke up this morning feeling miserably stuffed up and the last thing I wanted to do was climb a mountain. I pushed through it and decided that I needed to hike Table Mountain if it was the only thing I did in Cape Town. Actually once we got going I felt a lot better; it took me back to the endless sick weekends I spent playing soccer. It was a beautiful trail and hike and it turned out to be extremely interesting because when you got about halfway up the mountain it started getting very eerie and foggy. I trucked up the mountain and kept getting held up by the rest of my group. I spent most of the hike just doing the “hoo-di-hoo” call to be sure that they were still behind me because even though most of the time they were only 50 yards behind me, I couldn’t see them through the misty fog. You will have to see some pictures to really understand the fog. Also as we approached the top it got colder and colder and I just wanted to keep hiking because if I stopped I got too cold, but when they stopped behind me, I had to stop so that I didn’t get to far away from them. A lot of the time I had to huddle behind some rocks to try to stay warm while they drank some water. When we finally reached the summit we were soooooooo confused because you could not see 5 feet in front or behind you and we didn’t know where we were. While we were standing there trying to figure out where to go a Korean man appeared out of the abyss. Katie asked him if he knew where we should go and he told us “he came from the end of the world.” He later clarified that he meant South Korea, but he didn’t know where to go or where we were either. We finally picked a direction and started walking; we finally reached a paved sidewalk and we figured we were headed in the right direction. A few minutes later we ran into another SAS group that was hiking as well. We ran around on the top of the mountain for a while, took some pictures, and quickly learned that the cable car, restaurant, and gift shop were closed due to poor weather conditions. At the top of the mountain it was probably 40 degrees Fahrenheit and after a while I couldn’t feel my hands and I had to run everywhere to stay warm in my rain jacket, tank top, and shorts (keep in mind that it was probably 75 degrees at the base of the mountain). After all that we descended the mountain fairly rapidly with our Korean man in tow (he actually made friends with Jeremy and John and has since emailed them to open contact). After we got back to the V&A all I could do was take a very long, hot shower to defrost. Later that night I enjoyed a nice dinner with Mackenzie (my roommate) and Katie.
The next day I was supposed to head out to Simon’s Town and Boulder’s Beach to see the penguins and to the Cape of Good Hope, the southernmost tip of Africa, but I woke up feeling worse than the day before (probably due to the fact that 1) I climbed a mountain, 2) it was freezing atop this mountain). I made the executive decision that I would sleep all day so that I would feel better the next and be able to enjoy my final day in Cape Town. Which just like magic, worked! My final day I took the train out to Simon’s Town and went to see the penguins at Boulder’s Beach. They were very cute! They are not like the penguins that live in the Arctic or Chile, but a much smaller variety, similar to the ones you will find in the Central Park Zoo, except that these are in their natural habitat. After we saw the penguins, we went back and did some final souvenir and grocery shopping before we had to get back on the ship again.
Overall I very much enjoyed Cape Town. There are a lot of parts that I felt like were similar to the United States and their culture did not shock me all that much; I did eat some crocodile and ostrich while I was there, which we don’t do in the U.S., but much of Cape Town is comfortably developed. I did not get a very in-depth view of South Africa so I do not think that I have a right to say too much about it, but there is so very much to do, that I will definitely be going back. I would have liked to get a closer view of the townships, visited Robben Island, done some extreme sports, and gone to the Southernmost tip of Africa, but it just didn’t happen for me this time around. For everyone who is considering going to the World Cup, but is unsure in any way, I say go. I am sure that it will be the time of your life. Mix in a safari, some shark diving, a township visit and much more and you will not be bored for a second. I will wait for the day where I can truly give you an in depth look at South Africa, but for now this will have to suffice.
I am actually on my way to India right now and we just finished up our time in Mauritius. I will write a short blog on my time in Mauritius, but I will forewarn you that most of my time there was spend playing in the ocean and relaxing on the beach, preparing myself for the upcoming India, Vietnam, China, and Japan which will hit us like a piano falling from the sky. Each one has about 3 days before the next. So it will be a little boom, boom, boom. On a different note today we had Sea Olympics and we came in 6th place out of 9 teams, which is a little disappointing, but it was tons of fun. As I believe I told you all before, we are split into 8 teams on the boat (plus the Lifelong Learners and Faculty) by where we live. We competed today in a variety of games that lasted the entire game. We had a relay race, reverse scavenger hunt (which I ran), Don’t Forget the Lyrics, eating contest, dodge ball, volleyball, crab soccer (which I played, we had to play soccer in crab position; it was hard) and much more. Either way it was a gorgeous day and I got to run around and play all day, which was so nice. It may not seem like it, but we do work very hard and very much deserve our break in port and our days off on the ship. This would be why I have not gotten this blog to you sooner, I had about 40 group projects in the past 2 weeks, now it is finally slowing down for a while, especially with the craziness of the next 4 ports.
Also this is just a final thought/note, last night I attended a seminar on human trafficking put on by a group of students and staff on the ship and I was shocked by what I learned. I urge you to take some time and research this issue; all it takes is a quick google. I wasn’t aware of just how prevalent this issue is and how often it occurs, especially in our own backyards in the United States. So if you have some time, look into it! Anyways until Mauritius. Hasta luego!

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