October 3 2010 / Cape Town, South Africa

Lorelei gave me a call at 5:30 in the morning, as I wanted to watch the sun rise with her.  However, as I was completely exhausted, I sort of stumbled to the phone, warbled out “The boat isn’t moving,” which was true—we’d come into port far earlier than expected, and then did my best to try to go back to sleep.  This, however, was impossible, as around 7:00 the voice of God on the intercom started calling up seas to be checked in, as the immigration officials had to give us our visas one by one.  I think she forgot the Aegean Sea, because she called one of the seas twice and then was sort of like “IF YOU’RE NOT UP HERE THEN GET UP HERE.”  So I went up to Glazer Lounge where the immigration officials were sitting around, and they put the South African visa info my passport.  :)  I am going to LOVE looking through my passport by the time I get back.

After that, Lorelei and I went up to get breakfast and sit outside so we could see Cape Town.  CAPE TOWN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PLACE EVER.  The Victoria and Alfred wharf is incredibly beautiful, with Dutch glass buildings around—a gigantic mall and a shopping center is literally a minute’s walk from the ship.  Out stretching behind it are beautiful houses and businesses, and close by, Table Mountain, Lion’s Head, Devil’s Peak and Signal Hill create a fence around us to the sea.  Cape Town is definitely where all the rich people live.  The weather is perfectly Californian, with a light breeze and nice heat, no humidity.  Everything is green and lush as well.  It is an incredible view.  Around 8:30 was the Diplomatic Briefing, but I heard that you could get it in the cabins on the TV, so I decided to go back and “rest my eyes” with it on.  Yeah, after the first lady went up, I completely fell asleep and don’t remember anything of what the second guy said, though Ellie told me  later—women shouldn’t go to bathrooms alone, because they could be attacked; don’t use your cell phone in public, because you could get bashed over the head; there’s no pick pocketing here because there’s so much violent crime.   I’m glad she told me those things, but I’m kind of glad I was asleep—talk about scaring people half to death.

The Poets and Authors FDP was around 10, when I woke up, but I decided that the city was just calling out to me—it just looked so beautiful, the sun and weather were perfect, so I had to go out and explore—I didn’t want to be on the boat any longer.  So I met up with Julie and Lorelei, who were going to go and explore the Greenmarket Square, which is apparently a flea market where you can haggle for things.  We walked into the mall so that we could get some money, and I was momentarily stunned by how very American it was—nice glass walls, spacey and clean.  The only real difference is that there were guards EVERYWHERE, as there are in all touristy areas of Cape Town.   The entire V&A Wharf is very much like Pier 39 or something in San Francisco—very touristy and clean, definitely a change after all of the working ports we’ve visited lately.  We went and got some rand out of the ATM and then headed out again.  A nice guard told us the market had been moved, as it was Sunday, so he gave us directions and soon we were off again, travelling to where I think was north-east in the city.  There are tons of roundabouts here, and the cars drive on the left, so we had to be extra vigilant.  There were lots of “ABORTION KILLS BABIES” signholders and truck-billboards around on that day, which was kind of strange—seemed like it was a specific event day. 

Anyway, we walked a little up a hill and then turned on Main Street, walking alongside the road.  After a while we passed the Football Stadium that had been built for the FIFA World Cup, which was awesome to see—weirdly enough there was a McDonald’s next to it that was strangely classy, and we assume had to have been built just for the tourists coming in for the cup.  There were large vacant lots around where I assume tents must have been set up for all the events going on.  We walked farther down main street until we could see ocean in the distance, and then to the left of us we finally saw tents and colorful fabrics to the right of us.  It was a small Farmer’s Market, but it was pretty cool—there were wire sculptures that were beaded animals, metal scraps sculpted together into animals, teeshirts, African masks, and all sorts of things like that.  I found a couple of cool gifts for mom (no telling, but it’s a set and is pretty cool—did a little bit of bartering and it’s pretty exciting), as well as this really neat wood carving of Africa that had the Big Five carved into it (rhinoceros, water buffalo, giraffe, elephant, and lion)—the man had carved it himself and it was really neat.  I also bought a little rhino charm bracelet.  :) 

After a while we walked back, because it was getting to be around lunch time and we had to meet up with the people we were going to Table Mountain with (we had decided not to go to Boulder Beach today).  We (Caroline, Brian, Lorelei, Julie and I) ordered a “riki” (a largish cab that is a lot cheaper than a regular cab) and went up to the mountain.  When we got to the bottom part of it, we started watching the “tablecloth” roll over the table—a thick blanket of fast moving fog.  Our driver immediately told us that there was no way that we could climb the mountain safety because the wind would be outrageous and there would be no visability, and that we really shouldn’t go, especially since the cable cars, which were the things that could take you up and down the mountain, would be not running.  We decided it was probably best to take a local’s advice, so we decided to go to Lion’s Head instead, which was the slightly smaller friend of Table Mountain that looked as clear as could be. 

The hike was absolutely incredible.  At first it was a slow incline on a wide dirt path that snaked around the mountain.  The entire city of Cape Town was stretched out below us, and we could even see our harbor, our ship, and the FIFA stadium.  The fog was rolling over Table Mountain beside us extremely quickly, which was incredible—it reminded me so much of San Francisco fog.  The weather here is just very Californian.  All around us the ocean was stretched out, and on the other side of the mountain we could see Camps Bay—in the distance I could see Robben Island, which I was like whaaa I want to go there… I can’t believe my trip fell through.  :|  But anyway there were lots of pretty purple flowers around, as well as monstrous African bees, which were a little terrifying.  The hike was about two and a half hours long, and the best part was near the very end, where you had to vertically climb up along chains and metal handlebars that were embedded into the stone.  It was very hardcore and adventurous.  I absolutely loved it.  :)  At the very top we could see completely 360 degrees all around us—the stadium, the Harbor, Cape Town, Table Mountain, Camps Bay, everything just stretched out below and around us.  It was incredibly epic.  We sat down on the stones up there and just talked for a while before heading back down 45 minutes or so later, because we wanted to be down before the sun set.  On the way down, Caroline decided she wanted to do “bouldering” for a while (hardcore rock climbing) so I just sat on a rock and stared out at the mountains for a while.  After a while a South African guy came by and we talked for a little while about Cape Town and how it is similar to California.  “Cape Town is the base chakra of the world!” he said at one point, which was awesome.  Everyone here is so kind.  I’m really glad that I’ve been doing so many active things while I’ve been exploring here.  I feel as though it’s been a truly great experience. 

At the bottom of the mountain, we caught a random cab.  We wanted to go to the pizza place we’d hear of from pre-port, but the diver didn’t know it, so we ended up going to this random chain restaurant, which was just kind of okay, though it was reasonably cheap.  I got a pineapple onion chicken bbq pizza, as one does in that kind of situation.  After we munched, we began the long walk back to port through Main Street, which was interesting as we didn’t really know how far it was to the ship, we only had a map that told us that we would get there… eventually. 

We almost went along a freeway at one point, and then we decided that we should probably just stay on the road.  Two beggars accosted us at different times for money, which I felt bad about because it was really clear that he didn’t have anything and his jeans were all torn up… you just can’t help but feel helpless in those situations.  Brian had some chocolate so he gave some of that to him.  We got a little lost every once in a while, and because we had been hiking all day we were just generally exhausted.  We were just trying to get back as fast as possible though.  In retrospect, though there were enough of us to be formidable, we probably shouldn’t have been walking around in that area that late at night.  But all the people who were going by and shouting at us from mini-buses were really sketchy, and there were no taxis.  =/ 

Finally we got back to the V&A waterfront, where Michell’s Pub (a Scottish pub!) was waiting for us, especially Brian and I, who had been talking about thoroughly needing a beer after that wake to relax our stressed leg muscles.  We sat down outside and got Pilsner Urquell, which is a Czech beer that Brian likes.  Sitting outside was pretty fun—people would come by that we knew, like Dasha, Steven & Hans, and Aaron.  There was a gigantic black and grey bear of a dog going around, who was an endearment of everyone sitting nearby him.  It was nice just talking about the day.  After a while Alex came by and sat with us, and while Lorelei decided she wanted to go back to the ship to sleep before her safari.  At some point we went upstairs (at this point it was just Alex, Julie, and I) and decided to get something people were calling a “fishbowl,” which was a big bowl filled with blue liquid and ice inside.  It was really good—apparently it was just lots of different kinds of alcohol mixed together, and the blue part was blue raspberry sours or something like that. 

A brief story for you:

“There should be alcohol fish in this fishbowl,” said Julie.
“Indeed!  And they should be cold, so ice cubes would not be needed.  Wait!  What about when we finish drinking the alcohol?” said I.
“Well, of course we’d have to order more!”
<3 She’s lovely. 

There was loud music playing while we were upstairs, and a couple of SASers were making asses out of themselves by dancing on chairs, so I kind of wanted to go outside for more conversation, but no one else wanted to go.  So I just kind of danced with Julie (in a reasonable and not obnoxious way) and sipped at the fishbowl.  It was definitely fun, though I decided to head back with Julie around midnight so that we could wake up early tomorrow.  We decided that we wanted to go to Boulder Beach, then maybe the Malay District and lunch, and figure things out from there. 

Sorry if this entry is a little fractured… doing so many things in such a short amount of time leaves blog entries a little disjointed!  I really can’t even do Cape Town justice with this blog—it’s just so beautiful it needs pictures to accompany it!