Cape Town!

I'm doing anything to avoid reading right now! I went through all 400+ of my pictures from Cape Town and sorted them, I even got them ready to upload to Flikr if I ever find the time to get to an internet cafe in port. We're in rough seas, last night was awful. Right after we pulled out of port they made an announcement to secure all items in your cabin, so we immediately took sea sickness medicine and secured things. About 15 minutes later the boat was rocking and things were flying, doors were slamming. It was awful! Things fell all night, but this morning was a little more calm. Calm enough that I can walk around without getting sick.

Cape Town was amazing, I want to come back ASAP! I love it there. The first 4 days I spent in Cape Town, and the last 3 I spent further north at the Pilanesburg Game Reserve on a safari. The very first day in Cape Town, the first thing we did was head to the mall which was only 5 minutes from port. We found a Gloria Jean's and had coffee, exchanged money, etc. We spent most of the morning just walking around the mall and then I got a ticket for city orientation, because most of the people I've been hanging out with were already going. I'm really glad I went. We went to the Castle of Good Hope, to the city gardens, had tea, and then went to a museum. It was really informative, I really like the city orientations because you get a good overview of the city and the layout outside of port. After city orientation four of us went to a restaurant/bar near the boat, Quay Four- which is where we ended up spending most nights if we went out. We met an Australian couple and a British couple- they loved us and were so jealous of our trip.

The next day I had breakfast with Esther and Allison, and then we walked around the port some more outside of the mall. After that I had another FDP visiting the District Six museum and a township. The history of District Six is interesting, but the museum itself wasn't that interesting. The first stop in the township was at a community center where the kids danced, sang, and played music for us- then we went further into a real township and saw a hostel where 16 families live. They only have one kitchen (with no modern appliances that I saw), one toilet, and one tap for all of them. There are several families in each bedroom, and it's really overcrowded. They're happy though, I don't think shelter is their main priority like it is in the US, although there were over 40 people in this little house, some of the younger kids had cell phones and they were all dressed really nicely. After the hostel we just stood on the street and all of these kids came out from no where- you couldn't ignore them because they were literally climbing on us. They'd grab your hand and pull you down to their level, they wanted their pictures taken so they could see them on the screens of the cameras. While I was crouching down to show one girl her picture- another kid jumped on my back, and then he followed me all the way back to the bus (about a 15 minute walk). I have no idea where there parents were or how big their "neighborhood" was but I thought it was really weird that they just followed us all the way out there. We drove through a few of the shanty towns and saw Amy Beihl's memorial etc. By the end of it I was exhausted!

But the next morning there was an early wake up call because we had planned to climb Table Mountain. I don't know what made me think I could climb it? I guess I expected more of a dirt path or something but it was legitimately mountain climbing. I barely made it up! It took us about 2 hours, which is what it took most other groups I talked too. At the top we stopped for lunch and then took the cable car back down. The cable car was cool- the floor spins so you get all the views!

On Monday I slept really late and then had breakfast with Bill and we walked around the mall, it was really rainy and windy outside so there wasn't much to do. We took a cab to Long Street (downtown) and walked around down there for a while but since it was raining it wasn't that fun. We went back to the ship and everyone just hung out until later on. We went to run a few last minute errands, since it was my last night in Cape Town and we have an 11 voyage before India, and we also stopped at the breakfast place for luxury hot chocolate (SO GOOD).

I hung out with the boys from the quad down the hall for a while at the piano bar on the boat, we got pizzas and talked to the crew about the election and the bailout because it had failed that day. After that I went to bed because I had to be in the union at 4:30AM for my trip.

Our flight was around 6am, a 2 hour flight, then a 3 hour bus ride to the reserve. It was such a long trip! The lodge was gorgeous though, it was a 5 star resort- which no one was expecting. We were served lunch immediately, and everyone decided it was 1,000x better than ship food. We went on our first drive, from about 5-9pm. It's really cool doing the drives at night, we saw a lot of animals on the first drive alone.

Our rooms were amazing, each room was a little cabin, complete with an indoor sitting area, an outdoor sitting area, a really big tub, and an outdoor shower... which was cool when I had to shower before 5am the second morning and could see stars while I showered! We left for our morning drive around 5:30 and got back around 9:30- lots of animals, including lions! It was so hot out, I'd say almost 100 degrees. Which was very different than Cape Town because it was freezing there. Anyway, after our morning drive we had a great breakfast, then we hung out by the pool and took naps, had lunch, and got ready for another night drive. On that drive, an elephant came RIGHT UP to our car- you could've touched it but no one wanted it to charge us. It was so crazy. We came back for dinner, went to bed early, and woke up for another early morning drive- tried to find the last of the big five, but never found the leopard. We got back and had breakfast, then got ready to leave. Another really long trip back... and back on the boat to the beginning of this blog entry!