Africa Tree, Africa Sun, Africa Cloud

There are very few words that I have for how AMAZING South Africa was. After 2 very hard travel ports (Ghana & Morocco) and our 3rd six-day stretch at sea we were beyond anxious to get to Cape Town. The seas had also been particularly rough and my roommate situation was coming to a head, so Cape Town was looking to be a welcome reprieve. We got there on October 3rd and Drew, Corinne and I got up in time to watch the sun rise over Table Mountain as we pulled into port. The view was breathtaking and eating breakfast in the cafeteria under the shadow of Table Mountain was amazing. Not to mention one of the first things we could see was the massive World Cup 2010 Stadium at the base of Table Mountain, it was gorgeous and reminded me of the boys, which made me happy. We RAN off the boat once we cleared customs. We later found out that security coming into Cape Town was particularly tough and we even had drug-sniffing dogs come on and go through random rooms. I am sure some kids have drugs on the boat and I am very curious to see what happens if anyone gets caught- it couldn’t be good.

Gen and I were planning on just wandering for the morning and we met up with Kareem, Anjulie, Joey & Eric. We docked into the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront and man it was just what we needed. The second we walked off the ship we were met with a huge hotel and a giant boardwalk strip with tons of stores and restaurants and even a huge gigantic mall. This part was incredibly European & Americanized, but it was a great break. We meandered through the waterfront and into the city. We walked through the financial district, but since it was Saturday everything in that part of town was pretty quiet. Then we headed to Greenpoint Market, which is an outdoor market area and a big shopping area. This place was jumping on a Saturday morning! There were several groups of teenagers performing through the streets. They all had on costumes and were singing and dancing. It was great and super entertaining.

Kareem had his heart set on finding this sandwich they told us about at our preport called a “Gatsby”. Every time I asked someone where we could get one of these they laughed at us, so that meant it had to be promising. We finally found this cute little Middle Eastern place that served this and other Indian/middle eastern food. I got some samosas and Gen and Kareem ordered this famed sandwich. When it came we could only laugh. It was a giant sandwich with French fries, meat, lettuce, tomatoes, sauce and a ton of other stuff. They were HUMONGOUS, so I shared part of Gen’s with her. Kareem and I had to head back to the ship because I was going to the Khayelitsha Township and he was going to a rugby game. The owner of the restaurant pointed us in the direction of a “taxi” we could get for really inexpensive. We walked that way and talked to a cab driver who wanted to charge three times the amount the owner recommended we pay. We then saw a line of tro tro’s across the road. Tro Tro’s are these vans (which are usually illegal) that get packed with people and go to several different stops. They are like mini buses that make specific stops. Kareem and I asked the driver if they were going to V&A Waterfront he said “yes yes” and I asked him when and he said “when we are full” and I said well when will that be. Right after the words left my mouth a flood of people came rushing past us into the van filling it almost completely. The man started yelling “Get in Get in!” so we followed directions and jammed ourselves into the back row with 3 other women and a baby. At this point we are just laughing hysterically and we pay our .25 cents and the Tro Tro made several stops and Kareem and I have been in Cape Town for all of oh 3 hours we had no idea where to go. So we ask the lady with child next to us. She couldn’t fathom how two white kids found their way on a Tro Tro and weren’t scared shitless. Somehow we found our way back to the waterfront and I immediately got on the bus for my Khayelitsha Township visit.

We headed out to the Khayelitsha Township, which is on the far outskirts of Cape Town. Townships were developed in South Africa after the Group Areas Act was established in the 1950’s as an integral part of Apartheid. This act prohibited blacks from living within cities. In the 1980’s with discontent growing from the black population of South Africa they lightened up on many of the segregation laws to attempt to quell resistances. Many people flooded to the outskirts of cities to attempt to find work and that is how Khayelitsha was established in 1985. The townships became segregated towns where only non-whites resided. In South Africa people are not classified solely as blacks but instead as Blacks, Coloureds (mixed race) and Indians. During Apartheid each of these distinctions had different rights although all were limited. Now Khayelitsha is the home to over 2 million people. Technically there is extremely limited water & electricity although people have rigged up their own wires everywhere. At one point our bus actually had to stop while someone took out PVC pipe to lift a cable so we could drive under it. Most of the “homes” in the townships are shacks made of tin and wood barely pieced together. Most look like if the wind blew the wrong way they would tumble to the ground.

Our first stop was in a neighborhood within the township. They had laid out some crafts that were all fair trade goods that we could purchase. One of the community leaders told us about all these social initiatives they are beginning including girls groups and AIDS prevention meetings. Then we went to a store to see women doing weavings, which were incredibly intricate and beautiful. They then did a small dance performance for us. After that we headed to Vicky’s B&B. This is on my list of places to hit up when I come back. Oh yeah guys, our first grown up vacation we take together as cool grown up friends is going to be to South Africa, I planned the whole thing in my head don’t worry. Vicky is a woman who took her home within the township and turned it into a fully functioning B&B. She markets it as giving people the opportunity to get the full township experience. At $30 a night in that vibrant community it was something I wish I had had time for. In all of the 15 years she has been open she has had two visitors who were actually from South Africa, which just goes to show how interested wealthy South Africans are in the what they did to their fellow country men. This was not a frou frou fun trip in the least. It was the equivalent to wading into the slums of Bombay. Vicky also runs a program for the local children and tries to take them on field trips (table mountain etc) and get together Christmas gifts and things. After visiting Vicky’s B&B we went to another one run by another woman. It was amazing meeting all these empowered women who were fully vested into helping their community and the area around them that was important to them. The woman at the second B&B had actually studied at the University of Pittsburgh as a fellow in the mid 90’s after Apartheid ended. She had been a community organizer and worked for NGO’s before Mandela had reformed the government there. Then in the mid 90’s she spend time in the US studying community relations in depth. She returned to Khayelitsha and said that she did not know how to help. Then she saw that as South Africa was opening to the rest of the world there were buses driving through their towns every day with tourists. She said everyone felt as if they were in a zoo with tourists just driving through to look without ever stopping. So she decided to open a B&B so people could spend time with them. After that proved successful she decided to start seminars to show others in the community how they could do they same. She said she didn’t look at them as competition because she knew in the end they were all helping the community and not one single person needed to be the sole breadwinner. She also went into detail about how her B&B helps so many facets of the community around her from the people she employs to the dessert she buys for guests. There are many Universities from the states that come and spend time with her to give students hands on experiences with social action. She also provides these kids with homestays so they eat meals at her B&B but actually live with a family. She also went into detail about how she educated the families she organizes homestays with about cleanliness and how you have to change sheets between guests etc…that made me pretty happy since I have an inherent problem with germs. After visiting the last B&B we walked through the township for about 20 minutes meeting the people and seeing everything hands on. This was one of my favorite trips I have done with SAS so far. These women were so amazing and seeing the townships was definitely something I appreciated. It is easy to come to South Africa and only see the white parts, so this added a whole new dimension.

We headed back to the boat, and I took a much-needed nap. Then Drew, Gen, Corinne and I met up and went out to Long Street where all the bars and restaurants are. We ate at this fun place called Cape to Cuba, which had fun drinks and tapas and stuff. We sat there and ate and drank for a while and then headed to this place called Mama Africa. It was decorated all Africany and had a live band. It was fun and we got drinks and hung out there. We ran into Christie, Leigh Anne, Charis and Carly, which was good and the band was super fun. Corinne isn’t used to going out and drinking stuff. She goes to a Catholic University where they are super strict about it so she isn’t totally comfortable with the whole situation. So the band ended and she went back to the boat with Leigh Anne and everyone. Hell if Drew, Gen and I were going back even though I had to be on my safari at oh 6:45 am. We found this Irish bar with live music called Dubliners and there were a ton of SAS kids there. We drank and danced there for a long time it was great. There was crew there too, which got interesting because they have such strict anti fraternizing rules with the students. It was amusing. It was so much fun just to be off the boat and free and out I was ecstatic. Finally around 3:15 we figured we had to be up in 3 hours so we headed back to the boat. This was the point I realized that I should have really referred to Cape Town as No Sleep Ever for the 6 Days I am Visiting Town because it only got worse from there on out.

We got back to the boat and Fiana wasn’t in my room…thank god. And Gen and I had the brilliant idea that she should come to my room and we wouldn’t sleep at all just watch an epi of 6 Feet Under and then she would just go on her trip that left at 5. After eating some biscuits and nutella (drunk ship food? Nowhere near as good as majestic) I fell asleep till my safari where thankfully the potentially raging hangover that I knew was coming at some point had held off and I was smart enough to pack ahead of time. Mary and I called each other just to make sure we were both up and we got on the bus to head to the airport.

We had a short flight to Port Elizabeth, in which I slept in an attempt to recover from the few hours before. When we got to Port Elizabeth we saw another World Cup Stadium and then had about a 2 hour drive to Kariega Game Reserve. We stopped at what they called a rest stop but was really a gigantic supermarket type place. Here I met Kam, my new partner in crime. She is from Bermuda and is on SAS with her friend Rochelle. By this point my headache was setting in and we made an exec decisions to try the mac & cheese. It was delicious and I am now a big fan of shitty rest stop food in South Africa.

We also found out that some kid named Daniel did not make the flight and lived out all of our worst nightmares. He wasn’t in his room when the field office called (with a girl!). He got up right after our bus had left for the airport so he jumped a taxi to try and get on the plane. He missed the flight and his taxi driver then offered to drive him to Kariega. The cab driver then took him to his township to pick up his wife and then to his friend’s house to trade his cab for his friend’s Mercedes for the drive. He finally got to Kariega at midnight after paying approx $500 USD to get there. Hilarious.

We got to Kariega and checked into the lodge. Then we took game vehicles to lunch. The game vehicles were these open air keeps that had rows of seats each one slightly elevated about the next. Lunch was delicious the food was amazing. They had loads of venison (lasagna, meatballs) dad would have been in heaven. After lunch we went to check out our Chalets. They were beautiful. Ours had 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms and there were only 4 of us in it. I decided to share a room with Riley. There was this one sort of strange girl named Marissa and she got her own room and so did Rochelle who is also from Bermuda. We played around in our gorgeous chalet with wrap around porch for a little while. The views were amazing. We also realized they had TV! With Satellite! We were beyond ecstatic (we also deemed that simple stupid things now make us inexplicably happy). So we even got to watch a little Extreme Home Makeover. Yeah. As Ellen is probably laughing right now- I was in heaven. After hanging out we got picked up for our first game drive. 10 of us piled into our game vehicle. We looked around and realized that we are all girls with a very hot game driver, named JR. He sped off and we were trying to be chatty with us and suddenly stopped in a huge field for the “rules”. He came off very strict and the 10 of us were joking around and trying to get him to smile continuously. It was drizzling a little and he very graciously provided us with really attractive green ponchos. It was also FREEEZING, but we were cracking up the whole time. It was just a great group of girls and we were constantly egging him on and cracking jokes. It took a little while, but eventually he warmed up to us. Kariega is split into two game reserves. The one our chalets were on had giraffes, impala, nyala and other slightly less harmful animals. The other side of the reserve held the lions, rhinos, elephants and more dangerous animals. This is where we got to go on our 1st 3 hour game drive. Within 45 minutes of our drive starting we had the good fortune of running into a sleeping lion! They do not tag their animals in Kariega so whatever you see is found by sheer luck/talent of your game driver. We got within 15 feet of this sleeping lion it was so cool. JR kept turning around yelling at us because he was so nervous for our safety. We couldn’t stand up or stick any limbs out of the vehicle because it breaks the line of car and the animal then realizes that there is an “intruder”. We drove around for 3 hours and saw so much game. Pictures will have to do it justice it is too boring to just list animals. We stopped around sunset and got “snacks”- chips and soda of our choice, and a pee break in the bush.

This is when we really got to know JR. Apparently to qualify as a ranger you have to LIVE in the bush for 180 days straight. Killing your own food and chilling with the Bushmen. So needless to say JR was a hotty but his social skills were a little inept. Definitely had a dark past.

Our first game drive lasted until about 7pm. As we returned to the chalets a HUGE giraffe just wandered out from behind a tree next to the chalet. It was so cool. We dried off and had a delicious traditional BBQ. We then went to sleep as we had another game drive at 5:30 am. We got up at 5:30 am and it was POURING out. We bundled up and had not packed for it being so cold and rainy. My totally awesome new waterproof (not just water resistant) LL bean rain jacket was hanging in my closet aboard the MV Explorer. We had another fun game drive. We saw hippos, which were very cool. We also made the find of the day with the Rhinos. JR was saying that they have recently been having problems with poaching on the reserve. 3 weeks prior to our arrival a rhino was killed on the reservation. Its head was completely cut off so they could take the horn. The horn is used in the Muslim faith and for other reasons as well. After that incident the rangers were doing all night shifts to try to protect the reserve. 2 nights before we got there they actually got shot at by the poachers and now they have stopped monitoring because it was too dangerous for them. After our game drive we got breakfast and napped. Then had lunch and wandered around the reserve. Since it had rained so much that morning all the trails were closed. Also they did not want us to wander by ourselves because the buffalos were herding across reserve and it was very dangerous.

We had another game drive that night. The weird girl Marissa had been super into all the drives and guessing what animals were. She hated the rest of us. She asked if 2 ostriches were sisters and I promptly asked or are the best friends or co workers? She did NOT like this and snapped at me saying “that is a perfectly legitimate question”. So she loved me. We were all discussing who was going to sit in the front with JR on a large group before he picked us up. He comes down the road and stops and we see that this girl was so adamant that she sit in the front that she walked down the road to get to JR before he picked up the rest of us. It was very passive aggressive and we all were hysterical at how weird it was.

It was a good game drive and we got to see a ton of elephants. They were mating and herding so it was sort of dangerous JR was very careful about where he put our game vehicle. JR then took us to a very romantic sunset overlook. It was gorgeous and we ribbed him about trying to woo all 10 of us. We also found out that he has given drives to a ton of famous people. His most famous was Elton John who he gave a one on one drive with. This made us super excited as we had been singing Lion King songs all day. We also made some nasty jokes about Elton John hitting on JR. After sunset we headed back to the lodge for dinner. With all the money we paid for this trip (which was totally worth it) we got a bunch of free wine and beer. This was great and only complimented the delicious food. We then decided to keep the party going in the bar and some of the Rangers joined us, including JR. Most of us drank till about midnight because we had another 5:30 am game drive. I went to bed and everyone came into our chalet at about 2 am. It turns out one of our girls decided to go home for the night with JR. YUP! She WENT HOME WITH JR and was just sitting in the game vehicle when he picked us up at 5:30 am. We can only speculate but rumor has it that some action happened in the game Vehicle. Cracked us up.

The morning game drive was a river safari as well. We got to go out on the water and see some birds and we stopped in a huge field and had coffee, tea and JR made me special hot chocolate! They really have all these drives figured out down to the second and they really are operating as 5 star resorts. We headed back for breakfast and then started to head out. Two of the boys had bought full on ranger outfits from the gift shop and had been wearing them for the past day. They had convinced JR that they deserved to become Junior Rangers. The rest of us jumped on the bandwagon and all started bugging him about the junior rangers. As we were leaving he whipped out these cute diplomas that said Junior Ranger on them. He said they normally give them to the 12 year olds that complete the nature programs but he figured us college kids would enjoy them just as much. It was great he was such a good sport and it was such a fun group of kids. Definitely worth all the money and I am a certified Junior Ranger!!

We flew back to Cape Town and dropped our stuff and went to find Internet. This was super stressful and so not worth the energy. I finally found a place I had to pay for, but I had a few glasses of wine and got to skype with dad so that was good. Afterwards Drew, Gen, Kara & I got dinner at Quay 4, which was a fun outdoor restaurant with great views of the ship. Then we headed to Mitchell’s, which was the bar SAS frequented the whole time. Apparently the night before one of our deans was extremely drunk and bought everyone shots. It was fun and we stayed until closing. We still didn’t want to go to bed, and thought there was a party on the pirate ship. Yes there was a pirate ship. There are these people who dress up a pirates and sail from port to port and let tourists party on the boat. Pretty sweet job. We got there and the pirates were all passed out downstairs. Lauren got the bright idea to steal one of their pirate costumes. So she ganked the jacket and proceeded to wear it around for the rest of the night. We grabbed a cab and headed to Long Street and went out there for a long time. We finally decided to head back home at about 5am. No one had any money, but me (always responsible) so I had to pay for our cab ride back.

The next morning we got up at 9 (town of no sleep) and headed to the Cape Malay quarter. We were supposed to hike Table Mountain but it was raining so that was no go. The Cape Malay quarter was just an area of brightly painted houses (reminded me of the Gingerbread houses on the Vineyard). Then we wandered to Greenpoint Market again and finished up our shopping. We also went to the Castle of Good Hope, which was supposed to be one of Cape Town’s big tourist attractions. It sucked. We amused ourselves and they had a really long table that sat 100 people, but then you would need to have 99 friends. We played on a cannon and defaced a wall.

After that we decided we would go see the World Cup Stadium. When I say we I really mean I wanted to go see it so I could take pictures and brag to Tim, tom, graham, dohnny cole etc. Our cab driver was a nasty bitch and dropped us off in the MIDDLE of the construction zone. At this point we had no way out and were trapped between massive lanes of cars and a do not enter construction zone. You hear this Tim? I did all of this for you, just to get a picture of the god damned stadium we are going to be looking at all summer long. We tried to walk out but we got about ten feet and there was a giant sign that said “NO PEDESTRIANS BEYOND THIS POINT”. By the grace of God a shining BMW pulled up and it was cab! He offered to take us back to the ship and we excitedly clamored into his car. We got back and took naps and decided to get sushi for dinner! I was so happy since I missed sushi so much. They had all these great rolls and even had a “sandwich” roll, which was shaped like a triangle of a sandwich. It was great and we had a coupon. Dinner ended up taking forever but we sat for a while and it was enjoyable. We met up with Drew and Kareem and headed to the Green Dolphin Jazz Club. We were beyond exhausted at this point and stayed until the club closed at 12 and then went back to the boat and went to sleep. It was a fun club and I had to go for my Jazz History class. Yup doing class work at a bar at midnight…sweet life.

The last day in Cape Town Corinne and I had bought tickets to head to Robben Island. You have to take a ferry to get there and it was very emotional and interesting. Our guide was a former prisoner; it is amazing that such a horrible thing happened and it was so recent that the freed prisoners can give tours. We saw Nelson Mandela’s prison cell and also toured the island. There were penguins! We headed back and went to get lunch & Internet so I could talk to Mom & Tim. We were debating on going to Table Mountain, but decided against it (since I KNOW I am coming back) and it was a good thing! Kara went out there to try to go and the Cable Car wasn’t working so it was good we didn’t waste our time. We ran last minute errands and headed back to the ship to leave Cape Town.

I had such a great time and it was definitely my favorite port so far. There was so much to see and do and the culture had so many facets from the townships to the V&A Waterfront. It took me two weeks just to process it enough to write about it. It was a pleasant surprise as I was not expecting that much from South Africa and was not particularly thrilled with its addition to the itinerary. It was fabulous.