I bless the rains down in AFRICA!
Wow. South Africa was definitely the best port so far. I had an absolute blast here. Let me go through what I did day by day so I don’t skip anything.
Day 1: Woke up early on Monday to see up come into port. The view of the sun coming up over Table Mountain was amazing; the top of the mountain looked very musterious, all shrouded in mist. We also saw a whale flopping around on the surface, which was very cool. After taking everything in (and getting lots of pictures), I went back to bed for a while. Got off the boat around noon and headed into downtown Cape Town. Cape Town is such a cool city. It reminds me of a mixture of Amsterdam and San Francisco. The Dutch influence is clearly evident—they even have street names like Buitengraght and Herengraght, which I recognized from Amsterdam. The main street in the city is Long Street, where I spent most of my time. Long Street has all of the shops, cafes, restaurants, clubs, bars, etc. It was also nice to finally be in a city where everyone spoke ENGLISH! It was such a relief to not have to use hand gestures to communicate.
After wandering around a little bit, I went to St. George’s Cathedral. This is a Protestant cathedral right in the center of Cape Town, and was Desmond Tutu’s home cathedral during his time as an archbishop. I’ll be honest, the main reason I first went here was for my Religious Traditions class, but I definitely enjoyed seeing the impressive architecture and stained glass inside. I participated in an afternoon mass, which I also had to do for class. Aside from me and one other girl from my class, there were only 3 other people there and the pastor. Quite awkward, to say the least. Pretty much, I tried not to make too much of an ass of myself, and I think I did at least OK. Afterward, I talked to the pastor for a bit, who was originally from San Francisco, and his son was looking at going to Stanford. Small world.
After the cathedral, stopped into a local dive bar called the Purple Monkey and had a few beers—you know, to clear the religious stuff out of my head. Ended up chilling with two girls from the boat who were absolutely destroyed and insisted that me and this other guy go with them to a piercing studio that was just above the bar. Got my scrotum pierced, that was interesting to say the least—KIDDING, just making sure you were still paying attention here. Anyway, went back down to the waterfront, where I ran into a group of friends who were signing up for a safari on Saturday, so I decided to do that with them. Ended the day with dinner at an African restaurant, where I had some great South African red wine and an ostrich steak. Quite interesting, tasted more like beef than like chicken, but was damn tasty. Afterward, this other group of kids who were at the bar in the same restaurant were like come over, we are learning this tribal African tradition. The bartender brought out this big jar of “Mcompote,” which is this traditional drink that tasted like sour milk, in my opinion. And it is pronounced with a click where the c is, but I don’t really know how to spell that. Anyway, we got in a circle and danced around this bowl of Mcompote and sang this song and when you wanted to, you broke from the circle and got on your knees and picked up this bowl and drank from it. I am not really doing it justice here, but it was fucking awesome to be dancing around with these Africans and drinking and yeah. We rocked out the song all the way back to the boat.
Day 2: Woke up at 10 AM for my overnight river rafting trip. Got on a bus and drove into the wine lands. On the way, we stopped twice; once just to take pictures up in the mountains, and once at this outdoor museum that showed traditional Afrikaner life. Not terribly exciting, but we saw some cool animals like turtles, pigs, roosters, and these crazy-ass ducks. Arrived at our river lodge in the afternoon, where we had some tea and paddled around a bit, just to see what these inflatable canoes were like. Then, we did this awesome wine tasting (or wine-chugging, call it what you will). These two representatives from a wine marketing company brought in bottles of wine from all 10 of the vineyards they represented. There was a TON of wine and it was a beautiful day and we were in the middle of fricken AFRICA and it was just a great time. Dinner was a traditional stew that was slow-cooked over our campfire and was soo good. After dinner, we just chilled around the campfire talking and listening to music.
Day 3: Got up at 7 AM to start our actual rafting trip. Our guides cooked this amazing breakfast of eggs and toast and bacon right over the campfire—I don’t know what it is about food cooked right over the fire like that, but seriously, this was one of the best breakfasts I have ever had.
At 9 AM, we drove up to our put-in point on the river, and began our trip down the Breede River. This was NOT whitewater rafting by any means. Like, if you weren’t paddling, you weren’t moving at all. I kinda wished it had been more extreme, but oh well, it was really nice just to be out on the water in the middle of this beautiful country. We stopped halfway down the river to get out on a sandbank and take pictures and have a snack, and then paddled back to our camp. Lunch, some more wine, and then we got back on our buses and headed back to the waterfront.
After a nap, went out with my roommate to Mitchell’s, a cool local bar. This was my kind of place; kind of small, more local people here than SAS kids, an upstairs where people were watching rugby and soccer. They also had their own beer called Milk and Honey which was fricken amazing; kind of like a hefeweizen, but a bit darker and sweeter. Had a couple of beers here, did some Car Bombs with girls from the boat, and then went to dinner at an Italian place in the mall. Not anything special, but still good. Went back to Mitchell’s, had a couple more beers, and then went to a bar on Long Street called Mama Afrika. This place was SWEET. That night, they had this local percussion group called Abakhaya playing, and they rocked the house down. 3 marimbas and 4 drummers and so much funkiness it was incredible. I bought their CD, I’ll play it for you all when I get back. Stayed till the bar closed, and then headed home to the ship.
Day 4: Up again early, this time for Habitat for Humanity. This was my first time doing Habitat, so I didn’t really know what to expect, but I was excited to help build this house and really hoped we could make an impact. This was the 4th day that Semester at Sea kids had been working on the same house, so I was maybe hoping that we would finish the house, but unfortunately that didn’t happen. The house we were working on was in the Khayelitsha township, about 30 minutes outside of Cape Town. Going into a township is an experience in itself. People live in tiny shacks made of wood or tin siding or whatever they can find. The unemployment rate in the township is about 50% and the average monthly salary is less than $80. Despite all of this, though, the people we talked to and met in the township all seemed quite happy with life in general and wouldn’t even consider moving out of the township.
We started work on the house, but it came clear to me pretty quickly that we weren’t going to be able to do as much as I had hoped. There was relatively little direction for us, so we ended up doing mostly menial tasks like fixing up cracks in the cement that had been set the day before or passing up bricks to where they were needed. Any substantial work, like laying the bricks and cement, or setting the trusses, was done by local township men. I did what I could, assembling trusses and handing them up to people on the roof. Ate a lunch of fried dough, and because they were not really using us so much in building the house, spent a lot of time playing with the throng of kids that had gathered near the house. These kids were so friendly, they all just wanted to hold your hand or jump on your back. They thought digital cameras were the coolest thing ever, and wanted to pose and take pictures of each other. Kind of felt like I was back being a camp counselor again. After playing with the kids for a while, I went back to helping with the cement work until it was time to go at about 4 PM.
After a much needed shower and short nap, headed out to dinner. We went to this place called the Cape Town Fish Market, which was soooo good. Food was also soooo cheap; I had an amazing surf and turf platter AND 2 rum and cokes AND shots after dinner all for like $25. Went back to Mitchell’s and continued the drinking, and I had planned to go out back to Long Street, but I was having such a good time, I ended up staying at Mitchell’s. They had a jukebox and we played awesome music all night long and danced and sang with a lot of local people that were getting off work. It was a blast, rocking out to Tubthumping and Call on Me and Sex Bomb (Matt, that one was for you).
And speaking of rocking out, I was rocking out the Toto the whole time I was here. Yes. I was in AFRICA. I didn’t see Kilimanjaro rise like Olympus about the Serengeti, but I should have. If you are reading this, put on Toto right down, and love it. Love the drums. Love the synth organ. Fuck yeah.
Day 5: After 4 pretty jampacked days, I decided I needed a day just to chill out, do things on my own time. Slept in, woke up around 11, went to the mall and got a magazine, and had a nice long lunch and coffee. Went out, ran into some other SASers, chilled down by the waterfront and had a pancake, and then went into downtown to do shopping. Bought tons of cool shit, including a Djembe drum, which I am so pumped about playing, and a painted ostrich egg, which I thought was awesome.
Went back to the ship, changed, and went to a Jewish Friday night service, again, mainly for class, but it was a good experience. It was in a orthodox synagogue, which was very different for me. The men and women were separated; women in the balcony, men on the floor. And EVERYTHING was in Hebrew—no page numbers, no responsive reading, nothing. The first English I heard was during the rabbi’s sermon. Anyway, yeah, did that, then met back up with the people I had done my Venezuela trip with at Mama Afrika for dinner. Food was sooo good, I had alligator kebabs for appetizer and a lamb curry for dinner. It was really good to hang out with this group again; I hadn’t seen a lot of them the whole time I had been in South Africa, and we had a great time. Made it an early night, because I had to be up ass early the next morning for a safari.
Day 6: Woke up at 5:30 AM and was on the bus to the Aquila Game Reserve by 6:30 AM for our safari. I bet the scenery on the way there was awesome, but you know what, so was my nap. Anyway, got to the lodge, which was gorgeous, and had a great buffet breakfast before going out on our morning game drive. The drive was so cool! We saw tons of animals—hippos, giraffes, springbok (small antelope), rhinos, zebra, blue and black wildebeests, and lions. I will definitely need to show pictures of this, but seriously, it was so awesome to be like 20 yards away from these three huge rhinos, and just watch them do their thing. The giraffes were also fricken sweet.
Went back to the lodge, had another amazing meal, and hung out for a while. Got to see some cool crocodiles they had near the lodge, and also two lion cubs that they were raising in a large pen. After that, we went back out onto the reserve for our afternoon ATV safari. Oh MAN, driving an ATV is sweet. It was my first time on one, and I was just having a blast. I felt so hardcore, crusin around the desert on my ATV, dust blowing in my face, bouncing off of rocks. Oh yeah, and we saw more animals. 6 buffalo walked right across the road at one point, the hippos came all the way out of the water, and there was one place where the giraffes, springbok, antelope, and zebra all had congregated—I couldn’t help but break into Circle of Life. I have GOT to go ATVing again—this was so fun.
Went back to the boat, showered up, and went out for our last night in Cape Town. Ate dinner at this really nice restaurant in the mall, and got things started with some more good wine. Had a really long dinner with the safari crew, and then we went back to Long Street. After a couple more beers and shots and cocktails at the Long Street Café, we went to this club called the Pulse. For a Saturday night, I was actually somewhat disappointed—at 2 AM, the place had pretty much cleared out. Oh well, the upside was that the DJ would play whatever we asked, so we rocked some 80’s and old school rap.
Day 7: For my last day in Cape Town, I was supposed to go shark diving and see great white sharks, but I talked to the company on Saturday and they told me that the trip was cancelled because of bad weather forecasts. Something to do when I come back, I guess. Anyway, this gave me an opportunity to see Table Mountain, which I was really happy about. We took the cable car up, because we felt lazy, and walked around up top for an hour, getting some great pictures of Cape Town and the surrounding areas. Had a cup of coffee at the café up top, then came back down to the waterfront, and chilled at a coffee shop for a bit. Did some last-minute shopping, and ended the trip with dinner at a sushi bar, which was sooooo good.
BLAAAAH. If you read all that, I think you care more about my life than I do. Cape Town was an amazing city, one that I will definitely have to return to. There is just so much to do and see here, and the people were all really friendly—I could definitely even consider moving here at some point in my life, we’ll see. Now we are back on the boat, heading to Mauritius, a small island off of the east coast of Madagascar. It is pretty much just a tourist beach island, which will be a nice break before we begin the Asia leg of our journey; I hear they have really good Scuba diving too.
Alright people, hope life is going well for everyone, and I’ll write again soon.
Day 1: Woke up early on Monday to see up come into port. The view of the sun coming up over Table Mountain was amazing; the top of the mountain looked very musterious, all shrouded in mist. We also saw a whale flopping around on the surface, which was very cool. After taking everything in (and getting lots of pictures), I went back to bed for a while. Got off the boat around noon and headed into downtown Cape Town. Cape Town is such a cool city. It reminds me of a mixture of Amsterdam and San Francisco. The Dutch influence is clearly evident—they even have street names like Buitengraght and Herengraght, which I recognized from Amsterdam. The main street in the city is Long Street, where I spent most of my time. Long Street has all of the shops, cafes, restaurants, clubs, bars, etc. It was also nice to finally be in a city where everyone spoke ENGLISH! It was such a relief to not have to use hand gestures to communicate.
After wandering around a little bit, I went to St. George’s Cathedral. This is a Protestant cathedral right in the center of Cape Town, and was Desmond Tutu’s home cathedral during his time as an archbishop. I’ll be honest, the main reason I first went here was for my Religious Traditions class, but I definitely enjoyed seeing the impressive architecture and stained glass inside. I participated in an afternoon mass, which I also had to do for class. Aside from me and one other girl from my class, there were only 3 other people there and the pastor. Quite awkward, to say the least. Pretty much, I tried not to make too much of an ass of myself, and I think I did at least OK. Afterward, I talked to the pastor for a bit, who was originally from San Francisco, and his son was looking at going to Stanford. Small world.
After the cathedral, stopped into a local dive bar called the Purple Monkey and had a few beers—you know, to clear the religious stuff out of my head. Ended up chilling with two girls from the boat who were absolutely destroyed and insisted that me and this other guy go with them to a piercing studio that was just above the bar. Got my scrotum pierced, that was interesting to say the least—KIDDING, just making sure you were still paying attention here. Anyway, went back down to the waterfront, where I ran into a group of friends who were signing up for a safari on Saturday, so I decided to do that with them. Ended the day with dinner at an African restaurant, where I had some great South African red wine and an ostrich steak. Quite interesting, tasted more like beef than like chicken, but was damn tasty. Afterward, this other group of kids who were at the bar in the same restaurant were like come over, we are learning this tribal African tradition. The bartender brought out this big jar of “Mcompote,” which is this traditional drink that tasted like sour milk, in my opinion. And it is pronounced with a click where the c is, but I don’t really know how to spell that. Anyway, we got in a circle and danced around this bowl of Mcompote and sang this song and when you wanted to, you broke from the circle and got on your knees and picked up this bowl and drank from it. I am not really doing it justice here, but it was fucking awesome to be dancing around with these Africans and drinking and yeah. We rocked out the song all the way back to the boat.
Day 2: Woke up at 10 AM for my overnight river rafting trip. Got on a bus and drove into the wine lands. On the way, we stopped twice; once just to take pictures up in the mountains, and once at this outdoor museum that showed traditional Afrikaner life. Not terribly exciting, but we saw some cool animals like turtles, pigs, roosters, and these crazy-ass ducks. Arrived at our river lodge in the afternoon, where we had some tea and paddled around a bit, just to see what these inflatable canoes were like. Then, we did this awesome wine tasting (or wine-chugging, call it what you will). These two representatives from a wine marketing company brought in bottles of wine from all 10 of the vineyards they represented. There was a TON of wine and it was a beautiful day and we were in the middle of fricken AFRICA and it was just a great time. Dinner was a traditional stew that was slow-cooked over our campfire and was soo good. After dinner, we just chilled around the campfire talking and listening to music.
Day 3: Got up at 7 AM to start our actual rafting trip. Our guides cooked this amazing breakfast of eggs and toast and bacon right over the campfire—I don’t know what it is about food cooked right over the fire like that, but seriously, this was one of the best breakfasts I have ever had.
At 9 AM, we drove up to our put-in point on the river, and began our trip down the Breede River. This was NOT whitewater rafting by any means. Like, if you weren’t paddling, you weren’t moving at all. I kinda wished it had been more extreme, but oh well, it was really nice just to be out on the water in the middle of this beautiful country. We stopped halfway down the river to get out on a sandbank and take pictures and have a snack, and then paddled back to our camp. Lunch, some more wine, and then we got back on our buses and headed back to the waterfront.
After a nap, went out with my roommate to Mitchell’s, a cool local bar. This was my kind of place; kind of small, more local people here than SAS kids, an upstairs where people were watching rugby and soccer. They also had their own beer called Milk and Honey which was fricken amazing; kind of like a hefeweizen, but a bit darker and sweeter. Had a couple of beers here, did some Car Bombs with girls from the boat, and then went to dinner at an Italian place in the mall. Not anything special, but still good. Went back to Mitchell’s, had a couple more beers, and then went to a bar on Long Street called Mama Afrika. This place was SWEET. That night, they had this local percussion group called Abakhaya playing, and they rocked the house down. 3 marimbas and 4 drummers and so much funkiness it was incredible. I bought their CD, I’ll play it for you all when I get back. Stayed till the bar closed, and then headed home to the ship.
Day 4: Up again early, this time for Habitat for Humanity. This was my first time doing Habitat, so I didn’t really know what to expect, but I was excited to help build this house and really hoped we could make an impact. This was the 4th day that Semester at Sea kids had been working on the same house, so I was maybe hoping that we would finish the house, but unfortunately that didn’t happen. The house we were working on was in the Khayelitsha township, about 30 minutes outside of Cape Town. Going into a township is an experience in itself. People live in tiny shacks made of wood or tin siding or whatever they can find. The unemployment rate in the township is about 50% and the average monthly salary is less than $80. Despite all of this, though, the people we talked to and met in the township all seemed quite happy with life in general and wouldn’t even consider moving out of the township.
We started work on the house, but it came clear to me pretty quickly that we weren’t going to be able to do as much as I had hoped. There was relatively little direction for us, so we ended up doing mostly menial tasks like fixing up cracks in the cement that had been set the day before or passing up bricks to where they were needed. Any substantial work, like laying the bricks and cement, or setting the trusses, was done by local township men. I did what I could, assembling trusses and handing them up to people on the roof. Ate a lunch of fried dough, and because they were not really using us so much in building the house, spent a lot of time playing with the throng of kids that had gathered near the house. These kids were so friendly, they all just wanted to hold your hand or jump on your back. They thought digital cameras were the coolest thing ever, and wanted to pose and take pictures of each other. Kind of felt like I was back being a camp counselor again. After playing with the kids for a while, I went back to helping with the cement work until it was time to go at about 4 PM.
After a much needed shower and short nap, headed out to dinner. We went to this place called the Cape Town Fish Market, which was soooo good. Food was also soooo cheap; I had an amazing surf and turf platter AND 2 rum and cokes AND shots after dinner all for like $25. Went back to Mitchell’s and continued the drinking, and I had planned to go out back to Long Street, but I was having such a good time, I ended up staying at Mitchell’s. They had a jukebox and we played awesome music all night long and danced and sang with a lot of local people that were getting off work. It was a blast, rocking out to Tubthumping and Call on Me and Sex Bomb (Matt, that one was for you).
And speaking of rocking out, I was rocking out the Toto the whole time I was here. Yes. I was in AFRICA. I didn’t see Kilimanjaro rise like Olympus about the Serengeti, but I should have. If you are reading this, put on Toto right down, and love it. Love the drums. Love the synth organ. Fuck yeah.
Day 5: After 4 pretty jampacked days, I decided I needed a day just to chill out, do things on my own time. Slept in, woke up around 11, went to the mall and got a magazine, and had a nice long lunch and coffee. Went out, ran into some other SASers, chilled down by the waterfront and had a pancake, and then went into downtown to do shopping. Bought tons of cool shit, including a Djembe drum, which I am so pumped about playing, and a painted ostrich egg, which I thought was awesome.
Went back to the ship, changed, and went to a Jewish Friday night service, again, mainly for class, but it was a good experience. It was in a orthodox synagogue, which was very different for me. The men and women were separated; women in the balcony, men on the floor. And EVERYTHING was in Hebrew—no page numbers, no responsive reading, nothing. The first English I heard was during the rabbi’s sermon. Anyway, yeah, did that, then met back up with the people I had done my Venezuela trip with at Mama Afrika for dinner. Food was sooo good, I had alligator kebabs for appetizer and a lamb curry for dinner. It was really good to hang out with this group again; I hadn’t seen a lot of them the whole time I had been in South Africa, and we had a great time. Made it an early night, because I had to be up ass early the next morning for a safari.
Day 6: Woke up at 5:30 AM and was on the bus to the Aquila Game Reserve by 6:30 AM for our safari. I bet the scenery on the way there was awesome, but you know what, so was my nap. Anyway, got to the lodge, which was gorgeous, and had a great buffet breakfast before going out on our morning game drive. The drive was so cool! We saw tons of animals—hippos, giraffes, springbok (small antelope), rhinos, zebra, blue and black wildebeests, and lions. I will definitely need to show pictures of this, but seriously, it was so awesome to be like 20 yards away from these three huge rhinos, and just watch them do their thing. The giraffes were also fricken sweet.
Went back to the lodge, had another amazing meal, and hung out for a while. Got to see some cool crocodiles they had near the lodge, and also two lion cubs that they were raising in a large pen. After that, we went back out onto the reserve for our afternoon ATV safari. Oh MAN, driving an ATV is sweet. It was my first time on one, and I was just having a blast. I felt so hardcore, crusin around the desert on my ATV, dust blowing in my face, bouncing off of rocks. Oh yeah, and we saw more animals. 6 buffalo walked right across the road at one point, the hippos came all the way out of the water, and there was one place where the giraffes, springbok, antelope, and zebra all had congregated—I couldn’t help but break into Circle of Life. I have GOT to go ATVing again—this was so fun.
Went back to the boat, showered up, and went out for our last night in Cape Town. Ate dinner at this really nice restaurant in the mall, and got things started with some more good wine. Had a really long dinner with the safari crew, and then we went back to Long Street. After a couple more beers and shots and cocktails at the Long Street Café, we went to this club called the Pulse. For a Saturday night, I was actually somewhat disappointed—at 2 AM, the place had pretty much cleared out. Oh well, the upside was that the DJ would play whatever we asked, so we rocked some 80’s and old school rap.
Day 7: For my last day in Cape Town, I was supposed to go shark diving and see great white sharks, but I talked to the company on Saturday and they told me that the trip was cancelled because of bad weather forecasts. Something to do when I come back, I guess. Anyway, this gave me an opportunity to see Table Mountain, which I was really happy about. We took the cable car up, because we felt lazy, and walked around up top for an hour, getting some great pictures of Cape Town and the surrounding areas. Had a cup of coffee at the café up top, then came back down to the waterfront, and chilled at a coffee shop for a bit. Did some last-minute shopping, and ended the trip with dinner at a sushi bar, which was sooooo good.
BLAAAAH. If you read all that, I think you care more about my life than I do. Cape Town was an amazing city, one that I will definitely have to return to. There is just so much to do and see here, and the people were all really friendly—I could definitely even consider moving here at some point in my life, we’ll see. Now we are back on the boat, heading to Mauritius, a small island off of the east coast of Madagascar. It is pretty much just a tourist beach island, which will be a nice break before we begin the Asia leg of our journey; I hear they have really good Scuba diving too.
Alright people, hope life is going well for everyone, and I’ll write again soon.
posted by ehindman at 3:29 PM
2 Comments:
evan,
glad to hear that you like cape town. i worked out in the townships and lived right above mama afrika. i think it's just about the best city i can imagine. anyway, just wanted to let you know that we're all loving your blog and are looking forward to your eventual return. don't get yourself killed, all right? take care.
matt turnbull
ps: i spent last night vomitting jim beam. i would have made you proud
I had a friend in college that grew up in Cape Town and he taught me to say a huge string of obsenities in a tribal language there (the one with the clicking):
M!nuacko, sin!nuacko
Replace the ! for clicks and enjoy.
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