Cape Town

So, we finally hit a new continent. Africa. I remember cruising along the shore line a few nights before we arrived, we could see the African lights in the distance.  I spent a lot of time outside that day because I was having a “trapped” day. Being outside and seeing Africa was a huge breath of fresh air almost. I stood on the deck trying to imagine what South Africa had waiting for me. Although I know that I go into every port with zero expectations, as I looked at South Africa from a distance I felt anxious. The only movies I have seen about Africa (besides The Lion King) have been pretty violent. It didn’t exactly help that the entire administration on the ship was warning us about the violence and pick-pocketing. They didn’t mention how incredibly warm the people were. They didn’t mention the gorgeous scenery. (Not until pre-port at least; which is the night before we arrive in a country.) They didn’t mention that our ship would be pulling up to a huge expensive mall. There were a lot of things that would have been really nice to know before entering the country. Like… how not to get ripped off by the taxi drivers for example. Or “don’t worry! You’re probably not going to get stabbed while in Cape Town.”

 

South Africa is beautiful. The people are so loving. I believe it is my favorite port so far. I really don’t like saying that, because each country I have seen is completely different from the next. And I absolutely loved each country for completely different reasons. I’m just gunna go ahead and say that it is by far my favorite African country I have seen so far. Ha-ha Alright so here is how I spent my time in Cape Town, South Africa…

 

Day1 – Before getting off the ship, we were introduced to a special guest speaker; Amy Biehl’s mom, Linda Biehl. Usually I throw a couple grunts at the very thought of sitting through another pointless diplomatic briefing (we have these right before we clear the ship.) Not this time. In fact, I showed up 30 minutes early just so I could get a great seat in the union (the big meeting hall.) I’m not sure if you know anything about Amy Biehl, so let me sum it up. Amy was an activist (from the states) living in Cape Town who was stabbed 200 times in 1993 (during the apartheid years.) Linda Biehl started a foundation in Cape Town called the Amy Biehl Foundation. It’s an after school activities foundation for youth in townships. So, at this diplomatic briefing I was privileged enough to be able to sit through Amy Biehl’s amazing story, and shake Linda Biehl’s hand.

After that briefing ended, my friends and I quickly left the ship and took our first steps in Africa. First stop= Table Mountain. We jumped in a taxi and headed for the cable car that would take us to the top. (We totally would have hiked it but we only had so much time.) We were completely shocked when we arrived because we hadn’t realized that table mountain was a huge tourist attraction. There was a huge line to get on the gondola. We waited for an hour!! It was ridiculous. We finally got to the front, and bought our tickets (my friend Julie Anne told the lady at the desk that she was 17 years old and got away with a child’s ticket. I couldn’t believe it. Her ticket was half price!!!!) The gondola ride was really weird. It fit like 65 people in it at a time and the floor spun around so we could get a panoramic view. Well… everybody except me. I wasn’t standing by a window so I didn’t really see much. Except Eric’s back. haha The view from the top was so magnificent though! In the distant there was a small fog cover over the ocean that actually looked like it was connecting the blue sky to the blue ocean. The sky and ocean were one. It was absolutely gorgeous. The fog wasn’t covering the city or anything though. It was just far out in the ocean. It was really pretty just walking the pathways through all the rocks. We strolled for a bit and snapped some pictures before we found a restaurant and ordered lunch. We literally only had an hour on top of Table Mountain, which is not long enough at all!! After lunch we quickly headed back to the gondola to make the trip down. I got to stand by the window this time. It was delightful. So we then jumped into a taxi and sped back to the ship. (They drive so fast in South Africa. Even on sharp turns. It’s really quite scary.)

Back at the ship, the friends I was with had to run to catch a township trip. That’s when I was really confused on what to do with myself, but I ran into my friend Helen and decided to head to the District 6 museum with her and her crew. It was definitely interesting learning about these unfortunate townships that were burned down. We spent a good amount of time there before we decided to stroll down the street to the random castle in the middle of Cape Town. Apparently it was built by the Dutch, but I don’t actually know all the details about it because it closed 15 minutes before we got there. We hung out in the grass outside of the castle. It was a lot of fun. From there we walked towards this huge square in front of the town center. There we met 2 older women, an older gentleman, and a small child. They were so nice to us. One of them invited us over to her house the following day but none of us could make it! I talked to the older gentleman for a while. Turned out he was a priest, and had 4 wives and 19 kids. I asked him if he had any grandkids and he said he had too many to count. He told me this as I stood there and stared at him with a blank look on my face. Ha-ha I didn’t know what to say! After a couple minutes he had me read some of his sermons. I literally could not understand anything that we had written down. I don’t know if his sermons were just too smart for me to read, or if he just wrote down every big word he knows and threw random periods in there to make it look like a bunch of sentences. It would have been super interesting to talk to him about his beliefs, but I legitimately couldn’t understand his sermons. Ha-ha. Whatever; he was nice anyway.

Alright so we left there, and headed back to find some taxis. We stood at the corner we were dropped off at for about 30 minutes. There were a bunch of teenagers playing soccer in the street right next to us. That’s when Max got out his video camera. Sooner or later everybody in the group was making faces and dancing in front of the camera. I’m sure it is a great video. I have yet to see it. So, our taxis never came back to get us. We ended up waving down a taxi and asking the driver if we could cram 7 people in there. Ha-ha he was so against the idea, because it would be a fat ticket if the cops found us. Me, being the little one got to lay across everyone’s laps. It was actually quite cozy. I was pretty cramped up by the time we got back to the waterfront though. It was funny watching the faces of people watching us unload out of the taxi. They were laughing because more and more people kept coming out of the taxi. It was a fun time. We all started singing Indiana Jones at one point in the taxi. Anyway, the taxi didn’t drop us off right at the ship. There was a huge fancy mall between us and the ship, so we all ran through the mall. My friends had to make it back in 5 minutes to get on the pirate ship trip. I just ran thru the mall for kicks and giggles. Ha-ha.