Kaapstad

My friends and I pulled in from Cape Town around 8:00 last night. It was something like an 8 hour drive to Jeffreys. We actually left CT at 6:30am, to get to Port Elizabeth at 3:30 to take Matt to the bus station, and waited around for a while in PE before getting back to Jeffreys. Needless to say it was a long day. Anyway, it was Matt, Sara, Loretta, Sydney, and myself that went to Cape Town this past week for Holiday. What an amazing city it is! It’s so many different worlds coming together in one location. For all you Californians, it is something like San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and Hawaii all joining forces. It’s such a beautiful place where the ocean meets the mountains. The strangest part about it, though, was driving past all of the townships that lined the highway.

Even after being there for 8 days, we still weren’t able to see everything we wanted to see. But, we did get to do a lot of cool stuff. We took the cable car up Table Mountain, stood on the southern-most tip of Africa, hung out with penguins, ate Cinnabon and drank Dr. Pepper (the only place in SA you can get either!), went to an aquarium and to a few little museums, went to the waterfront, watched the sunset at Camps Bay, visited the wine country of Stellenbosch, shopped at some African markets, ate a lot of ethnic meals, and drove a lot. The place where we stayed was a friend of a friend’s place and it was about 30 or more minutes outside the actual city. Driving in Africa on the left side of the road was so liberating! We are used to being taxied around everywhere in our huge Kombis (vans), so it was nice to be able to drive ourselves for once. And driving on the opposite side (and opposite side of the car) really wasn’t all that different; it felt pretty natural.

Being in Cape Town was a bit like Disneyland. There was such a mix of people from all over the world. We heard a myriad of accents and dialects, and even saw numerous Muslim women covered from head to toe with only their eyes peering out. It was quite interesting how many Muslims apparently vacation there. The interesting part, though, was how English Cape Town is. Hardly anyone there speaks Afrikaans.

I have so many favorite parts of the trip. The drive to Stellenbosch was the most beautiful, in my opinion. We literally had the ocean to the right, and lush green hills to the left the whole way. Stellenbosch wasn’t too much different than any other wine country in California I’ve been to. One winery, though, had a cheetah exhibit, an eagle exhibit, and other cool things for families to do. It was a really gorgeous campus.

I also love fine dining. A good restaurant will make a trip worthwhile to me. We set a goal to eat ethnic food every night. And we did pretty well. We had Italian, Thai, Seafood, Mexican, but my favorite was Ethiopian. What a fun experience that was! We all huddled around a small basket-weaved table and ate all these different meats and sauces with a kind of sponge-like bread/pasta that I’ve never even seen before.

The penguins were at the top of my list of things to see. I got to see them at Boulder Beach, and also at the aquarium. They are kind of weird looking, but so cute and have so much personality!

Here is the view from Table Mountain, and below that is Cape Point. We were lucky that we went on nice clear days.