Capetown: a mountain, some penguins, and a lot of fun!

Hey everyone! Hope things are going well. I just got back from Capetown this morning, and I had a great time.

We got in to Capetown on Wednesday night and all of us stayed in the same hostel. On Thursday we went to Table Mountain and decided to climb it. Apparently I was the only one who remembered our plans though... because I was the only one who wore shoes. So we all climbed up, everyone else wearing flip flops and some people carrying alcohol they'd bought earlier in the day. We realized after a little while that we weren't on a "real" path and eventually came to a near-vertical escarpment. At that point the way down looked just as dangerous, so we decided to make our way slowly up the wall. It was pretty crazy looking back on it... we probably should have had harnesses on and all that jazz. After we found a path again (not even halfway up the mountain) most of us decided to try to make our way back down, having realized that it would be nearly impossible to make it all the way to the top the way we were going. Gideon and Raj weren't satisfied with their adventure yet, and decided to try to make it to the top anyways. On the way down, the rest of us struggled through a path of dishelved rocks... Crystal's flip flop broke and she had to go the rest of the way with just one shoe. We had to walk through bushes with lots of thorns, and we were a little frightened at what might be lurking on the ground. The only wildlife I saw the whole climb though was a little black salamander, happily I saw no snakes or anything else that would have scared me enough to make me stay put. When we got to the bottom we tried to call the guys who had been continuing upwards, because we'd seen them recently and they weren't making much progress -- we wanted them to come back down before they got hurt.

They said they were going to turn around, but it would probably be another hour or two before they were back at the bottom. Kelly and I decided to take the gondala up to the top of the mountain so we could enjoy the view and kill some time before the guys got back. This is me at the top of the world -- ok not really the world, but it sort of felt like it!:

I've got lots more pictures on the way, but I didn't want to sort through them all. Just wanted to throw one up so you could appreciate the view... and I looked cute :) The guys got down ok... they were back by the time we came back down from exploring the top of Table Mountain. They seemed pretty shaken up though, and realized how dumb they'd been.

We went out to some clubs a few of the nights. Capetown has this street called Long St. that has tons of bars and clubs on it (hostels as well, although they were full so we ended up staying further out of the city). The buildings and ambience resembled that of New Orleans (that's what the people in our group who'd been there said anyways). It looked like a lot of fun. Though we have a lot of clubs here in Durban, we don't have a place like that street where everything's jam-packed together and you can make your night wandering from bar to bar.

We took a trip down to Boulder Beach which is the beach where the penguins live. It was a ways away from the city center, but the view on the ride was beautiful, and the penguins were really cute. It's a bit bizarre to think about penguins living in Africa... but I guess this is one of the only beaches they're on and they definitely seem to have made it home.

We also went to the District Six museum... which is a memorial for the area of the city that used to be a very cosmopolitan area with tons of different ethnic groups living together in a happy little community. During Apartheid, the coloreds, Indians, and muslim families were forced to move out into townships and the museum serves to remember not only what the community once was, and what happened to it, but also the rebuilding of it and the relocation of former residents back into the area.

We walked around town quite a bit as well; saw the parliament and the company gardens. Then we made our way to the waterfront to go to the Two Ocean's Aquarium which had fish/animals from the Atlantic and Indian oceans. It wasn't overly impressive (tough to beat the Shedd Aquarium and some of the others I've been to) but it was a neat experience nonetheless.

While Peter, Kelly, and Raj were staying with friends who go to the University of Capetown for the weekend, and Crystal and her boyfriend had their own place, Gideon and I had to find a hostel to stay at. Though it was a bit further out from town than I'd hoped, we stayed at a pretty nice place that was only 3 blocks from the beach.

Yesterday we went for a walk along the waterfront and grabbed some delicious lunch. (This is noteworthy because most of the weekend I was frustrated at my inability to actually get food the way I ordered it, so when I was able to get something delicious I got really excited). Then we went down to the Wharf in the V&A Waterfront district and met up with some of our friends for some food and looking around. Later in the afternoon we had a tour of Robben Island scheduled, which we went to. Robben Island is most famously known for the fact that Nelson Mandela was imprisoned there for 18 years, but it also held many other political prisoners captive, as well as some regular criminals. The tours there are led by ex-inmates, which I thought gave it a really interesting feel. They didn't share that much personal experiences, but just knowing they really experienced it put a different tone on the experience. We saw Nelson Mandela's cell... to sleep all they had was a pillow and blanket on the floor (even in Winter, and it was already getting chilly in Capetown when we were there), they had a bucket to use as a toilet, and they were locked in their cells starting at 3:00 everyday. The tour guide told us about the fact that inmates of different races were treated differently... with the diets of black political prisoners being much smaller and less nutritional than those of colored or asian political prisoners. The clothing they were able to wear was also different, while black inmates were only able to wear shorts and short-sleeved shirts with no shoes or socks, colored and asian inmates wore long pants, long-sleeved shirts, and were usually given shoes and socks.

Overall I have to say Capetown was an absolutely amazing place to visit. There's tons to do there... we didn't get to the winelands and there were lots of other museums I would have liked to visit as well. It's a very historical place... but I'm very glad that I'm studying in Durban. Capetown felt much more like Europe than Africa... and though the city had some interesting dynamics because of different sections resembling different cities across the globe... I'm enjoying my experiences much more here in Durban.

I'm sure I'm leaving some out... but that's the way it goes sometimes. I'll elaborate on anything you might have questions about. And I'm sorry if you tried calling at all this weekend... my phone shut off after being in the mountain drained its battery, and I didn't know the PIN number to be able to turn it back on. I'm back now and will be around all week (I think) so give me a call if you'd like :)