Back to Reality

April 10
Coming back to Cape Town was a pretty harsh reality. I have been completely swamped with work these past couples weeks.
On Friday, April 13, there was a rugby event up on campus called DOWNERS, me and Isabel were coerced into going because the teams were only allowed to play if there was a girl on the field. Rugby is not super popular with the girls here, so we decided to go. It turned out that before every game, your team had to chug a 6-pack of beer. Because we had to play on multiple teams, it became pretty hard to keep playing. We persevered though and made some friends! That night we went out to a party with them, it was nice to not be at bars or with all American students for a change.

April 21
The week after was just filled with more work, I've had so many essays due it's pretty overwhelming. Today was nice because I finally got to go to the District Six Museum which I've wanted to go to for awhile. District 6 is an area in Cape Town where all the coloured people were forcibly removed and put in the Cape Flatts during apartheid. The museum pretty much goes through the whole history of the time period and has a lot of pieces that people have brought back to the museum to put on display. Our tour guide was removed from district 6 so it was nice to get his perspective but also very sad. It's really crazy to believe that something like this happened not so long ago.

Afterwards we stopped at Charley's Bakery, which is a really famous bakery in Cape Town. It was so cute and the cupcakes there are amazing!

The rest of the weekend I'll most likely just be getting work done, maybe going to Mzoli's next weekend. I'm really just excited for this next school week to be over because Thursday, me and 8 of my friends are embarking on a little excursion to the Karoo Desert for Afrikaburn. This is a huge art festival in the middle of the desert and we'll be camping out there from Thursday-Monday. I'm sure many fun, interesting stories will come out of it. We just need to make sure we have enough food and water to get us through the weekend. Me and Isabel are probably going to go get our hair braided for this event, we're prepared to get laughed at in the salon, updates to follow.

It is completely unreal that I only have 6 more weekends after this. Also, my two best friends are coming to visit me 3 weeks from this Monday! I still have so many things to see and less than 50 days to do it all at this point. I will try to go back to actually blogging after this, if you actually just got through all my new updates, I commend you. Hope you enjoy :)

Kruger is Great, no if's and's or BUTT's

April 4-8

On the 4th we flew to Johannesburg and started our journey up to Kruger. A lot of driving but we finally got there. I could go through our days in detail but it's hard to put it all into words. The animals in this park are absolutely amazing. We saw everything from giraffe's, to elephants, to warthogs, zebras, rhino's, hippos, even a leopard! Only pictures will really do it justice. We even saw a green mamba snake one day, which is one of the most poisoness snakes in South Africa.

One day we woke up really early to do a morning game drive. We got driven around in a safari truck and we were mostly just trying to see some lions, but we were not lucky enough. We did see a leopard in a tree though which was awesome. We also saw a huge herd of elephants with all the moms and baby elephants. The babies were so adorable.

In the Cage.. READY!

April 3

We woke up at 4 am and got ready to go to Simon's Town to go shark cage diving! On the boat ride out to Seal Island, we saw hundreds of dolphin's jumping in the waves. It was actually one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Then we got to Seal Island where we would put the cage in. Seal Island is just what it sounds like, literally thousands of seals just everywhere.

Me, Isabel and my Aunt Sameena were the first brave ones to get into the cage. Getting the wet suit on was the most difficult, stressful part of the whole situation and it took a good 15 minutes to get that thing on. The water was absolutely freezing. We were in the cage for about 45 minutes and really only saw 2 sharks, 1 was pretty far away too. As soon as we got out, my brother and dad got in and of course, there was 3-4 shark sightings in 20 minutes. We still got to see the sharks jump out to bite the penguin board that they threw out into the water as bait so that was still cool.

We grabbed some lunch on Long Street, stopped at Green Market Square again then went back to our house. A couple of us went back out to see the Penguin Colony that was right down the street from our house!

The view from the back of our house!

Skeleton's Gorge

April 2
Today we took on Table Mountain. We went to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens in the morning to take the trail up the mountain from there. The trail that we were taking took us up Skeleton's Gorge (the harder of the two, compared to the Nursery trail).

It was a pretty rough hike up because it was just completely steep the entire way and there were a few parts where you had to climb up rocks which water was running down. When we got close to the top there were also a couple ladders that we had to climb up.

The trail was worth it though, the view at the top was beautiful!

After the hike down we were pretty tired and so I took them to Fat Cactus, which is the best Mexican food I've eaten in Cape Town. 

Mzoli's: Eating Meat between Cars

April 1

So today me, my brothers, Isabel and my aunt decided to take on Mzoli's while my parents explored some rare flora. My parents dropped us off at the mini-bus station in Cape Town and we all crammed in to go to Gugulethu.
Mzoli's was completely packed because there was a concert there. Literally it was impossible to walk around and we knew the meat would take forever to cook but we stood in the long line and ended up paying the the guy behind the counter a couple extra rand to speed our meet along a little bit. The problem with this was that everyone had the same idea, so it took us 2.5 hours to get our meet. This was the time even with some extra bribing, me and Isabel stood in the back and were giving cider to the guy cooking our meat in the back. When are meat was finally ready we went in to get it and it took us about 15 minutes just to get out of the butcher's  because there were SO MANY people inside. We were crammed between lots of sweaty people, practically suffocating on the way out. When we did make it out we decided that we would just eat our meet on the street and get of there as quickly as possible. We had a nice little conversation with a man that came over saying things about Obama and how he wasn't racist and we were all good people - this is also when we realized we were just about the only white people still there.
Because there was so much traffic we had to walk up along the street to find a mini-bus that would actually be able to get out. We hopped in one and took it to Cape Town. One of the lovely ladies in our mini-bus then directed us towards where there were mini-buses to get to the Waterfront and so we packed in another one and went to the Aquarium. The Aquarium was pretty lame and so we just spent a little time there and then sat on the waterfront. We took a cab back to my house where my parents picked us up and we headed back to our house to braai again!

Old Biscuit and Peninsula Tour

March 31

Old Biscuit Mill was a pretty big success among the Kappes’, I think. We spent the morning walking around and trying lots of different food. Pizza, waffles, eggs benedict and then some coffee to finish it off.

Afterwards we started our self-drive of the peninsula. We stopped at a couple look out points on the way, and in Simon’s Town for lunch. We saw a lot of animals on the way and had pretty close encounters with the ostriches. At the Cape of Good Hope we got out of the car and did a short walk. Then of course took some touristy pictures in front of the Cape of Good Hope sign… Time flew by with all the driving and taking pictures. After we went back home to braai! 

The Kappes’ Arrive in Cape Town

March 30

My parents, brothers, and aunt arrived on Friday, March 30^th in our rented mini-bus that we’d be driving around in. When they got to my house, we unloaded their stuff and then took off to Long Street for some lunch and shopping.

We went to Mr. Pickwick’s for burgers and milkshakes first, and then went to Green Market Square. Quickly everyone learned to bargain and we directly added a large amount to the economy in Cape Town with all the souvenirs we bought. We walked around Long Street for a little bit and then were off to Stellenbosch for some wine tasting. 

 We looked at the cheetah sanctuary for awhile, but we didn’t go in to pet them because it was super tourist-y and you just basically posed for a picture.

 

We then went and tasted some wine inside! None of us like red so we went through pretty much every white wine, each just being slightly worst then the first (Sorry, Moyo, really not a fan of your wine).

Then we headed back to where I live and stopped for dinner at one of my favorite restaurants in Observatory, Gypsy. Afterwards we picked up Isabel and headed to Betty’s Bay where we stayed for a couple nights. It was a very small town on the coast past Gordon’s Bay but our house was right on the water and was really nice. We called it a night so we could get up early for Old Biscuit Mill!