Cape Town 1

Hey Everyone,

So I’m in Cape Town, South Africa and it’s really pretty amazing. It actually strikingly resembles San Francisco, which puts me automatically in a good mood. You’ll never believe what I did today. Today I jumped the tallest bungee jump in the world (off the Bloukrans River Bridge in Plett, South Africa). I’ll get to details later, but check this out!!



Ok, so like with every port Meggie and I woke up around 5 am to watch the sunrise. Coming into Cape Town was beautiful. It was dark until like 6 unfortunately, but once it got lighter out we got to see the amazing site that is Table Mountain, a massive plateau shaped mountain that seems to be plopped right in the middle of it all (isn’t really, but coming into port it looks that way).

We pulled in to a wharf not unlike any pier on the Embarcadero and saw sea lions swimming and fishermen untying their boats and everything that just screamed San Francisco. A group of us decided to head off the ship once we were cleared by customs and find a tourist agency to book some crucial stops for our time here. We walked through the wharf area and ended up booking a trip to Robben Island to see Mandela’s prison cell and a guided township visit. In doing so I managed to also book some other little adventures that I’ll get to in the next post in the near future.

After taking care of business we walked around the pier area and shopped a little and enjoyed a nice pizza lunch, we were craving anything but peanut butter sandwiches! I left lunch and rushed back to the boat with a few others who were signed up to an FDP or Faculty Directed Practicum. FDP’s count for 20% of our grades in class and are requirements in certain ports. I will be taking care of a lot of FDP’s in Cape Town since much of the culture and cities history is relevant to my studies. For this first FDP I went to the Desmond Tutu Peace Center (or what exists as of now). It’s a building in progress that hopes to promote peace to South Africa, Africa as a whole, and internationally. About 20 of us sat in a tiny room in the building which is under construction and had a private meeting with executive for the program, Nomfundo Walaza. Walaza is a member of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) for the UN and involved in many other important organizations globally. She’s had a fascinating career as a psychologist and crisis center working and spent nearly 11 years working in various countries in Africa speaking with rape victims and helping with the healing process. The meeting lasted about 3-4 hours and we were able to ask some heavy questions. I was surprised at her abilities to answer the questions in ways I never would have assumed… needless to say I took some good notes.

After that the group traveled back to the ship where I met up with my friend Matt S. Matt and I decided beforehand that we were going to try to see a play in Cape Town and I had some other friends going that night. So we bought some tickets on our own and traveled alongside the SAS scheduled group to the Baxter Theatre. We saw, “Red George” a one-man play about apartheid. It was good, only we were pretty exhausted and there wasn’t too much action throughout the play. Regardless it was great to see the Baxter theatre which is right next to Cape Town University and to at least dabble in the South African theatre life.

We somehow pulled ourselves together and went out and met about 300 of our closest SAS friends on Lang Street (pronounced Long) where there are a number of restaurants and bars.


The next morning happened in such an amazing rush.

Matt G and I were supposed to wake up at 4 am and meet four other friends in the lobby area to head to the airport to catch a flight to George, South Africa. Once arriving in George we’d have to take a taxi two hours to the Bloukrans River Bridge, home of the highest bungy jump in the world (it holds the Guinness World Record). Conveniently Meggie had to leave at 3:45 am for her Safari trip and I expected to wake up when she woke up. Of course, I woke up at 3:45 and went right back to bed without properly setting my alarm. At 6:07 am I woke up and looked at my clock and FREAKED out. Our flight was scheduled to depart at 6:50 am and I knew the airport was about 30 minutes away. I jumped out of bed and called Matt. He was also in bed. I asked him, “Should we do this,” and without hesitation he said, “Yeah, let’s go.” So I literally chucked everything on my counter into my bag, threw on shorts and a shirt and ran out the door where I saw Matt (who lives down the hall) running towards me. Right before leaving I made calls to everyone else in our group and NO ONE answered. Very reassuring.

So Matt and I ran through the ship, down the gangway out to where the taxi men were standing. While running we were shouting, “TO AIRPORT. FAST!” and one guy started running and said, “Me. Follow Me!” As I’ve mentioned when discussing Puerto Rico and Brazil my experiences with taxis hasn’t been all that comforting. Let’s just say that this one tops the cake. We made it to the airport in 10 minutes and I was hyperventilating most of the time. Once we got there, we jumped out of the cab ran through the airport parking lot (convenient how they put the parking lot between the drop off drive through and the building!) and rushed to security. We got to security, ran to the front and tried to get through with just the printout confirmations. They weren’t having it, so we had to run from one end of the airport to the other (not that bad, it’s smaller than Madison’s airport, but still the clock was ticking!) and cut the line at the ticket booth.

As we got to the front we frantically explained our situation and on the loud speaker we hear, “Final boarding call for Gate 3, flight to George. Final Boarding call for Gate 3 flight to George.” Oh god, I thought. The man took our passports fumbled on the computer for longer than was what we wanted and eventually gave us our boarding passes. We then ran back to the other end of the airport where security was. Mind you Matt’s in flip flops and has nothing on him but his passport and camera (including no money) and I have a shoulder bag full of nothing important (i.e. a binder and three ring notebook, as well as an empty water bottle and power bar wrapper). We rush to security somehow make it through quickly and run to our gate where they wave us down and say “Hurry!” Oh, right, they want us to hurry!

So we get to the gate and find that we have to board a bus that will take us to the plane on the runway. We get on the bus and as we walk in I see our group all sitting in the corner talking about us! We rejoiced in meeting up with everyone and finally took a second to breath. Matt and I decided if we get desperate we’re going to apply for The Amazing Race on CBS. We’d kick butt!

So we flew from Cape Town to George where we met up with a scheduled shuttle bus (not part of the initial plan but SO essential! Thank you Kate and Rachele for organizing that). Nine of us boarded the shuttle bus that drove us through a number of towns that resembled the Midwestern countryside. Two hours later we made it to the Bloukrans River Bridge. Let me just say, it’s beautiful.



So we all walked over to the booking shack and signed up as a group to individually bungee jump! When signing up they offered us a deal where we could zipline to the middle of the bridge where we were meant to bungee. We decided to take it and all got strapped in to our harnesses and made our way to the bridge. We walked down this little side path trail and ended up at the zipline post. This is where I started to get a little nervous. Somehow I got over it and jumped up the platform to the zipline. It was surprisingly relaxing whizzing from one end of the bridge to the middle. It got us all a little pumped up too. Then they gave us the order for bungee jumping and Kate was first! She was a champ though, excited and ready.



The area where we jumped off the bridge was this little block probbaly 50 feet by 50 feet. There was a DJ booth (sooo necessary by the way) that would play a new song for everyone once it was their turn (mine was a techno/rap remix of "Dyin in Your Arms Tonight" - a classic, I know). And about 15 crew guys there to play jokes on us and laugh at us as we all got nervous and excited.

I was fourth up and after watching the three before me I knew I had to do this. I've wanted to bungee jump for a long time now and this was such an amazing place to do it. Frederick, the one making fun of me most of the time, strapped my ankles together and walked me to what I called "the plank". The music was bumping and frederick and one other guy held my hands out and made sure my shoes were hanging off the edge halfway. Then they speed counted from 5 down. 5, 4, 3, 2, Bungee! I jumped off and felt an amazing rush. The first three or so seconds of just realizing you jumped off a bridge feeling no resistance was unbelievable. I was shocked, excited, and scared all at once. After free falling I snapped back up and down for a little while, then rested staring at the Indian Ocean one way and a beautiful mountain landscape another. The hanging part was surprisingly relaxing and serene. The whole experience was so fun. Such a rush!

After everyone went we all boarded the shuttle bus and drove around various coastal cities. We stopped at this fantastic oyster place where Matt and I ate everything but the fish! We then drove back to the airport where most of us got out and boarded a plane back to Cape Town. Some people stayed to explore George a little more.

We came back to our ship from the Cape Town airport and decided to shop around the wharf area for a little and eat dinner at this semi-fancy restaurant near the ship. The dinner was incredible, great food! Then I called it a night having barely slept in the last two days and headed back to the ship with another girl who had to get up early for a safari.

Today I went to a township called Phillipi about 30 minutes outside Cape Town. I went on an SAS organized program with the NPO "Operation Hunger". "Operation Hunger" does a number of things for those living in township areas and today we helped weigh children to check their nutritional vitals. Malnutrition is a big problem in the townships, so we were able to speed up the process for Operation Hunger by speeding through an entire school of children. I spent most of the time playing with the kids, juggling for them, running around with them and picking them up and spinning them. It was tiring and fun and such a great interaction. We also met some High School kids and snacked on Wimpy's (a fast food chain much like in-n-out only not nearly as tasty). Since then I came back to the port and jumped on the internet to post this and some more photos (see other posts).

That's all for now, but much more lies ahead in Cape Town. I have three more days and plan to fill them up with as much activity as possible! I'll post again soon! Miss you all,

E