Cape Town 2

(Operation Hunger)


(Pre Sky Diving!)


(About to start the Table Mountain Hike)


(View of Table Mountain from the ship)

Hey all again. So it’s hard for me to blog about Cape Town because it was truly amazing. I’ve never done so much in one week. It may have been one of the best weeks of my life. I’ll do my best to document the rest of the week and try to explain why it was so truly amazing.

Before getting into the details let me reiterate how much Cape Town reminded me of being in San Francisco. The city, the wharf, the mountains all reflected pieces of my home. It was really wonderful being able to relate such a positive experience with such an important feeling of comfort for me.

Alright, after Operation Hunger, which again was really a great experience, I came back to the ship and met up with some friends. We ended up staying around the wharf area and found a fun jazz bar to spend the evening at.

I woke up early the next day to go…SKYDIVING! Four other girls and I hopped on a shuttle bus and drove to the only skydiving company in Cape Town. We split into two groups and boarded these tiny dinky planes with plastic peel up doors. We flew up to 7,500 feet and just jumped out! It was unreal. So beautiful to soar above the Cape Town coast and see the mountains and the ocean all around you. The free fall was something like 35 seconds and I loved every second of it. I have it all on video and will hopefully post it on YouTube for everyone to see. Soaring down was beautiful. All the girls had a blast and it was really a great trip.

After that we made it back to the ship and then decided to shop around downtown Cape Town. So we drove the Green Market/Long Street area and checked out a number of boutiques and the market. It was nice to see downtown during the day because I’d been so busy with other things that I hadn’t been able to just walk around and window shop. There were some really cool stores. I also got to meet some local Cape Towners which was cool and I struck up some interesting conversations. From most of my conversations, they all want to visit the United States and have generally positive feelings toward Americans. We made it back to the ship that night to have dinner on the boat and save some money. Then we went out to the Long Street area again at night and again saw about 300 SAS kids all over the street.

The next morning woke up early to go back to the shopping area with some other kids. We made it to Green Market and Long Street and walked around again during the morning. We also tried this nice Mexican Restaurant on a side street that made the most bizarre chips! We had planned to meet people back at the ship at 1 ish so we had to cut our shopping short. When I got back three other girls and I decided to do a tour of the Cape of Good Hope and the Western Cape coast. This was such a good idea! We loaded a private shuttle and drove to Boulder Beach where we saw a ton of Penguins! We also got to drive around the coast and see beautiful coastal houses, an ostrich farm, and baboons wandering in the street. It was so fun. The guys who drove us around were really cool as well (we’re facebook friends now, fyi) and they played the Celine Dion DVD show the whole time. It was hilarious.

We got back and ran into Marsh Allen, my RD and one of the coolest guys on the ship. He told us about this huge Gay Pride festival party that was going on in the Waterkant district (much like the Castro district). We knew we’d have to check it out. So the same girls got together and made to the VIP party where we danced side by side with lots of men in tight tank tops and jeans to blasting techno music. It was a lot of fun. We left a little earlier than I wanted and made it to Long street to end out the night with the same 300 SAS kids from the nights before.

The next morning a big group of girls all woke up super early so we could hike Table Mountain. Table Mountain is beautiful and insanely challenging to climb. It was by far the hardest and most rewarding hike of my life. My friend Mandy and I broke away from the group and made it up the mountain in about two hours. The last 45 minutes were especially challenging as we essentially were climbing rock stairs. Once we made it to the top we saw an amazing view of the city and the coastline and it was so worth it. We definitely took the cable car down though.

We then took a taxi back to the wharf area and Mandy and I met some other kids for a planned tour of Robben Island. Robben Island was great. It was about a forty-five minute ferry ride to the island where we had a bus tour and walking tour both provided by two ex-political-prisoners. It was touching and I definitely need to read more about the prison and about the famous prisoners.

After that we made it back to the ship in time to load up and check in.

We had to delay our departure from Cape Town because there was some intense fog preventing us from leaving.

It’s been a few days since we finally left and I’ve been catching up on sleep, work, and hanging out with people who I didn’t see while I was in port. I can’t believe how amazing Cape Town was and how unreal it is that I have so many more countries to go to! Next stop is Mauritius, don’t worry no one knows where it is. It’s an island off Madagascar. It’s supposed to have beautiful beaches, great flea markets, and amazing scuba/snorkeling and hiking. I’ll be sleeping/reading on the beach a lot and Natalie and I are planning on cooking some decent meals finally! Hopefully I’ll get some good internet time and I can finally e-mail those of you who I haven’t been able to keep in touch with very well. Again, thanks to everyone who has written e-mails, it really means a lot! I feel so out of the loop sometimes and it means a great deal to hear from you guys. I’ve got such great friends! I’ll also try to upload more pictures later. Love and miss you all,

Peace,
E