every step of my trip to and through cape town

Okay, so this is really long (and not even all of Spring Break). This is mostly so that I can remember everything, but if you'd like, come with me and enjoy!

Soooo... Gaby is bullet pointing her spring break and since I do everything Gaby does… I’m also going to bullet point my spring break.

• Kotoka airport was the easiest thing in the world. Someone told us that we should be there three hours in advance. Whoever thought that was necessary obviously has never gone through the easiest customs line in the world. We could wear our shoes through security and I think Marlee even had water in her water bottle. Kotoka airport was also the COLDEST airport in history. The air conditioning unit was blowing right on me and Caroline and I thought maybe I’d get frostbite. But I didn’t, thanks goodness. Jasmine, Tanesha, and Aiesha were also on the same flight, but it took them much longer to get through the airport. Funniest thing ever said to a stranger – a Ghanaian worker to Tanesha, “Are you mad?” Tanesha is probably one of the funniest people ever but never looks happy, per se, and this lady felt the need to comment on it. So hilarious.

• Got on the plane, got my window seat, and got cozy. I sat next to a Ghanaian lady who was going to Johannesburg to visit her brother who she hadn’t seen in four years. Her name was Sarah. It was her first time on a plane. She was just so adorable and nice – in fact, she hissed at the flight attendant to get their attention for me when the headphones they provided me were broken (Ghanaians hiss at people to get their attention… sounds pretty rude, but it’s actually quite effective). So I fell asleep for most of the ride listening to South African Airway radio – channel 8, African music. It was so soothing, especially after my complimentary split of wine. Sleepy time…

• Johannesburg airport was so nice. Like being back in America. We were only there for a little bit.. then got on our connecting flight to Cape Town. The man sitting next to us waiting to get on the flight had the biggest newspaper EVER. You literally cannot sit next to anyone while reading it because your arms will be in their laps. Its completely unnecessary… maybe they do it to be funny.

• The plane ride to Cape Town was only a couple of hours. I sat next to a dad and a daughter. I forget his name… but while we were talking he asked me what I was studying in school, and upon telling him that I was a psychology major, he said, “Oh man, could I use a psychologist…” and basically just spilled to me about his ex-wife and their problems. Seriously, this therapist/psychologist biz could get a little weird if random people I don’t know just tell me their life story. Basically though, we told me how his wife, the mother of his cute little girl, cheated on him with a 65 year old. Then went on to tell me about how he thinks its because she never had a dad and that she just needed an older man in her life, blah blah blah. Tooooo much information. Finally I got to sleep though.. it was still reallllly early Ghana time.

• Upon landing in Cape Town, we walked out to get our car and there was a cute man standing there with a sign that said “Busching” (as in Marlee Busching). Marlee reserved us a shuttle so that we wouldn’t have to deal with a taxi, etc. at the airport. He ended up being a great tour guide and told us a lot about South Africa and Cape Town during our drive to our hostel on Long Street – Carnival Court.

• We checked into our hostel with the “awkwardly cute front desk guy” who we later found out has a name… it was Sean. We asked him how to get to a Robben Island tour and he told us to take a taxi. When he told us this, we asked him if the taxis are metered or if you bargain with the taxi drivers because in Ghana there aren’t meters… only negotiations. Sean was a little weirded out by this question until we explained that we have been living in Ghana for the past two months.

• Got into my first metered taxi since being in Africa, on our way to the V&A Waterfront. Even though I knew the Rand was worth less than the dollar, watching the meter looked like we were going to have to pay a FORTUNE! It was something like 50 Rand… 5 US Dollars. While walking around the Waterfront looking for somewhere to eat, this lady approached us because… silly us, all four of us were wearing Ghanaian clothes. I was wearing a tank top I had made, Marlee a dress, Caroline a skirt, and Monica a shirt. It was actually pretty ridiculous. This lady wanted a picture with us. She was from somewhere in Western Africa, but living in the US, so she felt so connected with us. She walked with us for a while until we went off to get lunch. After lunch, we had to hurry to the Robben Island tour because we were late for take off time (you have to take a boat to Robben Island, hence the island).

• The whole thing was completely amazing…. At least the parts I was awake for. I was so sleepy from the trip from Ghana, I literally fell asleep for a little during every part of the tour. On the boat, on the bus tour, and I’m really embarrassed but while in a prison cell during an ex-prisoner’s talk about his stay in Robben Island. I didn’t actually fall asleep but I was dozing off. I don’t know which is worse. I hope the tour guides didn’t notice me because its not like I wasn’t interested, I was, I was just so tired. I did learn a lot though. Our bus tour guide was so hilarious and charismatic. He showed us around the island and explained how every country has or has had some sort of impact on Robben Island. After our bus tour of the island, we went on the tour of the prison with another guide. He showed us Nelson Mandela’s prison cell and told us why people were imprisoned and how they differentiated between whites, blacks, and colored people. During apartheid, being black was worse than being colored so you’d get worse conditions while in prison. Gosh, its so crazy how recently all of this happened… Apartheid only ended in 1994.

• After our tour ended, we walked around the waterfront, where I got some coffee Haagen Daz, mmm. If you’re still reading, comment and tell me what your favorite ice cream flavor is.

• On our way home to our hostel, we saw three of our friends, Jackie, Katie, and Emma, who were also spending their spring break in South Africa outside at a little bar. Then we went to MEXICAN FOOOOOOOD! Ah it was so delicious. We were all a little ravenous about it. For instance, we go nachos for the table. It was a well sized dish. Emma got up to go to the bathroom and in the time she was in the bathroom, we got the nachos and finished them off. Oh and the fajitas were so good – I felt like I had a food baby after dinner.. I think I might have had to unbutton my top button, shh… It’s weird because I didn’t used to love Mexican, but now I do love it so much and it was the most wonderful thing to have upon our arrival. One thing I still do miss soooo much is sushi. I have to find some here, stat.

• Our first night out in Cape Town was pretty fun. Our hostel is rated in the top 20 list of party hostels in the WORLD. And it lived up to this title our first night. Being a Saturday, they had a huge party in the bar – Zanzibar. Loud, loud music and tons of people. The music that was playing was really loud technoy stuff. South Africans dance really funnily too. We met a lot of really nice people from all over the place, mostly South Africans though. People are so hilarious. This one guy was so funny to Caroline. Caroline was kind of slouching on this bench and he went up to her and said, “Sit up!” So Caroline, like he was a drill sergeant, sat up immediately. Then he said “Stand up!” so she did. Then he said, “Hug me.” Hahaha, it was so funny. Who does that to a complete stranger? Crazy people. This is the same boy who was calling me Shakti all night because I’m apparently just like a little girl from The Matrix with that name. Never seen it, so I can neither confirm nor deny. Oh and as we were sitting on the balcony, someone from another bar’s balcony threw a glass bottle at a police car driving by. It didn’t do any damage to the car, it was just pretty stupid of them because they the police had to get out and investigate. It was pretty stupid. After a while, we decided to walk around Long Street and there were quite a few beggars. This one girl asked me for money EVERY SINGLE DAY we were in Cape Town. I gave her my coins if I had any, but otherwise she just got a big hug… but I think she appreciated it – she always called me “sista.”

• Just so you know… I wrote down all of my spring break on a legal pad in small bullets and what I’ve just written took up only one page of this baby legal pad… so buckle up. This’ll be long. I think I have about 10 pages of this legal pad. Maybe I’ll just write a short novel. And really these bullet points are quite unnecessary, they might as well be separate paragraphs. But I’ll go with it.

• Sunday, we went kayaking in a little town outside of Cape Town called Simonstown to see PENGUINS! At first when we had to get up at 8 Am after a night out, I didn’t know if it’d be worth it, but once we got there, and got some physical activity going, it was so fun. The penguins were so cute, and the water was so so so cold. That is the closest I’ve ever been to Antarctica… but that’s pretty obvious. After kayaking, we just walked around this adorable little town. Lots of antique stores and just cute things everywhere. We saw ads for houses and the houses were so cheap compared to American houses in similar locations. I mean beautiful houses for much less than you’d ever except – like on the water for $300,000…3,000,000 Rand. Then, we had lunch at this beautiful place called “The Meeting Place” – I want to open a restaurant like it some day. We took the train home for 12 Rand… first class. There were about 50 kids on our bus from some day camp or something all singing camp songs and playing games. I wouldn’t have minded had I not wanted to nap so badly… oh well. Once the (what Caroline deemed the) “troupe” got off, we all napped pretty soundly until the last stop in Cape Town.

• That night we had a delicious dinner and the best fruit cobbler, then went back to our hostel to hang out. The only people there were these lame, lame Americans. They were just so annoying. One was from Mesa, Arizona and just thought he was the coolest person alive. Needless to say, I went to bed early because I just couldn’t handle their pretentious and annoying conversations.

• Monday, we did a winelands tour which was so amazing. I almost didn’t go on it because I wanted to skydive that day, but then we arranged for another day to skydive instead. To get to Stellenbosch for our tour, Isaac in a little van picked us up at our hostel. He does tours often to different places in Cape Town. On our way to the winelands, we picked up a Polish couple, Hannah and Robert, who I love… and I wish I got their contact information. Anyway, as they got in car, Hannah said something along the lines of, “Oh aren’t you a lucky guy today?”… So we thought maybe they were brother and sister, but really they were just a really fun, sarcastic cute couple. On our drive to Stellenbosch, we saw a township and Isaac talked to us a little bit about them. Then told us about how bad traffic is going to be in 2010 because of the World Cup, and how all South Africans are going to be mandated to carpool. Our first stop was Bergkelder winery. We did a cellar tour where we tried about seven wines. Our guide taught us how to taste wine. I don’t really remember the steps but it was something like, first rate the color, arbitrarily, really. Second, smell it. Then taste it. Fourth smell it again after swirling your glass. Then do this weird sucking thing to get a different taste of the wine… and choke. Then drink it. I definitely started to feel the wine after that first tour. Hannah and Robert did too. They kept talking about how they wanted to dance! It was so funny. Our second winery was Goats Do Roam. They had cheeeeeese there. Being in Ghana, there is a lack of dairy products. I don’t usually crave cheese at all… I actually never really have dairy but having this cheese at Goats Do Roam was so delicious. I had so much goat cheese it was crazy. Caroline and I got baguettes and chevin goat cheese and just snacked, yum. We also all bought some wine there – it was so each. For good wine it was about 55 Rand… $5.50, woo. Next we were off to our picnic that Isaac set up for us. He had homemade cookies for us and then cold cuts and salad and drinks. Just as we were setting up, it started to drizzle and it got really cold. Robert gave me his jacket because I was so cold… another reason why I love that couple. Next, we went to another winery. After the first two, I couldn’t drink anymore. I definitely don’t think I got the Gosnell drinking genes. I gave all my wine to Robert and whoever was willing to take it from me. Hannah and I were out for the rest of the day. Next, Isaac took us to a cheetah conservatory where we got to pet cheetahs! It was so awesome. These cheetahs were rescued and are just so used to humans. They were so calm and soft and beautiful. It was really bad ass. That was our last stop, then Isaac dropped us off at home and got really sad saying goodbye to us. He really loved us. And we loved him, he was great. Oh, I forgot to mention how well informed Isaac was about current events, not only South African but American. He was talking about how he was so disappointed that “my man John McCain” didn’t win the election. He said that he liked his fiscal policy, his stance on war, etc. It was so interesting to talk to him about it. People in Ghana all love Obama, but simply because he’s African. It was so captivating to talk to someone from abroad who knew probably more than I do about my president. In fact, we met a lot of people in South African who were fans of McCain and were really up on American politics and current events… I felt kind of out of the loop.

• That night we went to a bar for happy hour, drinks were incredibly inexpensive, two for one. I guess all-in-all South Africa was pretty inexpensive. It was really bizarre though because the bar said 21 and over. Which I’m obviously allowed for, but all of my friends are underage.. minus Katie and maybe Emma. But they let us in anyway without our IDs because we told that they we didn’t want to carry around our passports as IDs because its unsafe… he obliged. After happy hour, we went to Kurtish food. It was so good. Right as we were about to get our check, belly dancers came out. This would’ve been cool had I not just read in the menu that there would be a “Compulsory 10 Rand” fee added per head if belly dancers came out during our meal. It was fun to watch but irritating that we each had to pay extra for this lady to dance in front of us. Literally, had we received our check like two minutes earlier, we wouldn’t have had to pay. Then since it was Monday night and we wanted to do something fun, Emma (she used lived in Cape Town last summer) knew of this club for 18 and up. So we got a cab there… again same problem because we didn’t have ids. When we explained that our only ids were our passports, they still wouldn’t let us in and said that we didn’t all look 18. Rude. We went to club next door, and they said they’d let us in, but only if Caroline and Monica showed ID. Even more rude. So we just decided to walk back to Long Street and go to our hostel to hang out yet again. It ended up being a short night because I got tired early… probably from all that wine, and we went to bed.

• Tuesday, we were supposed to SKYDIVE! Erin, my friend from Pi Phi, told me that this was something I had had had to do. So I told my friends about it and we made all the arrangements. We were all set when we looked outside and saw it was a little gloomy… uh oh. Then we went downstairs to ask Sean, awkwardly cute front desk guy, about the sky diving conditions and he said he’d give us a call when he heard from the company. Sure enough, ten minutes later, we got a call from Sean saying that it was too windy but that they could reschedule us for Monday. Unfortunately, we’d be in Namibia by then, so we couldn’t go. I’m sort of happy we didn’t though because we had such a wonderful day anyway.

• Instead of skydiving, we went shopping along Long Street. Everything was really cute, but pretty expensive. I got a couple pairs of lounge pants that were two for the price of one. Then We went to Mr. Pickwicks for some lunch. They had really yummy milkshakes, so I got my favorite – Banana!

• After lunch, we went hiking at Lion’s Head, a suggestion from Sean. This was probably one of the most incredible hikes I’ve been on. First of all when we got to the trail head, we asked this man to take our picture. He took a couple of pictures of us. And as we were about to start hiking, we stopped us and said he’d like to take some pictures of us of his own for a photojournalism article he was doing on the dangers of being mugged while hiking. This is just what we wanted to hear – since we were carrying a backpack, each of us had a camera, and well it was only three young girls (Marlee, Caroline, and me). He said that there had been a lot of mugging on this particular trail and that there should be more signs about it, and that’ why he was writing the article. So once we had our photo shoot, and he told us we might be in the local newspaper – we don’t know if we actually ever were, we started the hike. I don’t know if its because I’ve done very little strenuous activity in this blistering Accra heat, but I felt so out of shape the first couple minutes as we were hiking. It was just a steady incline, but it seemed like K2 or something, not really. We finally started getting to the real hike part, and it wasn’t as bad. We passed some Germans who told us that there was rock climbing, scaling walls with chains, and some other really difficult stuff ahead, so we were prepared not to make it to the top, especially with our cameras and bags. We kept walking and literally every person who passed us we discussed the possibility of them being a mugger. No one mugged us yet. The hike was a complete circle around the mountain, so we got to see all of Cape Town from every side of this mountain. We kept hiking and finally we got to the top… lazy Germans didn’t even make it, just kidding. We were the only ones up there and it was unbelievably beautiful. I think the wind that prevented us from skydiving cleared the city of any pollution or anything, because standing on Lion’s Head I could see for miles. I could see the beautiful coast with its blue, blue waters, the downtown area, the waterfront, Robben Island, Table Mountain (the big mountain), and the incredibly blue skies with the white clouds making awesome shadows on the mountain. It was like something out of a postcard. I actually felt like a postcard photographer while I was hiking. Come to think of it most spring break was like I was in a postcard… Anyway, it was just so perfect. After we took all of our pictures, we started our way down. The hike down was just as great.

• When we got to the bottom we didn’t really know how to get home from there. We waited a while for a taxi, but then we saw this guy coming down the mountain. I asked him if he knew where we could get a taxi… he didn’t but then offered us a ride once his friend came down, because we were on his way home. Their names were Christian and Michael. They were so nice and funny. They were two self-proclaimed “decent South Africans.” We talked with them about the photojournalist who told us about the muggings. They too agreed that it’s a problem on the mountain. And said that if we had gone up the other route, we probably would’ve been mugged… lots of “dodgy” people hang out on the other route. Christian said that mugging is such a problem in South Africa that his brother bought his girlfriend a stun gun just in case. We also talked with them about Ghana, told them about tro tros, decribed them as dilapidated with bungie cords holding the door on. Tro tro generally are broken down with a Jesus saying on the back, folding down seats, and at least one high pitched voice yelling from it… basically vans that parents would advise you not to get into.

• We got back to the hostel safely, showered and went out to dinner. We had delicious burgers and sweet potato fries, mmm. We went back to our hostel for the St. Patrick’s day party. Tons of people were there. Right when we sat down we met a bunch of really nice South Africans from East London (Wouter, Ben, Belinda, Natasha, Daniel,…). They taught us a little Afrikaans and some of the clicking language, while we taught them a little Twi. We all stayed up all night until our shuttle to the airport at 5:30 am for the airport. On our way to the airport, we could see that Table Mountain was on fire. It was so terrible, it literally seemed like the entire mountain was on fire.

• When we got to the airport, we found out that there were only 12 people on our 50 person plane. Perfect, since we were all so tired… we each got our own tiny, tiny row. Carolie and I had to be woken up by the flight attendants when it was time for landing. Out the window, Namibia looked so vast and there was literally nothing around the airport besides grass and trees. It was crazy. In the airport, there was a place to pick up your firearms if you were in Namibia to hunt game. It was pretty appalling to see that check point, but whatever.

• When we got to our backpackers, Chameleon, we went swimming, then took a nap, met our weird roommates (guy who opened locker every hour in the middle of the night, so annoying), and went to the grocery store to get food to make for dinner. Our whole meal – pasta with vegetables cost us US $4. Oh and one huge perk about Chameleon, as much free rooibus tea as I wanted. Mmmm… We watched some TV with our German friend Fabian, saw some people watching Ace Ventura, and considered joining them but didn’t… they ended up being the boys who went on the safari with us!

Sossusvlei and Swakopmund coming up next.


Oh, I've been trying to upload pictures to no avail. Patience is a virtue.

love peace love love