SOUTH AFRICA

Wine Tasting
Well the M.V. Explorer pulled into beautiful Cape Town about 2 hours late on Feburary 18th! I was bumming cause we were supposed to have a private tour guide take 6 friends and I to the wine lands of Stellenbosch and Franschoek. We were two hours late to meet our guide because I had no way of getting a hold of him :-/ I felt so bad! But he was a really cool guy and we were off to go taste some delicious wines! On the way we stopped at the prison that Nelson Mandela walked to his freedom from. For those of you who don’t know who he is or anything about South African history here is a little tidbit! Up until pretty recently South Africa had an apartheid government. This basically meant that white people were first class citizens, colored people who were Asians and Indians were second class citizens, and black people were not considered citizens at all. Mandela was a fighter for human rights and was arrested for doing so. He was sentenced to prison for life and even at one point almost condemned to death. After 27 years in Prison (most of his sentence being lived out in Robben Island) he was free to leave in 1990. He was then named President of South Africa for 6 years. In South Africa Mandela is looked at as their sort of savior or deliverer, he is kind of like our equivalent of Martin Luther King only more radical. Anyways that’s my little history story for the day!
Back to the wine lands. When we pulled into Franschoek I was immediately astounded. I had never seen any type of vineyard before or anything even remotely similar to it. Everywhere you looked there were rows and rows of grapes and different beautiful buildings that housed the cellars. We stopped at a vineyard called Chamonix. It only cost 15 rand to do a wine tasting ($1.50 American) So we were all very pumped being the poor college students that we are! And they were delicious we started with 3 whites then 2 reds. It was just so fun trying all the wines and hanging out with friends in such a gorgeous setting. We then traveled to the cute little town center where we sat down for lunch. After that we continued to a second winery. This was a much bigger winery that had a restaurant, store, and even a little museum which was an original Dutch house from the 1800’s. We didn’t do a wine tasting here we just walked around a bit and took lots of pictures and relaxed. Next we continued to Stellenbosch. The winery we went to here was incredible. This was the most modern one which had huge windows overlooking the big metal tanks that housed the wine. This vineyard was at the bottom of a hill. Running all up the hill was rows and rows of grapes lined at the top by olive trees. It was amazing. We went to 4 different vineyards in all. After this we went to the town of Stellenbosch which houses the University of Stellenbosch. It was really fun it reminded me of being back at school! Walking around with tons of college students, seeing all the school buildings, dorms, the town even looked like a college town. I really enjoyed it. We did some shopping and got some ice cream then headed back to the ship.
On the way back to the ship I was able to talk with my guide a little bit. We passed tons of townships which are kind of like housing projects in the United States but they are way poorer in South Africa. The houses are literally little shanty shacks built out of random scrap materials that they find in garbage cans. The nice luckier shacks steal electricity and water. The electricity poles have wires sticking out of them in every which direction it looks like a giant spider web in the sky. These townships were lined up all over the highway and they just went on for miles and miles. The only space that the children had to play was in the little grassy area on the side of the highway. They mainly played soccer which lead me to my next question, was football (soccer) popular in South Africa? Well I was shocked to hear that they actually call it soccer as well and yes it is popular but the team is not very good. The 2010 World Cup is actually being played in South Africa. We saw the stadium being built in Cape Town. In South Africa soccer is a predominately black sport and rugby is mostly white.
Cape Town
The next day my friend Kelsey and I were off to wander around Cape Town. We started by going to the aquarium! I love love love aquariums cause I love looking at cool fishies and sharks and dolphins! My favorite display though was the clownfish display. There was a good 100 little Nemo fish in this tank with a hole in the middle where you could climb under the tank and stick your head up in and then it looked like you were in the tank too! It was awesome I will upload pics soon. Other than that we saw so many cool fish that we don’t have in the states. After we bought a bus ticket and went to the green square market. This place was awesome! I love my shopping and I loved this place. It was a huge market that had tons of cool African jewelry, drums, paintings, masks, bowls, and tons more. I went a little crazy but it was soo worth it. After shopping we stopped for lunch at this cute little café. There was a street band performing in front of the restaurant named the Ganga Muffins! Ha they were awesome I went to go tip them 10 rand (1 dollar) and turns out they were selling a CD for that much so I bought that instead! Now I can bring the Ganga Muffins from the Streets of Cape Town to Skokie! After lunch we did a tour of Cape Town. We drove passed the district 6 museum, Table Mountain, the oceanfront which was filled with gorgeous beaches, the capital building, and many other historical sites. After this we headed to our cute little bed and breakfast. It was adorable! It was about 4 blocks from the ocean front and 1 block from tons of restaurants. It had a cute little pool, living room area, and dinging area. Our room was on the first floor which we were a bit nervous about. South Africa has the highest violent crime rate in the world and the worst part is they are usually crimes against people not property. Well our bed and breakfast was aware of this cause there was a locked gate on our sliding door to the patio as well as a cage on the bathroom window, so we rested easy. Kelsey and I got all dressed up and headed to dinner at a restaurant called Africa Café. We decided not to be adventurous that night so we just ordered some good old burgers! After dinner we headed back to the bed and breakfast since we had internet and I went a little crazy uploading pictures as I’m sure all of you can see!
Table Mountain &Township Tour
We had an early morning we were up and ready to go at 8am. We were supposed to do a township tour through a company but we got stood up! They never came to pick us up so we bought another bus pass and headed to Table Mountain. Table Mountain is a mountain located in the middle of Cape Town. From the top you can see amazing views of the city center as well as the coastline. You can hike up it if you are feeling adventurous but we decided to take the cable car. The cable car holds up to 60 people and it take only 1 minute to get to the top! It’s really cool the inside of the cable car rotates on the way up. At the top you can see for miles it’s so beautiful! Our ship looked SO teenie tiny from the top of that mountain. We then headed on down and continued on our tour.
We found that on one of the busses you can get off and do a walking township tour with a local tour guide. This was an experience that both Kelsey and I were dying to have so we decided to go for it. It was still daylight and after all the bus company was reputable and sponsored this man. So we got off at the township exit and hoped other tourists on the bus would get off with us but no it was just Kelsey and I. We met our guide who was very nice and we began walking in the township. The ground was muddy and full of pieces of glass, stones, metals, and garbage. We walked up hill and saw the formal and informal housing. A few of the houses are made out of real housing materials and were built by habitat for humanity or government sponsored but most were informal and put together made out of random materials. They looked like little forts children would make in the summertime out of tarps and garbage, but they live here year round. Our guide took us to one of the bars in the township so we could interact with some of the people. It was a little sketchy at first pretty dirty and gross but we relaxed and took it for what it was worth. We met tons of people who lived in the townships and learned that so many live there for so many different reasons. Some people choose to live in the townships because they are lazy and don’t want to work, others cannot find work anywhere, some are criminals who steal what little they have, some are refugees fleeing from other countries in Africa. I met two men from Zimbabwe (you should Google what is going on with Mugabe and hyperinflation there) who had moved to South Africa a year ago. They lived in the township and were SOOOO grateful to have their little shanty. It was truly incredible how welcoming most of these people were. Our guide bought us this HUGE sausage it was a local favorite apparently. It looked DISGUISTING oh my god so nasty but we had to be polite and try it. So I hesitated and ate a small piece. I was glad it was just a small piece because it was as gross as it looked. I tried another bite to be polite but no it was not good. All the men in the bar loved it though and they passed it around and ate the whole thing! We talked about politics in South Africa and we discussed Obama and Bush, man they do not like Bush at all, they despised him even more than some Americans. After the sausage our guide took us to some of the houses which are literally the size of a bathroom. It’s a bed a fridge if they are lucky and a stove all in one room. He brought us to a white shanty which was named “the white house”he said that the U.S. should send Obama to South Africa and they would set him up real nice in there haha. Visiting the township was an amazing experience. I am so happy I got to interact with the people of Africa. South Africa is deceivingly beautiful. The tourist areas are AMAZING they are just gorgeous. While there you forget that 70% of the country lives in townships like this.
Cape Malay Cooking Tour
I ventured to the Cape Malay quarter of Cape Town. Here is where the Muslim population of South Africa lives. The buildings here are painted beautiful bright colors as far as the eye can see. I mean lime green, magenta, turquoise, orange, yellow every color of the rainbow! Just walking around the houses put me in a good mood! We made our way to a spice shop where I bought some good spices for my parents and grandparents (but stupid semester at sea confiscated them cause apparently we are not allowed to bring spices on board…it sucked). We then made our way to a local lime green house where we began preparing our lunch. We were welcomed with a drink that was in a shot glass. It was pink and looked kind of like pepto bismal but tasted like a strawberry milkshake it also had seeds in it but it was very good. We then began cooking a traditional South African dish. We had samoosas which are SOO good, curry chicken, flat bread, poppers, and for desert donuts! Everything was so good and we were able to help our host cook and get to know a bit about her and more about the Muslim religion. Muslims pray 5 times a day and over the loud intercoms they have a call to prayer whenever they have to. The first one starts at 3 am! So every night at 3 am beginning at the age of 7 you wake up and pray. That is dedication! Anyways it was a really cool experience and we got to see what a nice house in Cape Town was like.
After this Kelsey and I made our way to our hotel which was located on the bustling Long Street. Long Street is like the main street for bars and restaurants. Our hotel was called the Grand Daddy and boy was it cool. On the roof there were these little RV’s. These RV’s were like little hotel rooms that people could rent out. They were silver and looked like tin cans on fake grass! There was also a bar located on the roof it was really cool. That night we went out to dinner and hung out on Long Street. It was pretty cool but night is when the night beggars come out, majority of which are children. A lot of older people have been training children to commit crimes and beg for money because if they get caught they can’t get in very much trouble because they are minors. It is really sad actually. There are guards all over the street yelling at these kids and even being physically violent with them to get them to leave. After a little bar hopping we hailed a cab to take us back to our hotel…only after we made a pit stop at McDonald’s haha oh they knew we were Americans!
Final ThoughtsFor my last day in Cape Town there was so much I wanted to do. I still hadn’t made it to Robben Island, Cape of Good Hope, or the District 6 Museum, there was still soooooo much to do. Instead of packing it all into one day I decided that South Africa is definitely a place I am going to have to go back to. I took a cab to the beach and I just laid there and watched people. It was a Sunday afternoon so there were many locals there. The tide was so unpredictable, I was sitting about 40 feet from the ocean and when a big wave would come it would touch my toes! It happened about every 20 minutes. I loved just relaxing and soaking in the last few drops of the South African sun!!! I was in Camps Bay which reminds me a little bit of Miami beach. It was lined with swanky hip colorful restaurants. I ate lunch at one of these amazing restaurants and I sat outside and just wrote in my journal. It sounds lame but it was awesome. It was a great way to end an amazing trip. I know I say this about all the countries I have been to but Cape Town was amazing. It was my favorite port by far and the one place so far that I know I will one hundred percent get back to and all of you should as well. The food there is amazing, the beaches are beautiful, shopping is phenomenal, for thrill seekers there is shark diving and safaris, the mountains line the backdrop of the city, just everything was perfect. South Africa is an amazing place and I feel extremely blessed that I got to experience it.