MAURITIUS
In order to split up the 12 day journey from South Africa to India semester at sea made a pit stop at the beautiful island of Mauritius! And was it beautiful! Mark Twain said that heaven was modeled after Mauritius and now I see why. We hopped off the ship as fast as we could and took a water taxi to the town of Port Louis. From there Win, McKenzie, and I hired a taxi driver for the day to take us all over the island which is about the size of Rhode Island so not very big. We wanted to go to the other side of the island to get away from all the semester at sea kids so we headed for the southern part. Along the way we stopped at this hidden waterfall that our taxi driver knew about called Rochester falls. We had to hike down a hill that was full banana trees, sugar cane, and other gorgeous greenery. There was this one plant that was soooo cool, when you touched it its leaves sprang in towards the stem. I know plants are living creatures but it was really interesting to actually see one move on its own! We had a guide who helped us walk across a river to reach the bottom of the waterfall. It was amazing. There were local children there who were swimming around in it having a great time. It was so nice to be the only tourists in an area for a change. Win and McKenzie decided to jump off the top of the waterfall! I was too scared so I just took pictures of them and swam around! It was so fun though we went under the fall and I thought I was going to die cause the water was falling so hard on me. After the waterfall we took a mini hike around the area where our guide picked some wild guava plants for us to try We climbed to the top of the fall and crossed the river back to the car. At the car we ripped out some sugar cane which grows all over Mauritius and tried some of the juice from it. It was delicious but a little odd it tasted like warm sugar water! Next we were off to this great beach we read about, Blue Bay beach. Upon arrival I was in absolute awe of the water, I have never in my life seen water so blue. We ran from the car onto the beach and jumped right in. It was my first time in the Indian Ocean and it was great! The water was pretty warm but still refreshing it was the saltiest ocean I have ever been in! We were 3 of only 10 people on the beach which was very nice. I collected some old coral in all different shapes and sizes. We decided to hang out at this hotel on the beach where we pretended to be hotel guests! We ate lunch there which was pretty similar to that of any island cuisine, lots of fish, fruit, a touch of spiciness, it was pretty good. I ordered a strawberry daiquiri with lunch which they did not know how to make! Instead they gave me the most disgusting vodka and grenadine concoction! I stuck to drinks off the menu for the rest of the day. We mostly just laid out in the sun and swam around and relaxed all day it was so amazing. McKenzie went snorkeling I laid out while all the different beach vendors came selling their jewelry which I was able to bargain down pretty low for a beautiful green, white, and gray shell necklace. We went swimming again and this time I cut the bottom of my foot open on some coral which was very painful. It immediately began bleeding and it was getting late so we decided it was time to head back to the ship. Overall Mauritius was great it reminded me a lot of hawaii. We were only there for a day but it was well worth the stop.
SEA OLYMPICS
Well as soon as we arrived on the ship we had little time to prepare for the opening ceremonies of the sea Olympics. It was really a funny site to see 700 college students get so into something so silly. There were 10 seas which competed I was part of the red sea. At the opening ceremonies each sea presented their mascot (ours was the red bull), flag, and our sea chant. Pretty much half of the kids were still drunk from our day spent at Mauritius so that increased the rowdiness of it all. After the opening ceremonies it was straight to bed because I had to participate in the 3 legged race at 9:00am the next morning!
Well when I woke up my foot hurt SOOO bad from when I hit it on the coral there was no way I could run on it in the three legged race. So I had to find someone to take my spot and I participated in the orange pass instead (yanno where you stand in a line and pass an orange down using only your neck no hands!). I swear we all did the craziest most childish things just in the hope of being able to say we were the winners of the sea Olympics! There was a tug of war game, wall sit contest, mashed potato carving contest, Sudoku, scavenger hunt, flippy cup tourney! And the most important and entertaining of all the synchronized swimming show!!! My group had been practicing for a week but not once in the pool. We were all a bit nervous since we had an audience of hundreds but I was pumped and ready to go. We did our dance to a 90’s remix and it was GREAT! We won 3rd place! I am going to try and put a video of it up soon it really was funny. The Sea Olympics was a lot of fun. It was another day off of school and it was cool to see so many people take pride in a team because I know we are all missing it. Well the red sea won the silver medal!!!! WOOOOHOOOOO It was really fun and a great time. I am so glad I participated in it and we won silver!
Well when I woke up my foot hurt SOOO bad from when I hit it on the coral there was no way I could run on it in the three legged race. So I had to find someone to take my spot and I participated in the orange pass instead (yanno where you stand in a line and pass an orange down using only your neck no hands!). I swear we all did the craziest most childish things just in the hope of being able to say we were the winners of the sea Olympics! There was a tug of war game, wall sit contest, mashed potato carving contest, Sudoku, scavenger hunt, flippy cup tourney! And the most important and entertaining of all the synchronized swimming show!!! My group had been practicing for a week but not once in the pool. We were all a bit nervous since we had an audience of hundreds but I was pumped and ready to go. We did our dance to a 90’s remix and it was GREAT! We won 3rd place! I am going to try and put a video of it up soon it really was funny. The Sea Olympics was a lot of fun. It was another day off of school and it was cool to see so many people take pride in a team because I know we are all missing it. Well the red sea won the silver medal!!!! WOOOOHOOOOO It was really fun and a great time. I am so glad I participated in it and we won silver!
E-mail from Britt, Until she can update again
Mom, I think I might know who your blog lover Phil is! Haha does he have blonde hair? I think he was on the green team in the sea olympics! Synchronized swimming went great today! All those handstand and diving competitions Matt and I had as children really paid off! I had someone tape it so I can show you guys when I get home! lol Mauritus was really fun! Win, Mckenzie and I traveled together we hired a cab for the day and we went to some coooool ass waterfall! Then we went to this quiet beach on the other side of the island! There were no semester at sea kids there it was so relaxing we ate lunch and use the facilities at this nice nice hotel on the beach it was super fun! The Indian ocean is reallly warm but reallly salty!!! Anyways I'll give ya a blog update soon thats just a little tidbit of what I did to hold ya over! My slumdog millionare is flying off my shelf! Everyone wants to borrow it but I am just gonna have to say NO soon cause I still havent watched the whole thing!!!! Ok gotta go write the most difficult speech of my life! Its basically like midterms week so I have so much stuff to do but I have to just keep telling myself that as soon as I finish I am like cruisin until finals week! I will be in India Wednesday night your time, so I will update when I can but it may be after India. Ok miss you and love you talk to ya soon!
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.
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.
NAMIBIA, AFRICA
Let me just say Africa is amazing and I am head over heels in love with it!!! We pulled into Walvis Bay at around 8 am on February 14th. Semester at Sea organized a group of school girls to come and perform for us in the port. They were so great. There was around 20 of them ranging in age from 6-14 and they dressed in a traditional African dress they sang and dance for us some songs in Afrikaans and some in English. It’s funny the way they danced would have been considered provocative in the United States it was a lot of booty dancing but it was SOOOOO cool. After they were done we were able to take pictures and talk to them. They were all so nice and sweet they kept saying I know who your president is! Obama! It was so cute.
Next I was off to leave for my Safari! There were about 12 Wild Dog Safari vans waiting for us! I was on bus 6 with 13 other girls we only had 1 guy in our van! Ha our two tour guides names were George and Milner they were both from Namibia and hadn’t been anywhere outside of Namibia in their whole lives. We drove past the giant sand dunes which were so big I can’t even describe the size they were enormous! We drove passed a few townships which were also huge, they would just pop up out of nowhere in the middle of the desert. We made a pit stop in Swakempound which is an old German town in Namibia. It was so cool. You can see the German influence in the buildings and a lot of the shopkeepers were German as well. Namibia was a German Colony until 1990 when they finally gained their independence. Everything in Namibia is SO cheap the exchange rate is 10 Namibian dollars to 1 U.S. dollar so you get a lot of bang for your buck! Although the town was cool I was looking for a more authentic African feel I was shocked at the amount of people who spoke English. I learned later that in the schools they teach Afrikaans and English to them.
We then continued our drive to Etosha Park. We were all under the impression that the drive to Etosha would be 4 hours that was a LIE! It took 8 hours to get there! I think the tour company lied to the woman who planned the whole thing so that we would book it cause there was like 127 SAS kids that did it and I am sure about half of us wouldn’t have if we knew it was 8 hours away!!! Oh well it’s not so bad driving 8 hours when wild crazy animals like warthogs, springbok, and monkeys cross the road! We also stopped a million times for gas like it was ridiculous but it was cool cause we got to have like a half hour in a bunch of little African towns. Someone had the bright idea to buy some bottles of wine for the remainder of the ride and the first night in camp! It was really fun our tour guide sang us the Namibian National anthem and some Namibian songs in return we sang him our national anthem and some classic American tunes!!! He loved it and so did we it was a great way to start off our Safari.
When we pulled into the park it started raining! I mean African downpour! So we are all thinking great time to unpack our gear set up tents and cook dinner in the pouring rain at 11pm. So we decided it was a good idea to change into our bathing suits so we wouldn’t get our clothes and stuff all wet! People looked at us like we were crazy but we weren’t the ones complaining when we had warm dry clothes in the morning! Well for dinner I decided to help out our guides cook so that I could get some time to talk to them. We cooked pasta with meat sauce! It was delicious. After dinner it was straight to bed cause we had to wake up at 5am to start our game drive!
5am rolls around a lot sooner than you think! We woke up and were immediately off. I snagged a front row seat in the van so that I could get lots of good shots of animals! We first saw springbok which are basically like deer and they were everywhere! Same thing with Zebras they were all over. Literally everywhere just running around! It was funny by the end of the trip we would all be so annoyed when the Springbok and Zebra were in the road cause then we’d have to stop! I was like really am I honestly getting annoyed because Zebra are in the road?!?!How cool!!! We saw lots of Giraffes one of them came really close to our van it looked like he was going to try and stick his head into the open top part. We spotted them because their heads stick up passed the treetops. We saw Oryx, Ostrich, Wildabeasts, and a lot more! But we really really wanted to see a lion so we began the mad hunt for them! Our guide would stop every time we saw cars and asked them if they saw a lion and finally we were pointed in the right direction! We saw 2 female lions that were relaxing under a tree after eating a zebra! We saw the bloody zebra carcass next to them it was so cool. After our game drive we had some free time to relax and walk around our campsite area which was located inside the park.
I decided to go to the water hole where some animals stop and drink. It was way more beautiful than I expected. There were trees everywhere and the grasses were so green. They had benches set up for people to sit on and a little hut like bleacher area which I ventured off to. When I got there I saw that there were three young girls sitting there. I asked if I could join them and they said yes. They were very eager to talk to me and I was them as well. They loved my nail polish and my rings and my purse and pretty much everything I had with me. I asked them if I could take a picture with them and boy were they excited! They wanted to model for me so I took some pictures of them and they wanted me to show them! I’ve never seen anyone so excited to see pictures of themselves! They then said they were going to sing and dance for me! It was so cool they were adorable 10,11,and 12 years old. I talked to them for about an hour or so, about their schooling, friends, the music they listen to, and just life in Namibia. It was one of the best moments of my trip.
After this we began cooking dinner. Our dinner made over the fire was the best meal I have had the entire journey thus far! We had lamb, pork chops, corn, polenta or something like that it was a traditional Namibian dish, squash, and for dessert our guide picked up stuff to make smores!!! He bought strawberry marshmallows though and graham cookies instead of crackers it was so cute though cause he didn’t know any better! They were still delicious. We then sat around the fire and played some card games and just hung out. It was a blast. My friend Natalie and I decided to go and introduce ourselves to our camping neighbors. It was a group of 5 Europeans who were actually studying abroad in Cape town (our next port) we were very excited to hear this but then disappointed when we heard they were gonna be in Namibia on holiday for the next 10 days. But they were able to give us all advice on what to do and not do which was very helpful! It was cool they were all studying English in Cape town for 6 weeks, they were from all over Europe. One was from France, Germany, Switzerland, Czech Republic and Italy! None of them had the same native language in common so they are forced to speak English with each other and with us! They were all way cool and told us that when they thought of Americans all they thought was Obese and lots of music. All they listen to is American music, all of them. I would hate that so much to live in a country that had no good music. They were saying that they listen to music that they don’t even understand! That would just not fly with my everyday to have to listen to foreign music. Anyways that too was one of my favorite parts of the trip just talking to people from all over.
Overall Namibia was amazing. I loved everything about it. Everything. Africa is beautiful and it is a place that has so much to offer. My safari was incredible I saw tons of animals and stars! Oh the stars were outrageous like looking up at Waubee Lake times a million! The people were so generous and kind half of these people have nothing and offer so much to you. It was just amazing I can’t say enough about it. I hope that everyone gets a chance to visit Namibia!!! Can’t wait for South Africa.
Next I was off to leave for my Safari! There were about 12 Wild Dog Safari vans waiting for us! I was on bus 6 with 13 other girls we only had 1 guy in our van! Ha our two tour guides names were George and Milner they were both from Namibia and hadn’t been anywhere outside of Namibia in their whole lives. We drove past the giant sand dunes which were so big I can’t even describe the size they were enormous! We drove passed a few townships which were also huge, they would just pop up out of nowhere in the middle of the desert. We made a pit stop in Swakempound which is an old German town in Namibia. It was so cool. You can see the German influence in the buildings and a lot of the shopkeepers were German as well. Namibia was a German Colony until 1990 when they finally gained their independence. Everything in Namibia is SO cheap the exchange rate is 10 Namibian dollars to 1 U.S. dollar so you get a lot of bang for your buck! Although the town was cool I was looking for a more authentic African feel I was shocked at the amount of people who spoke English. I learned later that in the schools they teach Afrikaans and English to them.
We then continued our drive to Etosha Park. We were all under the impression that the drive to Etosha would be 4 hours that was a LIE! It took 8 hours to get there! I think the tour company lied to the woman who planned the whole thing so that we would book it cause there was like 127 SAS kids that did it and I am sure about half of us wouldn’t have if we knew it was 8 hours away!!! Oh well it’s not so bad driving 8 hours when wild crazy animals like warthogs, springbok, and monkeys cross the road! We also stopped a million times for gas like it was ridiculous but it was cool cause we got to have like a half hour in a bunch of little African towns. Someone had the bright idea to buy some bottles of wine for the remainder of the ride and the first night in camp! It was really fun our tour guide sang us the Namibian National anthem and some Namibian songs in return we sang him our national anthem and some classic American tunes!!! He loved it and so did we it was a great way to start off our Safari.
When we pulled into the park it started raining! I mean African downpour! So we are all thinking great time to unpack our gear set up tents and cook dinner in the pouring rain at 11pm. So we decided it was a good idea to change into our bathing suits so we wouldn’t get our clothes and stuff all wet! People looked at us like we were crazy but we weren’t the ones complaining when we had warm dry clothes in the morning! Well for dinner I decided to help out our guides cook so that I could get some time to talk to them. We cooked pasta with meat sauce! It was delicious. After dinner it was straight to bed cause we had to wake up at 5am to start our game drive!
5am rolls around a lot sooner than you think! We woke up and were immediately off. I snagged a front row seat in the van so that I could get lots of good shots of animals! We first saw springbok which are basically like deer and they were everywhere! Same thing with Zebras they were all over. Literally everywhere just running around! It was funny by the end of the trip we would all be so annoyed when the Springbok and Zebra were in the road cause then we’d have to stop! I was like really am I honestly getting annoyed because Zebra are in the road?!?!How cool!!! We saw lots of Giraffes one of them came really close to our van it looked like he was going to try and stick his head into the open top part. We spotted them because their heads stick up passed the treetops. We saw Oryx, Ostrich, Wildabeasts, and a lot more! But we really really wanted to see a lion so we began the mad hunt for them! Our guide would stop every time we saw cars and asked them if they saw a lion and finally we were pointed in the right direction! We saw 2 female lions that were relaxing under a tree after eating a zebra! We saw the bloody zebra carcass next to them it was so cool. After our game drive we had some free time to relax and walk around our campsite area which was located inside the park.
I decided to go to the water hole where some animals stop and drink. It was way more beautiful than I expected. There were trees everywhere and the grasses were so green. They had benches set up for people to sit on and a little hut like bleacher area which I ventured off to. When I got there I saw that there were three young girls sitting there. I asked if I could join them and they said yes. They were very eager to talk to me and I was them as well. They loved my nail polish and my rings and my purse and pretty much everything I had with me. I asked them if I could take a picture with them and boy were they excited! They wanted to model for me so I took some pictures of them and they wanted me to show them! I’ve never seen anyone so excited to see pictures of themselves! They then said they were going to sing and dance for me! It was so cool they were adorable 10,11,and 12 years old. I talked to them for about an hour or so, about their schooling, friends, the music they listen to, and just life in Namibia. It was one of the best moments of my trip.
After this we began cooking dinner. Our dinner made over the fire was the best meal I have had the entire journey thus far! We had lamb, pork chops, corn, polenta or something like that it was a traditional Namibian dish, squash, and for dessert our guide picked up stuff to make smores!!! He bought strawberry marshmallows though and graham cookies instead of crackers it was so cute though cause he didn’t know any better! They were still delicious. We then sat around the fire and played some card games and just hung out. It was a blast. My friend Natalie and I decided to go and introduce ourselves to our camping neighbors. It was a group of 5 Europeans who were actually studying abroad in Cape town (our next port) we were very excited to hear this but then disappointed when we heard they were gonna be in Namibia on holiday for the next 10 days. But they were able to give us all advice on what to do and not do which was very helpful! It was cool they were all studying English in Cape town for 6 weeks, they were from all over Europe. One was from France, Germany, Switzerland, Czech Republic and Italy! None of them had the same native language in common so they are forced to speak English with each other and with us! They were all way cool and told us that when they thought of Americans all they thought was Obese and lots of music. All they listen to is American music, all of them. I would hate that so much to live in a country that had no good music. They were saying that they listen to music that they don’t even understand! That would just not fly with my everyday to have to listen to foreign music. Anyways that too was one of my favorite parts of the trip just talking to people from all over.
Overall Namibia was amazing. I loved everything about it. Everything. Africa is beautiful and it is a place that has so much to offer. My safari was incredible I saw tons of animals and stars! Oh the stars were outrageous like looking up at Waubee Lake times a million! The people were so generous and kind half of these people have nothing and offer so much to you. It was just amazing I can’t say enough about it. I hope that everyone gets a chance to visit Namibia!!! Can’t wait for South Africa.
NEPTUNE DAY!!!
So on Tuesday February 10th the MV Explorer crossed the equator! I am now in the southern hemisphere and my toilet water flushes in the opposite direction!!! Haha so on Neptune day it’s been an old sea tradition for sailors who have never crossed the equator to go through a sort of initiation ritual. It was like the sailors were asking permission to cross into the next land. It’s really weird to think about in one of my classes the teacher was saying how you are in the northern hemisphere or the southern hemisphere, when we were crossing over the equator for a few minutes of our lives we were nowhere literally nowhere! Ok so it all began at 8am when the crew woke us up! They ran through our hallways with whistles and drums it was so funny. We were told to head up to the 7th deck where the pool was for further instruction. I was a little nervous at what kind of stuff they were going to make us do! So it all began with the King and Queen Neptune. They were painted head to toe in lime green paint and wore pirate costumes and wigs. As soon as King Neptune began speaking we immediately realized that it was our captain! He is from Britain so we all love his accent and recognized it instantly. We were all shocked to see that he would get so into Neptune day for the students. So after careful instruction this was what we had to do. First we had to have fish guts dumped over our head! (It was actually water, green food coloring, and fish oil but it smelled AWFUL) Then we had to kiss a dead fish on the lips, then kiss the King of Neptune’s rings, bow to the queen, kiss another fish, jump in the pool (which was freezing ocean water), then shave your head!!! I did all of the above…..minus the shaving of my head! A few girls did it though and then immediately regretted it I felt really bad but hey it’ll grow back! Anyways Neptune day was really fun we had the day off of classes and after the little ceremony which lasted like an hour or so we were free to lie in the sun! There was not an empty chair on any of the decks! They threw a BBQ for us for dinner which was SOO good with like burgers and hot dogs and stuff. We never get that kind of food on the ship it’s always meat, potatoes, and a form of pasta. Literally every night. So that was really exciting! Let me tell you the sun by the equator is STRONG! Laying outside so close to the equator for like an hour is like laying out at Waubee for 4! I swear it’s intense. I thought that being on the ship for 8 days straight was going to be awful but it’s actually flying right by! I’ve been getting pretty busy in my classes so that’s been really time consuming and we play a lot of card games to pass the time oh and my guilty obsession on the ship is playing Sardines! It’s like hide and go seek but opposite one person hides and then the group goes looking. The last person to find them becomes the new person to hide! Ha its so lame but on this ship we are literally cut off from the world we have to resort to children’s games to keep us entertained! But hey that’s the way I like it. The water has been really really calm I mean we look out our window at night and it feels/looks like we are on a lake. Well only 2 more days till my African Safari adventure begins! I’ll update after that.
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