Cape Town Continues

The second weekend I was in Cape Town was a long weekend because Friday was Freedom Day, which commemorates the first post-apartheid elections that took place in 1994.  The following Tuesday was also a holiday for Workers' Day, the equivalent of Labor Day in the U.S. 

On Friday, Paul and I drove from the city down to Cape Point, stopping along the way in Simon's Town along the the shores of False Bay on the eastern side of the peninsula.  The highlight of Simon's Town is Boulder Beach where there is a colony of African penguins.  To protect the fragile animal population, people can't actually go on the beach itself, but instead have to remain on wooden boardwalks that skirt along the sides.  The most accessible parts were mobbed with other tourists, but luckily we were able to find a side path that led to a less crowded part of the beach. 

The penguins were funny and cute, especially the little babies who were nestled up under their mothers.  However, the funniest thing we saw actually happened after we left the beach.  As we set off to drive farther down the peninsula, we were checking out a nearby golf course when we suddenly saw a giant penguin just standing on the side of the road.  My first reaction was "Oh my God, look at the penguin," but unfortunately I didn't move quickly enough to get a photo.  The penguin was actually a guy dressed up in a costume who I guess stands along the side of the busy road to help usher stray (real-life) penguins safely across.  In retrospect we probably should have pulled over to get our photo with the oversized bird.

After leaving Simon's Town, we drove down to Cape Point, which supposedly marks the spot where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Indian Ocean.  However, this actually happens about 90 miles father to the southeast at Cape Agulhas.  Paul had promised me a great meeting of the oceans so in my mind I was picturing a monumental collision of two bodies of water rising to crash against each other (kind of the opposite of Moses' parting of the Red Sea.)  We even did a whole photo spread of me demonstrating my unfulfilled visual and aural expectations of the cacophonous scene.  In reality, it's of course nothing like that.  It just looks like any old ocean, though the view is still achingly beautiful.

When we first got into the park, we left the car at a viewpoint and went for a short walk down a trail amidst the multitude of fynbos and other vegetation.  As I was trying to walk farther out onto a point, I suddenly lost my footing and ended up on my back in the midst of all the fynbos.  I know that Paul would have loved nothing more than to get a photo of me sprawled with arms and legs akimbo, but I was so scared that I was going to slide off the edge headfirst that he finally deferred to just helping me back on my feet.  Unfortunately, we had to hunt through the vegetation for my cell phone and camera, which were quite well camouflaged for a while. 

Once we finally found them, we walked back to the car and drove to the base of the hillside with the lighthouse.  There is a funicular that takes people to the top, but it's only about a 20 minute walk so we hiked up instead.  Once there, I discovered that New York is 12,541 kilometers from Cape Town, the farthest of any other place listed on the sign, including Sydney, Australia.  From the lighthouse, we walked down another trail where we could better see a better view of the very end of the Cape Peninsula and alleged location of the oceanic collision.  After much disappointment and letdown at the anticlimactic vista, we walked back down the car and headed to Cape Town fighting the baboons and rain clouds threatening our way.  We stopped a few more times at different overlooks, ultimately driving through Camps Bay and Clifton on the way back to Seapoint.

The following day, I wanted to get new running shoes since the ones I had were falling apart so we went to a nearby outlet mall.  The place was jampacked and we had trouble finding parking.  After we finally got a spot, Paul and I both bought new pairs of sneakers.  Paul also bought a pair of sunglasses, which he promptly sat on and broke when we went to go have dinner at his aunt and uncle's house that night.  It's too bad I couldn't persuade him to get this pink pair because he might not have been so sad if those were the ones that got wrecked.

On Sunday, we took another short road trip out of town to the wine region just 45 minutes west of Cape Town.  We stopped first in Paarl where we went to the Afikaans Language Monument.  I was worried that I would get found out for my failure to speak the "native" language, but luckily since Paul speak Afrikaans, he was able to cover for me.  I could only smile and nod politely as he talked to a recently widowed old white lady and told her I was visiting from America.  The monument itself is just a tall, slightly phallic concave structure dedicated to preserving "Afrikaners identity and pride in their language.  Doesn't sound at all apartheidy to me.  Nope, not at all.

From Paarl we drove to Franssschoek (literally "French Corner") where we walked around the quaint little village that was settled 300 years ago by the French Hugenots.  We both had to use the bathroom so we paid to go into a small historical museum, which we then wandered around a bit before stopping at a garden featuring a Hugenot monument on the way back to the car.  Our next stop was Stellenbosch where we had planned to stop and eat a late lunch.  Unfortunately, by that point it was so late in the afternoon that Paul had to get back home for a meeting.  We ended up just stopping to grab something at a gas station to tide us over until dinner.

After conquering Lion's Head the first weekend I was in town, on Worker's Day we took on a new challenge: Table Mountain.  The mountain was clouded over in the morning so we first went downtown to see if there was a museum we could visit before hiking up in the afternoon.  Unfortunately, all the museums were closed for the holiday so we just wandered around for a bit before driving to the base of the mountain in the late morning.

There's a cable car that goes up to the top of Table Mountain, but of course we wanted to hike.  We took one of the easier trails, but it still was a bit of a steep climb.  It was sunny when we left, but started to cloud over a bit once we neared the top.  Along the way, I had the brilliant idea to film an iPhone movie with a very minimal plotline.  When we reached the top of the table the foggy conditions actually played well into the premise of our future Oscar-winning short, "Terror on the Tablecloth," which is currently still in the edit stage.  Luckily the clouds did part occasionally, giving us a decent view of the coastline and neighborhoods below.  Unfortunately, all the people who had cheated by taking the cable car up made for quite a crowded summit.  We did it the real way and even though our legs felt like jelly when we got to the bottom, the effort was definitely worth it.  We put the "work" in Workers' Day that afternoon.  We climbed a mountain AND made a film.

Cape Town Commences

I arrived at Cape Town toward the end of April and planned to stay for about a month since I was looking forward to remaining in one place for a little while after so much continuous traveling.  Once Paul picked me up at the train station we drove to my hostel so I could get myself checked in.  The hostel was on the main road across from the beach in the neighborhood of Greenpoint.  It was only mid-afternoon by that point so after I dropped off my bags, Paul and I walked down the promenade along the water for a while toward the area where he lives in the neighborhood of Seapoint.  We hadn't seen each other in person since we first met in Korea nearly three years before so it was really nice to catch up and talk about all the changes that had happened in our lives in that time.  After walking a ways we turned around and headed back toward Greenpoint where we went to the Taste of Cape Town and tried dishes from a bunch of different local restaurants for dinner.

The following day was a Sunday so Paul was off from work again.  We met for breakfast and then climbed up Lion's Head, which is one of the three main hills surrounding downtown Cape Town.  It was a beautiful day, if slightly windy at the top, and there were amazing views of Table Mountain and the ocean spread out down below.  It was a pretty short hike so once we made it back to the bottom we walked around downtown for a bit past the National Gallery, the South African Museum, Parliament, St. George's Cathedral and the Company Gardens.

In the late afternoon, Paul dropped me off at my hostel with plans to pick me up a few hours later to have dinner with some friends.  Throughout the day, I had noticed that my arms were covered with some sort of itchy bug bites that seemed to get more plentiful as the afternoon went on.  The German girls staying in my dorm room with me had the same small bumps all over themselves as well.  Since we all had similar symptoms and were staying in the same room, I started to fear it was bed bugs.  Then, just as I was going to get ready to meet Paul, I checked my e-mail and found out that my mom was in the hospital with a frightening, though temporary, condition.  When I got in Paul's car I was so stressed out that I just broke down crying.  I think he felt bad, but didn't really know what to do so he said that we didn't have to go meet his friends if I wasn't feeling up for it.  In spite of everything, I couldn't bear the thought of just sitting in my hostel alone so I said I still wanted to go.  Unfortunately, I don't think I made that great of an impression, coming across as a sullen, quiet, crazy girl who just couldn't stop scratching.

After dinner, Paul tried to drive me to a pharmacy to pick up something for the itching, but all the places we stopped at were already closed for the night.  I knew he had to get up early for work in the morning so I told him to just drop me off and I'd take care of it the next day.  Then when I got up to my room and started to undressing I noticed that in addition to my arms, I also had huge welts all over my neck and back.  I started to panic so I immediately called Paul and helplessly whimpered that I needed to get some medicine.  Even though it was already really late, he came all the way back and brought me to a late night pharmacy downtown.  I bought some oral antihistamines, a topical ointment and a small jar of Zam-Buk, which Paul swore was a cure for all ailments from mosquito bites to cancer.  By this point, I was convinced my hostel room was infested with bed bugs so on the way back to the hostel I told Paul I just didn't think I could stay there any longer.  He graciously offered to let me stay on his couch so I made arrangements to check out the next day.  The hostel owner seemed understanding and spent the day trying to fumigate the room.  In retrospect, I don't know if it was actually bed bugs or rather hives from some sort of allergic reaction perhaps to the bed sheet detergent.  Either way, the bumps and itchiness had mostly gone away within a few days of being at Paul's.

During that following week the weather was kind of touch-and-go with some days that were rainy and chilly.  I mostly took it easy, going for runs in the morning along the promenade and taking care of some shopping I needed to do since my clothing was starting to fall apart.  I did make it downtown a few times and went into an exhibit in St. George's Cathedral on the church's role in the fall of apartheid and the Slave Lodge Museum, where the Dutch East India Company housed their slaves between 1679 and 1911.  The Slave Lodge has exhibits on the history and impact of the slave trade in the Western Cape as well as displays on the general history of Cape Town.  I had to actually go back twice since I didn't get all the way through the first time around.  Even still, I didn't even see everything on my second attempt.

The nice thing was that the Friday of that week was a public holiday for Freedom Day so Paul had a long weekend.  We were able to head out of town and check out the surrounding area.

I'll continue the tale in Part 2 of the Cape Town chronicles...

Final Overland Leg

Sorry that it's been a while since I've added a new post.  I'm back in the States now, but busy at work and still living out of a suitcase so I haven't had much time.  I will to try to finish up the tale of the rest of my trip (and update all of the other sections of my blog) over the next few weeks.  I can't move back into my apartment until August 1st so I can't make any promises about wrapping everything up before then since I'm constantly moving (and don't always have wifi access), but I'll do the best I can.

It was the end of April when I headed back over from Gaborone to the South Africa border and onwards to Johannesburg.  At the bus station in Gaborone, I boarded a tightly-packed minibus where I was stuffed in the back row with a couple and their baby.  When we got to the Botswana side of the border I went through immigration and then headed back to the bus.  Apparently I was supposed to walk across the border, but I was so afraid of being left behind that I got on the bus just to be safe.  When I arrived at the South African immigration office the guy pointed out that I still had three days left on my stamp.  I told him that, though that may be true, I wanted to stay for at least a month so he finally begrudgingly gave me a new stamp with exactly 30 days.  If I had arrived via air I think I would have automatically been given 90, but I didn't feel like arguing.

Once everyone had made it into South Africa and reboarded the bus, an immigration officer came over and pulled off the family that was sitting next to me.  There was quite a bit of negotiation, but the officers were speaking in Zulu or Xhosa or some other African language that I didn't understand.  It was getting hot on the bus so all the passengers started getting off and I asked one of them what was going on.  The woman told me that the Zimbabwean family didn't have a passport for their one-year-old baby.  In the end, they had to take their luggage off the bus and head back over the border.  I felt really bad for them, but selfishly it meant I then had the whole back row to myself.

After about six or seven hours on the road we finally rolled into a parking lot in downtown Johannesburg.  By that point it was already dark so as I was getting off the bus a tout approached me and told me to follow him if I didn't want to get robbed.  He might have been exaggerating, but I was in no mood to test his theory so I followed him toward one of the metered cabs that was waiting.  When we got there he expected a tip not only from me, but also from the driver.  I didn't give him quite as much as he wanted, but I didn't feel like I owed him that much for escorting me less than 100 meters.

The cab took off and as we were leaving the downtown area, the driver continued with the scare tactics, telling me he wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.  I tried to explain where my hostel was, but as I don't know Johannesburg I could only share the information I'd been given over e-mail.  After going quite a bit out of the way, the driver finally agreed to pull over in a McDonalds parking lot where he could call the hostel for directions.  He then told me that he'd gone the wrong direction (I had given him the address upfront) and had to drive an extra distance.  As we were driving into the neighborhood of my hostel, he started rambling on about how dangerous it was.  When we finally pulled up in front of the place, I was so freaked out that all I wanted to do was get inside the building.  As I got out of the car, he of course tried to jack up the price, claiming he had gone really far out of the way even though it was his own fault and probably intentional.  Since I was so desperate to get inside at that point, I argued a bit and then just paid basically what he was asking.

Once I got inside the gate of the hostel property, I saw that the building itself was lovely and there probably wasn't quite as much to worry about as my other "guides" had let on.  I had a sneaking suspicion they were playing up the danger factor a tiny bit after seeing a single, white female in an effort to get some extra cash.  The women who ran the hostel were incredibly friendly and welcoming and I actually felt a little guilty that I was only staying for one night.  The next morning, I was sure to use their own driver to get me to the train station.  The equally-friendly female driver told me about all the places to visit if I ever came back to Johannesburg and made me feel a lot less nervous about driving through the city.  Then again, it was broad daylight at that point.

When I got to the train station, I headed right to the ticket office where I had to wait a short time in line.  My plan was to take an overnight train to Cape Town since my friend, Paul, was already expecting me.  The people right in front of me seemed to be giving the woman at the counter a hard time in a language I couldn't understand so when I got there, I did my best to be polite.  I asked if there were any sleeper cabins for that night and she told me they were sold out for the rest of the month.  I was stuck buying a regular seat for the entire 24-hour journey.  However, since I graciously accepted my fate, after paying for my ticket she did happen to mention that if I asked the conductor on board he may be able to find some space in a sleeping cabin.

As I waited to board the train an hour or so later, I met a Muslim woman who asked me to sit next to her once the train arrived.  I couldn't exactly say "no" so I was stuck sitting in an aisle seat until the people collecting seats came by.  I mentioned to the woman that if there was any availability, I would like to upgrade to first class.  She said I would have to speak to the conductor and tried to describe what he looked like.  A short time later, while the woman next to me was sleeping, the ticket collector came back and told me to follow her.  We went into the dining car where the conductor asked me if I would be willing to share a compartment with a woman and a young boy.  Since all of the sleeping cabins were same sex, except for families traveling together, we would have to claim we were family members.  I was totally fine with that so I paid the extra amount for the ticket and went to get my bags.  I did kind of feel a bit bad for my seatmate who probably wondered what had happened to me when she woke up from her nap.

Once I was settled into my new sleeping cabin, an older woman boarded a few stops later.  Surprisingly there wasn't any child with her.  I later learned from her that she was supposed to go down to Cape Town with her five-year-old grandson, but he had come down with a case of chicken pox.  It ended up just being me and my cabinmate, an older Afrikaans woman who was slightly racist and set in her ways, but also tough as nails.  She was heading down to Cape Town to get treatment for a brain tumor and had been widowed for over 40 years -- most likely at least half her life.  She complained to management about every little thing that was wrong with the compartment and dragged me into it too, but was nice enough to buy me a cup of coffee (which I don't drink and had to choke down) for breakfast in the morning.

The rest of the trip down to Cape Town was pretty restful and relaxing.  We passed through grasslands, farmlands, mountain ranges and wine country as we traveled from north to south.  We got a bit behind schedule overnight and when I talked to Paul by phone the next day (the first time in nearly three years since we first met in Korea) I told him we'd be a bit late.  We still made it into the Mother City by mid-afternoon and for the first time in my trip, after deboarding the train I was able to bypass the cabbie asking if I needed a ride and head straight toward my smiling friend who was waiting at the station to come pick me up.