We arrived in Cape Town on Monday, September 26, after 8 days on the ship, exhausted from losing 5 hours in 8 days. We were supposed to be in South Africa for 5 days, but in the middle of our first day we found out that our canceled port of Kenya had been replaced by 2 extra days in South Africa and a 3 day stint on the island of Mauritius.
The trick to visiting Cape Town is to find a clear day to go up Table Mountain because the view from the top is magnificent. We didn't pick a totally cloud free day, but after being cooped up on a ship for 8 days, my legs were itching for a good hike. Most people take the cable car to the top, but I convinced Molly and another student, Susan to hike up with me. Although most of the time we couldn't see through the "tablecloth," at the top, every once in awhile it would become clear and the view of Cape Town below was magnificent. We actually took the cable car down which was also an amazing experience. We scrambled to stake out a good spot near a downhill window for the ultimate view and then found out that everyone near any window gets a good view because the car rotates 360 degrees.
We watched other SAS friends take taxis to and from the mountain, but always up for an adventure and saving a dime, we opted for public transportation and took a public bus and mini-bus. The mini-bus is a little 12 seater that drives around picking random people up and can often become a 20 seater. Our mini-bus home was quite the experience. The bus was full when we left Table Mountain, and as we drove we kept picking up more and more people. There was a guy riding in the mini-bus who was in charge of taking the money and getting people on the bus. As the bus driver drove along, he'd honk whenever he saw people walking who might need a ride and then the other guy would lean out the window whistling and getting people's attention. When someone wanted a ride we'd pull over and pick them up. We eventually got to the bus station and everyone but us piled out. They then drove us to another part of downtown where they transferred us to another mini-bus which was even more crowded. This one had at least 20 people crammed inside, but we made it back to the waterfront.
That evening I went to a wild game restaurant with some friends. There were all sorts of crazy meats on the menu - some I've never heard of. We all decided to order different meats and share them. I ordered mozambique brown shark, others ordered crocodile, game stew, ostrich, kudu, eland, springbok, and warthog rib.
My second day in Cape Town I made the trek down to Cape Point with some of my staff friends, Beth, Jason V., and Chris. We took a taxi from the waterfront to the train station and then hopped a train to Simon's Town at the top of the peninsula, which is as far as you can go by train. Everyone we talk to in South Africa tries to talk us out of public transportation. They say it's very sketchy. Our taxi driver actually offered us a really good deal (about $35 each) to be our private driver for the day and drive us down to Cape Point, but we decided we wanted more of an adventure, so we took the train route. The train ticket was only 12 Rand each way. That's less than $2.
We were expecting a pretty dirty uncomfortable train, but the first class cars (which was the 12 Rand ticket we bought) were almost as nice as the Boston Commuter Rail cars. It was a gorgeous hour and fifteen minute ride down there. When we got to Simon's Town we got off and just started walking. The penguins at Boulder's Beach were only about 2 kilometers away. On the way we popped into a little photo store/cafe to get some coffee. There was a photo of Desmond Tutu dressed in his Archbishop uniform with the Dalai Lama. They were both laughing, it was a great picture. Jason said that the picture was probably taken right after they told a dirty joke to each other and that's what they were laughing about. It was a priceless picture. Apparently they gave a copy to Desmond Tutu and he loved it.
You have to pay about $5 to get down to Boulder's Beach. There's a boardwalk that you walk down and all the African Penguins are along the sides and all over the beach at the end of the boardwalk. Chris is the voyage photographer, so he tried to help me figure out what I was doing with my camera, this was my first time trying out my telephoto lens, and I'm still learning how to adjust the aperture and shutter speed to get good pictures. Chris's patience finally ran out and when I asked him how to set my camera he just said "keep it on green Double-A, keep it on green." Green is the automatic setting, and Double-A is his nickname for me. This was one of those quote board worthy quotes that stuck with us the entire voyage.
This was really a great day, so many memorable things happened that we'll always remember. At the gift shop on our way out we each made commemorative coins from Boulder's Beach (in the US these are the machines that flatten pennies, but since they don't have a copper coin that can be flattened, the machine just provides round copper coins to flatten). We will forever be PFF - Penguin Friends Forever.
Next stop was Cape Point, but that was about 26km away, so we got a taxi down there. The drive down to Cape Point was very beautiful. We passed baboons which are not very friendly and had nasty raw red bums and huge fangs. Our driver wouldn't let us out of the car or even stop when they were really close. At the top of the Cape Point, or as we call it "Cape Crowded" peninsula there is a lighthouse that you can either walk up to or take a cable car. We cable carred it up and walked down. They had a cool signpost at the top with arrows and distances to many different places in the world. Cape Point is 12,541 KM from New York, and 6,248 KM from the South Pole.
There was apparently a path that you could walk down and explore some caves along the coast and even walk over to the Cape of Good Hope. Cape Point is actually farther south than the Cape of Good Hope, and there's the lighthouse there and everything, but at the Cape of Good Hope there's a sign saying that it's the most southwest point in Africa and the ocean is really cool. You can actually see the different colors of the Atlantic and Indian oceans mixing. The Atlantic is very cold and the Indian Ocean warm. We didn't have time to go down this path and explore unfortunately because our driver only gave us an hour. Fortunately Chris was able to convince our driver to do us a favor and drive us over to the Cape of Good Hope for a couple of minutes.
The short drive between Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope was beautiful. We passed more baboons and some ostriches. We weren't ever allowed out of the car when baboons were around, but Chris and I did jump out to get some Ostrich pictures. I think this is as close as we're going to get to a Safari on this voyage. I can now say that I've touched the water at the most southwest point of the African continent.
Chris, Beth, and I went to lunch before heading back to Cape Town, and somehow we got into a conversation about religion and ethics and consistency. We all come from very different backgrounds, and Chris is put off by many of the Christian groups he sees who are very in your face and quick to try to convert you and bring you into their religion and say you're going to hell if you don't accept Jesus into your life. He's observed that some of these same people will leave the church service and go get drunk. He challenged me on my reasons for not drinking and not having sex and all those other things I don't do that most people do. His argument is always that Jesus drank wine. Anyway, I didn't really get angry or offended during this conversation because I realized that his motives were really to understand, not to look down on what I do. I think it's actually really great to talk to people like him because it's good to have people point out the inconsistencies. Beth and Chris both thought that was a really good way of putting it. That what they look down on is people who preach one thing and live another, it was a good reminder to me to make sure I'm always walking the walk.
We needed a low key evening that night, so Beth and I found the movie theater at the mall and went to see Crash which was an excellent movie about race relations in Los Angeles. Even though we went to a mall to see a movie in English, it was still a cultural experience. When you purchase your ticket you pick your seats, so I guess that would make it easy to buy your ticket early in the day and then show up after the previews and still get a good seat. We ordered popcorn which turned out to be just plain fresh popped popcorn with no butter or salt. You then take your popcorn over to a table and they have different salts to sprinkle on it. We got sea salt and vinegar salt. They also had sour cream and onion, and cheddar cheese stuff to sprinkle on the popcorn. It was interesting, but I think I prefer the movie popcorn in the US. The commercials before the movie really identified this as a non-US experience. The commercials were all very sexual. Beth's comment during one was, "I know sex sells, but what is this for?" It turned out that it was a commercial for a radio station.
Day three, Beth and I took the ferry over to Robben Island where political prisoners such as Nelson Mandela were imprisoned during apartheid. The best part of the 45 min. ferry trip was that we had some great views of our ship, the MV Explorer. Robben Island was an interesting experience. They have things perfectly timed and you really don't have as much time as you'd probably like to take to explore and take it all in. You're immediately put on a bus and driven around the perimeter of the island. Robben Island actually has a diverse history. It was first a leper colony, and the during World War II it was used for war activities, and then in the 50's the prison was built. It has the country's 2nd largest penguin colony, next to Boulder Beach where we were the day before. There are 29 shipwrecks on the island, and today there are several people who live there who work with the prison museum I think. Any fresh water they use has to be brought in from the mainland by boat.
They drove us down into a lime quarry, and I think that was the point where I first realized how awful this experience must have been for the political prisoners. They had to move lime around from pile to pile to pile for no reason at all. They actually ended up usually moving it back to where it came from in the first place. Nelson Mandela has had a lot of trouble with his eyes over the years as a result of working in this lime quarry. The lime dust caked his tear ducts to the point that he couldn't cry. There is a hole or cave in the rock that they don't know how it originally got there, but that hole came to be known as the University of Robben Island because the prisoners used to go in there and teach each other how to read and write. They weren't allowed to do this, so they had to do it very secretively.
At the end of the tour we got a 45 minute tour of the prison by an ex-political prisoner. We were wondering why he would want to come back and be a tour guide after being imprisoned there for 18 years and he told us that he doesn't want to be there, but there are no jobs and he wants to stay out of prison, so working here is a better option than stealing to eat and getting thrown in prison again. The conditions were very sobering. Most of them had no beds and only 4 blankets to get them through the cold winter nights. The prisoners weren't allowed to talk to each other while they were in their cells. This was actually their own rule rather than the guard's rule. They made this rule because they would study their books while they were in their cell because education was very important, so if you were talking to someone, you were keeping them from studying.
The letters they'd get from home were highly censored and sometimes completely rewritten. Some prisoners were written fake letters from their wives saying that they were divorcing them. Since many prisoners weren't even given visitation rights and the letters were censored it was very difficult to find out it this was true. They were very creative and found ways to communicate with the prisoners who did have visitation rights to send word back home to find out the truth. Eventually these 2 groups of prisoners weren't allowed to talk to each other, but they still found ways to communicate like cutting open tennis balls and slipping notes inside and "accidentally" hitting the ball over the wall to where the other prisoners were.
That evening I was the trip leader for a Township Music trip. It was about an hour trip out to the township of Khayelitsha which is the largest township in the area. The bus was incredibly loud, so we didn't get much background on the township from our tour guide Shai who actually lives in the township. I was really looking forward to this township experience and the chance to see how these people live, but this was not the experience I was looking for.
We were driven through a couple of townships, but not allowed to get out of the bus. We finally arrived at a social center where we all piled out and went into this empty cement building where three guys gave us a concert and there was about 5 minutes of group drumming that we were able to participate in. There was also a group of 4 kids who did some native dancing for us, but it wasn't a chance to interact with the locals. Next was dinner, also at the social center. The dinner was amazing South African food in a very nice setting, but I'm sure this isn't how they eat. They served us a homemade juice that I thought must have been alcoholic, but it wasn't; it just had a lot of ginger in it.
Our last stop was at a bar and they had a live band playing. It was a very strange environment. There were about 15 locals there, mostly men and then this bus of SAS students jumps off and piles in. The weird thing is that when we got in there they locked the bus behind us and Shai told us that if we wanted to go to the bathroom, he'd need to escort us there. They locked the gate to keep out the locals I guess, but it was just this very weird atmosphere.
On our way home we realized that we had had an escort the whole time. I'm not sure if it was for safety, to show the bus driver where to go, or both. Beth and I finally got a chance to talk to Shai about the townships on our bus ride home. The townships were stretches of land with small little shanties packed in there. The shanties were one room little places that looked about like a tornado stricken bus stop. The corrugated tin roofs often look like they're held on with trash like tires and stuff. They have different levels of houses. Most of them are the one room little shacks, but there are some different levels, some are 4 rooms, and if you're really up there you actually get a bathroom in the same house rather than using a community bathroom. The 4 room houses are about $1000 and that buys you the house and the land. Most people who live in the townships these days have no desire to get out because that's where their friends are and where they feel comfortable. There's also extremely high unemployment - close to 100%, it's terrible.
Just driving around the outside of the townships didn't really give us a great feeling of what they're like, but it was pretty sobering to see how many people live in extreme poverty and pretty telling that they wouldn't let us really have a township experience. It's a pretty dangerous area just because people are so incredibly desperate.
Thursday morning, Day 4, I got up painfully early to meet a group of students and Sony, the videographer to go shark diving. We had a 2+ hour bus ride past Hermanus to the place where we were going shark diving. Once we got there we ate a quick breakfast which they had prepared for us outside and then about 16 of us boarded the "Barracuda" our approx. 42 ft. shark diving boat.
To me, the highlight of the day wasn't the shark diving, but was being out on the boat in the sunshine and fresh air taking pictures of the birds, mountains, sharks, and sea lions. We had a short boat ride out, and then they anchored the boat with two lines heading up into the wind and current and started chumming - throwing fish guts out into the water to bait the sharks. They made it sound like it would take hours for the sharks to show up, so I headed to the bow of the boat where no one else was and started reading, less than 10 minutes later I heard a commotion and was barely able to get my camera out in time to see the first shark going for the fish head we were using to lure him in with. The shark swam around a few times coming back for the bait until he finally got smart and realized there was no live food here. This was the pattern for the rest of the day. We probably saw 4 sharks the whole day which was actually pretty good for this time of year. The visibility is only a few meters and most of the sharks were only a meter and a half, although they said we got one 3 meter shark.
They say that most of the waiting is for the first shark. Once he comes, others will follow soon, but you have to take advantage of them when they're there because at any moment they'll get smart and realize that you're not live bait and that will be the end of our shark sightings for the day. The sharks are constantly migrating, so there isn't a chance for them to get too smart, so we're not ruining it for others. We waited in the boat for the first shark, but once that first shark showed up the first group started suiting up. We got in the shark cage in groups of 4, but I was having too much fun taking pictures from above in the boat, so I didn't jump up to be one of he first groups. It wasn't too cold, but I was perfectly happy being nice and warm and dry in my long pants and warm hat. There were 4 or 5 groups of us and I was in the second to last group. The ones before me each got to see a few sharks. Actually, I think they each only saw one shark, but the shark came around a few times. I think the best views and most exciting part of shark diving is watching them from the boat, you see a lot more.
When I finally got in, we waited and waited and waited and finally the dive master (in the boat) told us to go down. The people in the boat were so excited at how big the shark was and how close it came. I wish I could have seen it. I had my underwater camera, so I went down in the cage and saw it bite at the bait, swim towards the cage and then swim away, but it was so close that I couldn't really get a good view of the entire shark. Sharks are actually very timid creatures. Shark diving isn't actually even diving or snorkeling. They sometimes use dive gear, but apparently the bubbles from the scuba scare off the sharks, so you get better results without scuba. When getting into the cage, we have to balance our feet on bars that go across the cage and then slowly lower ourselves down into the cage with our arms. They tell us not to move in the cage and not make any sudden movements. When the dive master spots a shark he tells us to go down and we slowly go down about a foot to a layer where there's about an 8 inch viewing area in the cage. The shark is gone well before you run out of breath. I just saw the one shark and then we waited and waited in our 7mm wetsuits with hoods and booties (although my suit was huge). Finally they asked us to get out so the next group could try to see a shark. The next group had to wait about 30 minutes and they were just about to get out without a shark sighting when a small one came around. So the day was a success with all of us seeing at least one shark under water and several from the boat. It wasn't nearly as exciting as I had hoped, but I guess it was worth the $200.
Now that we're a month into the voyage, I took the time on the bus ride home to reflect upon my wonderful friendships on the voyage and at home. I am so grateful for both groups of friends, but they are very different. This voyage has made me appreciate my friends at home more, especially the high quality of thought. I definitely have much more in common with my friends at home, but that's to be expected. At the same time I also really appreciate my friends on this voyage. Being in this crowd has hopefully made me a stronger individual since I have a lot of opportunity to make a stand for my identity and be myself instead of blending into a group. My way of life is so different than most people's on this voyage that people can't help but notice me and I take that as a challenge to always stay on the straight an narrow and walk the walk. Of course now I've met a completely new group of people that I know love to travel and since many of them are at a crossroads right now I'm sure that when I want to travel I'll have no problem finding a travel companion. It's also a lot of fun to be with a group of people that really know how to have fun. I love being silly with them. Other people might not think we're so funny (although they probably do), but we definitely amuse ourselves.
I can't imagine life after Semester at Sea. It's going to be hard to go back to the real world. We're in this super-stimulated environment where there are always friends and an endless amount of activity around. When I go home, wherever home is, I will surely have lots of alone time and will have to actually make plans to hang out with friends rather than just showing up at a meal or lounge. I know that every voyage is different and it might not be like this if I came again, but I wish that this voyage would never end. It would be nice to turn around and travel west though because the 23 hour days are definitely hard to take. I would LOVE to have 25 hours a day to spend with these people.
I had a short turn around before heading out for the Opera. About 100 of us signed up for the SAS trip "A Night at the Opera," and we boarded 2 busses to go to the Artscape Opera House to see the Cape Town Opera in Carmen. The director of the Cape Town Opera has been a theater professor on Semester at Sea several times, so he arranged our tickets and met with us before the opera. I think this was my first time at the opera. I've seen several operas on video, but this was my first live opera experience.
The director, Michael Williams, gave a pre-show talk to the audience down in their rehearsal room, and at about 19:45 we headed up to find our seats. My seat was amazing. The opera was wonderful, although we were all very tired and had a hard time staying awake for a 3 hour opera. The cast was mostly black South Africans, and they brought in Katherine Henderson, a South African opera singer for the role of Carmen. She was very good. The program was pretty much what you'd expect in a Playbill program in NYC, but you had to pay almost $5 to get a program, and it was in both English and Afrikaans. The opera is in French, but we were able to follow along because there was an LCD marquee with subtitles (which they called surtitles) at the very top of the stage. I wish they had actually had it quite a bit lower because it was so far up that you couldn't really see the performers when you were reading the subtitles and it was like following a vertical game of tennis. I was able to slouch pretty far down in my seat and situate myself so I could rest my eyes a bit, follow the acting, and occasionally read the subtitles. I always felt like I was missing something - either the acting or the words. It would have probably been better just to watch the acting and forget about the words because the subtitles are pretty corny and they're not really saying much substantial. It sounds a lot better when you don't actually know what they're saying. I suppose the best would be to actually understand French so you don't have to read.
Friday was supposed to be our last day in South Africa, but because our itinerary changed to avoid Kenya and the eastern coast of Africa, we had an additional 2 days added to our stay, and then 3 days on the island of Mauritius, so the staff decided to use our additional time and take a staff only trip to the winelands.
Eleven of us decided to go on what was one of the most fun trips of the entire voyage. Our guide's name was Deon. He was our tour guide and driver. He owned his own 17 passenger mini-bus and wore a mic'd headset so he could play both roles as we drove out to the winelands. I had originally not been included in this trip because the staff knew I didn't drink and I hadn't expressed any interest in going, but how could I stay back on the ship when everyone who was anyone was going on CAP100. All SAS sponsored trips have codes, so we called this trip "CAP100 - The winelands and beyond." I've missed out on a lot of the staff bonding trips (which have previously been in small groups here and there), but I had no idea where Molly was or what she'd been up to, so I wasn't going to miss this trip that the rest of my friends were on. The group was Briana (our elected trip leader), Jason V., Chris B., Byron, Jason L., Melissa, Krista, Yas, Karen, Beth, and me.
Briana took over the microphone as soon as we got on the bus and read us a list of rules for the trip. They included: no shop talk, not talking about students - except of course those that annoy us, are problem children, we love, or we just like to make fun of. I recorded her whole list of rules, so I won't forget them. It was pretty funny. We were a pretty rowdy group. Deon had to be persistent in shutting us up for a bit so he could actually tell us something about the areas we were driving by.
This is just the very beginning of the growing season in the vineyards, so there's not much to look at comparatively, but the winelands area is still beautiful. Deon stopped before a couple of vineyards so we could walk up to the vines and look at the long rows of grape vines. It's interesting. In between each row, they plant a row of wheat. The wheat isn't harvested at all; it's just used to help hold the moisture in the soil.
One interesting fact I learned. I think the barrels they make/store the wine in are oak barrels, but they can't really use South African oak because the temperature is too warm here and without the cold season the trees completely rot out pretty quickly and can't support themselves after 200 years and just fall over.
We visited 5 different wineries that day. I joined the group for most of the stops because they included a tour, cheese, or lunch, but by the end I decided to sit outside and read while I waited for the rest of the group to do their tastings. After our 5th winery it was time to head to the town of Stellenbosch which is a college town and the town where our B&B was. At the University of Stellenbosch (I think that's the name) Afrikaans is the main language. You have to do your first degree in Afrikaans, but it's possible to do a 2nd degree in English. I'm pretty sure that most people who speak Afrikaans as their first language also speak English. Most of the tour guides we had spoke Afrikaans, but you wouldn't have known by talking to them. Their English was excellent. It was only when they were talking to each other that they spoke Afrikaans.
We spent an amazingly comfortable night in our B&B with super cute rooms. The next morning, we were served an amazing breakfast spread. We had cereal, yogurt, fruit, and really fresh juice, and they made us omelets with bacon. It took me awhile to figure out that bacon in South Africa is Canadian bacon.
After breakfast we wandered into town. We definitely came the right time of year. There is a two week music festival just ending in Stellenbosch. We didn't hear any of the music, but there were lots of craft vendors in the town.
Once back in Cape Town we went out to dinner at a restaurant that was definitively South African. We were celebrating our friends Krista & Lisa's birthdays. I ordered a game sampler platter which had Ostrich, Warthog, and Springbok (I think). I really like the game I've eaten. Dinner took over 3 hours, they aren't in any rush in South Africa.
Sunday was our last day in Cape Town and still so much I wanted to do. It wasn't going to be possible to do everything, but shopping was definitely a high priority, I also wanted to go to church. Molly and I were able to fit in both church and shopping. Actually it was a shopping-church-shopping sandwich. We practically bought out the market before church, left our items with the vendors and came back after church to buy more and pick up the items we'd bought before church. I was pretty excited with the things I bought. A cool chess table, a chair, and some bowls and wall hangings.
We took a taxi to the 1st church which was a small congregation (about 10-12) that met in a mall. After the service we met most of the congregation and they helped us find an ATM machine since we'd run out of money and already spent too much at the market. A nice older lady named Margaret offered to give us a ride back to the market so we didn't have to call a taxi. She actually lived just down the road from the market.
Margaret was nice enough to give us a ride back to the ship after we'd shopped for another 3 hours. We looked pretty funny walking down to her apartment with all of our purchases.
Beth and I had a tradition of eating our last meal in port together. I had wanted to go to the Tank restaurant which is a restaurant Abe McLaughlin recommended, but I tried calling and couldn't get a hold of them, so we tried a place that Amanda Mulcahy recommended which was right on the waterfront - Harrie's pancakes. Pancakes are a big thing in South Africa apparently, but they eat them differently. We had a pancake rolled up with cinnamon sugar and lemon in Stellenbosch, and there were all sorts of exciting fillings for pancakes at Harries. I ordered a biltong (wild game jerky) with gorgonzola cheese, and Beth ordered trout (which I think was salmon) and we split them. For dessert I ordered a banana and caramel pancake with ice cream, and Beth ordered this South African dessert that's a lot like bread pudding. Great food, but we've come to realize that you need to plan hours for dinner in South Africa. Each meal we've had we've had to ask for the bill at least 3 times. Finally we learned to ask for the bill when they bring dessert, so maybe you'll have it 30 minutes later.
Before the ship left, a township choir performed on the ship, and our SAS choir (which I was a part of) performed a few songs for and with them. They were amazing! We couldn't understand the words, but it was a very entertaining performance. They are very dynamic, animated singers. They do lots of loud whistling and yelling, it's fun. Actually they hollered through our song, so it was a little hard to concentrate, but made it sound more authentic.