Cape town was an amazing port. The city itself is just physically beautiful with all the buildings being overlooked by table mountain. It is also culturally beautiful with many different people coexisting together in relative harmony. However, as nice as the city was you could see poverty everywhere and if you drove just a couple miles outside of the city center you found yourself in the midst of townships. The line between rich and poor was stark. You could see an amazing golf course probably world class but right outside its electrified walls you say tin shacks. You could close your eyes to inequality of people living there but then you would be ignorant to what this country is facing.
There is so much to do in this port so it was difficult to choose, but one thing I wanted for sure was a visit into the townships. The first thing I had to do was climb table mountain to get one of the most breathtaking views I have ever seen. On one side of the mountain you have the whole city looking back at you with its skyscrapers and multicolored homes. The other side is empty of any human life and is just ocean crashing on rocks. This port shows you the connection of nature and human activity because everywhere you look there is life. At the pier there were seals and in the hills you saw zebras and antelopes and this is all inside the city. That night me, greg, kyle and some other friends went out for some traditional African food. I at Springbok, Kudu, and Ostrich and then after that we went to a jazz club where we met up with some students and professors and hung out for a while.
One of the great things I got to do in this port was go on a safari. I went to the Kwazulu-natal region of South Africa. This is the region that the Zulus live in. It is one of the most hard hit by aids as well with 1 in 3 adults affected by the disease. Of course we were not shown this side of the area because we were in a protected wild park (Mfolozi game reserve). This game reserve is known for its rhinos because operation rhino was started here and we saw plenty of these animals. We got to go on three game drives and saw most every animal except for a lion and leopard. We had a couple highlights though. We got to see wild dogs which are endangered and extremely difficult to find and we saw several herds of cape buffalo that were 200+ members. We literally were 5 feet away from some of these animals. The camp that we stayed at was open to the animals so they told us to stay in our tents at night because it wasn't uncommon for a lion to wander in at night. The first night we were there the sky gave us a little treat. We were witness to a lunar eclipse with no cloud in the sky. With the moonlight blocked we could clearly see the milky way and every star in the sky including the shooting kind.
When I got back from the game reserve me and greg had planned a day out to robben island and the south African winelands. The plan was to go to robben island in the morning and then to stellanbosch by train and rent bicycles and visit several vineyards.
Robben island is off the coast of cape town and is where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison. All of the prisoners on the island during apartheid were political activists and many of the people who took over the government after apartheid were imprisoned on the island. All of the tour guides were former prisoners. It was chilling to see how they were treated and standing in front of Nelson Mandela's cell. The whole thing hit harder because the stories of what happened there were told by those who lived them.
We had about six hours in the vineyards. The area was stunning because you had these large vineyards and mansions that ran right up to these mountains. Me and greg consider ourselves to be in fairly good shape but the biking killed us. The whole thing was gradual up hills with short downhills. We ended up biking for about 8 miles to a vineyard that we thought had cellar tours but we missed the time for them. Instead we did a wine tasting which was about 2 dollars for 6 wines and this is at a fancy place (things were that cheap). We wanted to ship some wine bottles home but the cost of the wine was about 8 dollars to ship it just to an airport in the states to get picked up cost about 80 dollars per bottle. Once we finished drinking we realized we had about an hour to get back to our train and it took us an hour and a half to get out there. We basically hauled it while a tad tipsy in 95 degree weather all the way back into town. We made it in time and got back into the cape town in time for dinner which was the best ostrich burger ive ever had. We were so exhausted that night that we decided to head in early because we had to wake up early the next day.
This was the best day in South Africa. Me and Greg had wanted to do a township visit but most of the SAS trips had been bought up except for the Amy Biehl foundation. We decided to sign up for it not knowing what it really was. This turned out to be the best township trip offered and many kids just looked over it. Amy Biehl was a American student killed in the township towards the end of apartheid. Her parents got to face 4 of her killers during the truth and reconciliation trials in south Africa. They forgave her killers and started this foundation to help kids in the townships stay out of violence by providing them after school programs and other various school initiatives. 2 of her killers now work within the organization. It really demonstrates how this country had to forgive the atrocities that happened during apartheid in order for it to survive and not get torn apart. We got to visit 4 different schools. At the first school we watched as 7th graders read to 1st graders in order to be mentors to the younger kids. After that the kids performed songs for us . The next school we got during recess so we got to take pictures with the kids and play soccer. Whenever you took a picture of a kid 50 kids would mob you and ask you to take their picture and then you had to show them your camera so they could see themselves, that little act made them so happy. I got lucky enough to play a whole game of soccer with these kids. First off, it was hot and we were playing on cement. These kids were playing in uniforms and dress shoes and they were so good. I could barely keep up. I did however score the only goal pretty much by accident. After these two schools we got to walk around a township and see how they are set up before we got lunch in a family run restaurant out of the nicer area of the township. The food and restaurant were very well kept up and it is amazing to see how this family created this business for themselves. The last two schools we visited during their afterschool programs. Each of the schools prepared songs and performances for us. The foundation focuses on teaching the kids how to play instruments and dance so we heard kids play the recorder, xylophone, and trumpet. They also did traditional dances for us. They were so excited to play for us and they kept asking for us to stay and listen to just one more song. It was amazing to play with the kids and see how talented they all were
I wanted to finish my trip to cape town with a bang so what better way to do it then go shark diving. I woke up really early to get on a boat to go swimming with great white sharks. Basically you get into a cage that sits at the surface of the water and they bring the sharks towards your cage. Since it is summer time the sharks were more tame than in the winter. The water was absolutely freezing but we got wetsuits to be in. Everyone got to be in the cages for about 30 minutes. When you are in the cage you can't see anything more than 5 feet in front of you. You would hear the people in the ship saying a shark is right next to you and you wouldn't know it until it pretty much hit the cage. These things were huge and they got a couple to stick their heads out of the water so we could see their teeth. It was like being on the discovery channel or something. You always see people do this on tv and I finally got the chance to do it and I got home safe which is all that matters at the end.
