Last week in Cape Town

As of today, I will officially be leaving Cape Town in one week. I knew it was going to go by fast when I got here, but really…I’m leaving already? I don’t really have much planned for my last week, which is how I wanted it to be really. The only things I still need/want to do are go to Simon’s Town to see the penguins and do all of my souvenir shopping.

Tonight we’ll probably go out with some of the people from Milton and say goodbye (blegh…I wish we could skip that part though), then tomorrow we’re going to Long Street to a pub called the Dubliner for St. Patty’s day. I’m mostly just looking forward to tomorrow night cos I’m sure it will be pretty crazy.

I’m working all this week, and I have to put together everything I’ve done and send it to Carly. We’re also planting our garden this week and today I helped to dig one of the trenches (they plant in trench beds here since the soil is hard and there isn’t a lot of water). I’m really excited to get to help with that this week and it’s a good way to finish my time here! I really can’t believe it’s just about done though!

Cape Town has been absolutely amazing and it would be a very, very easy place to live for longer. I’m going to miss the sushi (I’m a little bit embarrassed about how much sushi I’ve eaten here), the hikes, the sun, the culture, but most of all the people.

((I wasn't able to upload this until a few days after writing it, so here's a picture from st. Paddy's))

Stormers game and party at Milton

On Saturday, Whit, Jess (Whit’s sister who’s here for 2 weeks), Liz, Howard and I went to a Stormers game. The Stormers are Cape Town’s rugby team and they’re pretty big here. I have wanted to see a soccer or rugby match since I’ve been here so it was really cool to finally get to go.

When we got to Newlands stadium, we had quite the ordeal finding our seats. After climbing a million different stairs and asking a million different people (who worked there) for help and them pointing us in the wrong direction we finally found someone who knew what he was talking about. The direction he pointed us in was right next to the first place we asked—of course it would be, right?

It was pretty chilly, but we still had a really fun time! It was my first rugby match and it was cool watching it and trying to figure out what was happening. People were waayyy into it and although the game wasn’t very intense (we won like 35 to 13 or something), everyone still managed to get riled up.

After the game we headed to the Milton house (another VAC house) where they were having a braai. We brought Phomudzo—where he was quickly showing off his sweet Michael Jackson dance moves—and everyone had sooooo much fun playing drinking games and hanging out.

Most of the people at Milton are leaving for a trip to Mozambique on Wednesday and Liz and I leave while they are still gone so this party was like our last big hurrah. I’m really going to miss everyone and it’s going to be weird to have to do a big goodbye a week before I actually leave.

Later in the night all of the miltoners brought out a paper banner thing that everyone had signed that said “bye Oregoners.” It was soooo cute and even made me tear up a little (but that’s no surprise). A couple group pictures later we headed out to the bars and then to reload to finish an amazing day off with some dancing (as always). Another 5 am night at reload…couldn’t have been better.

Cape Point

For our last Friday activity we went to Cape Point, which is the southern most tip of Africa (well, I guess it’s not really…but that’s what they claim). It’s about an hour and a half drive or so from obz. You have to pay R75 to get in and I guess there’s some hiking that we didn’t do, which might make that money worth it but I thought it was all a little over rated. Once we got there and parked we just did a little walk up to the light house where the view was pretty, then spent the rest of the time hanging out in the gift shop and getting ice cream and cold drinks at the restaurant. Not totally worth it if you ask me, but I suppose it was good to see and so I guess I would say it’s one of those things that you go to see cos you’re in Cape Town, but you probably never go to again. And that’s all for Cape point. Saw it.

Housemate bonding—table mountain reservoir + beer pong lessons + reload

Two of our roommates are named Phomudzo and Londi. They’re cousins (maybe brothers…but people call their cousins brothers and sisters here so it’s hard to tell) and they’re from Limpopo Province, which is in northeast South Africa. They’ve been living in the Station rd. house for 3 years now while they go to school so they’ve seen tons of interns come in and out of their lives, which I can’t imagine is easy. Unfortunately we haven’t spent much time with them until pretty recently but they are a couple of amazing guys and I am going to miss them a lot when I leave!

Neither of them had been hiking before—with all of the mountains around here, it’s actually surprising how many locals have never been—so we convinced them to hike up to Table Mountain reservoir with us for the day on Friday. For a couple of non-hikers they sure kicked my ass and they absolutely loved it! Phomudzo kept saying he was going to do this every Friday even while we trudged along dripping sweat ha. When we finally got up to the reservoir, everyone was in heaven—I’m sure, this will remain one of my favourite places on the planet for as long as I live. We popped out our lunches and beer and lounged around and swam all day. Phomudzo was like a little kid in the water and kept splashing around and telling us, “take a picture of me.”

We hiked down through Kirstenbosch after it was already closed, which meant we had to walk along the road in the dark trying to hail a cab until we finally found a number and called one. It was a little bit of a bummer to the end of our day, but it was fun to get to be with both of them on their first hike!

Saturday, we went to Mzoli’s again (3^rd time and just as good as the other 2, so I wont go into detail) and when we got back to the house we decided we were going to teach all of our non-American roommates how to play beer pong. Liz and I carried out our desks to make a table and we somehow were able to find cups (small Styrofoam ones that actually sucked) and ping pong balls so we were set! It was like the Olympics—we had someone from Austria, England, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and America all comin together for a good ole fashion game of beer pong. Our Austrian roommate Klemens ended up being super good at it and winning the tournament.

From there we ended up at Reload—what has become our favourite dancing destination—where we finished the night off with more roommate bonding to the sounds of African house. Yes please!

Sunset/full moon lion’s head hike

A few Sundays ago a big group of us decided to hike Lion’s Head to watch the sunset and see Cape Town lit up under a full moon. Turned out, everyone else visiting Cape Town had the same idea, which made for a little different hiking experience. There were so many people hiking up the mountain that a lot of the time you had to walk super slow or basically wait in line until you could keep making your way up.

Finally we made it to the top though and luckily some of the people from our group were able to make it up quickly so they had a nice place staked out for us. Watching the sunset from up there was amazing. It was really fun to get to sit up there with all our friends, pass around a couple bottles of wine, and take in the city we’ve been living in for the past 3 months from on top of the mountain.

After the sun finally dipped beneath the horizon, we decided to try and hit the trail before all these other people tried to do the same. It proved to be much more hectic than we had hoped. Even though it looked like everyone in Cape Town was on top of Lion’s Head, many were heading down at the same time we were and even more were still trying to make their way up. It was dark so we had our cell phones in our mouths pointing the flashlight at the end (a handy little feature I’m going to miss) towards the ground and trying to scale down the boulders and somehow fight against both the others going down and the crowds still going up. It was a mess until we finally got towards the bottom where the ground was even.

Despite the strange experience of hiking with a bazillion people, the view was more than worth it and I would definitely suggest you do it if you ever find yourself in Cape Town when there’s a full moon!

Wine Tasting at Eikendal and Solms Delta

For our Friday activity we went on another wine tasting escapade. First we hit up Eikendal, which is in Stellenbosch. This area is really beautiful (duh, wine country in Cape Town), and the tasting was really nice. The tasting was done indoors, which as you know from my first wine tasting post, is not my favourite. The wines were all really good and I’m regretting my decision to not buy the pinotage there.

Next we went to Solms Delta, which was out near Franshhoek. This winery was even more gorgeous and…wait for it…the tasting was outside! The guy who was giving it though was crazy and it took a million years to get our first tasting. He had some seriously nutty facial hair—like civil war style beard—and was more concerned with seeing who wanted the cheese and cracker plate than startin’ us off with the good stuff.

The high light of this tasting was their Cape Jazz Shiraz, which is a sparkling red wine. It was suuuper delicious (the only thing bad about normal sparkling wine is that it’s always white) and I want to see if I can get it anywhere in the states.

**look how short this entry is! I’m glad I could finally give you guys a break and I’m sorry for making you read medium length novels all the time. However, as I’m writing this I realize I’m just making it longer so I guess I’m not that sorry.

Namibia Series pt. 4—Back to Fish River Canyon then Cape Town

We headed back to Fish River Canyon to watch the sunset on our last night in Nambia. There would be no better way to end the trip really. The things that we saw over these nine days, the incredible beauty, was truly humbling and we were once again forced to feel how very small we are when watching the sun dip below the canyon. While we stayed and took it all in for a while, our time was cut short by a group of loud European tourists who were more interested in talking (shit, more like yelling) to one another than watching the amazing thing that was going on in front of them. It was so irritating that we had to leave.

As we drove back to the campground, leaning out of the window and feeling the warm Namibian air against my face, I had probably my biggest realization of where I was and how lucky I am. For as long as I can remember I have dreamt of Africa, and here I am. As cheesy as it sounds, in this moment I felt more alive than I ever have and I knew that I was where I was supposed to be.

This night was one of the hottest nights I have ever experienced. Usually, although it was hotter than hell during the day, it cooled down to a bearable temperature in the evenings. Not this one. I don’t think it ever got below 80 degrees (which actually sounds cooler than it felt). We all had to take cold showers just to attempt to stop being miserable. Sitting around in our swimsuits, we hoped the temperature would drop even a little bit before morning so that we could sleep. No such luck. I slept for probably a total of an hour before the sun was up and I couldn’t stand sweating in a tent any longer.

After nine days of adventure, laughter, savannahs, biltong, sweat, good people and some of the most beautiful landscape we will ever see…we were headed back with dreams of the chilled Cape Town wind and with some of the greatest memories of our lives.