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.

Namibian Series pt. 3—Dinosaur Capsite and Back to Windhoek

During our night in Windhoek, Samuel and his friend mentioned that they were having their birthday party later in the week and that we should come back down for it. We had so much fun with those guys that we knew it was an opportunity we couldn’t pass up. So instead of going home down along the coast and through the Namib Desert (gives me a reason to go back to Namibia!) we decided to take the same route home—Windhoek, fish river canyon, cape town. Instead of driving all the way back to Windhoek though, we decided to stay somewhere in between for the night to break up the driving a little bit. With no plans, we decided just to take a turn at the first campground sign we saw off the main road a few hours in. Awesome enough, it ended up being called Dinosaur Campground! We had to check in at this fancy lodge up the street and when we were doing so she mentioned there being a lion feeding later that night that we could go to. Uh…yes please.

Our campsite here was absolutely beautiful! It looked out onto this lake/pond thing (possibly sewage reservoir but we were able to look beyond that) and we were completely isolated, which was a nice change from the other campgrounds we had stayed at. We had our own bathroom/shower and a circular wind shelter with a fire/braai pit in the middle. We hung out there for a long time watching once again, an absolutely incredible sunset then headed back up to the lodge for the lion feeding.

We were all pretty nervous as we loaded this rickety old bus type thing and were carried out into the bush. The drive alone was pretty freaky. The perfect setting for a horror film in which the drivers turn on the passengers and we become the lion bait. We got to this concrete bomb shelter barricade looking thing and the driver unlatched a ladder from the back and told me not to move. I’m getting the chills just thinking about it again. Then he came back and was like ok you can come down now. Still freaked out and wondering what he had done to somehow make it safe now for me to move, I nervously went down the ladder and followed him into this concrete barricade. It was dark and quiet and we all sat down on this bench behind a concrete wall with thick steel bars looking out onto a dimly lit concrete slab, now the plate presenting a dead warthog to some hungry lions.

The guys told us we could take pictures and that the flash was allowed (weird enough) but that we should just be quiet. Pretty soon 2 lions and a lioness came wandering out from the trees, licking their chops, ready to tear pumba to shreds. The lioness and the dominant male went in for it first. Tearing at its flesh without much hesitation, while the other male sat beside them patiently waiting his turn.

I wish I had a recording of what it sounded like. The only thing that would have made it worse would be if the warthog had still been alive and squealing. You could hear every bone crunch and its skin rip open. I couldn’t help but sit there and think, “this is exactly what I would sound like if I were being eaten by a lion.” Pretty soon the non-dominant male began pacing around—probably to pass the time as he drooled waiting to get his chance to eat—and came right up to the wall and looked straight into Dan’s eyes. I don’t even know what Dan was thinking, but I just about peed my pants. A hungry lion two-feet away staring at you? No thanks. Finally the dominant male had had enough and he walked away leaving the rest to be had by the other male as the lioness kept on at it. Before they were completely finished the guide motioned for us to head out and load back on the bus. I had never seen anything like that and while I’m not completely convinced it was a wild act (there’s no way they’d be able to feed wild animals like that), it was a crazy experience for sure.

The next morning we headed out to find what gave this campground its name—dinosaur tracks! After a quick puke at the trail head (the reason I gave up on my malaria medicine), we started hiking up to this rock plateau type deal where it seemed like there would be tracks—the people at the lodge didn’t have any information for us besides where to start the trail. There was a lot of wandering around and “maybe this is one,” until we finally found the area where there were some definitelys. It was pretty stinkin sweet to end our wildlife safari adventure with some dino tracks let me tell you! Standing on this rock slab next to huge dinosaur footprints looking over Namibia it was hard not to feel like Little Foot. With a quick, “bye dinosaur campsite. We love you dinosaur campsite. We’ll miss you dinosaur campsite,” we were off and on our way back to Windhoek.

We decided to stay at the same backpackers as before and prepped for the night with a nap and shower before meeting up with Dan’s other friend Ian and catching a cab to the birthday party. The party was a lot of fun and while it was a little awkward at first, after a little social lubricant and people learning we knew Sam and Ian (and weren’t just random white kids off the street), everyone became really interested in talking to the Americans.

Pretty soon everyone was ready to hit the clubs, so that we did! None of us had packed for going out so we felt a little underdressed and had to go to a club that wouldn’t mind as much (although Whit’s shorts caused a little bit of a commotion at the door with the bouncer).

I had seriously one of the best nights ever dancing with everyone at the club! Everyone was out there and everyone was dancing. Even though us white kids couldn’t really keep up with the sweet dance moves, they still gave us a chance and nobody really cared that we looked ridiculous. We danced our hearts out until probably 5am and then decided we should head back and get some sleep before our drive again the next day. It sucked having to say goodbye to all of these amazing people we had just met and who had welcomed us in better than I could ever imagine. That’s the hard part about travelling though. Something that somehow doesn’t stop me from doing it all over again.

Namibian Series pt. 2—Windhoek and Etosha

With still quite a long drive up to Etosha we decided to stop and spend a night in Namibia’s capital, Windhoek. This is the city that my friend Dan lived in as a kid, so he called up one of his old schoolmates who gave us a hostel recommendation and met us for drinks.

As we drove up towards the city it began to rain. It was still warm out so the storm was pretty amazing! This whole area is very lush and green (probably helps that it’s the rainy season), and the dark sky lit up the purple mountains creating the most beautiful scenery.

It was really great to meet Dan’s old friend Samuel and his friend and we spent a good part of the night sitting outside under a covered porch listening to the rain, watching the lightening, and drinking Savannahs (cider).

The next morning after another grocery stop we headed up for Etosha. About 5 or 6 hours later we entered the gates of Etosha and pretty soon after we saw our first giraffe! We set up camp at the first campground area, and headed down to the watering hole to wait for the animals to come. Summer time is the rainy season for Etosha, which meant that everything was beautiful and green, but also meant that a ton of animals weren’t gathering at the main watering holes (they could get water elsewhere, and there was a better chance a bunch of people weren’t watching them at those ones). We did see a ton of zebras and springbok at this watering hole though.

It was incredible to be able to just sit at a bench and watch the animals come up to get a drink. Pretty soon we realized that the dark storm we could see far away was now coming our direction. Heavy raindrops soon turned into torrential downpour and we hurried to the car where we decided to wait it out inside. Our tents were already set up and as we sat in the car looking out to a flash flood, we couldn’t help but fear for the state of our tents and the possibility of us having no dry place to sleep. Finally the rain stopped and we were able to get out and trudge through ankle deep water to try and salvage our gear. Luckily the inside of our tents weren’t completely soaked.

For the next 3 days we drove around looking for game and every night we stayed at another campground area along the Etosha Salt Pan. In the afternoons we would be dying of heat and covered in sweat (I’m not joking when I say we didn’t stop sweating for nine days), find our new camp site buy a pack of savannah’s and hit the pool. We then would proceed to talk about how shitty it would be to be one of those animals out there trapped in the heat.

During our 4 days in Etosha we saw:

-Giraffe

-Zebra

-Ostrich

-Kudu

-Springbok

-Oryx

-Wildebeest

-Elephant (even a baby one with no control over its trunk!)

-Hyena

-Lion

-Rhino

-Flamingo

-Warthog

-black mamba

-giant millipede

-giant lizard/ (what looked like a baby komodo dragon)

Dan and Liz are huge bird watchers so we all got pretty into it while we were in Namibia and spent a good part of our trip looking out and identifying awesome birds. We saw some seriously cool looking birds!

I was so happy that we got to see everything that we wanted to see! It was incredible to get to see these animals in the wild (pretty much) and doing what they would naturally be doing!

**side note: I taught everyone about our Schalk family tradition of saying “bye___. We love you____. We’ll miss you ____” whenever you leave some place. So as we drove out of the gates of Etosha you will be happy to hear that we gave it the traditional farewell of “bye etosha. We love you etosha. We’ll miss you etosha.” We also did this for the next few places we stayed from here on out. Thank you Dad for being completely weird (or maybe dumb is a better word) and in turn making me weird too.

Namibian Series pt.1—Fish River Canyon

I can’t believe it’s been a month since my last post! Sorry for the delay…my week long adventure through Namibia left me with no idea of how I would organize some kind of reflection into blog form. First and foremost…if you ever get the chance, go to Namibia…it will change your life.

My housemate Dan’s visa expired on feb 16 so he had to leave the country so that the visa would be renewed when he got back. Perfect excuse for an adventure outside of Cape Town! Dan lived in Namibia for a year in 6^th grade (his dad taught at the law school there for a year) and so we decided to head up north so he could get back there and we could see some of the amazing stuff he remembered from when he was a kid. As you probably figured, the plans all came together pretty last minute but we planned to leave Saturday, feb 13, and get back Sunday the 21. We rented a badass safari truck and scanned the travel books for a couple camping spots up towards Etosha (the game reserve in the north).

Saturday morning, when Whit and Dan got back from the rental place with the truck we were seriously amazed! It came packed with EVERYTHING you could ever need: An ice chest, connected water spout thing, table, folding chairs, all of the kitchen supplies, propane grill, two tents (to be set up) connected to the top of the truck and even bedding (4 sleeping bags, sheets, 4 pillows, 2 heavy blankets). Can you even believe it?! We all decided we would each own one of these things in our lifetime. The ultimate adventure truck.

Anywaaayyyys….we left around 11 that morning and after a (not so) quick stop at a grocery store for just about the only supplies (food) not included with the truck, we were on the road headed north for the border! …about 6 hours later, covered in sweat (little did we know we wouldn’t stop sweating until we got back to Cape Town 9 days later) we finally reached the border. It only took us probably 15 minutes total to get through customs on both the South African and the Namibian side…not too bad. From there we continued up north towards Hobas along the Fish River Canyon.

About an hour or so in we had to veer off the main, paved road and onto a long dirt road towards our campground near the canyon. The sun was beginning to set at this point and as we drove along the dusty road, hanging out of the windows breathing in the Namibian air and trying to capture a few good pictures, we saw what would be the first of 9 incredible sunsets.

Dan had remembered seeing game all over the place so we were glad that we wouldn’t be driving in the dark for too long. As we drove along, all of a sudden we saw a huge animal in the middle of the road. It was a giant Kudu buck! We slammed on our breaks and sat there staring at this beast of an animal for a minute or so and then it ran into the field beside us. Soooo cool! One of the things I forgot that came with our truck was a huge, hand held, spot light. After the Kudu spotting, Whit took control of that little baby and we spent the rest of the drive scanning the area for more animals.

We got to the campground, set up our tents (the easiest tents ever to set up!), and made somedinner then pulled out the chairs and went out into this open area to look at the stars. Namibia is one of the least populated countries in Africa, meaning few lights and therefore the most amazing night sky I have ever seen. I’m pretty sure you could see every single star. And don’t even get me started on the Milky Way! She was doin’ her thang, dancing all sexy-like across the sky, like nothing I have ever seen!

We woke in the morning to baboons ransacking the camp garbage cans and searching for any food people had left out. That’s right, raccoons shmacoons…in Africa you get Baboons trying to get into your stuff! It was seriously crazy. They looked so much like people it was weird. Dan was out making breakfast and one teenager-sized one came right up to the table and he had to bang some stuff together to try and get it to go away. The big ones were pretty freaky lookin, but the little bubbas were adorable!

Before heading up to Windhoek (the capital of Namibia and our next destination), we obviously had to stop by and have a look at Fish River Canyon. Looking online, nobody seems to know or agree on if this is the 2^nd largest canyon in the world or 2^nd largest in Africa…or neither, just a claim to keep tourists coming. Regardless…it was the biggest damn canyon I’ve ever seen and most definitely the prettiest! We were absolutely blown away by the sight as soon as we stepped out of the car and hung around for quite a while before deciding we should hit the road once again. We also decided that we would stop here again on our way back to try and catch the sunset at the canyon. ::foreshadow to future post::