South Africa!

SOUTH AFRICA!

**Warning this is going to be a long one!** :)

I will begin with saying I am moving to South Africa…well in my dreams. The boat pulled into Cape Town and we were all in awe. It was like a little slice of Europe in Africa! It also looked like heaven because we were supposed to arrive the day before, but due to strong winds we could not clear the narrow passage into the harbor so we couldn’t dock. We spent a day and half doing circles outside of Cape Town, we saw it about 8 times with out being able to dock, we were so close yet so far! This was a huge issue for many trips that were planned and I had my huge four day safari with the elephant ride that was supposed to leave at four in the morning the second day, I woke up to find that we had still not docked. Eventually the day after we were supposed to arrive, the winds died down enough for us to get into the harbor and we were finally docked! As I watched all the kids excitedly pile off the ship I had to hang around and wait to hear any news about my Safari. The big complication with rescheduling our flights to the reserve was that there were zero flights available because there was a U2 concert that night! Eventually we were told that there was no way we were making it out that day so my friend Grace and I wandered around Cape Town. When we came back to the ship, there was a paper posted saying that our safari got cancelled. I was disappointed, but only for a moment because there is so much to do and see in Cape Town that you can’t really complain. Grace and I immediately thought that this was a sign for us to go to the U2 concert, we tried to scalp tickets but eventually gave up. A bunch of students from SAS went and said that it was an amazing show. My friend Alex’s sister lives in Cape Town so that night Grace, Alex and I went to her sister’s friend’s house. They had a traditional barbeque for us; the food was DELICIOUS and was cooked on a wood-burning barbeque. It was so great to hang out and talk with some locals; after we ate they took us out to Long Street, which is the popular nightlife street with bars and clubs. We went two a small local bar called The Neighborhood and then to a dubstep club by the name of Fiction. I was so impressed about the amount of amaaaazing techno/dupstep music in Cape Town; I had no idea that it was so popular there!

The next day I went to Table Mountain with a group of friends. We took the cable car up and walked around the top, the view was unbelievable. You could see all of Cape Town, including the MV Explorer docked in the harbor! After we enjoyed the amazing sights, we decided to abseil down the side of the mountain, which is like propelling or belaying down in rock climbing. It was by far the single coolest thing of my entire life. We hiked down a little bit to get the ledge that we would get propel off of. After getting all harnessed in we were ready to go. The guides mentioned that there is a “surprise” half way down, we had no idea what that could be but were all excited to find out. Our group propelled down two at a time and after Ali and another women went down, it was time for Liz and I to go. It was so crazy to just walk backward off of a cliff and turn 90 degrees and allow your weight to shift to be 100% depended on ropes and being walking/falling down the side of a mountain. We were laughing and having so much fun turning around and looking at the ridiculous views. At one point there was a huge fog cloud that engulfed us and then passed by. It was the most epic experience of my life. After we went out and got a beer and fish ‘n chips! We came back to the ship, got showered and then joined a big group of people heading to a winery in the Stellenbosch region for dinner and wine tasting. The winery was Asara and before dinner we tried a tasting of 6 different wines; a white, a rose, three reds and he pulled out a special dessert wine for us. All of them were so amazing, and then we sat for dinner. I went with my gut and got dessert for dinner, boy am I glad that I did. I had a chocolate trio complete with a milky liquor shot, a rich chocolate passion fruit cake and an ice cream truffle; it rocked my mind to say the least [hence me blogging about it haha]. Once we were done with dinner we all went out to Long Street.

The following day Gabi, Liz, Haley, Ali and I took the train to Boulder Beach to see the African Penguins. These are the only tropical penguins; they literally live on the beach! They were so adorable. We stopped and got lunch a little hole-in-the-wall bakery, which was delicious. We also went to a nearby African market. After arriving back on the ship, we got ready and went out for sushi! I had been craving sushi for so long. Gabi had a friend that had studied abroad in Cape Town and gave her a list of things to do, including the name of a sushi restaurant with half off cocktails and sushi on Sundays! It just happened to work out that it was a Sunday so we got a group together and went to Beluga. It was yet another delicious meal, complete with blood orange coconut mojitos! Yummy! After that we went to bar on the waterfront called Mitchell’s. Gabi and I called it and early night because we had an early morning and headed back to the ship.

The next day was…CAGE DIVING! There was a group of seven of us that were picked up at 4:30 am by a van that drove us two and a half hours to the beach. We arrived at a lodge where we ate breakfast and met up with the rest of the group that would be going out on the boat with us. We were then given a talk about the endangered great whites and heard a little bit about the company that would be taking us out to dive. After the talk, we filled out of the lodge and walked to the boat that was near by. We drove out about 30 minutes to the spot where we anchored and threw in some bate and chum, just waiting for the great whites to show up to the party! While we waited we changed into our full-body wet suits, including a head covering and booties. Our group was one of the last groups to get into the cage, the second to last. There were about 8 people in the cage at a time and it was a long rectangular cage where we would be side by side. Your heads would be out of the water until the crew told you “Divers, down and to the right” where you would plunge into the freezing cold water, hold your breath and watch the shark swim toward you, open it’s jaws and lunge towards the bate then swim away. You would then pop back out of the water gasping for air, laughing and exclaiming how awesome it was. Our group got lucky and saw about seven sharks, at one time one of the sharks came towards the cage head on, jaws open and bit the bate, tugging and thrashing, turning upside down and bit the entire bate off. It was such an amazing thing to stare into the eyes of a great white shark after watching shark week for so many years! It is definitely tied with abseiling as the coolest thing I have ever done.  After diving, on our way back to the ship we went by a near by town, it was really nice, we went around and shopped at an African market. Then made our way back to the ship. We went out with a bunch of SAS kids later that night, which was a good time.

The last day a few girls went out to breakfast and after Gabi and I went wine tasting. We took the large double-decker red tourist bus to the Constantia region. We had a great time traveling through South Africa, listening to the history and seeing the different areas outside of Cape Town. We ended up going to the oldest winery in South Africa, Groot Constanta that was founded in 1685. The grounds were absolutely beautiful; we went on a tour of the cellar and learned about the production of wine. After the tour, we had a wine tasting. Then we got back on the bus and headed back to the ship to catch it before we set sail. When we got back on to the ship, it was taco night, which is a big deal, such a nice change from mystery meat, potatoes and pasta! Next stop is a good one but a quick one, Mauritius!