Cape Town, South Africa

I LOVE CAPE TOWN!

Cape Town was AMAZING!! It has, by far, been my favorite port thus far! We arrived on Feb. 19 around 6 am, and we all got up to watch us pull in. The sun wasn’t up yet, and Cape Town was so beautiful all lit up. Immediately you can see the famous Table Mountain, the best scenic location in the entire town. After eating breakfast and being cleared to leave the ship, Tessa, Jess and I walked around the waterfront where our ship was docked and looked around. This waterfront has been the best location we have docked throughout the entire trip. It had very pretty buildings, restaurants, and shops, and it was very clean and easy to get around. We met up with a group that invited us to go wine tasting in Stellenbauch, a town about thirty minutes away famous for all of its wine farms. (They don’t call them wineries) We took the train, which was about $1, and headed to one of the most famous wineries, Spier, where the world famous restaurant Moyo is located. Finding the train station was a very interesting feat. Getting directions, for some reason, was oddly difficult for us at first. Everyone just pointed in the general direction and said “go that way.” After going “that way” for quite a while, we finally arrived at the train station and bought our ticket. The ticket told us what platform to board at, but for the life of us, we could not figure out the entrance to the platforms. We were so frazzled, and had only 5 minutes before our train was departing. Finally, a very nice woman, seeing our great distress, offered her help and showed us where we needed to enter. I felt like I was on Amazing Race and can now understand why all of the partners get in huge fights when they are pressed for time and can’t figure out something so simple like how to get to a train platform in a foreign country. Everything is just not as well marked in some countries as it is in the US, something I am very grateful for, as I’m sure the tourists to America are, too! After a great lunch (at a different restaurant in Spier), that only cost us each $10, we headed over to the wine tasting bar. (Equal to $1) Everything was SO cheap here, including the wine. Needless to say, we had a great time! We headed back that afternoon and got ready for a dinner at the waterfront. I made plans with some girlfriends, Brittany and Dylan, for the next day because Jess and Tessa were leaving for their safari. The girls had been at the same winery as us, but at a different time, and we found out later that when they went horseback riding, Brittany was thrown from her horse. Obviously the combination of wine tasting and riding a very wild horse is a dangerous thing, because she ended up separating her shoulder and getting bumps and bruises all over her. The next morning (Wednesday), Brittany, Dylan and I went to Harry’s Pancakes for breakfast, where we had the most amazing food! I ordered a cinnamon and sugar pancake filled with apples and raisins, topped with ice cream! Sound like an apple pie, yah I thought so, too! They were thinner than regular pancakes but thicker than a German pancake or crepe, and at this restaurant you had to buy your topping separate. (Even maple syrup!) So what did I do? Figuring how much I like ice cream, it sounded like a great alternative! Anyway, that breakfast was super cheap, too… we were loving the dollar-rand conversion rate! We walked around and shopped most of the day then headed up the cable car to the top of Table Mountain for sunset. It was an absolutely beautiful view… this is the time I fell in love with Cape Town. I had been there only a little over 24 hours and knew I had to come back! We ate a very late lunch and walked around the top, killing some time till sunset. There were a lot of couples picnicking and sharing wine and food all over the top of the mountain, and then there were all the SAS students who drank their beer and wine to celebrate having just hiked the thing! Considering Brittany was in a sling, we took the cable car and just enjoyed watching the sunset… little did we know, there was an eclipse! The pictures I have are so cool! We saw another group of girlfriends who had sky dived earlier that day then wanted to hike the mountain. Brittany, Dylan and I decided to head back earlier than the rest of the group to get ready for the night, and it was a lucky thing we did… The rest of the group of girls was in a car accident while riding home in the taxi back to the ship from the base of the mountain. Had we waited for them, we could have been in that taxi, too. Luckily, they weren’t severely injured… but glass shattered all over them and one girl hurt her knee. Fortunately, this didn’t put a damper on the rest of their night, and we all went to a wonderful restaurant, voted best steakhouse in South Africa! But what was most interesting about this restaurant was that it sells more wine by the glass than any restaurant in the WORLD! The wine list was huge… at least the size of a US roadmap, front and back! After the restaurant, I went back to the ship to get some good sleep for my cycling the winelands trip I had the next day. I met up with my group at 9 am and we headed back to Stellenbauch (where I was the first day) for a 10 mile bike ride. When we arrived and finally got going around 10 am, it was already 90 degrees outside! The “semi-paved road” that was in the description of the trip was so far off… the road, if you’d call it that wasn’t even a bike path. Bike paths aren’t supposed to have huge rocks that can throw a bicycler off their bike. (Which almost happened to me a few times) So between the 90 degree weather, no shade, horrible road for cycling, and all of the up-hill riding we did, it was worse than spin class! There was a van that followed us through the course, and almost half the people dropped out within the first hour. We finished the course and headed to the first wine farm for wine tasting and lunch. This part made all of the hard work we had just done well worth it… the food and wine were great! I strongly considered mailing some of the great red wines back home to Dad, since we can’t take it back on the ship, but I figured he’d tell me not to spend the money. It was really good wine, though, and I can still order it online. After a few hours of wine tasting, I made it back to the ship around 6:30 only to find out some girls and I had reservations at the famous Moyo restaurant and we were leaving at 7:15. I took a lighting speed shower, got ready faster than I have in my entire life, and we headed back to Stellenbauch(in three days, I had been there three times), back to the Spier wine farm, to eat the greatest dinner I’ve had in a very long time! The atmosphere was great! It was a tent with live entertainment, singers, dancers, guitarists, and face painters… you name it and they had it. The buffet consisted of all of the weirdest South African meats you could think of- Crocodile, Ostrich, etc, all of which I didn’t try. We had a great time, and made it back to the ship around midnight. I packed for my safari and headed to bed so I could wake up at 4 am to leave for Kwazulu-Natal game reserve.