South Africa

South Africa

We made it!  All our flights (Buenos Aires - São Paolo - Johannesburg - Cape Town) were all on time and went perfectly smoothly. Even our bags made it just fine. And to top it off, South African Airlines actually serves really good food!!  Our stewardess from São Paolo to Johannesburg was awesome and gave us very good advice about South Africa and then presented us with a bottle of S African champagne at the end of the flight, since we had explained our crazy honeymoon to her. So sweet. 

Cape Town is so beautiful. Everyone told us we would love it here. The stewardess (and everyone else we've talked to) told us not to spend any time in Jo-burg, so we've scrapped our original plans of spending 2 1/2 days here and then 2 1/2 days there before we fly on to Tanzania. Now we're just going to stay in Cape Town, and we bought a cheap plane ticket to Jo-burg, that will get us into the airport a couple hours before our flight to Tanzania. 

I found a place online that looked great and offered camping, so we headed straight there from the airport. Riverlodge Backpackers is a funky little place that is part of the Oude Molen Eco Village. The "village" is a conglomeration of lots of projects - a small organic farm, a Waldorf school, a day care, a cafe that sells organic food, a community theater, a barn with horses for rent to go trail riding, and a few random art studios. Everything is kind of haphazard, and most of the projects look like they were started with the best of intentions and then kind of fizzled. But the lodge is a safe, comfy place, and we set up our tent among many others and set off to explore the city. 

Cape Town is very dramatic because it's on the water, surrounded by Table Mountain (a huge flat top mountain with sheer cliffs for sides), Lions Head mountain, and Signal Hill, both slightly smaller mountains that are equally impressive. The city itself is really beautiful, and we started by exploring the famous waterfront. 

The V&A waterfront (named for Queen Victoria and her son, Alfred) is designed mostly for tourists but is still a very active harbor with big and small boats. The money here in S Africa was immediately apparent. Of course diamonds are huge here, as is platinum mining and coal, oil and natural gas extraction, sports and tourism. I haven't seen so many Porsches, BMWs, Mercedes, Audis, and Range Rovers in one place, with the exception of West Palm Beach, FL, maybe. There were condos along the waterfront for sale for a few million dollars each, but we decided not to buy one. 

That night I did lots of reading about Cape Town, in order to make plans for all the things we can do in the next few days. In my reading, I came across a description of the place where we're staying. Turns out it is a former mental hospital. It really does look like one, and it is badly in need of repair in some places. More than a little creepy!  Then we started chatting with some of the other folks staying here (some of whom have been camping here for months.) Jonathan and I have decided maybe it is still a bit of a mental hospital, even if the info says it shut down as such almost 50 years ago. There is an Albino man here who is mentally handicapped. He doesn't speak much English, but he likes to give me a fist bump and Jonathan a noogie on the head every time he sees us. He promptly gets into his matching pajamas at 6 pm every evening. He has a huge tent that he has pieced together with all sorts of strange bits of junk around, and I think he has been living here for quite some time. 

Today we got a late start due to our jet lag (or mostly mine!) We spent most of the day exploring the rest of the waterfront. We started out going to the Two Oceans Aquarium, which is a fantastic place!  They have incredible displays that are so well lit that it is really easy to see every detail of the marine life. Everything you can think of is on display there. My favorites were the giant spider crabs (really, really giant and the biologists have no way to tell how old they are, what sex they are, or how they reproduce!); the rays (so friendly!!); and definitely the penguins. They have both African Penguins and another type, who's name I can't remember. But they're the ones with the fringy bright yellow feathers above their eyes that stick out like huge eyebrows. Also, they were in Happy Feet - that will probably give you a better picture!  The African Penguins were so sociable and curious. I took tons of photos and some video that I will try to put on Facebook. 

We had a late lunch along the water and then wandered back into the city. Along the jetties are some docks where seals hang out and sunbathe. They have got to be the cutest things ever, except they smell seriously bad. 

We walked some more into the city hoping to find a big market that is supposed to be awesome on Saturdays, but everyone was closing up shop by the time we got there. So we took the train back to our crazy hostel and went grocery shopping. Our plan is to cook for ourselves the rest of the time to save some money, and this place has a great kitchen.

We spent the night grilling alongside a very friendly South African named Ian, who is a wealth of knowledge. His family has lived in S Africa since 1669, and there doesn't seen to be much he doesn't know about this country. He recommended that we take the train down towards the Cape of Good Hope nature reserve. There is a huge penguin colony at Boulder Beach, so that will be our first stop, and then we'll just spend the day exploring the reserve. 

Now I'm going to try to get some sleep, but I'm still on Argentina time, and two of our resident crazies here have decided to try to be DJs for the night. They're blaring electronica and pop music with the bass cranked up. Might be a night for the earplugs...