Anchors Aweigh!: March 6, 2011

February 26, 2011

South Africa

We were due to get into Cape Town on Thursday February 17^th. The whole ship was like a middle school the day before Spring Break. Everyone was really excited for Cape Town and everyone had big plans. It was finally a town that was more modern that had so many things to do. As I mentioned before my roommate had kidney stones and still hadn’t passed them before we got there so she had arrangements to go to the hospital once we arrived. Wednesday night a bunch of my friends and I watched the lion king to get ready to see something similar in real life. Hanna and I woke up early Thursday morning to join a group to watch the sunrise. I think it is a tradition to watch the sunrise on port days but this was an especially popular day just to live the opening scene of lion king with the famous ‘Circle of Life’ song that had been hummed on the ship since we came to Africa. It was rough but Hanna and I made it to the top deck around 5 am. The wind took my breath away and it was definitely the coldest air I have felt since I left Colorado in January. We toughed it out and saw a beautiful sunrise and went to bed for a couple more hours. Thursday was the only day I didn’t have a field trip planned so I had a lot to get done so we were all ready to get off the ship when we went to breakfast. We still couldn’t see land which was very strange to us but we patiently waited for ‘the voice’ (the name of the lady that makes all the announcements on the intercom) to tell us we were about to go through immigration. Instead we got an announcement saying it was too windy for the pilot to bring us in so we had to wait until the wind died down. Unfortunately we got many more announcements throughout the day saying just about the same thing. They looked for other ports we could dock in but there was no luck. Instead we went in circles on the really rough sea and hoped the next announcement would bring better news than the last one. To keep us busy they played movies in the Union and planned an open mic night since the last one was so popular. Our friend Kenji always plays his guitar in our room and is really good so we convinced him to play a song. He seemed nervous but finally agreed. There were some really good acts and open mic is exciting because you never know what is going to happen. Last time this girl reinacted a Lady Gaga music video and it was SO funny because she was so serious and didn’t know any of the words and people thought she was kidding but she was so serious. She wasn’t going to leave it as a one hit wonder so she performed again and this time she did “Hot Stuff Baby Tonight”. She knew just as many words as the Lady Gaga song, maybe less but made up for it by ripping her sweater off in the middle of the song to keep the crowd roaring through the whole thing. For some reason it reminded me of something Emily, my sister, would perform for family and friends. Kenji also was a hit and probably had the best acoustic song of the night. I recorded most of the acts so I can share the laughter when I get home.

We went to bed with an announcement saying we were supposed to reach the port between 11 and 1. People had already missed flights for their safaris and a lot of trips were missed. I woke up around 4 in the morning to the drawers banging in and out because we were still rocking back and fourth. I was pissed. We ended up getting in around noon on Friday. I had an Operation Hunger service project planned that day and it was still going we were just going to do the afternoon work. Pulling into Cape Town was jaw dropping. The city is framed in perfectly with 2 large mountains (Table Mountain and Lion’s Peak) and there are high rise buildings in the background behind the Waterfront port area. It was tourist heaven. We drove through the town on our way to our Operation Hunger site. There were all sorts of high end designer shops, restaurants, palm trees, nice cars, and cute boys! Everything was so eye appealing. The drive on the left side and the driver’s seat is on the right. We were in the nicest tourist bus we had been in on the whole trip. It had a huge bathroom right in the middle of the bus, two entry ways, squishy seats, and tinted windows. It didn’t take long until we drove a few minutes outside of the main part of Cape Town and started seeing all the shacks in the townships line up. It was a sea of poverty as you looked out the window and saw townships that went 8 miles in from the highway.

We learned a lot about the apartheid before we got there so we were keeping our eyes open to racism and segregation. Apparently the townships didn’t have much to do with the separation of the black and whites that had happened 20 years ago it was more of people coming from all over the country for work and getting stuck in the townships. The country has a 36% unemployment rate. We were with the founder of Operation Hunger and we were going to a place in a township that was a soup kitchen. Operation Hunger provides them with food once a week and on this visit since we had so many people we were going to help him by weighing all the children so he could keep tabs on them. The kids were so welcoming just like in Ghana. Once they saw we had scales though they got really shy and scared because any time they have seen scales and white people in the past that has meant they were going to get a shot from the doctor. Some of the little ones cried and fussed when we tried to weigh them but were happy to find out they weren’t getting a shot. Most of the kids spoke English which is the country’s main language but they also speak Afrikaan and Xhosa (sounds like klosa but the ‘klos’ is a clicking noise you make with the side of your tongue). Xhosa is a clicking language and is very interesting to listen to and try and figure out how they incorporate a click with the letters in the words. I still can’t even pronounce the name of the language.

The little girls in the township had so many songs to chant for us and dance to it was so cute to watch them. A meal was made for them and they all stood in line with their Tupperware and got something that looked like mashed potatoes and a stew. There were way too many kids for the amount of adults that were there. I don’t know where the parents were but the kids were just roaming freely in the street. Driving through the townships was amazing. The shacks are so close together with metal roofs with tires or anything heavy they could find to keep the roofs on. There were electric poles that had about 20 wires dangling down into each shack. No wonder they have problems of fire! If once shack catches fire they all do because there is no way to get a fire truck in there.

When I got home from that trip a lot of people were leaving the ship all giddy on their way to the U2 concert that was playing in the stadium that the World Cup was played in. Hanna along with 72,000 other people fit into the stadium and enjoyed a great show. I went to dinner in the Waterfront area in a nice restaurant with some friends and neighbors on the ship. It was a very nice restaurant but the food seemed to be very reasonably priced in South Africa so we all splurged a little. Being so thrilled to have a break from the ship food I got a peanut sesame chicken dinner and a ‘Robin Island Iced Tea’. I was so jealous of the girl across from me that got a Karibu Kiss to drink (Karibu was the name if the restaurant and had got awarded the best drink in Cape Town for this drink). It was a chocolaty banana drink in a glass rimmed with powdered chocolate and a massive chocolate elephant head hanging from the glass. It was delicious! Before dinner I thought my malaria medicine was trying to kill me because I felt so terrible until I finally ate some food and I am blaming it on the medicine because it does that from time to time.

After dinner we all went to check out the hot spots on Long Street which is popular for all it’s bars and clubs. One of the girls we were with had friends that were studying abroad in South Africa so we met up with them and went to a club that was having lady’s night. It was fun and such a different experience than we had had anywhere else. There were finally so many people in the city that Semester at Sea kids blended in so much better. We weren’t the only white people for once and there were a lot more people around our age out and about. We went to a few other places and before the night got too late I went back to the ship with some people so we could wake up early to go cycling through the winelands.

This was a trip put on through Semester at Sea so we packed into a few vans and drove about 45 minutes outside of Cape Town into wine country. I got lucky and was in a van with really fun people which is rare because I usually get stuck with some sour apples in my group. Our tour guides name was Neil and he had just spent the last 8 years traveling the world while he worked on a cruise ship. He was very interesting and was a really nice guy. When we were asking questions about South Africa he had a much less liberal view of things than most people that lived there. When talking about the crime in the townships he tried to explain to us that it was the very low percentage of bad people that gave townships their reputation of being dangerous and that the crime really isn’t as bad as people say. We got on our bikes in an amazingly beautiful town that reminded me of a quiet upper scale Californian wine town. There were mountains in every direction you looked. It is getting close to the end of summer for them so the weather was beautiful and the grass was green.

We went on about an hour bike ride through wine vineyards and finished with a picnic at a winery. The views were beautiful and the ride was a little strenuous at times but very enjoyable. Each picnic basket was made for 2 people with samples of all sorts of food and a bottle of wine. I don’t particularly like wine but this trip is all about trying new things right? Kenji (my friend from earlier that was in the open mic night) was on the trip and he and I shared a basket. He doesn’t like wine either so it made us a little more comfortable that we could gag at the wine together if we needed to. The wine was a rose wine and wasn’t too bad. Kenji couldn’t handle it as well as I could but we made a good dent in the bottle. The food was good too. I have no idea what anything was except for the chicken and fruit but it all tasted good! There were some kids playing cricket by us so we played for a little bit and then went to the winery for some wine tastings. I don’t know if it was because I had already had a glass or two but the wine we tasted was amazing! There was an African Jazz wine that was delicious.

After our wine tasting we stopped in a town called Stellenbosch. It is home of South Africa’s oldest college campus. Again the town was really nice and reminded me of a California town. When we were leaving our group split off and Neil, our tour guide, agreed to take us to Table Mountain so we could ride the cable car to the top and watch the sun set. He drove us there but the winds were too strong so the cable car wasn’t in service. Neil was so nice though and drove us to the other side of the mountain to see a really nice part of town and give us another view of Cape Town. It was beautiful! When I got back to the ship I was crossing my fingers that my roommate would be back from the hospital because she had already spent one night there. She wasn’t in the room. I was starting to get really worried because I hadn’t heard anything about how she was doing so I found the number for the hospital I knew she was in and got a hold of her. She was alive and I told her I was going to come see her and asked if she wanted me to bring her anything.

With Jill’s toothbrush and some snacks in hand I headed to the hospital with Hanna and another friend Kelly. She was in this room with 8 other beds but only 2 other people were in there with similar problems. The stone still hadn’t passed so they had given her some other medicines and were still waiting to see if she would pass it and if not they would do surgery. She was in good spirits and was happy to see us. I couldn’t imagine being in a hospital alone for 2 days in a foreign country. Hanna and I were leaving for our safari the next morning so we couldn’t be there if she got surgery. She did end up getting surgery and is on all sorts of different medicine now but should be okay for the rest of the trip.

On Sunday morning Hanna and I and 40 other kids from Semester at Sea headed to the airport to fly into Port Elizabeth and then drove an hour and a half to Kereiga Game Reserve for our safari. We stayed in a lodge on the reserve and it was so nice! They welcomed us with a massive buffet lunch that was absolutely delicious. Every meal from there on out was just as good and just as filling. I left that place with a serious food baby. We were in groups of 4 and had our own cabins called chalets. They were really nice and we all had our own room. The view was beautiful overlooking a green valley. We would go on drives in the evening and early mornings. My safari ranger was so cute! It is always a fun atmosphere when our trips are filled with kids our age so you can tell the guides enjoy it a little more. Terry, our guide, was our age so it was fun to learn about his life because we could relate to it. We saw all sorts of animals; all of the big five except leopard. The big 5 are the most dangerous animals to hunt. They are elephant, water buffalo, lion, leopard, and rhino.

The elephant were my favorite. The first day we saw them they were walking right past our truck and we didn’t faze them at all. They would pull cactus off a branch stomp the thorns off and eat it. The second day we saw them the weather wasn’t as nice and Terry said the wind bothered them because their ears are so sensitive. We were driving and turned a corner and there was a huge elephant in the road so we stopped. The elephant was making a growling noise and flapping its ears and Terry said she was upset about something. She continued to eat and slowly came closer to us. She would lift up her front foot and kind of make a shooing movement which meant we were too close. And we were too close! Too close to start the car and get out of there because the engine would’ve scared her. She got closer and closer and luckily I was the farthest from the elephant in my row but the kid next to me was practically sitting on my lap. She got really close and lifted her head up and was looking right at us. I have this whole thing on video and the kid closest to her is in the whole thing and it is hilarious! He is looking at the elephant then Terry then the elephant then Terry. It was like he was waiting for Terry to do something but there was nothing to be done. Finally she backs up and walks in front of the truck and takes a huge dump right in front of us and we took that as our cue to leave.

We had a great time at the safari and made it back to Cape Town just in time to do some shopping before the ship left. I got a blueberry cheesecake frappe with my lunch and it was scrumptious!!!! There was so much to do in Cape Town but just not enough time. It was a place that I will definitely make my way back to. We just got to Mauritius today and are only staying here for the day. Apparently some voyage in the past stayed here for two days and just destroyed the island because they partied so hard so the government won’t let us stay overnight….that’s embarrassing. I plan on going scuba diving with Hanna and some people on my floor that organized a trip.