Joburg to Cape Town

I took a taxi to the Joburg airport, and my cab driver-come-tour guide showed me all sorts of interesting parts of Joburg as we fought the rush hour traffic. I got to see a few universities, a couple of slums where my driver pointed out that the people on the corners selling “sweets” were actually selling drugs, and the China town of Joburg. Got to the airport and flew successfully to Cape Town. I still can’t get over how NICE everyone is in this country. All the airline people were super polite, I got to check a bag for free (something I haven’t done in a while), and they actually served a hot meal on the two and a half hour flight to Cape town.

I shared a cab from the airport into town with this girl who for some reason everyone working the taxi line assumed was my best friend. She went to BC and has been working in Swaziland. She was actually kind of a snot and kept talking about the “white Swazi who owned like half of Kruger national park” that she had started dating. After getting into a semi-fight with my cabbie based on his claim that the US government planned the 9/11 attacks in order to have an excuse to start wars, we drove up Long street, the main street with all the bars, clubs and restaurants in Cape Town that connects to the street our hotel is on, Kloof street. We passed literally 6,000 crazy looking bars and clubs and a drunk guy drooling and walking in the middle of the street with cars honking at him and nearly hitting him. Hopefully that will not be me this summer.

I got to our hotel, which is really really nice- my room has a queen sized bed, a TV, a desk, a bathroom, a closet and a safe, daily cleaning service, etc. Pretty sweet. I finally got to sleep around 2:00 am after unpacking, only to be awoken at 3 am by three loud drunk boys (Hirsh, Jim and David) back from bars. After ignoring their knocking for 10 minutes I finally got up and hung out with them for a little while in our “common room” and they told me all about the cool stuff they’ve been doing and the people they’ve met.

This morning I got up and looked out my window (see photo)—Table Mountain towers over the city and is just breathtakingly beautiful. I showered and went down to the street, ad was happy to see that there’s a Woolworth’s right across the street and all sorts of stores and restaurants. I bought some stuff I needed and some bright orange “Cape gooseberries” (which turned out to be disgusting), and then Hirsh, David, Jim and I grabbed a cab down to the waterfront to get lunch. The waterfront was so beautiful (see photo), and we had lunch at this place called City something that had sort of a African animal theme. Jim ordered springbok, which is a small antelope that can jump twice its height. A few girl friends of theirs came and met us for lunch and then they went to take a cable car up Table mountain. We, dressed in America gear (me wearing Jim’s American flag bandana on my head) then went to a bar in City Bowl called Firemans’ Arms, where there were a bunch of people watching the South African rugby game (team called the Springboks, appropriately), the South African and the US v. Australia soccer games (“friendly” games before the World Cup starts next week, so basically games that don’t actually count for anything but that people take really, really seriously). We met a bunch of old British guys, one of whom decided it was his personal mission in life to convince me to “follow my own path.” He was very drunk. As we were sitting there drinking beers and watching the game, a guy (Adam) that Hirsh, David and Jim had met who goes to NYU law came to meet us with his friend. His friend turned out to be my old supervisor at Common Cause (D.C., summer of 2008) who had actually written me a recommendation for law school. Now he is actually a 1L at NYU law. This was probably one of the most random encounters I have ever had.

I ended up leaving the guys a little bit early to get a nap in before dinner, and I cabbed back to our hotel around 4. Took a brief nap, then after two of Hirsh’s friends from Berkeley, Dave and Nick, met up with us at our hotel, we headed to dinner at this place right next to our hotel called the Burger Joint. It’s so close that we were actually able to go down the fire escape by my room, walk through their kitchen and into the restaurant. Hirsh’s other two girl friends from ealier met us for dinner and we all had drinks and burgers (I had a rather disappointing lentil burger). After dinner we all went to the (unmarked) bar on the other side of our hotel, “Knoxville,” which is really really cool. Lots of places to sit, dancing if you want, cheap drinks, and what appeared to be a gathering of a lot of really attractive Europeans. The 8 of us played 50/50 and Hotspot (drinking games) and then after watching a guy get literally thrown down the stairs and out of the restaurant by a bouncer, we headed up to Long Street and went to this club called “Fiction.” Inside there was a lot of drugged up Europeans techno-dancing next to this huge neon side that (inexplicably) said “PEROXIDE”, but there was a balcony outside the bar that overlooked long street and faced other bars across the street that also had similar balconies. We talked to a lot of British guys, several of whom were fascinated by our “accents” and one of whom started a variety of political arguments with me. In the second random encounter of the day, while Hirsh was dancing his childhood neighbor came up to him and sort of nonchalantly said hello. Judging by my first full day in Cape Town I think I should expect a lot of other random encounters to occur this summer.

This morning I joined a women’s gym right across the street that is actually really really nice and has a steam room, sauna, lounge, lockers, and showers. Then I bought a hairdryer only to find that it doesn’t work in the electrical socket here…I also threw out the receipt. Awesome.