moonlight lion's head mountain hike and hair straighteners

Moonlight Lion's Head Mountain Hike
Yesterday after work Jim, David and I took a taxi to the base of Lion's Head mountain (2200 ft), the mountain next to the more famous Table Mountain in Cape Town.

Lion's Head, as seen from the top of Table Mountain


At the base of the mountain we met Josh (my old boss), his fiance (who was not very friendly), Adam, another guy we know here who goes to NYU law, and Calleigh, a girl who hangs out with them who goes to Virginia Law. The hike up was pretty cool, medium difficulty, and took about an hour and a half. It got steeper and steeper as we went up, as you can probably tell from the picture, and there were a couple parts where you had to climb ladders. I was very careful not to trip because it was a long way down!

When we got to the top of the mountain, we saw there were a bunch of people already up there (a lot of Americans). It was a full moon last night, and it's a tradition around here to hike up in time for the sunset, watch the full moon rise, and then hike back down by moonlight. We all brought wine and crackers and cheese up there so we just hung out and watched the sun setting.

One of the views on the way up:



From top of the mountain:



Me trying to look triumphant:


The whole gang:


As the sun was setting:


There were a bunch of astronomy students up there (wearing reflective vests that said "astronomers work in the night"-- I really wanted to steal one) who set up telescopes, one with the moon in focus and the other one pointed at Saturn. Looking at Saturn was really cool- it was crazy how distinct its rings were! It kind of looked like a fake image of Saturn, and David and I were joking that the astronomy kids could probably just put random slides in front of the telescope and convince people they were really looking at something in space.

The views were just amazing- one one side of the mountain you could see the ocean, and on the other side you could look out on all the twinkly lights of Cape Town with the moon overhead.


Before heading down, Jim passed out some flashlights he had bought earlier that day. He had bought a special one for David that was a kind of pink microphone-flashlight with Hannah Montana on it. David thought it was hilarious but it turns out it had a really weak bulb, so he eventually had to switch for a stronger one. Still pretty funny.


I got to lead the group on the hike down, which was really cool. At times it was really unclear where we were supposed to go, so I just kind of kept picking my way down hoping we didn't get totally lost. Turns out I picked a different way down than we had taken up, and this way involved climbing down a really steep part of the rockface using this long dangling metal chain to help you down. It kind of hurt my hands but I didn't have too much trouble getting down- the only difficult part was figuring out how to hold my flashlight and clutch onto the chain for dear life at the same time. I think it was almost less scary hiking down at night because you couldn't actually see how high up we were (and thus how far down it was).


The Hair Straightener Fiasco
Yesterday at work, the attorney in the office, who we will call Jen, bounded into my and Zanele's office and just yelled at me "HOW DO YOU STYLE YOUR HAIR???" I was kind of surprised, because Jen has never actually spoken to me. I told her I actually don't "style" it, I just blow-dry it. She was apparently not convinced because she then asked me what kind of hair straightener I use. I told her I have straight hair, and thus do not use a hair straightener. Then she basically commanded me to figure out what the "best hair straightener out there" is, tell her how much it was, buy it online, have it sent to my house in the States (apparently the 'best hair straighteners out here' cannot be delivered to South Africa), and then mail it to her, at which point she would send me some kind of money order to reimburse me. I was a little shocked that she was asking me to do this, but I said I'd look into it, and if she really wanted me to do this for her I could just tell her how much it was and she could pay me before I left. Still, this would be a huge hassle for me to have buy her a $200 hair straightener and then mail the thing to her from home to Cape Town, and she didn't seem too grateful to me for even considering doing this.

Regardless, I did a little online research, polled some of my curly-haired friends, and put together a document listing the different brands, providing links to their product pages, listing the price in $US and rand (which I had to convert myself), and giving their user ratings. I emailed the whole thing to her. Today, she busted into our office, apparently to talk to Zanele. Despite the fact that Zanele was on the phone, Jen was rudely gesturing at her to try to get her to interrupt her call to talk to Jen. I thought this would be a good time to talk to her about the straightener, since clearly Zanele was occupied. So I said, "Jen, did you get my email?" Jen said "yea yea", dismissively waved her hand at me, and then turned back to trying to get Zanele's attention. SO RUDE! And she hasn't said anything else about it all day. I'm not sure how I'm going to handle this in a diplomatic way, but mark my words I am NOT going out of my way to order this woman a $200 hair straightener and then mail it across the world to her. For all the people in this country that are really, ridiculously nice, there are some people who I think are downright rude. Last time I checked, beauty product consultant/personal shopper (for the only person in the office who has never even SPOKEN to me, mind you) is not part of my job description at ODAC. Hmph.

bizarre video art and lots of wine

Notes:
to see all my pictures, go here
Also, I updated my last post with some more pictures of the shark cage diving.


Last Monday was Mike’s last night in Cape Town (except it actually wasn’t, because he missed his flight the next day, but we didn’t know that was going to happen at the time) we went out for some farewell drinks. After randomly tripping and falling outside of Dubliners, leading a bunch of people to stare and point at me as if I were the drunkest person they’d ever seen (I was stone cold sober), I met up with Jim, Hirsh and Mike at this place called “Julep,” which had really delicious cocktails. After that we went back to Dubliners and hung out and listened to this sort of one-man cover band, who kept interrupting his signing to ask someone to bring him drinks. Hmm. That got a little old after a while so we headed to this place Zulu Sound Bar, which I’ve been wanting to check out for a while, which was pretty ‘hip’ if you will but as I wasn’t trying to be exhausted for work the next day I left the boys and caught a taxi home around midnight.

I spent a good part of the week translating documents/contracts/emails from English into French for Mukelani, one of my supervisors. I definitely didn’t mind doing a lot of translation work when it was from French→ English and was part of my research for the memo I was writing on access to information policies in the Congo, but I was a little annoyed at having to do straight French→English translation work (and we’re actually not supposed to have to do straight translation work for our internships this summer). I finally finished up with that project and am kind of hoping I don’t have to do any more straight translation during my last week and a half at ODAC.

One of the most mind-boggling things about working at an NGO in South Africa is that when the internet stops working (which happens A LOT), instead of getting on the phone immediately to try to get someone out to fix the problem, the majority of the people here at ODAC just sort of throw up their hands and say ‘oh well, guess we can’t do any work until it starts working again.’ This is what happened on Friday at around 1:00 pm, so Jim and I got to leave work 4 hours earlier than normal. We took that opportunity to check out the National Gallery, which is very close to our office.

What an interesting experience. I think the most striking/bizarre feature of the exhibits was the video art. One of those pieces was just a video of a guy in a business suit dancing on top of a building wearing a kind of newspaper headdress. Another featured a white drag queen wearing only a chandelier and high heels, running around a township dancing and twirling like a ballerina while being pointed at and stared at by the people of the township (this exhibit actually had its own private little viewing room). Yet another intriguing piece of video art was just a shot of a line of people’s feet climbing into a vehicle with this really strange (and distracting) music playing—the title of this one was “Where do I begin?”. Honestly sometimes the value of modern art just really escapes me, but I guess I would rather art be weird than boring.

View looking out from the National Gallery into the Gardens:



More of the Gardens:


Later that evening David, Jim and I got a couple of pizzas and went to see “A Serious Man,” a Cohen brothers film, at Labia Theatres across the street. It was a really weird and frustrating movie that left about a bajillion plot lines unresolved at the end. Grrr.

I also just finished reading The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, recommended by my Mom, which is an AMAZING book about African American maids working for white families in Mississippi in the 1960's. Read it. I've been reading a ton this summer, and the best books I've read so far have been Out of Africa by Karen Blixen, Disgrace by J.R. Coetzee, and the non-African themed Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran-Foer (an AMAZING novel).

Sunday morning Jim, Hirsh, David and I woke up early, went to the train station, and took the train out to Stellenbosch, which is an area in “wine country” about an hour from Cape Town. The town itself, where Stellenbosch university is, is really beautiful (and wealthy).

Street in Stellenbosch:


I had set up an all-day winery tour for us through a hostel called 'Stumble Inn Stellenbosch' Backpackers (very clever), and so we went to that hostel to meet up with the tour. There were about 15 of us overall, and after meeting our very eccentric tour guide we all got in the vans and headed to the first winery, Simonsig.





We got a tour of the winery and I learned that one barrel for making wine costs about 9,000 Rand (about $1200) and can only be used three times. Each barrel contains about 300 bottles of wine.



Then we all sat at outdoor tables and got to sample a bunch of their wines. We started with “Cape Sparkle,” sparkling wine made in the Champagne style, which I think sounds like a name that would have belonged to a My Little Pony (not that I ever owned about 45 of those). Our tour guide, whose name I guess is “Titi Titi,” made a point of dramatically opening the bottle of Cape Sparkle with a sword.



After the first winery we hopped back in the vans and went to the second winery, Fairview. As soon as we got out of the vans our tour guide plucked this really cool chameleon off of a plant and showed him to us—one of his sides was darker than the other so he can look more leaf-like when he needs to.



This was my favorite winery because you got to go around to different sort of bars and sample whatever wines you wanted, and there was also a huge cheese tasting counter. I tried a port-like dessert wine and the lady told me I had to try it along with their full-fat blue cheese--turned out to be a DELICIOUS combination. This winery also had a bunch of goats in the front that were climbing up a set of stairs that wound around a little tower in their pen. I’m guessing those goats were responsible for the wide array of goat cheeses available at the cheese sampling bar.



After that winery, we headed to Franschhoek where we had lunch. Many people in the group were ambitiously drinking wine with lunch- I had slowed down about an hour earlier and had been giving half of every wine tasting to Jim, who was only too happy to assist me. We then went to a third winery (I think it was called Dieu Donné, meaning God-given) near Franschhoek, which was by far the most beautiful winery probably because of how it was located right near these two mountain ranges that form a corner. We were mainly hanging out with these two British students that we met and a Canadian girl who actually wasn’t very friendly, despite the fact that she was traveling alone.




By the fourth winery, Boschendal, most of the group was pretty tanked. I suppose all-day wine tasting can do that to you.
See the face of our tour guide:


After leaving Boscendal, we headed back to Stellenbosch, and then had another beer at a really authentic-feeling pub in town with the two British guys.

Stellenbosch in the early evening:


When we went back to Stumble Inn to drop off the two British guys, we discovered the unfriendly Canadian girl in a very compromising position with Titi Titi (note to female traveling alone: NOT the best plan).

When we finally caught the last train back to Cape Town, we somehow picked the car that was basically being hot-boxed by about 15 Rasta guys who had ridiculous dreadlocks and were smoking A LOT of pot. Hirsh of course immediately makes friends with them and gets into deep conversation with a few of them. It was a very long ride back to Cape Town. At this point I could feel I had a migraine coming on from all the sun and the wine (even though I stopped doing anything more than sipping the wines I thought I would like, meaning no white wine, at about noon) and I knew I wasn’t going to make it out that night. The boys wanted to go to Knoxville (the bar right next door to our hotel) but I knew I was going to fall asleep pretty much as soon as I got home. I was right.

Yesterday I spent a pretty sad day at the hotel nursing my migraine, but today it appears to be better. Tonight is going to be a full moon and we are planning on hiking Lion’s Head mountain, the one right next to Table Mountain, hanging out up there for a little bit to meet up with some other US friends and watch the moon, and then hike back down by the moonlight and get dinner in Cape Town.

Can’t believe in 9 days I’ll be heading back to the States!

Nelson Mandela's prison and swimming with Great Whites

The beginning of last week was pretty uneventful. Jim and I finally ate at the Ocean Basket, this seafood/sushi place next door to us on Wednesday night, on Thursday at lunch I was served “anchovy butter” with my toast at a place near work, and on Thursday night we brought two entire pizzas and a bottle of wine into the movie theater across the street (yes, Labia Theaters) and watched Youth In Revolt (just out in theaters here, even though it came out about 9 months ago in the US) which was surprisingly hilarious.

On a few different lunch breaks last week, Jim and I wandered over to Greenmarket square, the square where all the vendors are, and bought some random things, mostly gifts for people. Not only is everything a lot cheaper after the World Cup, but the vendors are much more flexible in bargaining. When they don’t seem like they’re going to budge on a price, I like to ask them to throw some other random object into the deal, so I’ve ended up with some zebra-headed salad tongs, a beaded peacock keychain, and some South Africa flag themed earmuffs.

On Friday night, Jim, David and I went to this Asian Fusion Restaurant on our street called the Opal Lounge, which has been listed as the “most beautiful restaurant in Cape Town.” It really is gorgeous on the inside, with very interesting various rooms. I was looking for the Ladies’ Room at one point and entered the ‘Peacock Lounge,” which sounded promising, only to walk into a room which a bunch of jungle-themed furniture where two men were sitting on a couch smoking cigars and looking at me in surprise. Oops! The menu was also really interesting, and the food was delicious. My butternut squash soup had some kind of coconut ice cream on the top of it, and it contained something called “lemon air” which I’m still not entirely clear on.

On Saturday morning, Jim and I set off at 8 am to catch a boat to Robben Island, the island where Nelson Mandela was kept as a political prisoner for 18 years.



There were HUGE swells as we headed off there (the island is 12 km off the mainland), and being on the boat felt kind of like being on a roller coaster, with your stomach dropping every couple of sections. When we got to island, we were herded onto a bunch of buses that were waiting, and were then taken on an hour-long guided bus tour of the island.

View from Robben Island looking back toward Cape Town:


We had an Indian-South African tour guide who thought he was pretty darn hilarious, making all sorts of very un-PC jokes throughout the tour. My favorite was one where he asked why India wasn’t good at soccer, and then said it’s because everytime they get to a corner of the field, they set up a shop instead of taking a shot. We passed a “Leper Graveyard,” a cannon that was built to protect the Cape Town harbor during WWII but that wasn’t finished until 1947, and the island’s ambulance (even though there was never a hospital on the island).

We finally got to the prison, and we got a tour of the prison from a former inmate. There was some very rude Zimbabweans who were just talking all throughout the inmate-guide’s descriptions and taking pictures of each other grinning and smiling outside the prison, in front of jail cells, etc. At one point when the guide was telling us about the institutionalized favoritism of coloured’s over blacks in the prison (yes, they say “coloured” in South Africa) and the ID cards that they used to have to carry, someone’s baby escaped from its parents and crawled over to the guide and basically started crawling up his leg, while the guide just tried to ignore the baby until someone came and retrieved it. I couldn’t tell whether or not I was allowed to laugh at this.

View of prison yard:



Our tour guide:



View of the prison:



We all headed back to the buses and then got on the ship to head back to Cape Town. I wanted to sit on top of the boat for the way back, and I was fighting with some little kids to get a seat. I eventually let one kid have my seat because I felt like a bad person, but then a guy came up and said there was a “32 kilogram requirement” to sit on the top (I guess so little kids don’t fly off the boat?) and ordered the kid to go downstairs to the lower deck. He was crying about it to his mother who was trying to convince the staff member that he was actually 40 kilogram, which was CLEARLY not true, so he eventually had to go. HAH! So I got his seat and got some GREAT views of the Cape Town harbor with Table Mountain and Lion’s Head in the background on our way back in.




Jim and I met up with David for lunch at this Italian place, which was kind of in a mall complex that was hosting a “Ubuntu festival.” This appeared to consist of people having a cook-off on some skillets and other people finger-painting on a big white piece of paper in the middle of the mall. The best part about it was that one of the guys finger-painting had a sports jacket on with the last name “FARTMILL” on the back. That is a REALLY unfortunate name. David, Jim and I maturely laughed about it for about 5 minutes.

After lunch we headed over to the East Corridor to the District Six Museum, a museum about (and sort of for) the previous residents of “District 6,” an area in Cape Town that was declared a “white area” under the Group Areas Act in 1966 and then razed & reconstructed, forcing 70,000 to move from the inner city to separate townships determined by their race. It was a really cool little museum with lots of interesting art pieces.


There’s this one huge map that an artist made that covers the floor of the main room, and ex-residents have been able to sign their names and previous addresses on the map.




I left the boys who were going to do some souvenir shopping, and was walking back to our hotel when I tried to take a shortcut. I was walking along and I heard someone behind me say “sorry.” Then a little louder- “SORRY.” I really didn’t think anyone was talking to me, but when I heard the guy shout “SORRY” extremely loudly and realized there was no one else around, I turned around to find this very alarmed looking guard. Apparently I was trespassing through the grounds of Parliament, and the guard thought the best way to get my attention was to shout SORRY at me until I got the idea. Oops. Well, upon taking the long way around the grounds of Parliament, I got to see this lovely sight:

I mean, who wouldn’t want to put a giant cow statue on their house?

The next day, Sunday, we were signed up with a company called SHARK ZONE to take a trip to Gaansbai, a place about two hours down the coast, and then out in a boat to “Shark Alley,” the Great White Shark capital of the world to go shark cage diving. This basically involves jumping into a steel cage that is attached to the boat and floating on the surface with buoys and swimming underwater to the see Great Whites that are around the boat. When I called on Saturday to confirm everything and see if we could add one more person (David) to our group, the lady kept agreeing with me by saying “happy day,” and “happy happy.” I took that as a good sign.

So at 5:30 on Sunday morning, we were picked up in a minivan containing a bunch of other tourists, and we drove to Gaansbai. We had breakfast at a little place right by the water, signed our lives away to Shark Zone, and then we all hopped onto a waiting boat. We had heard from Hirsh, who had already done this trip with a different company, that almost everyone got seasick on the way out to Shark Alley because the swells were so high. It was an EXTREMELY lurchy ride out there, but I felt ok. On our way out we saw a southern right whale breaching not too far away from our boat—you can kind of see it in this picture:


About an hour and half later, we parked the boat right by a small island where thousands of seals live (this is why the Great Whites hang out there, poor seals ☹ ). The staff started “chumming the water” (ew) and after getting a safety talk, we hung out and waited for the sharks.



After a while, someone spotted one, and this huge shark circled the boat for a little while. We had learned from a very educational video playing in the van on the way to Gaansbai that Great Whites are very curious animals, like dogs, and they usually come up to boats not so much because they are hungry and want to eat the chum/the people on the boat, but because they’re curious about what the boat is doing in their territory. The staff people had this huge tuna head (gross) tied onto a sort of buoy that was then attached to a long rope, and they were constantly flicking it around in the water to attract the sharks. Throughout the day the sharks would come up to it and rise out of the water to bite at the tuna head, and then the Shark Zone people would pull it out of the way at the last minute so you’d just see the shark jumping out of the water baring its teeth. PRETTY AWESOME.




There were about 30 of us, and groups of 5 took turns going into the diving cage. The group right before us had an AMAZING dive; we were standing on the boat right by the cage all suited up in wet suits, and there were sharks literally jumping and biting at the cage because they were kind of dragging the large disgusting tuna head all over the bars of the cage.

Us before getting in the cage:


Unfortunately, right when it was our group’s turn to hop into the freezing cold water (David, Jim, two Canadians we met and myself), the sharks seemed to discover something better to do and hightail it away from the boat. So we bobbed in the freezing cold water in our wet suits and diving masks, waiting for sharks to come along. I think the scariest part of the whole thing was making sure that all of your limbs were always tucked properly into the cage; there were these certain inner bars that you were supposed to hook your feet under to keep you in one spot, because the wet suits were really buoyant, but I was too short to reach the bottom bar unless I was completely underwater, so I had an interesting time trying to figure out where to put all of my limbs while we were waiting for sharks to come.

About to get into the cage:



Us climbing down into the cage:



View from inside the shark cage:


The water was REALLY cold; the wet suit kept most of my body pretty warm, but my hands and feet (even though I was wearing these kind of diving shoes) were FREEZING. About 20 minutes later we heard someone yelling about a shark, and they yelled to us “DOWN, RIGHT!” which meant swim under water and look to your right. We did so, and I saw a huge shark swim right by the cage on our right. The image of that shark’s HUGE eyeball looking us over will be forever planted in my mind. Apparently that shark swam around us for a little while longer, but we couldn’t get any other good views of it. Finally I was so cold that I had to get out, and they took the rest of the boys out a few minutes later because it was getting to be around 3:30 and we had to head back to shore. After squeezing myself out of the wet suit I saw that my face and hands were completely white, and someone said my lips were actually blue, so I went in and took a hot shower in the lower deck to try to regain the feeling in my extremities. After getting dressed again, I realized I was REALLY not feeling well- the combination of te freezing cold water, being in a lurch-y boat all day, and swallowing a good amount of chum-filled seawater (EW) was really not working for me. David and I both got sick and then spent the ride back head in hands outside of the bathroom in the lower deck. When I got back to shore, I felt much better, and we had lunch with the whole group at the same place where we had had breakfast, and watched a DVD of footage that one of the staff members had taken throughout the day. Then we got loaded up in the vans and headed back to Cape Town, stopping on the way to catch some views of Hermanus, on Cape Whale Coast, which is considered best land-based-whale-watching destination in the world. I was EXHAUSTED when we got back and immediately passed out.

Today at work we had a 2 hour staff meeting in the morning, during which we learned that ODAC has made the decision to fire their IT company, “Dial-a-Nerd.” It doesn’t really surprise me, because the internet is out practically every other day, but I will miss those guys wearing their “Dial-a-Nerd” embroidered uniforms.

Over and out,
Cary.

being charged by a baboon, ostriches, cape point, and an 8k race

Highlights from the past week:

Tuesday morning began ominously when I found myself to be completely locked into my hotel room. The door just WOULD NOT open and I started panicking and envisioning myself having to be extracted from my room through the window by firemen. I called downstairs to the reception desk and they sent up the Really Happy Woman, who just kind of jingled keys outside the door and tried to fit different ones into the lock. I called Jim on my cell phone to let him know that I was going to be late for work because I was literally trapped in my room, and he came across the hall and told me through the door to flick this tiny little knob thing that looked like the end of a screw which was apparently some kind of secret deadbolt that I hadn’t known about. I flicked it and the door immediately opened to reveal the Really Happy Lady standing there looking confused and holding a lot of keys, and Jim laughing hysterically. Well. Now I know how to deadbolt my room.

At work on Tuesday I had a meeting with Alison, the director of ODAC, and we solidified my agenda for the rest of my time here. I’m going to be working on writing a policy piece about how a proactive access to information provision should be included in any piece of victim empowerment legislation that is proposed.

On Wednesday, my computer charger exploded. Well, it didn’t actually explode but it let out a very sad sort of sizzling noise and then refused to work anymore. I used my computer until it ran out of battery and then left work to walk 15,846 miles around Cape Town looking for a Mac charger. I came to believe that I am the only Mac user in the city of Cape Town, and after being offered this monstrous looking computer adapter device with 20 different cords springing out of it at all angles (none of which fit a Mac, mind you, much to the dismay of the people trying to sell it to me) a bunch of different times, I finally gave up and went back to the office. You can get Mac chargers online here, but they go for 1200 rand, which is almost $160--an absurd price for a computer charger. Fortunately, someone in the office told me that Alison (the director) uses a Mac, and when I asked her if I could borrow her charger for a little while she told me she actually had an extra one at home that I could use for the rest of the summer. She brought it in on Thursday and my problem was solved.

On Wednesday for lunch, Jim and I went to this little Italian café I had been wanting to try called “Trisha Delisha” (an excellent name for a café). Turns out it was pretty delisha- the focaccia bread they use for sandwiches is amazing and the place is ridiculously cheap.

Wednesday afternoon I trekked back to the ENS law offices to have my mock/practice interview. It all felt extremely formal, which was kind of awkward because I don’t actually want to work there. These two Indian-South African guys interviewed me for about 35 minutes, asking me not only the standard interview-type questions (why did you want to go to Law School? Why should we hire you?) but also an array of other comparative law questions about the differences between the U.S. and South African legal systems. I don’t think they were actually trying to test me on my knowledge of the differences; it seemed more like they were actually just curious about how we do various things in the States. I felt like it went pretty well and it definitely showed me the kinds of things I need to think about before the HLS interview program in August.

On Thursday after lunch, Jim and I were walking back to our office and we saw this guy who was trying to sell a bunch of little toy monkeys on wheels that sort of bob up and down as you wheel them. I guess the guy thought the best way to market his wares to me was to aggressively run one of the little wheeled-monkeys right up to me and sort of frantically zigzag it back in forth in front of me as I was walking. It scared the living daylights out of me and in no way made me want to purchase one of them.

I’ve been getting up at about 6 every morning to go to the gym, which is right across the street from me. On Thursday morning, I was walking through the reception area to head out, and Miles, the nice man who is usually at the front desk, got up to open the door for me and accompany me outside. I was kind of saying “oh no don’t bother getting up I can let myself out,” but he just kept coming and said something that I couldn’t really understand—all I caught was something about “my (his) routine”. He let me out and I started walking across the street to the gym. It’s still dark out at this time but it’s a safe area and the gym is literally a 15 second walk from the front door of our hotel. I looked back as I was about to enter the center where the gym is, and I saw Miles just standing outside the hotel watching me. The next morning when this happened again I realized that he’s been watching me every morning as I walk to my gym to make sure I got there ok! He’s also protective of me in a couple of other adorable ways. On Friday evening I was heading out to go get pizza up the street with Nick, Mike and Dave, and they called me when they were about 5 minutes away from crossing in front of our hotel so I could come down and join them as they were walking by. Miles insisted on coming out with me to wait for them, and asked me all sorts of questions about where we were going, how long I had known these friends, and was I sure I was going to have someone to walk me home later. So Mom & Dad, please do not worry about me because I have someone here who is extremely concerned about my well-being and is not going to let anything happen to me on his watch.

On Saturday we were supposed to go to Robben Island in the morning, but since it was raining they canceled all the boat trips out to the island. So I got to sleep in a little bit, and then at 2:00 David, Hirsh, Jim and I rented a car to drive down to Cape Point/Cape of Good Hope, the southernmost tip of the African continent. Jim drove, because he’s had more experience than the rest of us with driving not only in the opposite side of the car but on the opposite side of the street.
As we were leaving Saasveld (our hotel), we noticed this vehicle parked in our parking lot, which definitely belongs to one of the staff, and we absolutely NEED to find out whose car it is because it's hilarious.



We drove down Chapman’s Peak drive, which is this beautiful road down the western coast overlooking the ocean.



The rain had stopped so it was a very fresh, cool day, and there were these beautiful waves crashing all around the rocks and jetties in the ocean. We passed this Ostrich farm, and I of course made them stop the car so I could speak with some of the ostriches. I started taking some pictures of them and they seemed very curious about me.



One of them started walking right up to me, and I took a picture of it. I thought my camera (phone) had been really zoomed in, and then when I took it away from my eye after taking the picture, I saw that the ostrich was basically RIGHT in my face (the lens hadn't been zoomed in at all). I kind of jumped because the ostrich was so close he could had pecked my eye out, and then I guess I scared the ostrich because he kind of jumped too. Here is the picture:



We kept driving until we got near the Cape Point National Park. We were all starving and we hadn't passed a single place to get anything to eat on the drive down, so we stopped into the little welcome building to get some snacks. All they had was soda, chocolate bars, and chips, so we all bought some bags of chips and were standing outside the little building eating them. Perhaps I should have been warned by this sign



...but as it was I was not really prepared for what was about to happen. I had just opened my bag of chips when around the corner came this fairly large baboon carrying a little baby baboon in her chest. Before I even had time to point this out to anyone else, she literally CHARGED at me. She swiped at my bag of chips but they didn't fall-- at this point I wasn't even scared because I actually hadn't had time to process what was actually happening. Then she charged at me AGAIN and just grabbed the chips right out of my hand. Then she sat basically at my feet and proceeded to eat the entire bag of chips, reaching into the bag like a human and stuffing 4 or 5 chips into her mouth at once. The little baby was just sort of looking curiously up at his mother eating the chips. When she was done, she ripped the side of the bag and licked the inside of the bag for any remaining crumbs.




Then, she charged at David who was watching the scene in disbelief and who was also holding a bad of chips. David yelled "NO" and kicked his leg out toward the baboon, who was scared off and left the scene. We all just started cracking up and now we joke all the time that whenever I start to eat/do anything, a baboon is just going to come up and either take the food or stop me from doing what I was about to do. Well, that baboon definitely picked an easy target-- I probably would have just given her the chips anyway if she had asked nicely.

We entered the National Park and as we were driving we saw an ostrich just sort of casually walking down the road. We slowed down and said hello to it, and it just kind of glared at us and kept walking. I suggested that we give it a ride, but no one else seemed very keen on this suggestion.


We drove as far as we could and then got out of the car to walk up to the lighthouse on Cape Point. The walk up was SO gorgeous and it was so cool being on a landmass that had ocean almost all around it.




On the way up we also saw this sign, which was fitting:


It was hard to conceptualize that when you turned away from the ocean, you were staring towards the entire African continent.








There was also a cool post that had signs pointing towards different major cities and showing how far they were away. I felt very far from home when I saw that New York was over 12, 000 km away!


On the way back, we stopped at Boulder's Beach again so Jim could see some of the penguins, because he wasn't with us when we went the first time. Then we stopped and ate dinner at this place called Cafe Piscado in Simon's Town and had some delicious Italian food. Then we drove farther north to Kalk Bay and watched the Germany/Uruguay match (to determine who would get third place in the World Cup) at the Brass Bell. Germany won. Then we drove back to Saasveld.

On Sunday morning, we woke up at 6 in the morning to drive over to Langa, a township about 15 minutes outside of Cape Town, to run in an 8km charity race. It was a chilly morning but at least it wasn't raining. It seemed like all the people running in the race were really intense runners-- a lot of them had matching neon jerseys and track suits, and a lot of them just had the perfect running physique. The race winded through the streets of the township, and it was an interesting experience trying to focus both on running the race at a decent pace and also on the serious poverty of the township. The houses are mostly just little huts with nailed-on tin roofs. The people of the township, however, were EXTREMELY encouraging, especially the women, and they waved and cheered at me as I was running by like I was a celebrity. Anyway, I ran the race in 44 minutes, which meant I was running on average about a 8:40 for 5 miles. Not great, but not too bad. Here's a picture of all of us after the race with a very lovely nuclear power plant and Table Mountain in the background:


On the way home we stopped and had brunch at a French place with an Italian name, and then went home and took some much needed showers. The final World Cup match was last night, and Spain beet the Netherlands. Can't believe the World Cup is over! I think the entire country is suffering from a national World Cup hangover.

Cheers!