South Africa - Cape Town

A last minute trip to South Africa brought me on a 26 hour travel day to get to Cape Town, South Africa. The jetlag was hell for a few days, but the sights were amazing. On the first day after our first night there, we went down to the waterfront of Cape Town. It's really touristy, as was everything we saw, but it was pretty. The weather was weird the first couple of days. Since it's summer there, they usually have hot, sunny weather, but we had cooler, cloudy weather. It cleared up after that, though. Down at the waterfront, there was mainly a lot of shopping and eating. We went to a market with products by local people and they had pretty cool things. Since Scott and I are about to buy a house, I couldn't really take into the buying though - just looking! There were the coolest statues and we saw an artist painting on wood boards that was the coolest art I think I've ever seen. Kristin likened it to a mix between African and Matisse - very cool. No pictures of it, though - what was I thinking!? At lunch, we heard a local guy shaking a drum like thing and playing a flute - I loved watching him and listening.

On the second day, we drove pretty far around the cape and went to the Cape of Good Hope, which was originally thought to be the Southern-most part of the continent. Another place, Cape Agulhas (that we didn't make it to) was later learned to take this honor. The areas were so beautiful along this route. The coolest thing was that we saw all of these wild animals! We went to a penguin colony and were right up close to them. They are African Penguins and used to be called Jackass penguins.











We also saw these little guys called dassies, or rock rabbits - they were so cute and just sat in the trees eating and staring at us. One poor little thing even fell out of the tree! I guess they jump pretty far too. One person walking by told us that their closest relative is the elephant - wow!











On our drive into the Cape park, we saw wild zebras walking right across the road - it was the craziest thing I've ever seen and the first time I've seen zebras outside of a zoo - how exciting! Shan (Nancy and Kristin's cousin we visited) said that was the closest she's ever been to a zebra and she's been living there for over a year!











We saw an ostrich right by the beach and were able to get pretty close to it too. I was careful not to get too close after learning on a "Dirtiest Jobs" episode how strong their kicks are! We also saw some type of antelope, maybe Bonteboks, but there are so many antelopes in South Africa, it's almost impossible to keep them all straight. walking on the beach - how crazy is that!?











Then we saw baboons just walking down the road! There was a whole family of them and all of a sudden the big male jumped on one of the females and started having sex with her right there in front of us - it was nuts - we saw it all!

We had lunch at an amazing place with a perfect view and the best seafood I've ever had. I'd never had rock lobster before. Actually, I just thought it was a song and didn't realize it was a real lobster you could eat - so tender and yummy! Lots of other good seafood too. We walked up to this beautiful lighthouse too. The walk was pretty tough, but good to get us moving and sweating. On the way back, we saw more baboons - some just hanging out in the tree and a mom and baby walking along the road. What paradise we were in. At least for this silly American who LOVES to see new things. Here are pictures along the way down at the cape - it was so amazingly beautiful all around there and we were lucky because the sun started to come out later in the day.

That evening, we had a braai. What is a braai, you may ask. Well, I'll tell you! :D It's a South African BBQ! Normally, it is like a wood burning stove and is the popular way of "BBQing" there. This evening, the wood that we bought was too damp, so we had to use the American way of burning coals, but it was still super cool. Braai is an Africaans word, which is one of the 13 official languages of South Africa. In this picture, you can see Shan, Nancy, Kristin and I, along with Natalia who was Shan's friend back in Germany and Nicolette who is her friend in South Africa.











These last pictures are views from Shan and John's top deck at sunset one day - so beautiful!