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South Africa

Saturday, November 3, 2007

Written by: Brian

Current Location: Mumbai, India

With every new destination you have new things to experience, sometimes good sometimes not so good. I have previously written what I saw was the negative side of Cape Town. Now let me point out why it is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Cape Town is nestled up to a mountain called Table Top due to the flatness of the mountain that makes it look like, as you have guessed, a tabletop. The city sits right on the ocean as well and has breathtaking views no matter where you look. So we set out to explore the brighter side Cape Town with my cousin Keith who took a twenty-hour flight from Atlanta, Georgia to spend nine fun-filled days with us in Cape Town.

For those who don’t know, Keith and I grew up together in a small lake town about an hour outside Chicago. We were together all the time since he was 4 and I was 5. Our summers and weekends were spent swimming, catching frogs, shooting bb guns, and terrorizing our sisters. So, it was great news when Keith said he would come visit us on our trip. He also brought us some nice amenities from home like Cliff bars, a 2lb Vogue magazine (Susan’s), resupply of books, and replacement clothes. (Side note: I had some problems with my Gramicci pants, actually all three of them and I wrote to them and they responded with apologies and new pants and a shirt. We were very appreciative of their response and excellent customer service.)

Keith arrived here on Thursday night around 9pm. We picked him up from the airport, ordered some pizza and sat down to discuss our itinerary for the next nine days. There are so many things to do in Cape Town so we put a full day of activities together with little time for relaxation, which we would we would pay for in the end. The activities that we accomplished in the nine days were as follows: whale watching, trip to the Cape of Good Hope, surfing lessons, tour of Robben Island, Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, hiking Table Mountain, Great White Shark cage diving, wine tasting, seeing two movies, penguin watching, shopping for souvenirs, and an informal tour through a township. As you can see we had little time to sit around reading and relaxing. To save you some reading time though I will fill you in on our top experiences.

The coolest thing we did was shark cage diving with the great white sharks. When we talked on the phone the day before Keith was to leave I told him about the shark cage diving, which he responded I am not going to do that and then I heard him promise his wife that he wasn’t going to do it. After we looked into it though we saw that it was not dangerous and it would be a great experience. The one thing we were worried about was the environmental impact that our adventure would have on the sharks. Some say that the shark cage diving teaches sharks to associate food with seeing humans. I can now personally say that there is very limited impact on the sharks, which was good to know.

Our dive master, who ran the tour, was very careful to explain how things work and ensure that the sharks were protected throughout the experience. The sharks do not get fed and you could not touch them. The crew puts chum in the water to attract the sharks. The chum is made up of tuna, water and is murky in color. The sharks can smell the chum from up to three miles away and come to see what the smell is all about. There is another crewman that throws two tuna heads out in the water with a buoy so they float, this give the shark something to look for and they come up to see it. As the shark comes up for the bait the crewmen pull it away so the shark doesn’t eat it it just moves closer to the cage.

The cage we were in was an eight-foot deep cage that fit five people inside. The cage was attached to the boat and had floats on it. We were in the cage with wet suits and masks and a weight belt over our shoulders to assist us with going under the water. The captain or dive master would yell shark and we would all take a deep breath and go under the water to see the shark. It was pretty awesome to see a great white (Jaws) at about three feet away from us. We were in the water for about 45 minutes and we saw three different sharks, the largest was 13-14 feet long. It was a great experience.

We had seen a movie in our younger days called “North Shore” where this guy who wins a surfing contest (in a wave pool) from like Minnesota goes to Hawaii to surf the real waves. The guy started out as a lowly (rookie) that no one liked but at the end of the movie he was surfing the big waves. We had hoped that we would be able to surf like the guy did in the movie and not look like the lowly rookie at the beginning. We had high hopes for ourselves.

We got into our wetsuits, which was a sad sight that reminded us that we still needed to lose a few pounds, and headed out to the beach. The instructions were simple or so we thought. Basically, the instructor pushes you into the wave and you stand up. Sounds easy right??? Well it was far from that since we looked like idiots for the first hour only standing up a few times. If you would like to view our escapade you can click here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp2LHwwMZ5U it also has sound so turn up your speakers.

So after the first hour we were left to surf the rest of the day on our own. We fully planned on surfing the rest of the afternoon. We had that young energetic youth feeling that we could conquer the world, ok not the world maybe just the ocean. We decided to swap waves and cheer each other on. So we set about taking turns and finally Keith rode one all the way to shore. Shortly after that I found my wave and rode it all the way in. The thing with learning to surf is that you fail about 90% of the time but that one time you catch the wave and ride it all the way in totally makes up for the falls you have taken.

After being in the ocean for two and half hours we decided to break for lunch. We headed out to a local fish & chips place for a well deserved lunch and decided after our first beer that we were way too tired to head back out. Our youth had deserted us and we would pay for it in the morning.

The last major thing we wanted to accomplish was climbing Table Mountain. Time was running out with only 3 more days left with Keith in South Africa, so Thursday afternoon with 50 mile per hour winds we decide to climb Table mountain. We made it down safe with no injuries; so let me preface it that way first. It was a bad idea. I can now see why more people die climbing Table Mountain each year then do climbing Mt Everest. It is not technical, just the weather and wind change so rapidly. Our plan was to climb to the top and take the cable care down, but when we arrived on that sunny Thursday afternoon the cable car was not running due to high winds (bad idea #1). We decided to start up the mountain anyway in the late afternoon around 2:00 (bad idea #2). The trip up was supposed to be about 2 and half hours.

We started hiking the stone steps that would take us to the top. Keith earned the name mountain goat at the beginning as his speed out paced us and he had to keep stopping and waiting for us to catch up. I think we had eaten too much in the Congo and were not in the climbing and hiking shape we previously had been in. As we approached the mid-way point of the mountain we started passing people coming down who told us the views at the top were beautiful but the trek down was terrible. We smiled and kept on our pursuit for the summit.

This is where the 50 mph winds start to come into the story. We are hiking on rock-like stairs and the wind is blowing you backwards and you have to fight to stay upright. What gets even more interesting is the farther we made it up the more treacherous it became. Interesting in that the path became narrower, common sense right, and the geniuses at the park decided to help the hikers out and put a fence up on the path in case you fell into the fence. Sounds all good right? Well the fence turned into a barbed wire fence the higher we got. Yes I said barbed wire, you know the fence you touch and it cuts you. Now you don’t have to be a genius to figure out that people are going to fall and grab onto the fence to stabilize themselves. So now we are fighting the 50 mph wind (because the view is supposed to be worth it), we are trying not to fall and touch the barbed wire fence lining the trail, and we still have to come back down without the cable car.

We did make it to the top in record time; a hike that was supposed to take over 2 and a half hours only took us one hour and forty-five minutes. We think that we did well with the wind and the barbwire deterrents. We finally reached the top and noticed that we were pretty much the only ones up there. We took a quick walk around, snapped some photos and decided that it was best to start heading down.

Keith started out in the rear of the group but that didn’t last long, he put on some Jack Johnson on his Ipod and pretty much started running down the mountain. I twisted my knee as we tried to keep up but he was impossible to keep up with so we watched him as he jogged down, envious that he was going to get down before us. We just wanted to be done with the climb. We made it down though with no problems and Keith was smiling at us when we got to the bottom still listening to his Ipod. We were all exhausted at that point and headed back to the apartment for some dinner and relaxation.

As I said we paid for our busy schedule, we could not walk for the next two days. We thought it was fun though to hit each other in the legs and watch the other wince in pain.

Ok so not all of our young vigor had disappeared.

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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 06 November 2007 )

History of Cape Town

Monday, October 22, 2007

Written by: Brian

Current Location: Cape Town, South Africa

Every time we travel to a new country I’m interested to learn about the history. It is a little something that I know I will always be able to keep with me from our trip. Usually I read the Lonely Planet book on the airplane so I have some knowledge once we land of the people and place we will be staying. With South Africa I did not do this, I felt that we were heading into a touristy destination with little history and more western ideals. What I came to find out though is while South Africa is very westernized it is not without its own interesting and troubled history.

Who are the people in South Africa? The first people in South Africa were known as the Khoisan, which was made up of nomadic tribes. No other European countries wanted to settle in Cape Town as they had trouble with the local tribes. When the Dutch settled in Cape Town in1652, the nomadic tribes shunned the Dutch and would not trade with them. Still the Dutch had decided to build a port city as a stopping point for all the sailors traveling between Europe and Asia.

To build the port the Dutch imported slaves from Madagascar, India, and Indonesia to assist with the labor shortage. Women were in even shorter supply so the Europeans exploited the women and the Khoisan for both labor and sex. With the offspring of these unions, this formed the “coloured” group of people that make up the Muslim population of South Africa. There are three groups of people in Cape Town, the Black, the Coloured and the White population. They are still referred to by these classifications today, which is sad.

More on the history of South Africa…apartheid is a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race. The apartheid in South Africa started in 1901 and was in place until 1991. In 1901 the government blamed the black people for the outbreak of the Bubonic Plague (it was actually brought over on a boat from Argentina) which gave them reason to introduce racial segregation and move the entire population of black and coloured people into two different areas that would later become known as Townships (essentially the slums).

The racial segregation grew and in the 1950’s, the Dutch Reformed Church justified the apartheid saying that the separation of the races was divinely ordained and that they needed to protect the purity of the white race. In the 1960’s, the racial tension came to a head as the white government passed new laws making black people carry a passbook to authorize them into certain areas. As people began to protest, the government responded by killing five protesters (Sharpeville massacre) and issued a warrant for the arrest of Nelson Mandela. He was arrested and sentenced to life in prison on Robben Island.

The government tried for decades to get rid of the squatter towns that would be built, as these would be focal points for black resistance to the apartheid regime. In 1986 over 70,000 people were driven from their home and hundreds were killed but still the government was unsuccessful in eradicating these townships. In 1990 Nelson Mandela was released from prison, along with all other inmates that were there for treason. In 1991, equal rights were finally given to all people. Nelson Mandela was elected president and set the country to heal its wounds.

Again this is a short history that gives you an idea of what the people of South Africa have endured. To quote the last paragraph in the Lonely Planet guide “Full integration of the city’s mixed population, though, is a long way off, if it’s achievable at all. The vast majority of the Capetonians continue to live in the bleak, impoverished communities of the Cape Flats, split along racial lines and suffering horrendous economic, social and health problems.”

I know this sounds bleak and depressing but we are now wiser and I couldn’t have been more wrong about the history of SA. I have since read and reread the history section of the Lonely Planet. We went and saw the District Six apartheid museum here in Cape Town and actually spoke with a person that was forced to move out of the area and into a township during the segregation in the 1960’s. He explained how terrible it was and what the conditions were like. His grandfather was from India and his grandmother was from Scotland so we asked him what he was considered back during the apartheid because to us he looked white. His response was “I am and was a human being, why do I have to be classified as white or black.” He later told us that he was considered coloured due to his Indian heritage during apartheid.

Cape Town today still has a feel of separation to it today. You do not see white and black people working together to build their communities. The Townships are made up of millions of black people and the houses are metal walls and ceilings, sometimes with a tarp over the top to keep the water out. At the grocery store the black people are the checkers, construction workers are all black men, and the white people are driving the Mercedes and BMW’s. The thing that you notice is that South Africa is not a “poor” country like the rest of Africa but here you see only two classes the rich white people and the poor black people. It does make you think about how could something like this happen, then again it happen in America in the 1960’s.

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Our First Week in South Africa

Date: October 12

Written by: Susan

Current Location: Cape Town, South Africa

So after 3 weeks we said goodbye to the DRC and hello to South Africa. Unfortunately since we were traveling the “economic” way, our ticket routed us back to Ethiopia for 2 nights (one of those nights because Ethiopian airlines had a schedule change). It wasn’t such a bad layover though since it would give us the chance to ship the things we had bought in the Congo back to the states instead of incurring any additional overweight luggage charges. It also gave us the chance to visit our favorite café in Addis, The Lime Tree, to have one last lime juice and ginger iced tea as well as for me to pick up some more traditional Ethiopian scarves called Neytella (I’m pretty sure that’s not the spelling but that is how it’s pronounced) that I fell in love with and wished I had bought more (when we left Ethiopia the first time).

Our “economic” travel to South Africa continued from Addis to Nairobi, Nairobi to Johannesburg, Joburg to Cape Town. FINALLY, at midnight we arrived in Cape Town. We were glad to be off the planes after flying all over Africa. Unfortunately, my backpack had gotten misplaced somewhere between the 3 countries. Since we had flown Ethiopian Airlines from Addis to Nairobi and then South African for the rest of our trip, the lady at the Ethiopian airlines counter had mistagged our bags with the wrong flight number. So they found 2 out of the 3 bags at the Nairobi airport and had them retagged. They tried to convince me that my bag would somehow miraculously show up in Johannesburg and then on to Cape Town. I was not convinced and was already planning my new wardrobe. Alas, my backpack did show up the next day on the doorstep of the place we were staying. I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t even get one day of per diem to buy new clothes, but I guess in the end, it was much better.

Our first order of business after my missing backpack was to go get our rental car. We were tired and on the verge of cranky plus our plane was an hour late and the people whose guest house we were staying at were waiting up for us. After filling out all the paperwork for our Toyota Corolla, we realized that the gear shifter was to the left of the driver since the driver’s side is on the right in SA. Although I knew the car was a manual when I made the reservation, I didn’t even think that we would have to learn how to shift gears with our left hand. A moment of panic washed over me. Ok, it’s now midnight, we’re in a foreign country, haven’t driven for 6 months, don’t know where we’re going, and now we have to drive a manual car using our left hand on the wrong side of the road. It just sounded like disaster to me. But the automatic Corolla was just too expensive. And we were cheap.

So we got into the car, crossed our fingers and headed out. Brian was at the wheel and I will have to say he did a pretty good job (except for the time he ran over the white bumps in the road and into the gully on the side) and we made it to our little house safe and sound.

The first place we stayed was in Hout Bay and it’s the first house we’ve stayed in since we’ve left the states. So for us, it was just exciting to go to the grocery to buy food and the local video store and rent dvd’s. We would love to say that we got right onto exploring Cape Town but with Brian’s cousin coming in a week, we reserved all the good stuff until he came. Instead, we indulged ourselves by going to the mall (something we never did in the states) and watching movies every night. It was nice to feel a little like we were back in Seattle. So as of this writing the only thing I can tell you besides the fact that the natural scenery here is spectacular is where all the good malls and movie theaters are. I can probably also give you some good summaries on a couple of movies we watched including: Breach, The Bourne Ultimatum, The Namesake, Blades of Glory, and Meet the Robinsons.

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Last Updated ( Sunday, 14 October 2007 )

South Africa

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