March 9, 2007

This is gonna be a long one.

Our trip to South Africa, or ZA as they abbreviate it, is officially over even though we have yet to leave the port. We all boarded the ship last night around 9 and were supposed to leave, but the winds were too strong. Now it’s 2:40 in the afternoon and we haven’t made any progress leaving the country. I think Captain Jeremy really just wants to prolong our stay and I think that every student would agree with him.

Cape Town is incredible. We ported right on the Waterfront, which is an extremely popular area with tons of restaurants, music and opportunities. The food is very good and much cheaper than American food because of the currency exchange. Four of us were able to order a large pizza, sub sandwich and 4 drinks for a total of 128 Rand, which is equivalent to $18.15. Awesome! And there was a mall 2 minutes away so a lot of people took advantage of that for souvenir shopping, myself included. The big things to do were safaris, climbing Table Mountain, visiting the wine lands and townships, and going skydiving. I went on a 4 day safari and biked through the wine lands, so I didn’t have much time to do any extreme things, like skydiving. But the wine was fantastic. Unfortunately, we can’t bring any alcohol on board with us, even if its all boxed up and we have no intention of drinking it. I was so tempted to pay the $160 to ship 6 bottles home, but I didn’t want to get back to the states and regret that. And as I’m writing this I’m regretting not sending the wine home…sorry Dad…

So I was fortunate enough to travel to Northeast South Africa where Kruger National Park is. It was a slightly expensive safari, but the lodge we stayed in was wonderful. They fed us well and we got to stay in a great room, so it was nice to get away from the ship food and accommodations. They put on a small tribal show for us one night, and sang happy birthday to one of our leaders, Bob, which they pronounced as Boob. So imagine a bunch of Africans singing Happy Birthday to Boob. It was great. And I don’t have Malaria pills and the area apparently is buzzing with mosquitoes, so I had to stay all covered up during our Game Drives, and sometimes it gets hot in Africa. I don’t even wear long sleeves and shoes around my house in the winter, but I really didn’t want to get Malaria so I think it was wise of me to just stick it out. For 3 mornings, we got wake-up calls at 4:30 AM and we’d start our drive at 5:30 and stay out until around noon. We’d then go on an evening drive from around 5-8. The time between the two was spent eating, watching The Island for roughly 25 minutes, and then passing out for 3 hours.

Safaris require patience and that wasn’t really what I was expecting. By day two I was worried I had made the wrong decision in making the trip, but our third day was fantastic. My roommate Ashley and I decided we were good luck charms because both game drives we went on saw the most lions. There are only about 1,500 lions in the whole park, which is 20,000 square kilometers. Our guides explained to us that as far as we looked, in every direction, was the park. I felt like Simba in the Lion King when Mufasa takes him on top of pride rock and tells him that everything the sun touches is his kingdom. So I was able to see three male lions with great big manes, a pride of females walking together in the African night, and many elephants, zebras, rhinos, giraffes, buffaloes, a couple leopards, and many many many impalas. They’ve got little black marks on their bottoms that make an ‘M’ and the guides called them McDonald’s. The elephants had little ones trailing behind them a lot and they were SO cute. I probably took 200+ pictures of animals in the park.

After getting back from the Safari, I was able to take my first big night out in the city. While I was gone, my girls had made friends with some UK chaps who were studying or just playing in South Africa, so we went out with them on our last night and it was very fun. They took us to a bar called Chrome and it was an interesting situation. A lot of single guys standing on the dance floor, bouncing to the music, just waiting for a hot chick to come talk to them. And there were a couple of transvestites with killer wigs. Our group just hung out together and did our best to get jiggy to the ZA techno beats. The currency exchange is such a wonderful thing. Beers cost about $2 and mixed drinks around probably $4. When you leave someone a 10 Rand tip its great because its not even $2 to us but it’s a lot of money to them. The people in the city were so kind and courteous and were willing to help with whatever you needed. I had to find a pay phone my last afternoon there and this nice restaurant host let me use their phone even though I wasn’t eating there. After that I had a couple waiters ask me if I needed anything or if it was working correctly. Just little things like that to make travelers feel at ease. Simple kindness.

Every time I go to a new city, I always imagine what it would be like to live there and if I would enjoy it. As of right now, I think Cape Town and Paris are my two favorites, but South Africa does have the perk of having English as one of their main languages. And its also a very diverse place which makes for a more respectable and less judgmental society, I think. There are many white people, but there are still many African, Indian, and Asian people, all living together in one large city. Absolutely fantastic and I cannot wait to come back.