My (belated) CAPE TOWN adventure!!!!

MY CAPE TOWN ADVENTURE OF LOVE AND EXCITEMENT!!!!

DAY 1:
The trip from Gabs to Joburg was uncomfortable and late (which is typical), but I was SO excited for this trip. We drove 6 hours in a combie that had absolutely no seat padding, but that really could have been worse. We arrived at a rather deserted combie station in downtown Joburg (it WAS near midnight) and hit our first snag: we… didn’t have the address to our hostel. I mean, I HAD the confirmation, it just didn’t include the address like I thought it did. Luckily, some very nice locals took pity on us and helped us call the place and make sure our cabbie didn’t overcharge us as they are want to do. We got to the hostel, a bit tired, but none the worse for wear. We went to bed AS SOON as we were checked in. (SO tired) As luck would have it, we were the only ones in the 16 person dorm. PERFECT.

DAY 2:
Day started out at the bright and early hour of 11AM…. Yeah. I am SUCH a morning person, you can tell. We got up and needed coffee and breakfast, so we set off to find what we could. Our original plan was just to walk to the street and then pick a direction and hope we get lucky. GOOD THING that didn’t happen because there were no good cafes within… well… walking distance. (Also the hills in Joburg are even more severe than in San Francisco.) Lucky for us, a local named Jean-Pierre rolled by in his car to ask if we were staying at Diamond Diggers (he knows the owner). He spoke French and was impressed that I knew a bit of French and ended up offering to drive us to a “nearby” café. Since we had no clue where one was, we accepted. (I also figured he wasn’t too much of a creeper since he had his 8 year old son with him.) It turns out that he designs and contracts houses. Before we went to the café, he stopped to check on a house that was… HUMONGOUS and very modern. It had 2 stories, a pool, a gorgeous view, and nearly every wall was actually a bank of windows. Not really my type of house (WAY to big) but is WAS beautiful. We were both very impressed by the tour he gave us. Eventually Jean-Pierre did take us to the café (which was actually in a shopping mall) and wished us luck. The food was pretty good and the cappuccino was even BETTER! I was, however, greatful to catch a taxi back to our hostel (re: HUGE HILLS) When we returned to the hostel, we headed off to the airport!
This is where we ran into our… second snag. For some reason when Ali booked our flight online, it only booked us one seat… and the flight was completely full… and they had no more flights to Cape Town that day. ACK! Well, we were both pretty calm as we ran around trying to find some airline with flights to Cape Town same day. Well, I say ran around, but really we just asked at South African Airways who directed us to British Airways who had a flight scheduled for two hours after our original flight for R800ish. (roughly 100USD) GOOD DEAL. So we booked that ticket and Ali RAN to catch her own flight. I dawdled and made small talk with the airline people and then went through security and wandered around the shops. I sat and had a vanilla latte and then grabbed a SUBWAY sandwich and generally had a peaceful flight including a meal and rather nice seating (this is BA). Ali’s flight… apparently was horribly bumpy and she was stuck between loud asian ladies… so I feel like I got the good end of the deal. But Cape Town was gorgeous even from the airport! The sun was setting behind the mountains for chrissakes!
After we checked into our hostel (very nice), we decided to find somewhere for dinner. AND WE FOUND A MEXICAN RESTAURANT WHAT! I have not seen another Mexican restaurant in all my time in Africa. I had chicken mole and horchata and it was awesome :D And then… because the night could not end and this day could not get longer than it already was… we decided to go have a night on the town! At a… very sparkly gay bar down the road. We had shots, danced with very fun gay guys (I was pretty much insta “fag hag”), and even got creeped on by the only straight guys in the place. The bartender thought we were REALLY hardcore for having the shots, but I wasn’t even drunk. GOOD night.

DAY 3:
Slept in the next day (little woozy despite not even being DRUNK the night before), and just wanted COFFEE wherever I could get it. We did our “wander around until we find a café” technique and it actually worked! Except the place we went was actually pretty awful. Burnt coffee and bad food all round. But hey, caffeine. So after that we went to the waterfront. The waterfront was GORGEOUS but full of the wealthy and touristy. Seriously, the mall there had THREE STORIES and a bunch of really long, really organized hallways full of really expensive clothes. D: However! There was also some very nice craft markets in warehouses that were DANGEROUS. I bought a notebook and some tea and HAD to stop before I bought something at every stall D: We went on a VERY kitchy and punny harbor cruise, but there really wasn’t much other than the shopping. So we decided to go see a movie since I like seeing movies and Ali is a HUGE movie buff. We saw This Means War which was highly entertaining, but not an epic must see. We went back to the hostel and to a random Thai place which actually had pretty good Pad Thai. The moral of the story is: the waterfront was GORGEOUS and shopping for that long makes your feet and wallet hurt just a bit.

DAY 4:We had an earlier start today with actually GOOD coffee in a Spar café of all places. After that we headed over to Green Market. It was a pretty long walk, but it was SO worth it. It was like being in one of the craft markets so typical here, but in the middle of Boston. And VERY clean and cheap stuff. I found a lot of nice souvenirs and… ya know, stuff for me. We wandered around there for a few hours, which I enjoyed, and then hoped a combie to Clifton Bay. We spent the afternoon RELAXING on the beach. It was SO beautiful. I even managed to get a TAN even though the Atlantic was JUST as cold here as on the East Coast.
But the real excitement was for tomorrow: SHARK DAY!

DAY 5: (Better known as shark day)
Day started at 4:45am (not good) but lead to a LOVELY place called Gansbaai which contained both a beautiful view and middling coffee, so it’s all good. We set sail quickly enough after breakfast and we were SO excited. Ali and I were in the first group in the water (the wetsuit was a HASSLE to get on). The cage was attached to the side of the boat and the crew attracted the sharks to the boat with a fish head on a string. (I could not get “fish heads fish heads rolly polly fish heads fish heads fish heads, eat them up! Yum!” out of my head) THE SHARKS WERE SO BIG AND SO COOL! The only problem was that half the boat was getting violently ill over the side of the boat due to sea sickness. Let’s just say that the motion-of-the-ocean did not agree with us. I waited it out and went down into the cage a second time. SO AWESOME! LOVED IT! When we eventually got back to our hostel, we completed our fishy day with SUSHI. Seriously, there are SO many sushi restaurants in Cape Town. Like DOZENS. I love sushi. GREAT DAY.