Cape Town and Hermanus

Whoah, where do I even start? Suddenly seem to have gone back into America-mode (I keep saying 'totally' and 'sweeeet' and 'ser-weeeet!' every five seconds, full of buzz although I'm not really getting much sleep...it's awesome though :) I think it's hanging out with the Australians that does it.



So, long flight, some pretty cool cloud formations and a lightening storm, although I missed the sunrise as I have finally managed to get some sleep! The first 3 days we spent with Tom, another university friend who happened to be in SA at the same time as us. Cape Town is a vibrant city, good backpacking scene, with some excellent scenery. It hosts Table Mountain, which is absolutely beautiful. We climbed it in the midday heat (36 degrees and no wind, I ran out of water half way up - go figure) but we managed it and sat there to watch the sunset and night lights before heading back down on the cable car. Made friends with 'Taxi Tim' who "offer us a very good price, no problem" - and actually follows through on this offer instead of trying to charge us double for everything because we're tourists.



I'm living off 300 rand a day, which is about 20 pounds - this is a pretty good budget if you're settled in one place but not so good if you want to move about (i.e. with a car). John and I have teamed up with a couple of lasses (Shauna and Niku) to drive down to Hermanus (which is where we are now). There's plenty to do here so long as you've got the money - shark cage diving and paragliding are the big budget breakers that everyone seems to want to do. Wandering along the coast today we saw whales flipping about in the ocean, about 50m from the cliffs. Not so easy to take pictures of unfortunately - you have to be pre-emptive. So I ended up with a lot of photos with nothing in them :) but it's all good.



I have gotten ahead of myself. Where else have we been in Cape Town? Camps Bay. Beautiful white sand, lots of tourists - nobody in the ocean. We wonder why. Five minutes later, with John screeching away from the sea (It's cooooold!!) we understood. 'Bone ache freezing' is about where I can describe it. I showed the lads how it's done with a 3 minute swim, couldn't breathe it was so cold, but I thought, "heck, I've come all this way to South Africa, it's my first foreign beach for years, I'm going to swim goddamit!!!!" And so I did. I think many years of swimming in Sheringham have certainly trained me well for cold water (go Tanya and Roxanne yeaah!).



There was a Tibetan Teahouse in Simonstown where I had the most awesome noodle soup and a vegan chocolate cake (which, yeah, didn't taste like chocolate, but, you know, imagination is everything). The carrot cake was better. Our purpose in Simonstown was PENGUIN HUNTING. Not the literal, harpoon wielding kind of course. We paid 30R to get into the Boulders Bay nature reserve only to end up trapped by barriers about 15m away from the penguins. Unimpressed, we wandered further along the walkway (might I mention the FREE bit) to encounter a real up-close penguin experience at a deserted beach. We got pretty darn close, it was nice to see them so clearly (although they were rather smelly).



So much happens here, I can't believe I've only been away a week, it feels like a very long time ago. It's almost as cheap to eat out as to eat in which has made for some fun dining experiences...Tom nearly burnt his tongue off with a 'mild' Thai curry (in his defence, my eyes were watering too). To celebrate John's birthday we all went to Spurs, which is -supposedly- an American restaurant, although I would argue that monkey gland sauce probably wouldn't be much of a hit over there...I suggested that we give John a little birthday meal surprise and Tamara helpfully suggested a Holland tradition of a 'super birthday cocktail'...cocktails being out, we settled for birthday ice cream, complete with sparklers. They danced and clapped and chanted and sang the most awesome birthday tune ever. Imagine the words to 'I don't know but I've been told' (' - somebody is getting old', tee hee) with a hot African beat and the manager dancing around on the table...unforgettable.



There was one of those cars that children pretend to drive - you know, the ones where you pay money and it moves around and flashes its lights with a happy tune? Repeating his Sheringham antics, John -almost- managed to get into the car and survived a whole ride (although the machine tried to fall over every time he moved). Hilarious.




....argh! The computer just crashed and I thought I had lost this entire post! Luckily, Google are awesome and saved me from ultimate blogging doom :) muahahaha I heart Google :) gonna publish now before it dies again!