South Africa!!

We arrived on the actual continent of Africa (Mauritius was an island so it doesn’t count ;) )  around 8 AM on Wednesday, March 31 (how did we get here?) and the water coming in was so rocky.   They warned us ahead of time but my wake up call this morning was the ship rocking violently back and forth.   It took Customs about an hour to clear the ship and we were off and walking around by 10 AM. 

The area where the ship is berthed is beautiful.  It’s basically a touristy waterfront.  The ship is in front of a gorgeous looking hotel and there’s a mall, restaurants, shops and so much else right outside of the ship.  It’s really, really nice to have because Cape Town basically shuts down after 5 PM (after business hours) and most people head home.  The waterfront is pretty much a bustling area of activity anytime of day.  We walked around just exploring the area.  It reminded me of the waterfronts in Port Louis, Mauritius and Hong Kong.  It also reminded me of Cape May, New Jersey.  I think it’s funny because I thought of Port Louis and Hong Kong first and then Cape May as an afterthought.  Never thought I’d do that.   
We got lunch at a delicious diner.  Yep, a good old-fashioned diner.  I had a cheeseburger, fries, and a milkshake.  It was the best meal I’ve had in a while.    After lunch we made a stop at a grocery store.  The grocery store smelled exactly like Acme and I thought I was at home for a minute. 

Our next stop for the day was a tour of Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was once a prisoner. It was a scenic thirty-minute ferry ride from the dock to the island and I got some great pictures of Cape Town on the ride.    The island, oddly enough, was beautiful.   What once was there isn’t so beautiful.  The buildings there are all remnants of the political prison, during the apartheid years, that was there.  Our tour guide, once an anti-apartheid activist, also had been a prisoner there.   His descriptions of life on the island were horrifying.  The cells were 6 feet by 4 feet, with a pot and five blankets which was your bed.  Your meals depended on whether you were black, colored (in South Africa a colored person, even today, is a person with both white and black heritage), or Muslim.  A menu was still standing- can’t imagaine how they survived off of it   The prisoners were all forced to mine limestone, daily, and many of them (including Mandela) have eyesight problems because of the glare.  We also saw Mandela’s cell.  We had a few classes on apartheid and its consequences on South Africa; standing in the cells and just walking around the jail was very eerie.   It was so strange to think that Mandela himself once was here and so much of South Africa’s modern history is inside of that building. 

On a more cheery note, we saw penguins!  Troops of them randomly would be walking around parts of the island and we saw once which was definitely lost.   At least a dozen seals were also swimming in the harbor next to our ship! 

For dinner we went to a traditional South African restaurant with my friend’s friend who lives here in Cape Town.  There were two men playing African drums in the restaurant and they played the neatest versions of some American songs.   The menu was all over the place and I settled on an interesting chicken dish.  It was good, but very, very rich and filling.   I also had the most delicious calamari appetizer.  

I really enjoyed my first day in Cape Town.  It reminds me of any big city in the US, except with Table Mountain (I’m hiking up it tomorrow) behind it.   There’s lots of traffic (they drive on the wrong side though!), skyscrapers, malls, gangs (unfortunately), and it’s just a very, modern city.  Another plus is that the water here is 100% okay to drink.  This is such a HUGE relief!  Like I said in one of my India posts, I will never, ever look at a glass of water the same way again.