A slightly belated post on Michelle's behalf:
It's Thursday, around 7:30PM in Cape Town right now. The weather hasn't been so great - rainy and a little chilly. It just started being rainy yesterday though, and the weather is supposed to get better tomorrow.
We were supposed to go to
Robben Island today; it's famous for its prison, since political prisoners were held here. Nelson Mandela was held there 17 years out of his 28-year long imprisonment. Tours are given by former prisoners, and you can also see a lot of penguins there since it's a good place for them to nest. It was too rainy today though, so the trip was canceled b/c the boat ride would've been rough from the increased water level and resulting swells. We're going on Monday instead.
Since the trip was canceled, Amar, his sister, and I went to the District 6 museum. District 6 was an area where a lot of blacks and coloreds lived; during apartheid, the gov't declared it a whites-only zone, evicted everyone, and demolished their homes. Now they're attempting to return some of the land to the original residents. It's famous as one of the great tragedies of apartheid; we were going to take a picture of ourselves on a bench that was labeled "Europeans only", but we forgot due to our next misadventure, which I will describe below.
We had a scare in the museum that's funny in retrospect; I saw this guy lingering around us and thought he was weird, so I was a bit wary of him for a while. Later, Amar wanted to take a picture of something so I took out my camera. Amar saw the guy looking at the camera intently, then he disappeared. Given the high likelihood of muggings here, we thought he was waiting outside to steal our camera! After plotting ways to NOT get mugged (ideas included switching clothes, hiding the camera in Ami's pocket, and running across the street to the police station), we made a break for it and got safely back to the car. There, we proceeded to reinstall the CD player in the car (Amar had put it in his pocket so that the car wouldn't be broken into, haha...the rental car company suggested it). We drove back to the hostel in a very fogged up car with poor defogging capabilities. Lots of wiping windows with hands, cranking down the windows, and relying on backseat drivers to check blind spots ensued.
Oh yeah, and in the museum, some girl asked if I went to TJ. I didn't recognize her, so after checking myself for TJ paraphenalia (there was none), I asked if she went there. Apparently she was the grade below us and recognized me? I wasn't a complete loser in high school after all! Haha.
Later in the afternoon, we went to explore a chocolate house we had heard of. It was...amazing. We walked in and were immediately greeted by a nice elderly woman who opened up every single case of chocolate for us. We were awestruck; it was like we had won golden tickets to Willy Wonka's factory. After seeing the stunned looks on our faces, the woman just gave us paper bags and tongs and told us to take whatever we wanted (she neglected to mention prices at first, but it was worth it). We got chili truffles, champagne truffles, chocolates with fresh cream, marzipan...pretty amazing. She told us to sit and eat for a while, and ended up telling us a story about how Sheik Abdullah from Saudi Arabia had called once after tasting the chocolate (Swiss Slices, specifically...I had them and they were excellent). Basically, he wanted the chocolatier to move to Saudi and make chocolate for him! I have to admit though, if I were an oil tycoon, I would try that too. Amar ate his whole bag sitting there. I'll try to bring some home!
So last night, Amar and I went on a fish adventure. We were going to attempt to cook dinner with some girls in the hostel. Specifically, we were determined to find snoek, a local fish. After some hijinks involving the purchase of kingklip (a local fish that is sort of expensive and therefore is NOT snoek) we found some braai snoek (snoek for barbecuing) for 20 Rand a kilo! That's like...$2.25 a kilo! For fresh fish! We triumphantly brought it back to the hostel, fried it and ate it with rice and veggies. Actually we first showed it to Mama Fefe, who works here, and informed her of our plans. She looked...skeptical. After staring at the unskinned fish chunks in the kitchen, we ran to her for help and she sent us fish spices, flour, and instructions. We're meeting interesting people at the hostel, they're all very nice and social.
Tomorrow, Ami's going back to Namibia, and Amar and I plan to drive around the winelands (mostly Stellenbosch) and get drunk. No, really - South African wine is supposed to be stronger since the tropical weather makes the grapes sweeter. We'll be joined by a couple we met at the hostel, so it should be a good time. What will we be eating? Kingklip, of course - seriously, we paid too much for that fish to let it go to waste. We'll cook it tonight and bring it along tomorrow. The plan is, during wine tastings we'll ask the proprietors for wine that they think pairs well with kingklip...haha.
One last thing about Cape Town in general - it's a very beautiful and diverse city. So far, I find myself thinking that it reminds me of so many different places. Some smells from bakeries remind me of Taiwan, the winding roads around hills remind me of San Diego, and the way it's tucked into a mountain reminds me of Puerto Vallarta. The sloped streets are like San Francisco's, and of course the Afrikaans is a lot like Dutch. Still though, it's very different from anything I've seen or anything I expected, and I think that's partially because I came here knowing next to nothing about the place. But I'll learn more and continue to write profusely later!
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