HAPPY EASTER! We went to the Hillsong Church again Sunday morning for Easter service. It was weird not celebrating Easter with family, but they had a bake sale, so that made up for it a little bit ;) After the church service, we went to the Kirstenbosch gardens. They were absolutely beautiful! So many different kinds of plants and most of them indigenous to South Africa! I bought a postcard there, but I haven’t figured out who to send it to yet :P The gardens are huge, so we walked around for awhile and then I sat and read my book while Wellyna and Laura walked around some more. The gardens butt up against an area of wilderness at the base of the Table Mountain region. Before traveling to Cape Town I thought that Table Mountain was just one entity standing alone with the flat-ish landscape around it and that’s what made it a miracle, but it is actually part of a whole range of hills/mountains. It is a miracle because of how flat it is, but I will get to that later! We stayed at Kirstenbosch until dinner time, so we were there for about six hours! It was just so beautiful though, that we couldn’t even take it all it. We got a snack at the restaurant in the gardens and then Kyle picked us up and we went to the Victoria and Alfred (or V&A) Waterfront for drinks. The V&A is actually a whole other shopping area, but also provides entertainment, many eating places, an aquarium, and obviously a marina area. Kyle knew of a little stand that generally has many beers on tap and they let you sample them before buying a whole glass. They were mostly out by the time we got there, but they still had a few left to try. One of the ones they were out of was a Pumpkin Ale that Laura and I really wanted to try, but we couldn’t. We all ended up getting a dark beer that had molasses in it. It was actually really good! We realized around 8:30 pm that we hadn’t eaten dinner yet, so we found a fish and chips place that had really tasty fish and chips! It was probably the best I’ve had so far. There were some seasonings in the batter on the fish that were what really made it tasty. Also, it’s called fish and chips because french fries are called chips here and chip are called crisps. There are quite a few little things like that which I’m just now getting used to. After all of my Cape Town posts I will add one only about the colloquialisms of South Africa.
Monday was a really rainy day, so we decided to sleep in and work on stuff for school, which all of us needed to do some of anyway. There may be something that I’ve forgotten about Monday morning, but we did go wine tasting in the afternoon. Laura went to school with someone who’s brother lives here in SA, so she contacted him and he decided to go with us wine tasting. Kyle drove us so we had to wait for his class to finish, but then we picked up Claude and drove to one of the wineries that stayed open later. Most wineries close between 4 and 5, so we had to find one that was open later than that. We found about 3 that were open until 6:30, but with the rain it took us longer than expected to get to the area, so we only got to visit one, but we figured that would happen so we took our time with at that one winery and enjoyed each of our tastings. Their idea of a tasting here is like, almost half a glass of wine. It is so much wine! Laura went on a tour a few days ago because she is still on holiday, and one of the wineries lets you taste every single wine they have available! She didn’t because she doesn’t like certain kinds, but she most certainly could have! And that’s a lot wine! She and I are going to figure out how to land ship wine back to the states. The wine we had in that one afternoon was so tasty. I, of course, liked the most expensive one the best, but that still was only around $14 or $15.
Tuesday morning we got up fairly early and walked to the District Six Museum. The museum reflected on one area affected by white supremacy during apartheid. The area of District Six was primarily occupied by various groups of non-whites during the time before apartheid. At one point during apartheid, the government decided that they were going to make that area a whites only area, so the residents were given less than 24 hours notice and they were to move out of the area. If there were still people there after that, they were forcibly moved out of their homes. This wasn’t the biggest tragedy for them though. It was the fact that they were moved out of their communities and spread out across the area, not allowing them to keep the same communities that really tore people apart. They government demolished the houses and buildings where people used to live and work and then began recreating an area for white people only. It was a really sad museum to be in, but it gave a true account of what people’s lives were like and how they were changed. After District Six we went back to the V&A to the aquarium. We walked around there for awhile and were able to see a “Creepy and Crawly” show as well as the feeding of the large fish and the penguins. They have whole frog exhibit too, which I’m sure Molly would love! It wasn’t a big aquarium, but it was enough to keep us occupied until the evening when we decided to stay and watch a movie there at the V&A. We saw the movie “Parker” and I really liked it. I don’t think Wellyna or Laura really liked it because it was quite violent, but I really did like it.
Wednesday we went on a Cape Point tour with Baz Bus (the same company Molly and I will be using for our travels). The bus picked us up right in front of our backpackers and then we made a figure 8 shape around the Cape Peninsula. We made 3 big stops. The first was in a small town where some people took a ferry out to Seal Island. We didn’t because we already had the opportunity to swim with seals and they were pretty stinky. The second stop was in Boulders to see the penguins! The city of Boulders is home to many African penguins and they have made a large effort to preserve land for their natural habitat. We weren’t allowed to touch them, but we took lots of pictures of them. The big stop, of course, was Cape Point! The bus took us in to the park and we took a short bike ride to meet the bus at the visitors center for lunch. After lunch the bus took us to the parking area and we got to walk up to the top of Cape Point where the old light house is located. They decided to add another lighthouse at a lower location at one point because when there were clouds, the original lighthouse would be covered and not do anyone any good. After hiking to the top, we hiked back down only to hike up a different place and hike up and over a peak and then down to the sign that said we were actually at the south western most point of Africa! All three of us were under the impression that Cape Point is the southern most point and where the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic Ocean. Turns out this is false! Cape Aghulas is where all of this happens and that is East of Cape town, back along the Garden Route. We still took a picture at the sign, because it is still such a cool place to be! We got dinner when we got back into town and got some good sleep for our big day on Thursday! You’ll find out in the next post what happened on Thursday ;)
Monday was a really rainy day, so we decided to sleep in and work on stuff for school, which all of us needed to do some of anyway. There may be something that I’ve forgotten about Monday morning, but we did go wine tasting in the afternoon. Laura went to school with someone who’s brother lives here in SA, so she contacted him and he decided to go with us wine tasting. Kyle drove us so we had to wait for his class to finish, but then we picked up Claude and drove to one of the wineries that stayed open later. Most wineries close between 4 and 5, so we had to find one that was open later than that. We found about 3 that were open until 6:30, but with the rain it took us longer than expected to get to the area, so we only got to visit one, but we figured that would happen so we took our time with at that one winery and enjoyed each of our tastings. Their idea of a tasting here is like, almost half a glass of wine. It is so much wine! Laura went on a tour a few days ago because she is still on holiday, and one of the wineries lets you taste every single wine they have available! She didn’t because she doesn’t like certain kinds, but she most certainly could have! And that’s a lot wine! She and I are going to figure out how to land ship wine back to the states. The wine we had in that one afternoon was so tasty. I, of course, liked the most expensive one the best, but that still was only around $14 or $15.
Tuesday morning we got up fairly early and walked to the District Six Museum. The museum reflected on one area affected by white supremacy during apartheid. The area of District Six was primarily occupied by various groups of non-whites during the time before apartheid. At one point during apartheid, the government decided that they were going to make that area a whites only area, so the residents were given less than 24 hours notice and they were to move out of the area. If there were still people there after that, they were forcibly moved out of their homes. This wasn’t the biggest tragedy for them though. It was the fact that they were moved out of their communities and spread out across the area, not allowing them to keep the same communities that really tore people apart. They government demolished the houses and buildings where people used to live and work and then began recreating an area for white people only. It was a really sad museum to be in, but it gave a true account of what people’s lives were like and how they were changed. After District Six we went back to the V&A to the aquarium. We walked around there for awhile and were able to see a “Creepy and Crawly” show as well as the feeding of the large fish and the penguins. They have whole frog exhibit too, which I’m sure Molly would love! It wasn’t a big aquarium, but it was enough to keep us occupied until the evening when we decided to stay and watch a movie there at the V&A. We saw the movie “Parker” and I really liked it. I don’t think Wellyna or Laura really liked it because it was quite violent, but I really did like it.
Wednesday we went on a Cape Point tour with Baz Bus (the same company Molly and I will be using for our travels). The bus picked us up right in front of our backpackers and then we made a figure 8 shape around the Cape Peninsula. We made 3 big stops. The first was in a small town where some people took a ferry out to Seal Island. We didn’t because we already had the opportunity to swim with seals and they were pretty stinky. The second stop was in Boulders to see the penguins! The city of Boulders is home to many African penguins and they have made a large effort to preserve land for their natural habitat. We weren’t allowed to touch them, but we took lots of pictures of them. The big stop, of course, was Cape Point! The bus took us in to the park and we took a short bike ride to meet the bus at the visitors center for lunch. After lunch the bus took us to the parking area and we got to walk up to the top of Cape Point where the old light house is located. They decided to add another lighthouse at a lower location at one point because when there were clouds, the original lighthouse would be covered and not do anyone any good. After hiking to the top, we hiked back down only to hike up a different place and hike up and over a peak and then down to the sign that said we were actually at the south western most point of Africa! All three of us were under the impression that Cape Point is the southern most point and where the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic Ocean. Turns out this is false! Cape Aghulas is where all of this happens and that is East of Cape town, back along the Garden Route. We still took a picture at the sign, because it is still such a cool place to be! We got dinner when we got back into town and got some good sleep for our big day on Thursday! You’ll find out in the next post what happened on Thursday ;)
