Rejoice All! Matt has finally posted his South Africa Reflection/ Summary Blog!
South Africa was different. Not in a good way, but not in a bad way. I am in two classes that really stress the negative about each country, so I tend to look for a lot of that happening while I visit these different countries, and I must say if there is a country where it is easy to see its South Africa. SA has a huge class disparity and ranks super high on the Gini index which measures familial income disparity. So essentially, the white families in SA make far far more than the black families in SA. It’s really easy to go to Cape Town and never leave the nice urban area, which quite frankly reminded me of downtown Denver. But once you go 15 minutes outside of the city, you see shantytowns and townships which are crude houses, or huts rather, built for 2 people but house 6. I felt privileged in Ghana, but in Ghana they at least had space, I felt like a white person in South Africa, a wealthier White person at that.
My first day in we decided to hike table mountain, but a few people had field programs that went til noon, so we got off the ship right around 8 and headed into town to find someplace to hang out. We stumbled upon a really nice little square with a locals market, a bunch of bistros, and live music being played, it was really neat. We wanted to grab something to drink, so we sat down at a little table and whats the first thing the waiter brings us? A list of wines, when in Rome right? South Africa has great wine, and We ordered 2 bottles between 4 of us, relaxed and listened to the music. After drinking our wine, we walked around the market, I bought a pretty sweet soccer jersey that actually fits me pretty well( Which is hard to find as my body type is not conducive to soccer). We headed back to the ship to meet back up with everyone, but alas, nobody was there yet, and we didn’t want to wait an hour for everyone to come, so we put a post it note on a handful of doors and took off for Table Mountain! We got a nice cab driver who gave us a good deal on a cab ride there, dropped us off at the trailhead and we set off. We were in for a surprise… Hiking Table Mountain is unlike many hikes I’ve ever done in Colorado. We literally were climbing the mountain, I’m talking stairs a foot to 18 inches tall, it was so much more than we signed up for. It only took us about 75 mins, but we were pretty exhausted when we got to the top. As we reached the top we looked around, took a ton of pictures, and found a really cool place to sit and talk while overlooking the city, it was gorgeous, I can’t wait to show the pictures.
After talking we took the cable car down which was pretty cool, the inside rotated almost a perfect 360 degrees as you went down which was pretty cool to have that kind of view. We went back into town to that same little square, had a wonderful pizza for dinner, and headed back to the ship. Our friends had a penthouse at a hotel near long street which reminds me a lot of bourbon street in New Orleans, it was kind of fun, but I ended back up at the ship pretty early ready for my FDP the next day.
I got up and off the ship at 8 ready to meet up with everyone for my FDP titled Old Biscuit Mill to M’zolis. This was a pretty sweet FDP. We went to the Old Biscuit Mill which had been converted to a marketplace where they had big markets every Saturday. It was really cool, super extravagant, but prices were really cheap. We had a small wine tasting, had some snapsticks- which are really just beef jerky, and sampled all sorts of different foods they had all over. From there we jumped on the bus out to a restaurant in a township called M’zoli’s Meats. This place is super weird, you walk in and just see steak, pork, sausage, every kind of meat you could imagine on display for people to pick, once you’ve picked what you want you take it to the back and they cook it over an open flame to a perfect tender, yet still fully cooked and safe, condition, smother it in some special bbq sauce, then you take it out back, sit on a picnic table and literally eat steak and everything with your hands. It was soooo good. We hung out with the locals, they bought us a beer, we bought them a beer, it was a really good time, they even had a local xylophone and drum band come play for us, I of course was the first who got up and danced with them. After 2 hours or so we jumped back on the bus and went back to the ship. I made friends with a couple girls who seemed pretty cool from the FDP and we decided we were going to run over to the waterfront to see if anything was going on over there. It’s pretty much a shopping mall.. nothing super special. After that We walked over to the stadium where the world cup was played- Awesome. It was so cool to be in a stadium like that. We watched the entire game, and headed back to change because we all got a little hot from cheering and everything. After that we went to our friends hotel and hung out for a little bit, called it an early night and headed back to the ship.
The third day we all decided we wanted to go to Boulders Beach, a beach with penguins!! We jumped on a train after about an hour wait (which I had a double cheeseburger in McDonald’s!) and took the 90 minute ride out there. Boulders beach is really cool, it is literally full of wild penguins running around the rocks doing normal penguin things. Its sweet to see them in their natural habitat, and seriously, penguins!! I wish I had more to say but it was really cool, you’ll just have to trust me here. We saw in a brochure that there was a Mexican food restaurant in Observatory (a suburbanish neighborhood of Cape Town on the train route) called Panchos. We were stoked for Panchos… we jumped off at observatory and of course, it was closed. Sad Day right? I wouldn’t speak so quickly, we found this really cool little place called Hello Sailor, about 6 tables, and literally one guy running the show. I asked the local guy what I should have to drink, and he recommended a double brandy coke, so I took him up on that. The Brandy I had was called Klipdrift and is pretty good! I eventually had a Klipdrift neat, so I am officially going to call myself a man with a taste for Brandy.
We had disco fries, and probably the most amazing burger I’ve ever had. It was cooked to perfection, a great amount of bacon, super sharp cheddar cheese, I was in heaven. We tipped the guy super well for his service, and jumped in a cab back to the ship. We went to some really douchey LA style club with a cover, and it totally wasn’t my scene. It was some SASers bday though, so some kids got bottle service. Long story short, I ended up carrying this kid out of the club over my shoulder because nobody could find his friends. Kinda cool story I suppose haha.
Bryanna and I were the only two left, and we thought everyone had gone shark diving, but it ended up Matt missed out for whatever reason and was still in his room. We didn’t really have any plans, but I really wanted to go surfing. And I totally went surfing. We took the train out to Muizenberg beach which is a pretty nice beach, and found a surf shop which gave us board rental, wet suit and a quick lesson for 220 Rand, which is about 27ish US dollars.
I’m not the best at surfing haha, it’s a lot harder than it looks, but I did get up a few times and the owner of the shop actually took some good pictures of all of us getting up. It was really nice and super beautiful out on the water. After surfing for a few hours, we went to Kauk bay and had some really delicious pizza, I got the three cheese, Mozzarella, Cheddar and Feta. Super tasty. All the girls wanted to go shopping in Kauk Bay, so Matt and I went looking around, I bought a few touristy things, Matt bought some stuff, we ended up taking the train right back to town and went on the ship to change. We jumped in the showers, jumped out and got dressed and met up for dinner at guess where?! Panchos! It was open that night, I had a Beef and bean chimichanga type thing smothered in salsa. It wasn’t quite like home, but it’s going to be the only Mexican food I get until Cali I’m assuming. After that I took a local shot with a girl whose bday it was called a pickle back. A shot of Brandy chased with pickle juice. Seeing as my favorite food is Pickles and cheese, I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. We went out after that to a local bar called Mercury which struck me as really odd, they were playing Dubstep and all the locals seemed kind of weird. I found out later it was a gay bar. After leaving there we went to an awesome bar called Dubliners. It was an Irish themed place and they had a band who sounded like Flogging Molly, or Dropkick Murphys playing covers of Rolling in the deep by Adele, and all sorts of crazy uncharacteristic music. It was a ton of fun. We came back to the ship and jumped in bed.
The 5th day was upon us, and I was a lone ranger, all of my friends had plans or FDP’s I couldn’t get in on. What’s a guy to do? Well, I ran into 5 girls who were going to wineries to do wine tasting and pet cheetahs. I got lucky haha. We went to Asra winery which was super gorgeous and had some great wine, then we went over to another winery whose name escapes me and had a fantastic picnic style meal, with wine of course. Then we went to Spire winery, which is home to the cheetah Sanctuary where one of the girls in my group worked for 6 weeks. It was awesome, and we got to see some really cool animals, and of course, I got to pet a cheetah! Who does that?! A cheetah!! It was so cool. After that, Lesi, the girl who knew SA said she was going to take us to a local place not many people go. It was M’Zolis! Haha, I had another delicious carnivorous meal, which was great.
When we got back Kael was back from his safari and we went out to a local pub called Mitchells which is really cool. We hung out there for a while and then headed to a club called Café Caprice. Caprice is weird, its right by that other douchey club, but it was actually kind of fun. A group of girls were actually reading cosmo a few days after and they recommended Caprice as a go to bar with celeb sightings of Zac Efron and Leonardo DiCaprio. They were pretty stoked on that, and I gotta say it’s kind of cool to have been at a club where folks like Leo and Efron go I suppose. I was pretty wiped and headed back to the ship pretty early with some friends and got some sleep for my FDP the next morning.
This FDP was a wine tasting and vineyard tour for my Operations Management Class. We went to the Warwick Estates vineyard which is gorgeous. I want to say the countryside in SA if some of the most amazing countryside I have ever experienced. We had a wine tasting of 7 different types of wine, all delicious, however I don’t have a palette for red, and 4 of the 7 were red wines. My favorite was the Professor Black Sauvignon Blanc, which I ended up buying a bottle of with Kael and splitting it over lunch. We checked out where the grapes are smashed, the chillers where the barrels for red wines are kept, and really got to see some interesting facets of their operations. We also took a Land Rover around the Vineyard and got to see more of the most amazing countryside ever. We had an amazing gourmet lunch, and jumped on the bus back to the ship. We got back at 3 and I ran right over to the mall at the waterfront and got to skype my family. It was really nice to talk to them!! After that I headed back to the ship, grabbed what just so happened to be a pretty rowdy dinner and literally fell asleep for the night by 9pm.
South Africa, You wore me out. But you were a great time.
Also, due to weather concerns, we lost a lot of time between South Africa to Mauritius, so now Mauritius will only be a fuel stop and no passengers will disembark. Disappointing, but hopefully we won’t lose any time in India.
Much love from what is now 10 hours away,
Matt
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