Saturday morning Liese, Brittni, Sarah and I woke up early to catch the train into town to pick up a rental car for our road trip up the garden route. The garden route is a popular tourist destination in South Africa that describes a stretch of coastline and surrounding towns in the provinces of the Western and Eastern Capes. Renting a car here is cheap and the easiest way to get around on your own, as long as you can learn to drive on the left hand side of the road! Luckily Liese had mastered this skill. Once in town we walked down Long Street and ran into a little trouble getting the car since we forgot to bring the driver's passport so we had to stop by Rondebosh on the way out of town to pick it up. We drove for about six hours straight through rolling green hills, yellow wildflowers, farms and wineries, which again looked strikingly similar to California. However, every now and then we would pass a sprawling township next to the highway and signs reading "Hi-jacking Hot Spot." I was surprised that townships existed even in the countryside since I thought they were a city phenomenon and the rural poor lived in villages, like I experienced last summer. Yet townships are a country-wide phenomenon and seem to me to be much worse living conditions than those of the villages I experienced last summer even though many people in the villages are poorer than those in townships. There is also a sense of dissatisfaction with life in the townships that I didn't experience in the villages last summer where people seemed to be content with a simpler life.
At one stop along the way there was a pen filled with donkeys, ostriches, turkey, goats and ducks right next to the gas station... Then we walked in to the KFC next to it to use the restroom where there was a group of young Afrikaner boys wearing soccer uniforms. It is strange here how you can feel like you're in America one minute at a KFC, with rolling green hills and the next have a reality check of driving by townships or ostriches that you really are in Africa. Due to our late start we weren't able to do much except drive Saturday, but we did stop to walk around the pretty waterfront at Knysna, which had cute shops and beautiful sailboats in the bay. The scenery around Knysna reminded me of Minnesota; the bay looked like a lake and was surrounded by pine trees.
We decided to drive on to Plettenberg Bay for the night so that we could be as close as possible for our first stop the next day at Storms River just across the border into the Eastern Cape. After a freezing night in the hostel... All hostels say they provide bedding, but that usually means one blanket which is insufficient in the winter with no heating! Brittni bundled up in about 10 layers and that's what it took to stay warm! The rest of us froze a bit. We woke up the next morning at 7:30 so we could leave the hostel early enough to get to Bloukrans to bungee jump right when they opened. We made it so early that we were the first ones to jump. I wasn't sure I was ready for another bungee jump after last summer I thought I was done with that, but it was the highest bungee in the world and would likely never do it if I didn't do it now so I signed the form, paid and was locked in to go--they don't give refunds if you don't jump! None of us were too enthused about going first, but the people who worked there told us we didn't have a choice, it was already decided but wouldn't tell us who was lucky number one. Then they dressed us in harnesses and marched us down to the start of the bridge.
We walked across a scary metal platform to get to the center of the bridge. Walking across the bridge was one of the scariest parts for me. The bungee is setup in the center of the bridge directly beneath a busy road, which we drove across to get there not knowing the bungee was directly underneath. At the center platform we were greeted by probably 15 smily guys taking pictures and dancing to upbeat music. Besides Sarah, the rest of us were too nervous to start dancing as we looked around at the gorgeous trees and ocean, but frightening height of the bridge. Sarah jumped first and before we knew it she was on the ledge and the guys were counting down and all the sudden she was gone. We could only see her bobbing up and down on the other side. I was up next and as my stomach flipped and I was too nervous to listen to what the instructors were saying. Then before I knew it they said "5, 4, 3, 2, 1, bungee!" The wind rushed past my face as I plummeted down, keeping my eyes open.
The view of the mountains, sky and ocean was beautiful from upside down. Just a few minutes later, one of the instructors was next to me, lowered down on a cable to bring me back up to the platform. Excited and hungry after our jump, we headed back toward Knysna where we had a good lunch next to a canal. Then we drove up to Oudtshoorn, a town famous for ostriches and if you went there you would know why. There were ostriches everywhere! mostly raised for their meat, but we came to ride ostriches! The entire process of riding the ostriches was ridiculous from watching the ostriches march in to the arena where we rode them to seeing the people who worked there catch them by putting a bag over their head and pulling on their necks (they promised it didn't hurt them, but the ostriches didn't look too happy) to us attempting to get on their backs. There backs were curved and in order for the ostrich to be able to run you had to sit really far back and hold onto their wings to the point where you felt like you would fall off and I did fall straight in the mud at my first attempt.
Our next stop was at the Cango Caves where we arrived just in time to do the adventure tour. I'm a little claustrophobic and was worried about spending an hour and a half in a cave that required us to army crawl through small tunnels (they had to make sure we were small enough to go on the tour). However, the cave was beautiful and despite bumping my knees and scratching my back a few times it was really fun in explore the cave. The first two chambers were large and were once inhabited by Bushmen. When we finished the tour it was a bit after 5 pm and we still had a 5 hour drive back to Cape Town so the grimy and smelly 5 of us piled back in the car and drove back to town. We took a windy, hilly path which was a bit scary in the dark, but we made it back.
Monday was a (mostly) relaxed final day in Cape Town. I packed up in the morning then walked up to the University of Cape Town (UCT) from the house. It is one of the most beautiful campuses I've ever seen set on a hill with a dramatic mountain in the background. There is a large staircase leading up to the symmetrical campus with the Rhodes Memorial statue in the center. I was surprised that the campus was mostly white given their relatively small proportion of the population. It was fun to be on a campus with tons of students around sitting and chatting with friends on the grass and walking to class.
I walked back to town and met up with Brittni for lunch. On our way to a restaurant a girl called my name and when I turned around it was a girl I knew from middle and high school in Minnesota who was studying abroad at UCT for the semester. Such a small world! After lunch Brittni and I headed to Cavendish, a large mall. We saw Janine's jewelry store and a store by a local Cape Tonian designer, which had pretty, French-inspired clothing. The one stressful part of the day was trying to withdraw cash because my ATM card's information was stolen (and money withdrawn) so I had to shut down my card and can only open it for short periods of time to withdraw money... This is a difficult process because I have to call my bank in the U.S. who usually puts me on hold, which uses up international minutes and then give them a bunch of info so they can unlock my card. I'm just glad this happened fairly late in the trip so I don't need my card for too much longer!
I caught a ride to the airport in the Boogie Bus! (shown above). The guy who drives the Boogie Bus has had it for 16 years and is a friend of Prof. Samoff. He used to drive groups of Stanford students and said he started focusing on safe transport of students after Amy Biehl was murdered.
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