DAY 144: It may be interesting to point out that I attended Teaneck High School, five miles from New York City, from 1988-1992, and Rutgers University, the state university of New Jersey, from 1993-1997. While this information isn't exactly exciting enough to tattoo on your ass, I mention it because I ran into people from both schools before the day was over.

It wasn't my intent to do so that morning. I was supposed to leave Cape Town with the German girls from my dorm in their rental car, but opted to stay in town since Matt and Vicky, a couple I had met in Antarctica two years prior, had contacted me to catch up since they had moved from Oxford, U.K. to Hout Bay, outside of Cape Town. Meanwhile, Blogreader Steph, my brother's girlfriend's younger sister, was also arriving in Cape Town on a school trip with my alma mater, Rutgers.

Trying to contact Matt and Vicky was an ordeal because Matt's voice mail kept on cutting me off when I called from a pay phone:

"Hey Matt, it's Erik, the penguin guy. I got your email and I'm here in--" CLICK!

"Hey Matt, it's Erik the penguin guy. I'm in Cape Town staying at The Back--" CLICK!

"Hey, it's Erik again. I think you're voicemail keeps cutting me--" CLICK!

I emailed him some complete sentences and then called back for a quick message:

"Hey, it's Erik. I just sent you an email since I keep on getting--" CLICK!

Eventually, we got in contact and planned to meet for lunch the following day. Contacting Steph was easier; I just left a message at her hotel desk that I'd meet up with her later that evening.

SO AS NOT TO WASTE THE DAY waiting around for people to get back to me, I decided to trek up the other massive rock formation that overlooked the city: Lion's Head, "the mountain that looks like a giant boob" (as Blogreader Liz described it). Jason at the hostel had done it the day before and told me the trail head was within walking distance, so I headed over through the streets of Cape Town. At one corner, I saw a vaguely familiar face from twelve years prior.

"Excuse me, is your name Juanita?"

"Yeah."

"From Teaneck?"

"Yeah."

I took my sunglasses off dramatically, like a state trooper that had just pulled over a car. "Erik Trinidad."

Juanita was in the grade above me at Teaneck High School, so we weren't super close. We had once worked on a project together in our school's "Simulated Office Environment," a sort of in-school internship in the workings of business with one of my favorite teachers, Mrs. Olzewski. Just like a real office, you could goof off, photocopy your face on the copier and sometimes take double lunches -- like I used to do with Blogreader Duaine. Anyway, I always remembered Juanita because she was my one example I always cited of an Irish-American with a Spanish name.

Juanita (last name, Foley) was with her friend Natasha from Mozambique and were waiting for their transport to the trail head of Table Mountain. The taxi came in about two minutes and so they rushed off.

"Leave me a message at the hostel," Juanita said.

"Alright."

I CONTINUED MY WAY towards Lion's Head, up the somewhat steep hills to the trail head. A couple that had just descended the mountain recommended that I take the other trail up as they did -- there were two near the parking lot.

Some parts of the trail weren't really marked clearly -- I just had to follow the clearing where it looked like someone else had been. The trail I soon realized, wasn't the official trail at all, but perhaps someone's short cut to the top, despite the warnings that "shortcuts cause erosion." I came to this conclusion when I got to a point where the path led me to the edge of a cliff of a Road Runner cartoon. I might have slipped on loose rocks and pulled a Wile E. Coyote if I hadn't grabbed onto branches to keep my balance.

Hanging out on a limb, I managed to find the obvious real path below, which I took all the way up to the summit. The rocky parts near the peak had chains and grips to climb up the bigger boulders, and suddenly my trips to indoor rock gyms back home with Blogreaders Cheryl and da Rzz paid off.

The view at the top of Lion's Head was pretty amazing. I sat for a while to rest and soak it all in (picture above): Camp's Bay, the Atlantic, Cape Town and Table Mountain, which was covered in clouds or, as some call it, the "table cloth." I wondered if Juanita and Natasha could even see anything from the top.

AFTER MY HIKE, I went to Juanita's hostel to find out. They hadn't arrived yet, but I waited around with their friends and dormmates, two guys they met in Mozambique in a diving instructor class. The guys were all excited when I told them Juanita and I were both alumni of the same high school, hoping to get some dirt from me, but were disappointed that I really didn't have any since she was in the grade above mine.

Juanita and Natasha eventually came back and we chatted for a bit -- they could barely see anything through the "table cloth" -- before I dashed off to meet Steph. I was to call Juanita on her cell phone to meet up with them later that night.

THERE WAS A GROUP OF TWENTYSOMETHINGS all wearing embarrassing "Rutgers" badges around their necks when I got to the Park Inn Hotel lobby, and I knew I had found the right place. They had just gotten back from a tour of the Cape Peninsula, which they went on straight from the airport since their flight was delayed. I found Steph and she introduced me to the Rutgers crew, including her professors. They all welcomed me into their group; I was alumni anyway.

Being with the Rutgers crew was like being on the first episode of any season of MTV's The Real World. Most of the students were from different classes and didn't know each other prior to the trip -- and most of them were traveling outside the U.S. for the first time. They were all fresh and naive about this new world -- this "real" world -- where just like on MTV, they got to stay in a really fancy place.

I joined them all for dinner, drinks and dancing on the waterfront and it continued to be just like that first episode of The Real World, when they all go out on the town their first night and look like a big group that obviously isn't from around those parts. I called Juanita and she told me that her group was going to postpone their night out until the next day, and so I remained in "The Real World: Cape Town."

The Rutgers cast, fresh off the plane, was already rambunctious -- boozing, calling their parents at home, mingling with locals, posing for photos, waking up the seals sleeping on the docks -- not necessarily in that order. Instead of a confessional room, they just came to me, the alumni, with their comments:

"I can't believe I'm in Africa."

"I can see that there's still some division in the races here."

"When I dance with my hands in the air, that means I want to fuck 'em!"

And so, my past lives of schools in New Jersey, U.S.A. had resurfaced in South Africa. As they say in Sopranoland, "Badda Bing!" but as they say in Disneyland, "It's a small world after all."

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