July 5th – Cape town, South Africa
Today was my last full day in Cape town. My stay would be short and sweet, and I wish I had more time, better weather and more nights to experience the great night life that Cape Town has to offer. Anyway I got up to my wrist watch alarm at 730am, and called the Robben Island place. I didn’t get through for about 20 minutes and then was told to call back at 815am to see what the situation was. When I called back I was informed that the trips were canceled due to the wind and weather. Oh well. I won’t get to see where Nelson Mandela was kept in jail, I was upset for a brief moment and then thought to myself, “I get to drink wine all day, yay.” I took a long awaited shower after picking up supplies with Rusty at the mall. I was currently out of a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, shampoo and deodorant so I was smelling grrrrreat. I jumped in the shower, woke up Dana and Rusty to tell them that the wine tour was on and got ready to go.
We left at 915am and picked up a bunch of people. I think the tour had 16 total. It was us five from the hostel, 6 irish kids traveling together and two other couples from random hostels. Our driver and guide was named Stephen and he was cool. When we got to our first winery it was before 11am and I had six tastings! He gave us a mini crash course in tasting wine and the basics, which I found really helpful and then we were on our own. I am not going to go through all the wines I had, but after the wine tasting this particular winery had amazing cheese. Soft cheese, gouda (goat cheese?), and cheese with cranberries mixed in and all this wonderful cheese. Now I’m by no means a huge cheese fan, but it was darn good.
Overall the wineries were great. We went to five in all, and in one of them stopped to eat a decent lunch. I was craving food by the time lunch rolled around so I was thankful for the food. The last winery we went to called Spier had a cheetah rehabilitation center as well as an eagle one. I paid to get in to both and actually had the chance to hold a huge live eagle! It was great. I snapped several photos and then went to the place to have my final wine tasting. I think in all I had roughly 25 tastings. They glasses were small so it wasn’t that much alcohol don’t worry gang. During the trips to the different wineries our driver played like dance music and music to keep us awake and having a good time, which we all had. We got back to Cape Town at around 5pm or later. I played some pool with Gile and then Rusty and I went to a sandwich shop for dinner. I had a tuna melt and he had a soup and sandwich combo. It was a healthy, organic type food shop and it was good. We came back and then I started to update my blog which is what I am doing now. I will probably play some more pool, pack up my stuff and then maybe go out for a big night. I can always try to sleep on the bus tomorrow and anyway I haven’t had a big night out since Mumbai. Also I want to tell everyone that updating my blog will probably be very scarce the rest of my trip. I will be keeping a journal by hand that my mom scrapbooked for me and will update it when I can. Realistically when I get back to Jo’burg and have sometime there I’ll find an internet shop and try to update the camping trip in groups of 4-5 days at a time. As everyone knows these entries take my awhile so hang in there and at the very least it will be updated when I get back home in August.
Anyway after I relaxed a bit from the wine tour, a bunch of us hung out at the Hostel bar. I played ping pong with David, Pedro and then Gyle. I beat them all of course. My game with Pedro was intense. Pedro is awesome, he is 26 and from Rio de Janiero, Brasil and plays poker for a living. He basically can travel wherever he wants and as long as he can find wireless internet for his laptop he is set. We all had a few drinks, I didn’t really have much myself as I was really full from the tour. I gathered everyone and convinced a bunch of us to head out to the famous Long Street. Long Street in Cape town is basically like a Bourbon street in New Orleans (from what I hear, never been there) or other big cities with a strip of clubs, bars and hostels. That is what long street here is. We started at an Irish pub called Dubliner’s and I had to catch up with my drinking from everyone else. I had a beer, then started drinking a hard cider called Savanna. It is native to South Africa and basically I used to drink it in college until they stopped importing it to America. When I saw it for the first time I had to email my friend Grossman to find out if this was one, which in fact it was! I was in heaven as it is so good and I love it. Dubliner’s was nice but really crowded and not really my scene. It had a decent live band and husband and wife duo that sang pretty famous songs ranging in year and genre.
At around 130am or so, we left Dubliner’s and headed to a “club” called Jo’burg that was suggested by Pedro. Being from Rio I figured I would trust his judgment in picking a club, since there are so many in Cape Town. Well his judgment sucked, the place wasn’t very nice and at around 330am I left with Rusty. We went next door to a place that had Mediterranean food. I got a beef sharwarma in a pita. It was NOT as good as the Middle East I can tell you that, and the next morning I was definitely feeling it. After we scarfed down our food we had to bargain for a taxi which I managed to do a little bit. Since it is late it is hard to get a driver to turn on the meter. Lots of people, late at night, equals a bad combo for us. I definitely could have harassed several more drivers but Rusty wanted to get home so I settled on one of the first driver’s we bargained with.
We got back pretty late, and I had to wake up at 7am to leave the hostel and head to the departure point for my overland tour…or so I thought?
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Josh
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