You do what?!

The next morning we woke up early to make the long trek back to Cape Town. Before we left, our guide showed us his collection of poisonous snakes, located in his garage next to our lodges. He had over one hundred snakes held in cages or tupperware containers lining the floor and walls of the building. He also had thrown in there, giant scorpions, tarantulas, and other creepy insects. At one point, after showing us a scorpion, he dropped it and it got loose in the garage. After that, I decided it was a good time to leave. We spent the rest of the day hopping from buses to airplanes, to more buses. I got back to the ship later that evening, and I went out to dinner and then bar hopped with other semester at sea students. Rugby and soccer played on tv’s in each corner of the bars, getting everyone riled up for the 2010 World Cup being held in South Africa in June.

This is the mascot for the World Cup.


The next day we had planned to go great white shark diving, but due to rough seas our trip got canceled. At 4:45am I got a call from Jason asking if I still wanted to go because his roommate had two open spots on his trip. I magically got ready in five minutes and was out the door, ecstatic that I would still get my chance to shark dive. My enthusiasm was soon ripped out beneath me when we got to the bus and two other people had somehow gotten there before us to fill the open seats (I was in a minor state of depression for the rest of the day, until I heard that after driving two hours to the shark diving location and getting suited up, their trip ended up getting canceled too). Wide awake at 5:00am, Jason and I walked the deserted harbor for an hour until we finally realized nothing was open and our searching for something to do was pointless. After sleeping for a couple hours, we set out again and decided to get a cab to take us to the Cape of Good Hope. We took the most beautiful drive that winds along mountains overlooking the coast of Cape Town. We made a quick stop at an ostrich farm before finally arriving at Table Mountain National Park. It is commonly thought that the Cape of Good Hope is the most southern tip of Africa, but this is a misconception. The most southern tip is about 90 miles away, but that fact doesn’t take away from the impressiveness of the sight. As usual with anything this amazing, I’ll let the pictures do the talking.



Chapman's Peak, a scenic stop along the route to Cape of Good Hope




Cape of Good Hope:




I'm approximately 12000km from home!


After we left the Cape, we ventured a few miles away to see the famous wild African penguins that reside on the beaches of South Africa. They were absolutely ADORABLE. They also were pretty domesticated, letting us get close enough to pet them, as you can see by the picture below.







I trudged back on the boat downhearted to leave such an amazing place. I urge everyone reading this to plan his/her next trip to South Africa. I know it is the first place I want to go back to out of all the countries I have been to so far.

Annecdote
4/5/2010: After our couple hours of sleep, Jason and I got off the boat and searched for a taxi driver. In our state of delirium from lack of sleep, we went with the first guy we saw holding up a looseleaf sheet of paper with Cape of Good Hope tours scribbled on it in pen. This should have been our first sign. Our second sign should have been when we walked to his “taxi” and got in a 1980 dented up kia with no door handle and missing seat belts. I was a little disconcerted at this point, but decided to disregard it, as Jason was happily talking up a storm in the front seat with the driver. As we made our way to the Cape of Good Hope, our driver started talking about the really rich houses along the coast and the wealthy people that live there. He told us how they do tons of illegal drugs and have orgies on the weekends. I awkwardly laughed and was really regretting getting in the cab. When he went on to tell us that he trafficked coke for the guys, I decided it was time to pull over. I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t make taxi driver decisions in a foreign country after going on 4 hours of sleep.