I Am Coming Back to South Africa, and Here's Why: (Part One)

They told us that we’d be getting into port earlier than scheduled. When I dragged myself up to the front of the ship, there was no land in front of us. For some reason, we circled around a couple times, and the land was currently in the back and off to the port (left) side of the ship. I waited in front for everyone else to run up and join me, and they did shortly thereafter. Pulling into port generally draws about the same size crowd. I’d put it at about 50 to 75. Nothing impressive, but considering the time, it actually is somewhat impressive.

As I’ve said before about each time that we pull into a port, it’s different every time and it keeps getting better and better. There’s no way that it can keep up, though. There’s no way. South Africa’s entrance will not be topped, in my personal opinion. If you’ve ever seen a photo of downtown Cape Town, you’ll notice something similar with Seattle. Seattle has Mt. Rainier in its skyline, but its miles away. Here, Cape Town sits at the base of an 1100 foot mountain called Table Mountain, because it’s flat on top and looks like a table. It’s right at the base of it, and then there’s the port. So as we sailed in from the sea, we were trying to figure out where the sunrise would come up, while trying to stay warm. The wind was blowing in Weather Channel-like gales. We had difficulty standing up. I half expected Jim Cantore to come around the corner in a hooded blue windbreaker with a microphone. And some people were still out there with sandals on. They couldn’t feel their feet after a while. I was very glad I decided to put two jackets on.

Anyway, next to Table Mountain is a smaller, but still substantially sized rocky mount called Lion’s Head. The sun came up in the little valley between Lion’s Head and Table Mountain, and it was pretty impressive, and it was the photo that concluded the previous blog posting.

Cape Town, South Africa

After the sunrise, all that happens is the navigation through the port and then the customs stuff, so it goes rapidly downhill from there. As a result, once breakfast opened at 7, there was a huge rush into the line. When I get to breakfast on normal class days, there’s no such thing as a line, and there’s hardly anybody there. The days we come into port, good luck finding a table. It was packed and they were not too quick on restocking after the trays became empty. Nobody in their right mind likes plain yogurt. It’s just not the way of the world. To add insult to injury, all the food we’ve eaten for the past week or so is from Brazil, because that’s where we last restocked, and their boxes of cereal are only one-third filled, the rest is just air. So when you think you’re getting a box of cereal, you’re just getting mostly air. And people like to have more than a couple bites for breakfast, so finding additional boxes of cereal isn’t always possible. I’m not stooping down to shredded wheat. I refuse.

By the end of breakfast, around 7:30, I’m still frozen inside from the frigid entrance to port, so I go back to bed for two reasons. First, I need the sleep, secondly, I want to warm up. I think I was in bed for a little over an hour, and I only warmed up in about the last ten or fifteen minutes of the nap, which means that I was a lot colder than I thought I was. I was very glad to have my body temperature back up.

I woke up when I did because we have the mandatory diplomatic briefing, which nobody was looking forward to, because of the memories we have of the one in Brazil (the one where the lady scared and deeply depressed us.) So needless to say, we were less than enthused when we had to drag ourselves upstairs. As a matter of fact, it was quite empty from where I watched the briefing; I’m guessing about half the ship was still back in their staterooms, either getting ready to leave or still trying to get out of bed.

Believe it or not, the briefing was rather entertaining. The saving grace was that it was a PowerPoint that was filled with Photoshopped pictures of kitties in various activities. We all said afterwards that we should get the diplomats to teach Global, because they were fun, and Global isn’t.

After the diplomats, we had about a half hour before the Premier of Cape Town (like their governor) came on the ship to speak to us. I went back down to the room to prepare to leave immediately after he finished speaking. That’s the plan because the line that forms is really quite long and slow moving to exit the ship. And we had to get off early because we were going to try to beat the crowd to Robben Island to get tickets to go out later in the day. So we had a tight schedule to adhere to.

So I thought the Premier of Cape Town would give us a wonderful little welcoming speech, similar to what the Governor of Puerto Rico did. As best as I can discern, we got a 25 minute lecture on Islam. I had a very difficult time trying to figure out the relationship between that and a ship of students arriving in Cape Town, South Africa. According to our Preports and Global class, Islam is not deeply rooted in the history of South Africa. We may have been taught incorrectly however, but there’s something digging in me that may suggest otherwise. Long story short, it was boring.

And once it ended it was like the start of the Belmont Stakes (not the Kentucky Derby, this day will be like a really, really long sprint) as everyone tried to get off the ship at once. We managed to get relatively close to the front of the ship, and it was only about 11 or a little after. Once we got off the ship, our group tried to navigate the streets of the Waterfront, which is difficult because we’ve never been here before. You’ll find that, in life, things are easier when you’re more familiar with them. It’s a pattern that I’ve noticed over the years.

Anyway, we find the Nelson Mandela Gateway to Robben Island in record time. We didn’t make a wrong move on the way there, and we’re relatively confident that we’re the first Semester at Sea people to make it here. So we get in line and try to get tickets for the 1 o’clock trip.

In order to properly set the stage for the remainder of this story, I need to tell a story from a previous trip that I’ve been on. My family and I went out to the Western US one Summer for vacation, with our first stop being in San Francisco. Being completely unfamiliar with the city, we had our first day empty so that we could do whatever we felt like doing. Obviously, one of the major attractions in San Francisco is Alcatraz, the former island prison. It’s a very popular tourist destination. So we get on line to get tickets, and they’re sold out for the next three days, and we’re in San Francisco for one, so that idea flew out the window right quick, and we never made it out to Alcatraz.

Returning back to Cape Town, as we stood in line, I was having flashbacks. We were going to a popular, touristy former prison island. I’ve done this once before. And the outcome was the same. They were booked for the next three days. Now I know what you’re thinking – we’re in South Africa for 7 days. Yes, but I have activities planned for the remainder of my time in South Africa. This is what we call a scheduling snafu. They’re rarely a good thing.

At this point, the group that we came over with starts to splinter rapidly, with people having other ideas and things to do for the rest of the day. Then I have an idea. There is a Semester at Sea trip to Robben Island leaving at 12:15, about a half hour from that point. In the past, if people don’t show up for their trip (a frequent event), they will have a stand-by section where people can buy onto the trip on the spot. This now becomes a mad dash back to the ship with myself and two other people who will try to do the same thing, and hopefully, all three of us will get tickets. It’s a big group of over 120, some people are bound to change their mind about going.

So we get back to the ship just as the last people are getting off to venture into Cape Town, and we reach the Union well ahead of anyone who’s actually going on the trip. And then we sit and wait. Groups were leaving once they reached 40, so I didn’t begin to panic once the first two groups left, because having over 40 people not show up would be quite out of the ordinary. I began to get a little tense once the 12:15 departure time rolled around, and they were still letting people on the trip. They’ve made it very clear that if you don’t show up by your departure time, you won’t make it on the trip. Why that didn’t apply on this trip remains a mystery to me.

Would you believe that the trip, which was oversold by three people, had 122 people show up to go on it? They had to turn two people with tickets away. What kind of luck is that? Not only was I not going on the trip, I wasn’t even close! So that was two strikes against me for my trip to Robben Island. I was down, but not out; and the gears in my head immediately started to go to work about other options to figure out based on my limited stay in Cape Town.

As always, you never operate without a backup plan, and Day One in Cape Town is no exception. The original, albeit ambitious plan, was to do Robben Island and Table Mountain in the same day. That now shifted to doing Table Mountain now, and worrying about the rest later. So my friend Jen and I departed the ship again and asked the security guy what the best way was to get to Table Mountain. He laughed and said, “Oh, you have to take a taxi! Hardy!”

The taxi driver’s name was Hardy, and before we had the opportunity to think twice, we were in a cab and on our way to Table Mountain. I don’t remember whether or not I’ve told you to do this yet, but do a quick search on Table Mountain on the internet and get a basic idea of the mountain and where it is in respect to Cape Town. The best I can describe it is that Table Mountain is almost on top of Cape Town because they’re so close. It’s very interesting and worth your reading.

Anyway, on the way up to the departure point for the mountain, Hardy asked us if we had any questions for him. He wasn’t the chattiest of guys, so this was kind of an odd proposition. I told him I had a cinema class and asked him what the movies were like in South Africa. His response: “Not that good.” I would have asked him to expand upon that, but I thought better of it.

Once we got to Table Mountain, we paid him and he drove off. The way Table Mountain works is that you have two ways to get to the top. You can hike a very steep cliff face, or take the cable car up. They say the hike takes a few hours and the wind and sun can make it quite difficult, and we really weren’t in the mood for strenuous activity yet, so we opted for the cable car option. At the point where we were on the mountain, we were a couple hundred feet up the gently sloping sides, right before it begins to go quite vertical. This is where the cable car departs from and takes you to the top.

We figured that it would be a better idea to hike down, so we buy a one-way ticket to the top. The lady behind the glass condescendingly wished us good luck with that. The cable cars are quite large and can hold about twenty people in them. I’ve had past experiences with cable cars and, while none are bad at all, I still don’t trust them. That’s an awful lot of weight to carry on such a thin cable, as well as a thin connection between the cable car and the cable. That seemed to be an engineering decision that I would have looked twice at.

So we get into the cable car, which I’m still not all too thrilled about, and I think it’s going to be a smooth ride up to the top without surprises. I was wrong. To give everyone inside a complete viewing experience, the interior of the cable car rotates. Yes, it rotates while you’re rapidly ascending, which to me sounds like it defies the laws of centripetal forces. So that was interesting.

When we get up to the top, you walk out of the cable car and you’re literally on top of a flat mountain, that’s why they call is Table Mountain (which you’d know already if you’d done your homework). The top of the mountain is pretty, but when you turn around and get the views of the city and surrounding Africa, that’s what’s really impressive and makes it worth your while. The views are second to none. We had the best day to be up there; not a cloud in the sky, the wind wasn’t too bad, it was spendictacular.

(There was supposed to be a photo of me on Table Mountain here, but the internet is so slow, and minutes on-line are so expensive, that you're just going to have to use your imagination for the time being.)

It was here that I figured out what to do with Robben Island. On Wednesday, my safari was due to be back around 1:3o, which should leave plenty of time to make it to the 5 o’clock departure later that afternoon. I was very happy at the thought, I just didn’t want to get my hopes up to only find out that there were no tickets for Wednesday afternoon. It was nearly a week away, that couldn’t possibly happen. As a result, I was very excited about my brainwave.

Because we got up so early and were running around so much, we decided that lunch would be a good idea. So we went to the restaurant on top of Table Mountain and grabbed lunch while we second-guessed our idea of walking back down the mountain. It would still take a few hours to do, which could encroach on the time we were supposed to meet other people for dinner. And because this was really our only free day in port, we wouldn’t be able to explore the Waterfront much. So we decided that a cable car ride back down would be a good idea.

And the same darn thing happened on the way down with the rotating cable car. It’s really a bad idea. There’s got to be a reason why I’ve never seen it before. Once we get to the bottom, we grab the first taxi driver in the queue and head back down to the ship. This taxi driver’s name was Gary, and we spent a good portion of the 20 minute ride figuring out how to pay him in US dollars. In South Africa now, there’s seven Rand to 1 dollar. Seven is not a good number to do math with, so the calculations take some time, but we figured it our before we arrived back and that’s all that really matters.

Now that we were back at the Waterfront, I rushed over and purchased my Robben Island ticket for Wednesday afternoon, which was a successful mission. For the remainder of most of the afternoon, we ducked in and out of some shops and the mall that sits right next to the ship, which was way too Americanized for my tastes. I felt like I was back in the states. That mall could fit in anywhere. The only store that suggested it was South Africa was the Pick n Pay, the local grocery store which didn’t really look like US grocery stores. It was too clean and bland-looking.

After our shopping adventures, which yielded a t-shirt for me, we went back to the ship and were able to relax for about an hour. I spent most of that time trying to check my Email. Usually in port the connection is faster and better, but it felt like it was slower here. And because we have to pay for our minutes, it gets kind of nerve racking when a page takes forever to load. We should be able to load Email without paying. If we want to go peruse other websites for leisure then go ahead and charge us, but when I waste 30 minutes checking Email which results in a message telling me that the Email server is down and I’ve wasted all that time, that’s not a good thing.

Jen and I met up with Elise and Bryan for dinner. While I was waiting for everyone to show up, I could see the people coming back on the ship. On our way out, we passed one girl that had two people helping her walk, and she still couldn’t put her two feet underneath her. She was loaded, and it was only 7 o’clock. There’s fifty steps before we even get on the ship, and I didn’t stick around to see how they were going to carry her on.

The hopping part of Cape Town is an area in the downtown called Long Street, because that’s the street’s name. We took a cab over to Long Street, and while the street initially seemed long, it was really no longer than the main street of my town. Well, the street was longer, but the hopping places only hopped for a short distance along Long Street, but it was long enough for our purposes.

Our initial goal was to find a place to eat. Simple enough. Then the struggle became finding a place to eat that everyone would agree on. I was keeping my mouth shut for the most part, but if we started to wander into the Baghdad Café, I was going to open it. We looked in just about every place as we made our way down Long Street, and as I could see that we were running out of street, I suggested that we try the place we just walked by, the Royale Café. It looked good enough for the locals because it was quite full of people not from Semester at Sea, yet looked reputable enough for us to enter anyway. So we decided to eat there.

They told us there would be a wait and we could wait in the bar if we wanted, which was upstairs, but you had to go two doors down to get there. Once we got up there, I wouldn’t call this place as much of a bar as I would a room of scary looking people. I didn’t even see a bar while we were up there. Thankfully the waitress came running up behind us to say that a table was ready. I think we were all kind of happy to not have to be the one to suggest finding somewhere else to wait.

When we sat down and looked through the menu, it would on first glance appear that this place was a burger joint, but when you looked at all the tables of the locals, they were eating their burgers with forks and knives because they were so gigantic. So I got a mozzarella burger, not really feeling adventurous enough for the ostrich, which some of our group decided to partake in. I also differed from my group in beverage selection. The three of them looked for a local beer of some sort to try. I ordered the ever exotic orange Fanta – and it was delicious.

The only thing about the restaurant I wasn’t thilled about was that we were sitting in the smoking section. It wasn’t that bad because we were near the door, but I still wasn’t all that pleased about that. Because of that, I let it slide that the lighting was so low that I could barely see what I was eating, which I’ll attribute to mood lighting as opposed to them not wanting us too actually see what we’re eating. Although if I was having ostrich, I don’t know if I’d want to see that.

So after we left the restaurant, it was a bit up in the air what we’d be doing the rest of the evening, and after we walked from one end of Long Street down to the other and then turned around and started heading back, still with no plan of what to do, I knew we’d be arguing shortly. And we were. There was actually a good argument going over what we should do. I stood back and laughed a bit until I couldn’t take it anymore and had an idea that most of the group would most likely go for. We happened to stop across the street from a hopping bar called the Long Street Café, so I said that we should just go in there. And we did, argument solved. I’m a regular Henry Kissinger.

Perhaps now you’re going to notice a pattern: the three others in the group had a beverage of alcoholic nature (an veritable assortment) and I had a chocolate cappuccino, which was really, really good. I mean, I’ve got to either find another one of those things, or quit them altogether right now. I can’t have middle ground with those puppies. Goodness gracious it was good. So we hung out at the bar for a while and watched some of the more inebriated Semester at Sea students give the states a bad name on the other side of the bar.

We enjoyed ourselves at the Long Street Café. As the night went on, and we kept looking at our watches, because most of us had trips that left sort of early in the morning, we decided to get going after everyone’s second round. My first chocolate cappuccino lasted for both rounds. I decided to nurse it so that I’d actually be able to go to bed by the time we got back to the ship.

We hailed a cab on Long Street and told him to take us back to the jetty we were at. He wasn’t familiar with it. We told him to go back to the big student ship that came in today. He didn’t know what we were talking about. When we were a few miles away, and we pointed to our ship, he didn’t know how to get there. He dropped us off a ten minute walk away, basically on the other side of the Waterfront, and we figured it was best to walk back as opposed to telling our taxi driver the directions in a city he’s supposed to be more familiar with. It wasn’t like there was a language barrier and he didn’t understand us. No, he spoke fine English, he just had no idea where he was, which makes me glad that we made it back safe and sound.

As we were walking through the Waterfront, which was nearly deserted, we passed by a Jazz Club/Bar that had music pouring out of it, so we went in, and stayed for another round of drinks. Well, they had another round of drinks, I was on water. Let’s recap: Fanta, Chocolate Cappuccino, and Water. Just to be clear. Supposedly, the Jazz Club we were in holds the Guinness World Record for most consecutive nights of live jazz performances in any jazz club in the world. I didn’t know this at the time of course, but it’s still a fun afterthought. It was also here that I realized that with my water, I had completed my first official “barhop.” I’m not sure how long it will be until the next one, but at least I’ll have one under the belt.

We left the bar when the music stopped and as we walked back to the ship, we found out where the vast majority of the students were hanging out. There was a Mexican-type restaurant literally a hundred feet away from the ship, and they have a specialty drink called a “fishbowl.” My nickname for it was the “giant bucket of mysterious clear liquids.” What everyone was drinking was a huge plastic bowl, I’m talking a sixteen inch diameter here, filled with alcohol. Not just any alcohol, but 10-12 different kinds of alcohol. And all clear stuff, too. It’s better for you than the darker stuff, at least that’s what Joe Namath’s doctor told him. Anyway, these people are all crowded around these huge bowls with their straws just going at it. There were tables of four or five people that had gone through 3 or 4 whole fishbowls by the time we went by, and that was just a while after midnight! What!? Where does it all go? On second thought, don’t answer that.

On the way back on the ship, the student life director, Beth, was in charge of all “events” for the evening, and when we boarded the ship, she was on a satellite phone with a semi-panicked look on her face. I didn’t bother to ask what was going on, because I’m sure I’d find out about it eventually. And I’d be willing to guess there was a fishbowl somewhere in the midst of things.

On my semi-early wake-up for day two in Africa (it was before 8, but the vast majority of the ship was still sleeping off their fishbowl hangover), I looked outside and said to myself, “Why, it looks like another beautiful day in Africa. This wet weather that I’ve heard incessantly about the previous day must not be coming anymore. I think I’ll just wear my t-shirt and shorts for the day. Yes, that will be sufficient.” Let’s keep this conversation to myself in mind over the course of the day. I’m going to be coming back to it.

Yesterday, I had a sore throat when I woke up. Today, I had sandpaper for a throat. That was a new feeling for me. I didn’t know that throats could get that sore. I don’t think that was natural. I must have inhaled some kind of corrosive in the middle of the night that would destroy my throat like that. It was one of those things where you wake up in the morning and you don’t even need to swallow to know that it’s bad. You just turn your head to the side and can feel it. That’s not fun, but I still had a cough drop lying around somewhere, so I made sure that was coming with me today.

After I had breakfast, I met up in the Union with my friends Brianne (I think I’m butchering her spelling) and Janet. Unlike most trips, this trip didn’t have a catchy title, but was instead thoughtfully titled Kirstenbosch/Groot Constantia/Seal Island. Doesn’t that just roll right off the tongue? I’ll explain the title as the day goes on. It’s a seven hour tour, so it’s most of the day. Almost all of the daylight. And we boarded the buses and were off.

Something that’s very interesting to read up on is the fauna and fynbos of South Africa. The world is divided into four or five or six plant kingdoms. Kingdoms where you’ll find similar climate and similar types of plants growing. The smallest of these kingdoms, which occupies just the southwest corner of South Africa, is where the National Botanical Gardens are. In short, this area has a myriad of plant species wholly indigenous to this corner of the world and nowhere else. I think orchids are originally from this kingdom if I’m not mistaken. Regardless, I’ve done a poor job describing it anyway, so if you’re interested, it’s definitely something to read up on.

Anyway, the botanical garden is named Kirstenbosch (one of the names in the above title). The gardens originated in 1895 when Cecil John Rhodes (of the scholarships) purchased the land to protect Table Mountain (where I was yesterday.) So I figured it would be a very pretty and relaxing morning. It was until it started to rain. Now, I’m an Earth Science guy, so if I knew where we were going, I would have brought a rain jacket. We were going on the windward side of Table Mountain, so as the warm air hits the mountain, it rapidly rises and condenses, usually resulting in rain. That’s why the gardens are where they are – because it rains a whole bunch.

It wasn’t raining that bad initially. When the buckets came down, our guide positioned us under the trees with the good canopies so that we’d stay dry. And all of this is going on in the beginning when my camera decided to run out of batteries. These alkalines are not doing the trick!

At one point, one of the trees we ran under was a fig tree. I guess some of the figs were open or cracked because when it rained down on us, it was like an orangeish-brown dye falling on us, and I had a white t-shirt on, so I noticed quickly. I didn’t really care, it’ll be one of my India shirts anyway.

What I found most interesting (and I know you were asking yourself, ‘But Jeff, what did you find most interesting?’) was the part of the gardens that had all the cycads. For some reason, I thought cycads were all extinct. I don’t think I’d ever seen a live cycad in a photo, usually they’re in drawing form, because they are phenomenal prehistoric, gigantic plants. They are very cool just because they are so out of place.

By the time the tour ended, we were all getting a little wet beyond our comfort, and just when we reached the awning covered entrance, they told us that lunch was a hundred meters behind us. So we ran through the rain into the restaurant to have lunch. And, to make a fun little side note, the ship was supposed to provide boxed lunches for us, and we had to pay for ourselves. Not that I’m complaining, I just found that to be a very interesting side note.

After lunch, we boarded the buses (after we found them – he was parked on the opposite side of the parking lot underneath a low hanging tree; we think he forgot that we were the ones getting wet, and that the bus didn’t need to be protected.) We drove through the picturesque landscapes of South Africa into wine country. There are five large wineries in the area that we were going into, the one we went to (if you remember from above) is the Groot Constantia Wine Estate. I think that winery has been there since the 17^th century, but I could be wrong. That’s something else that you can have fun researching! As we were going in, it was clear that the roads were not made for the big tour bus that we were coming in on. The branches kept sliding against the bus and didn’t sound like we were doing them any favors.

As I indicated earlier in a past post, I’m a Survivor fan, but I’m also an Amazing Race fan as well, and for the trip as a whole, I can get to more Amazing Race locations, just because there are hundreds to choose from. I had two locations I wanted to see while I was in South Africa. The second of which I’ll get to the next day. But the first one harkens back to Season Two, Leg 3 (I know that from memory, which is kind of scary). The Pit Stop was a manor house on a wine estate. I had a one in five chance of going to the right winery and then, because the estates are so large, I had to go to the part of the winery where the actual manor house is located. So I knew going in that odds were probably not in my favor, but that hasn’t stopped me from trying before.

So we arrive at what I believe to be the back entrance because, for a world class winery, it didn’t look like a world class parking lot. Then again, which ones do? We go inside and start the tour. They make you go on the tour before the wine tasting portion because they actually want you to go on the tour. Did you know that most wineries usually only use the barrels three times before they’re not used again? I guess they recycle them somehow, but that’s an awful lot of barrels to be barreling through. You can’t taste the wood that much, I mean come on.

They actually started us at the technical end of the tour, which was where all the barrels sit. It was a big room full of barrels, but there had to be some other rooms, because otherwise they won’t be churning out enough wine even for the tastings.

Then we moved on to how the turn the grapes into wine. It was almost fascinating. The woman giving the tour went on at length about how you don’t initially crush the grapes, you squeeze them just enough to allow some juice to come out. She loved talking about that. My mind had moved on shortly after that talk began. But it is quite the operation that they have going on there. Tens and tens of large steel drums where a variety of wine-making activity occurs. If you’re interested in how wine is made, please feel free to research it yourself. I honestly don’t remember much. They add yeast to it at some point, though. That’s about all I can help you out with.

After the lovely half-hour tour, the wine tasting portion began. Now, I don’t drink, but I didn’t travel all the way to South Africa to stare at five wine glasses. When am I going to be here again anytime soon? So we had two white wines, two red wines and I think the last one was a port, whatever the dessert wine is.

Before I continue, let’s review that I woke up in the morning with probably the worst sore throat I’ve ever had, and it wasn’t much better. Regardless, I’ll cut to the chase and just say that that wine tasted vile. If I want to sit around in the evening and sip wine, I don’t want to be drinking something that tastes like it was run through an effluent (ßmake sure you know the actual definition of that word) plant. I know it’s an acquired taste and you get used to it after a while, but maybe with the sore throat I had, it just felt like I was drinking battery acid, in what should have been some of the best wines in the world. If this is the good stuff, I don’t want to know what the bad stuff is.

Needless to say, I took a sip of each, and the rest of my table finished some of my glasses. After the tasting, hey told us that we had the opportunity to go over to the Manor House and go inside and walk around before we had to go back to the buses. On a nice day, I’m sure it’s beautiful. It was pouring rain, and the only thing that made me go over there to check it out was the fact that it was the Amazing Race Pit Stop. And believe it or not, it looked exactly like it did on television. Fancy that. So I ran over, and stood out in the rain getting photos of me in front of the manor, and then went inside and took a photo of the doorway they stood in (where the door was now closed) and got yelled at for taking photos indoors. I didn’t see a sign – although there probably was one.

Once we had to get going, we all went back to the buses, in the rain again. This was where I started to feel stupid. On the bus ride over to the last stop on our whirlwind tour, I found out that nobody else on the bus who was unprepared for the weather had gotten a weather forecast the day before. I did and completely ignored it based on how it looked in the morning. So they’re dumb for not bringing anything with them but they didn’t know, and I’m really dumb for knowing and not acknowledging.

The last stop on our tour is Seal Island. It’s basically a small group of rock outcrops barely out into the Atlantic Ocean where huge numbers of seals congregate. If you’d like to know more, as you should know by now, look it up. I guess we got to the dock early because they told us we had a half hour to shop until the boat departed. Up until this point, I had not gotten my mask for Africa. The great thing about getting something specific from each country is that when you get home, it’s really, really cool to have that stuff. But while I’m on the trip, there’s some pressure to be able to deliver. I can’t afford to not get one. Thankfully, I found a shop where I found my African mask.

I had always intended to get most of my collectible stuff in Africa, but everything in the shops we went to had stuff that was either way to expensive or too kitschy. You don’t want to fall into buying some kind of tourist trap item, because then when you come back you don’t feel like you have anything of meaning or substance. Maybe that’s just me, but that’s how I think.

The boat we boarded was called the Drumbeat II, which immediately begs the question, “Well, what happened to the Drumbeat I?” They never told us, and I just decided to call the boat the SS Minnow anyway. We had a professor on board with us, a lifelong learner to be Mrs. Howe, the skipper was driving, and I’m sure one of the girls could have stood in for the Maryann role. No Ginger or Mr. Howe, and I’m not sure who would have been Gilligan either…

By the time we left the dock, the rain had stopped for the moment, but the wind was whipping quite rapidly. It was a smooth ride initially, but that was because we were in the harbor. Once we got closer to the water, the movement of the boat made our ship back at port look like a smooth sailboat. Like idiots, we were standing up at the front of the boat, you know, so that we could feel the full effect of going over the top of a wave and diving down to the trough. I had to hold onto a handle on the side of the boat it was pitching so much. But it was really fun. We had some good waves and were going up and down enough to make anyone that gets mildly seasick into a basket case. I think the pitching is fun. It’s like a really unsafe ride, so I guess the danger factor comes into it, too.

Once we got around an outcrop, we could see the waves crashing into Seal Island. To give you an idea of the size and force of these waves, the seals had trouble staying on the rock. They were struggling to even get back on. But they’re water animals, so watching them flail in the water isn’t hurting them at all – until a wave crashes them against the rocks, then it stops being fun, but I didn’t see any of that, so they must be adept at avoiding that.

It’s actually quite impressive to see a huge, almost bizarre, number of seals sitting around so close to one another. It’s like that’s the only place they’re allowed to be, like they’ve been banished or exiled there, or something like that. As the boat was pivoting to point back in the direction we came and give us a better view, we got, what I would call, “too close.” When you look overboard and see rocky outcrop less than five feet away from your boat, you worry about slicing the hull open or running aground when a wave hits and sends you on the rocks. But I have nothing to do with driving the boat, so I kept taking photos of the seals.

After five or six minutes, they tell us to sit down because as we go back, they don’t want to lose anyone overboard, because the waves have grown. Fear is a funny thing sometime. Sitting back and examining the situation, I actually can’t figure out the degree of actual danger that we were in. I also couldn’t figure it out while I was on the boat going back, which was why I was hysterically laughing the whole way. The captain later told me that the waves were nine feet, but they felt a lot bigger than that. Sitting at the bow of the boat and having that freefalling sensation after going over the crest of a wave is something that everyone needs to experience. The feeling of freefall while on a boat is quite exhilarating, and apparently hysterical. If we weren’t holding on as tightly as we were, I guarantee someone goes overboard. It was that rough. I’ve never been in rougher waters in my life and I’ve been on some trips with good waves in my travels. It was the most fun that I have had in a really long time. And you can’t buy that trip again, that weather should have warranted us staying back in port, but for some reason, probably because we weren’t in the US, we went out, and made it back with all hands on deck, literally. I’d do it again in a heartbeat if I had the chance, and a life vest within reach. I’m sure there were some on the boat, they just never told us where they were.

The trip out to Seal Island was what turned a good trip, into a great trip. I loved Seal Island for reasons having nothing to do with seals. It was a great trip. Back at the dock, we were relieved to be back on dry land, until it started raining again. The fact that it didn’t rain on the boat ride was nothing short of miraculous.

It took an hour to get back to the ship, driving along the windy roads along the coast and looking at the highly expensive waterfront apartments. Those things can rival high-end US city prices in some spots. It was a lovely scenic drive and a nice way to end the day.

Back at the pier, I had two goals: I needed to buy lithium batteries and cough drops. The Victoria and Alfred (not Albert her husband, her son (I think) Alfred) Waterfront Shopping Mall should have had both of those items in easy to reach stores. I stopped into a drug store and a female attendant asked what I was looking for and after a bit of searching and explaining, we found the Halls cough drops. Throughout paying, she did nothing but insult me and men as a whole, and give me dirty looks, like she was trying to get a rise out of me. To be honest, I don’t remember exactly what she was saying, but it was the general stuff about men, and my inability to describe a cough drop to her earlier. Some people would have gone off, or left the store, but I wanted the cough drops badly, so I just went with whatever she was dishing out about me.

After being thoroughly insulted and humiliated, I went down to the Kodak store a few doors down and got four lithium batteries, figuring that if I like them, I can get some more. I was not insulted in the Kodak store, and was treated well, just in case you were wondering.

I wasn’t in the mood to venture out into the wild, wet yonder for dinner again, so I stayed in and ate with Rider (9 months old) and his mom, Shawn. He is a magnet of attention, and it was really fun to eat with them. At one point, Shawn had to run back to the room and left us with Rider, which is so nerve-racking in case something happens. But everything was fine for the three minutes she was gone, and all crises were averted.

Towards the end of dinner, I felt my face getting warm, like I was hot, but I didn’t think much of it and figured it would go away. Later in the evening, it was packing time for my safari, which left at the crack of dawn in the morning. It’s another early departure for one of my trips, but I didn’t come on this trip to sleep anyway.

I had to get up at 4 to get ready and call my friend McKenzie to make sure that she was up and getting ready to go on the trip as well. They told us that they’d have boxed breakfasts for us in the Union, so I got dressed, grabbed my backpack and headed down as soon as I could for our super early departure.

Once we got to the Union, a scene very similar to Brazil was present. It was full of drunks, most of which were coming on the trip. I’m not sure why the drunks who were not going on the trip were there at all, but that’s not for me to explain the actions of the drunks. They really shouldn’t let them on the trips. It’s not fair to us sober ones.

They like to be prompt on these trips, so that’s why we always leave late. And even with the late departure, we still had one person, assumed to be out drinking that didn’t make it back in time. How do you not make it back to leave on your safari you already paid for? I don’t know.

So we boarded the buses and headed out to lovely Cape Town International Airport as the sun rose over suburban South Africa. In most images and moving pictures that I’ve seen, international airports are usually really pretty and architecturally brilliant. I’ve yet to set foot in one of those yet. The airport was what I would call less than stunning and, in some senses, safe.

We have to go up to the ticket counter and get our boarding passes. We walk up under a kulula.com sign, and I figure that’s some company’s advertisement. Once they hand me our boarding pass, I find that that is actually the full name of the airline Semester at Sea put us on: “kulula.com.” I didn’t get the memo that asked us whether or not we wanted to be thrown on a discount airline or one that people have actually heard of. I would have picked an airline that I’d heard of. And you know that there were other options; Cape Town and Johannesburg have to be the two biggest hubs in the country, let alone Sub-Saharan Africa.

After we go through security and arrive at our gate, I can look off into the distance and see the kulula.com fleet. They’re painted bright green. Airplanes aren’t supposed to be fluorescent! Especially fluorescent green! That’s a sign of the apocalypse – fluorescent green airplanes. I was none too thrilled, to say the least.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog (and who knows why you wouldn’t be) you know that there are things that I like to do better than flying. The fact that I’d be flying in a bright green aircraft did not help to ease my pains. To get out to the aircraft, they had trams pull up to the gate and ship us over. They packed us in there like…something that gets packed tightly. I’d say sardines, but nobody buys sardines, or Japanese/Indian railcars, but then there’s no comparison because they’re basically the same thing.

Once they drop us off, and we board the airplane, it’s clear to me that another airline used this plane well over 15-20 years ago, and kulula.com bought it once they decided that they didn’t want their passengers to go on it anymore. There are no vents above each seat, the buttons above to call the flight attendant or turn on a light do not always work, the non-smoking sign is secondarily added at the front of the aircraft, and the seat are bright fluorescent green pleather (sign of the apocalypse.)

And I knew the adventure of a lifetime was only just beginning continuing when, once I sat down, the armrest of the chair in front of me fell off. And it wasn’t a random occurrence; they drove a screw through the back to fix it at least once before already. Aircraft should not be falling apart. And then, all of a sudden…

TO BE CONTINUED

Will I make it to Johannesburg? Will I become dehydrated? Will I be eaten by a lion? Will I even see a lion? Will I finally make it to Robben Island?

The answers to these questions (Yes, Yes, No, Well…, Define ‘make it’) and more will be answered in the thrilling conclusion to I Am Coming Back to Africa, and Here’s Why. Stay tuned!