Blog #28 – Full Day Cape Town

This was our second full day in Cape Town and we meant to make the most of it. That included getting up early. I knew that we must have actually been up quite early when the man working at the hostel saw us, looked at us all ready to go for the day and said, “man, you guys get going early?!”

We took a taxi down to the waterfront. The harbour is a beautiful place and it goes on for quite a distance. There are sorts of different attractions to see with places to eat and shop at along the way. This morning we were going to the Two Ocean Aquarium, one of the best in the world! The very first tank that we saw – the acclimatization tank – was stunning. There were all sorts of fish, big and small, normal and odd shaped, colourful and shiny. It was going to be a good morning. We walked through the different exhibits stopping to peer glowingly into the tanks right next to all of the eight year-old children that were there as well. Who said aquariums aren’t for grown-ups? Hey! Who said we were grown-ups?!

My favourite things by far were the jellyfish – those things are wicked! They were in a unlit tank and were just these bright blow glowing globs. You could almost see right through them! Their structure was so different from our own, but they were still very much alive and responsive, so cool! There was so much neat other stuff as well – camouflaging fish, crustaceans of all kinds, seahorses, sharks, sting-rays and more. It really was a fully stocked aquarium.

We spent some time at the touching pool. This was really neat – and they let you touch and play with different seaweeds, anemones and even starfish (but you had to be gentle). It is so neat how much unique life, or just life in general in under the water. Renne was right when she said the ocean was like a rainforest.

We then proceeded upstairs to the second level. Here they had different kinds of birds and penguins! Watching the penguins was fun – they are odd little creatures with very flamboyant personalities. It is so odd to see them waddling around on ground without arms or hands. They were busy making nests and hatching eggs, which is cool. We came back to see them get fed later. They did really eat much of the food given to them, they would just taste it, and then spit it out for later. It is weird how little water space they have to live in considering that is where they are at their best. However, these penguins were born and bed in captivity, so perhaps they just never knew better. Interestingly they didn’t have any instinctual fear of humans, which made them so easy to watch and see.

After that we went to go see the MASSIVE kelp forest. It was a huge tank that was undergoing a lot of different processes to make sure the temperature, gas levels and salinity were optimal for growth and maintenance. They pump in water straight from the ocean to fed the tank, which is pretty cool, and the selection of fish and sharks that lived in there was pretty neat too. There is something captivating about sitting in front of a luminescent tank that is fifteen feet high hand fifteen feet wide.

After that there was only one more exhibit – the sharks! Interestingly none of us were that interested or amazed by it. The sharks we saw yesterday were much larger and more ferocious looking, not to mention in their natural habitat. However, they exhibit also contained a lot of documentation and media around shark awareness; that nine people died from sharks last year, but over three hundred from kite accidents. They aquarium has started this large initiative to help draw attention to the fact that viewing sharks as these massive killers is wrong and that the black market for shark, especially their fins, is cruel and unjustifiable. I would completely agree after seeing in the wild – they truly are magnificent creatures.

All in all I can see why Finding Nemo, Shark Tale and Happy Feat are so popular, clown fish, sharks and penguins are radical!

After the aquarium we headed out to this warehouse flea market for different kinds of traditional artwork and souvenirs. We didn’t spend too long here, just enough time for me to pick up some ostrich bone engraved salt and pepper shakers – which are pretty cool – and to try some ginger fudge, which was also delicious. After grabbing a quick lunch we grabbed a taxi and headed to District 6.

We had just over an hour at the District Six museum, but we could have spent a little bit more. District 6 was one of the largest sites where the local coloured inhabitants were forced to pack up and leave their homes. They were relocated from this fairly central part of the city into outlying communities. The museum was a testament to all of the families that were relocated. We are talking about many city blocks and ten, if not hundreds, of thousands of people. All moved because of the colour of their skin, to make way for development and homes and neighbourhoods of white people.

It was a very emotional place that balanced well between factual history and documentation and then a lot of personal stories and collections. It was able to capture the incident in both a large context of the culture and politics, but also on the level of individual children and families. Interestingly the museum does a lot of work in the community to educate people (and government) about justice, fairness and the atrocities that occurred. But it was also as much about rebuilding the community and giving tutelage to all of the families and rebuilding what was lost.

Then we had to boot it back to the hostel. We had arranged for a group shuttle from the hostel to the stadium. We were going to watch a rugby game between the defending world champions, the South African Springboks, versus Italy. Everyone knew going in that the game was going to be one-sided, but we were excited nonetheless.

This was definitely an important sporting event for the community. The traffic on the way there came to a standstill while we were still a good ten minutes away. Once we got out of the car we started the trek into the stadium with hordes of people. There were people selling all forms of Springbok paraphernalia and the inevitable street meat vendors. There must have been thousands of people coming to see the game. We were sitting in pretty good seats, that were a few rows up just off of centre field. The weather was a little bit funky and it would sporadically start to shower and then stop, so we retreated up a few more rows to sit just under the protection of the cover. It definitely was no sky dome, but it sat a lot of excited passionate fans on both sides of the game.

The rugby game was pretty exciting and I think I finally fully understand the game now too. There was some beautiful plays, mostly by the South Africans, and they ended up winning by at least thirty points. We also some one major hit that probably came close to paralyzing the player. It is amazing at how little protection these players have compared to hockey and football. Good news is, everyone recovered and it was a super fun game to watch.

We took our shuttle back to the hostel and cleaned up for dinner. We were going to a seafood restaurant on the waterfront that came on high recommend from a local Cape Town resident that Renne and Cait flew with. It was a delicious meal, and I ate enough for two people, haha, but there is definitely nowhere in Maun that you can get anything remotely similar to all of the fresh seafood they had – so I had to take advantage of it now. The other really nice thing about eating out at this fancy restaurant, was that given the exchange rate of South African Rand, which is 8 ZAR: 1 CAD, everything was ridiculously well priced and affordable.

This was the last dinner that I would have with Renne and Caitlin – and the last time that I ate with any Guelphites. It was odd that I had been here for a month already and had still been able to be in close contact with U of G students, but also, that after a month here with all these people, I still had two left without them. We had a nice long dinner, with great service, food and company. We sampled some delicious South African wines, We spent the early part of the evening just chatting it away. Finally we ordered some desserts – and decided to split them all between us. We had the courage to try, for the fourth or fifth time, cheesecake (which here in Africa is NOT like it is at home!) and after that I made up my mind that I would make my own cheesecake once I got back to Botswana!

We eventually headed back to the hostel. We got back and the place was a buzz! It was as if everyone that was staying there was down in the lounge area or by the bar. The troop of everyone was heading out to the bars right then – along with all of the staff. We convinced them to give us ten minutes to change and get ready and then we joined back up.

Our group was about a dozen large and we hit the town with high energy and expectations of a fun evening. We were heading to Zulu, which wasn’t too far away. A modern punk rock band called the Rag Dolls was playing – their stamp took days to come off! – the place was a little full with people just dancing, swaying and hanging out. We had some G&Ts here and sat for a while listening. We decided we were looking for less punk and more dance and headed up into the streets looking for another place.

After walking around for a while we quickly decided to try Fiction out. Yes, that was the name of the bar, haha. It wasn’t a huge bar, but it had some live music. The dance floor was packed full, so we danced on the outskirts for a little bit. The one thing that really bothered me about the bars here were that people would just light up a cigarette while they were standing right next to you. It smelled awful, tasted worse and gave this ominous haze to the place. We sat there for a while chatting about stuff, the trying to dance and finally just ordering some drinks. Once those were done we decided to find a place with less smoke and more fun :)

There were only three of us left by this point – Sarah, Cait and myself. We decided to take a bit of a walk again and ended up trying out a place called The Bronx – which I promise you was not nearly as dangerous as NYC…not that I know, haha! Anyways, it was packed full of people as well. However, we did manage to find a considerable amount of space to dance up on the dance floor off to the side. The key is just using my height and other people’s elbows ;) We spent the rest of the night here as they were playing way better music and the atmosphere was much more fun. It seems like third time is a charm!

It was a good night of dancing and partying! By the time we made it back to the hostel we jumped into bed! It was both chilly and late – and as tomorrow was our last day we were going to get a good start on it bright and early!