Last week was spring break, and a few housemates (Anna, Adriane, and John) and I took an epic 10-day road trip all around Namibia! We rented a trusty little Daihatsu Sirion (seriously, look it up. It’s about the size of a small Ikea dinner table and fits about as much as a small fish tank) and headed out on the open road with only maps and a few bags of groceries in tow… 

Day 1: Cape Town, South Africa to Ai-Ais Campground in Fish River Canyon, Namibia.  Left the cold, rainy, dreary drones of Cape Town and drove all the way up the N7 to the Namibian border.  After an 8+ hour drive, we made it to the border. Then we creeped along the gnarly dirt roads and sped our way over to Ai-Ais campground just after sunset to set up shop for the night.  This place was the perfect start to the week. We set up our tents, shared a nice meal at the campground restaurant (I ate ostrich!) and some wine, and then fell asleep gazing at the stars.

Day 2: Ai-Ais Campground to Betta, Namibia.  Drove along the scenic route of Fish River Canyon.  We saw SO many animals along the roads: cattle, goats, sheep, wild horses, springbok, monkeys, a puff adder…It was really fun to speed along the freeways—sometimes about 180 km/hr, or 112 mph, but most of those roads were TERRIBLE. I am still impressed that our little bumper car actually made it through the whole trip!  We decided to stop off at this campground in Betta because we couldn’t make it to our original destination before sunset.  We slept on this second-story deck thing and fell asleep looking at the Milky Way!….

Day 3: Betta Campground to Swakopmund.  We woke up SO early because these freaking cows and chickens wanted to have a late-night conversation that turned into an early-morning fight. Talk about having a cow. And it was FREEZING cold. So basically, we caught the sunset and got outta there as soon as possible.  We ate a quick lunch in Sesriem and then hiked the famous sand dunes of Soussosvlei. It was some of the hottest, reddest sand I’ve ever seen…and it gets EVERYWHERE… like, I still dump red sand out of my shoes when I go running, it’s ridiculous!  Once we got back on the road again, we crossed the worst dirt roads of the trip. Our car even spun out of control, picking up a huge dirt cloud on a thankfully empty road, but we were fine and just ambled along the rest of the huge mother-f*ing 4x4’s. (Note to self: next time I do a camping road trip, I’m getting one of those awesome 4x4s with a tent built into the roof rack so I don’t have to sleep on the hard ground and I can actually drive on dirt roads) We spent the entire first three days on the road, essentially in isolation from the rest of the human population, just the 4 of us in our little dusty toy car, and we finally made it to Walvis Bay just after sunset.  Once we filled up gas for the umpteenth time, we made our way across the bridge to Swakopmund…and got pulled over for not having a ZA sticker on the back of our car. SO lame. But I spent 40 minutes arguing with the power-tripping Namibian police officer…and after a stupid attempt at a “bribe” (seriously, message me if you want to hear this story…it’s really a great one) by one member of our group, I managed to fight our way out of this stupid ticket and we were off on our way.  We checked into our hostel in Swakopmund, our first big city since in Cape Town, ate a delicious dinner of hake and tater tots and some wine, took a deliciously warm shower, and finally slept in a bed (more of a thin futon mat on wooden slats…but it was still wonderful)

Day 4: Swakopmund.  We walked around the little downtown area of Swakopmund to run errands and hang out in the morning.  While Anna and Adriane went to explore town, including the panic-attack-inducing Snake Park, John and I went quad biking and sand boarding on the dunes! What a RUSH!! Just us, music on full blast, and pure adrenaline on the bikes and boards on the famously scenic Namibian dunes! So, the boarding wasn’t how I expected it to be, which was like snow boarding on sand. It was pretty much just laying on a really nicely polished piece of board and sliding face first down a huge mountain of sand. I tried to be cool and stand up a few times, but ate it really hard twice and came up a little worse for wear. We biked to the edge of the dunes where they meet the Indian Ocean—such an incredibly beautiful sight—and then made figure 8’s and did a bunch of crazy “tricks” in the sand before heading home.  We finally had some down time to chill, so we hung out around the hostel and then went to a nice Italian dinner in town before going to sleep early.

Day 5: Swakopmund to Spitzkoppe to Etosha National Park.  We made a longlonglong drive through the back roads, making a pit stop at Spitzkoppe to climb these huuugue rocks. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to take the tour to the famous cave paintings, but we met this awesome retired couple who’ve been camping and traveling for two months around southern Africa. What a dream!  We finally made it to Etosha just in time for the sunset, and it was not at all what I had expected.  This place was like a resort. We pitched our own tents, of course, but there were nice bathrooms with hot showers, really nice rooms with air conditioners and balconies, a restaurant with a gourmet buffet, a pool, and its very own watering hole.  Once we got settled in, we ate our scrappy dinner (chips and soda, pbj, and various unwashed veggies and fruits) and camped out at the watering hole watching all the animals bask in their glory.

Day 6: Etoshaaaaaaa! We woke up early and decided to take an epic drive throughout the park.  The sun was scorching and we ventured out during the middle of the day…and saw the entire cast of the Lion King. Seriously, elephants and giraffes on the side of the road, zebras and springbok surrounding our car, oryx and wildebeast, a leopard, snakes, rhinos, and even a lion sleeping off in the distance!  After hours in the hot sun, we got back to the camp and jumped into the pool….SO refreshing after a long day and no showering =]  We ate our standard, poor college student pbj/soda dinners, and then got ready for our night safari!…which turned out to be cold and pretty disappointing.  The light that our guide used to attract the animals broke, so we spent half an hour watching him fix it…and it was sooo cold I fell asleep…but we saw some lions and giraffe up front and personal, which was really cool.

Day 7: Etosha to Windhoek.  We finally said goodbye to the animal park and started the long trek home.  Thankfully, we reached a paved road…literally the only (main) paved road/highway in Namibia. I never thought I’d appreciate the beauty of a paved highway sososo much.  We finally made it to Windhoek, the capital, in the afternoon and walked around trying to find a tourist information center in order to find a hostel.  For some reason, they were closed at 4pm, so we went to an internet cafe and finally found an availability at a place called “The Cardboard Box”, which looked slightly better than an actual cardboard box.  One of my best memories of the trip was dinner that night. We went to this amazing place called Joe’s Beerhouse and feasted on a big, fat, well-deserved meal.  Newfavoritedrinkever: Beer Shandy (beer with lemonade…soosoogood, seriously, try it!) We started with potato wedges, then moved on to the main course (I tried ostrich, oryx, springbok, crocodile, zebra, etc), and then finished off with “treasure bags”, or apple pie deliciousness with ice cream. YUM! We went back and kicked it at the hostel, playing rummy until bedtime

Day 8: Windhoek to Ketsmanshoop. We woke up in the morning and wandered around the town for a little bit. There was an arts and crafts fair going on, but otherwise the city doesn’t have too much to offer, so we hopped in the car and veered south to our next destination.  We stopped somewhere along the way to get gas and hit up a little arts vendor station somewhere in the middle of nowhere, where I was offered a few marriage proposals in my attempt to pick up some souvenirs.  Apparently Namibians have never seen a Chinese/Chinese-American before….interesting.  Anyway, we drove a few more hours and then stopped at Ketsmanshoop to camp for the night.  We camped next to the Quiver Tree forest, which had a big collection of cute cheetahs to play with.  I was really excited for my last night of camping/sleeping on the ground.  We played rummy until well into the night and then fell asleep to the stars for the last time….

Day 9: Ketsmanshoop to Cape Town.  In the morning, we checked out this place called Giant’s Playground, which had a bunch of really huge rocks to climb on.  Other than that, it wasn’t much of an exciting ride, except that we very nearly ran out of gas and were preparing to have to push the car home…but we made it back just fine.

Day 10: Since we got back a day earlier than intended, we spent our free Sunday driving to Hermanus to watch whales. It’s really cool to see them jump and spout out of the water, and I’m impressed at how close they get to shore! The drive along the coast is probably the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, and definitely gives PCH a run for its money.

Overall, Spring Break was hectic and amazing.  I’ll post some pictures, and several updates, soon!

perfect weekend in mozambique

So…that may not be the most grammatically correct Portuguese phrase, but I was only there for 5 days, so bear with me. A few days ago, two friends and I went on an epic weekend trip to Mozambique!  We bought our tickets a few weeks ago, hastily planned out living arrangements, and had the best time living in paradise for a few days =] Let’s start from the beginning…

We were set to leave on Wednesday, and of course I had something due in every class and a bunch of errands to run before I left.  Basically, I had to write a paper for English, finish a lab report and homework assignment, and turn in another assignment, all on Tuesday…which was pretty difficult, since my computer crashed and I had to borrow and use the campus computers.  And, my house ran out of electricity and I had practically no clean laundry to pack….So stressful. But it all worked out just fine.

On Wednesday morning, we cabbed to the airport and caught our flight to Maputo, with a connector in Johannesburg.  I love that we get meals and snacks and drinks on every flight here =] South African Airlines knows what’s up! The travel time was easy, just 5 hours and we were in Maputo!  My (BEST)friend Maria’s sister lives in Maputo with her family, so we stayed with her for the weekend.  She came to pick us up from the airport and gave us a hasty tour of the city.  It’s generally pretty broken down looking and polluted with dirt sidewalks and reeeaaaallly dirty ocean water. Oh, and everyone speaks Portuguese, which made communication a little difficult, even though we knew Spanish from high school…but given that it was me, my white friend Julie, and my Indian friend Aneela, I’m pretty sure we stuck out like crazy. So, Teena and Dan, our hosts, live in this huge three-story duplex really close to the water and within walking distance of everything. We went to eat Thai food for dinner, and then got gelato and walked around Hotel Polana, the only 5-star hotel in Maputo, which looks like Caesar’s Palace but on the Indian Ocean, and then went home.

Thursday morning, we spent a decade at the bank trying to exchange money. Mozambique uses the meticals (1USD = 28 mets, 1 SA rand = 4 mets), so things were generally cheaper, but not by too much. We walked down the main street, Ave Julius Nyerere, along dirt roads past the President’s house (where the security guard told us we had to cross the street because people can’t walk in front of his house…strange) to grab breakfast.  We ate at this place called Cafe Sol—we were really excited for bagels with cream cheese, since we can’t really get that in Cape Town, but they ran out of cream cheese so we had bagels with jam. Delicious.  On our way out, this Australian woman offered to drive us down to the fish market.  We were a little sketched out at first because this random woman rolled down her window and told us to get in her car…but it’s okay, everything worked out really well. It’s awesome how nice strangers can be! Anyways, this fish market is famous and delicious, and one of those deals where there’s a bunch of seafood laying out on tables and people accosting you from all sides trying to get your business.  We walked in for two seconds before we realized we weren’t hungry yet, and then left to walk along the water and check out some stalls on the side of the road.  The beaches in Maputo are straight up gross..kind of like LA, but probably dirtier than Santa Monica. But the water is SO warm, and the shells are pretty!  I got a coconut for 80 cents and then bought a really cool wood carving of the Big Five and Africa (the big five animals: elephant, leopard, lion, buffalo, rhino) for my room.  Lunch at the Fish Market was a chaotic ordeal.  Julie and I ordered grilled prawns and grouper (a delicious fish that I’d never heard of) cooked with garlic in sauce with vegetable rice.  The wait took forever, and we were surrounded by vendors of all sorts trying to sell us everything from an iPhone 3GS to jewelery to roasted peanuts to wood carvings to posters of Jimi Hendrix…but the food was SOOOOO good. Hands down the best seafood I’ve ever had!  Later that night, we checked out the Maputo nightlife…which was surprisingly dead on a Thursday night.  First we went to Gil Vicente, a bar with live band that even charged a cover.  We expected something pretty poppin’, but there were only about 15 people total…including us, the bartenders, and the band.  Hilariously awkward to watch men and awkward couples dancing with each other.  Then, we tried our luck at Coconuts, the IT nightclub in Maputo.  But once we got there, it was not happening. We pulled up to a huge venue, and there were only about 30 people there, which would have been even more awkward for us, so we called it a night and saved our time and energy for the weekend.

We spent the rest of the weekend in Ponta D’Uoro, a beach resort three hours south of Maputo.  What an epic journey it was to even get there.  We woke up on Friday and checked out the Crafts Fair in the morning to buy some colourful tapestries for our rooms, and then packed up the car. It seems like everyone in Moz has an SUV, which made sense as we drove around (fun fact: they call them Landy Rovers, haha) We just caught the ferry to take us across the Maputo River, and then drove 3 hours on unpaved dirt roads to get to the beach house.  Seriously, this trip felt like a three-hour Indiana Jones ride.  I don’t even know how we found the place, because the GPS didn’t even have coordinates or the road marked.  We got to Ponta by sunset, and man, this house was incredible.  It’s a huge wooden structure built on big plank stilts with 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and  HUGE covered outdoor patio overlooking the ocean…with a private entrance down to the beach!  This place is my definition of perfection. Warm (almost bath-like, compared to the frigid waters of the Atlantic) water, sand as soft as powdered sugar, and practically no one around.  The weather wasn’t the best, as in no sun and some crazy rain storms, but it was still warm enough to wear shorts and a tank without a problem.

The people really made the trip awesome.  There was me, Aneela, and Julie, the college kids.  There was Teena and Dan and their three-year-old daughter, Saheli, the cutest little thing ever. They are both doctors who work in Maputo…talk about living the life, right?  There was Thandi and her two beautiful children, three and six years old. And there was Ansa (Antz?) who has a crazy life story and has climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro 9 times! Since we didn’t have cell phones or internet, it was really nice to spend time relaxing and reading and hanging out with such awesome people. They gave some great life advice—basically, live in the moment and love it…something I try really hard to ascribe to.

Anyways, on Saturday morning, we cooked breakfast—breakfast burritos!—and enjoyed them on the patio while we watched whales spouting in the distance and kite boarders along the shore. We checked out the beach and went seashell searching and laid out for a while without a worry in the world. I tried paddle boarding…and failed miserably. It’s so hard to balance and row with a one-sided paddle! So, I pretty much floated around for 2 hours until friends had to “save me”…but I would’ve made it back just fine.  While I was floating around, I saw dolphins and fish jumping out of the water!  And then we went back to the house to escape the rain and read and hang out.  Dinner that night was incredible—grilled steak, butternut squash, roasted garlic, chilli cous cous, and barracuda! Apparently barracuda is toxic in the States, but in Maputo, it’s freaking dericious =P

Sunday morning, I woke up to the sunrise and went running along the beach.  Then we packed up the car and made our way back to Maputo.  The ride back was bumpy—there were some mud puddles from the rain, and some cows obscuring the pathway, and the 4WD on the SUV was so clutch.  As we got back to the ferry, we realized we wouldn’t make it to the airport in time, so the three of us took a janky pedestrian motor boat back to shore and a ghetto cab (with cracks in all the windows, no handles to roll down the windows…but a SWEET sound system blasting R&B) to the airport and checked in just in time.

It was a bit sad to come back to the reality of Cape Town, but it was nice to come back to my new family back at Charlton House. My mind and soul are still sitting on the beach right now, but it was such an awesome trip with incredible people, food, and sights and sounds. <3 Mozambique

Sundowner on the Maputo River in Mozambique!

A few select pictures of my hike to Table Mountain. What a beautiful way to spend a lovely Sunday in Cape Town!

Today, I celebrated Women’s Day, a national self-explanatory South African holiday, by going cage shark diving with my lovely ladies from Berkeley!  To begin our day, we took a 2-hour bus ride to Gansbaai, South Africa with a huge group of international students.  After a brief introduction to the cage and diving basics, we climbed onto our boat, aptly named “The White Shark”, and headed out to sea.  The waters were rough and choppy, with swells of about 8-10 feet…high enough to throw us a few feet off our seats and give me some unexpected nausea.  After a 15 minute ride out to the cages, which were already set and anchored in an appropriate viewing area, we changed into wetsuits and started taking pictures while learning about the sharks’ habitats and whatnot. 

So let me try to describe the exhilaration of shark cage diving. Basically, you wear a wetsuit and a mask and hop into a cage that is tied to the side of the boat.  You float there in FREEZING water (about 11-12 degrees C, so roughly 50 degrees F…plus some gnarly wind) while the diving staff throw a tuna head speared onto a rope out into the ocean and wait for a shark to come and eat it.  It’s not scary, per se, but definitely a thrill of a lifetime!  We saw a good number of sharks, anywhere from 4-6, ranging from 2 to 4 meters!  The water was murky today, so some of my pictures didn’t come out, but I DID get to use my cool new underwater camera to take some awesome pictures of shark splashes =]   The crew that we went with had an excellent sense of humor and did a great job of attracting some MASSIVE sharks to our cage.  At one point, we had about two or three circling us, fighting for tuna, crashing against us.  Definitely the gnarliest adventure I’ve had in Cape Town so far!

To continue where I left of…

Last weekend, I went with a bunch of the international students to Mzoli’s, a hectic bbq joint in the middle of a township with a bunch of tents set up and a lot of people drinking and eating from bountiful tubs of smoked meat—ribs, chicken, sausages— with deep fried bread and this potato/flour-meal stuff.  Chaotic, but delicious!

School officially started last week, and I spent the majority of it running around campus getting signatures to add and drop classes, in order to configure a reasonably chill schedule.  I finally settled on an English class (first level literature and composition), Biochemistry (second level metabolism), and Chemistry (of health and disease, basically a second level drug design class).  The system is a bit different here, since the undergraduate degree is only 3 years, so I really should be taking three 3rd level or graduate courses.  Also, a 70% is considered an A with the UC system, but only 3 or 4 people in the class get such top marks a semester.  So, since I already finished my requirements for graduation, and I really don’t want to stress out and worry too much during my stay in Cape Town, the administration gave me permission to take under the required credit hours.  Now, I’m considered whether or not I want to take them P/NP.  Thoughts, anyone? Even though it’s a struggle continuing with ANOTHER semester of school and studying, when I could be playing or working, I’m really learning to appreciate a different system of education.  The classes are smaller, so there is more personalized attention, the books are cheaper, readers are free, and the people are so pretty (that has nothing to do with academics, but it’s a nice change from “Berkeley goggles”, right?) Also, I’ve realized that even though I really enjoy my classes, I spend most of the time being fascinated with my teachers’ accents rather than actually paying attention to what they try to say.  Good thing lectures are only 45 minutes! One of the greatest things about being an international student is getting to meet so many other people were are studying abroad this semester as well, or else just from around all of Southern African. I already have friends that are South African, Namibian, Mozambiquean, Zimbabwean, and it’s so fascinating talking to them about their cultures and diversifying myself beyond just Americans or people in my house.

So, in addition to school, I also signed up for cool clubs and societies.  I joined SHAWCO Health, a student health organization run through the UCT med school that visits townships and administers medical advice and help to the impoverished township communities in need.  It was a really eye-opening experience—jarring, to say the least—because I have never really been so immersed in such poverty.  I shadowed some med school students as they ran basic procedures on patients, and really got to see what life would be like as a doctor helping people in such need.  It’s what I would assume Doctors Without Borders would be, which I was always curious about, and as I continue to go weekly, I’ll post some select anecdotes on my experiences there.  Aside from that, I joined a Yoga (called the “art of living hatha yoga” society), the Mountain & Ski Club, and the gym. 

And, of course, I’ve still been going out as much as possible, to check out the famous Cape Town nightlife.  I went with my friends to this club in town called Zula to check out my friend’s band perform some sweet reggae music.  I also went to the Two Oceans Aquarium with my housemates, and saw an exhibit of Nemo’s, penguins, and sharks!  Speaking of which…I was supposed to go shark cage diving—where they boat you out into the middle of the ocean, stick you in a wetsuit in a cage, and draw sharks to the cage with steaks of tuna on the end of long poles (!!)—but it got postponed due to bad weather.  Instead, I went with some friends to the Stellenbosch Wine Festival (for those that went to the Eat Play Drink Beer Festival at Fort Mason in October, think that, but wine, and much drunker times =P).  Let me just tell you the struggle to even get in.  My friend drove us out there, and we stopped at this little farmers’ market/flea market thing for a little while to walk around.  By the time we parked and stood in line for about an hour, we were told that the festival was sold out…so, on the way back to the car, we stopped to help some guys move a car…by picking it up and turning it into the street…because the idiot who parked there, parked IN the through lane for the parking lot. Pictures are on Facebook!  Anyways, after that whole business, we ended up asking some people walking out from the festival for their wristbands and got in for free! What’s better than going to a wine festival at the famous Stellenbosch vineyards? Going for FREE! =]] Needless to say, I had a great time!  Then on Sunday, it was my friend’s birthday and we went to town to get half price sushi and to Camps Bay, a gorgeous beach, to celebrate.  I walked around along the seashore, for a while…but the Atlantic ocean is absolutely freezing, the sand is really soft, and the seashells are so pretty!

Anyways, here are some fun tidbits that I’ve learned since being here:

-Common slang: “oaks” means “people”, “brews” means bro/brother (here, it’s used very commonly as an endearing term, whereas in the states guys say “bro” waaay to often and have fratted all meaning), “jolling” means “party”

-Common burglary is normal, and people lock their individual rooms in their house, even if they only go downstairs to make a cup of tea or run to the bathroom

-Central heating and air conditioning does not exist, which will make it a bit nippy as “real winter” has hit Cape Town. They say that there are four seasons in a day, which I’ve definitely experienced. It can start out a little cold, then get really windy so your hair flies everywhere, then a little sprinkle, followed by a deluge, then sun. I brilliantly overlooked the fact that it is dead winter here and did not pack as many winter clothes as I would have liked, meaning it feels like I wear the same thing everyday and I’m even considering going to the mall to shop and get my hair done to keep up with the trendy people on campus (ha, I know some of you are getting a laugh out of that one =P)

-hookah here is called “hubbly bubbly” =]

-Internet and electricity are pay-as-you-go, which is expensive! Our house is working on getting uncapped internet, since pay-as-you-go is way expensive. I’ve been trying to stray away from using my computer as much as possible, but I’m still accessible by text, email or BBM. I’d love to hear how everyone at home is doing, so send me messages! Oh, and check out my pictures!

taking it all in at the top of devil’s peak

I’ve officially been living in Cape Town for a week now! It doesn’t really feel like I’m in Africa, since I live in a big city, but this past week has been full of crazy adventures and struggles.  Here’s a brief breakdown…

I’m living in Charlton House, a huge building that used to be a hotel and now houses 18 people from all over the States, Norway, Germany, and Holland.  The house is enormous and I have my own room with a queen size bed, my own bathroom, and my own balcony with an astounding view of Table Mountain, the iconic landmark of Cape Town.  The only thing is we have a to pay for internet and electricity.  Since there are so many people in such a big house, we blow through energy like it’s air.  In addition to that, the wiring of our house is all sorts of broken, so part of our house didn’t have electricity, part didn’t have hot water, and part got electrocuted when they took showers…but now it’s all fixed.   Internet here is a struggle as well. It’s a pay-as-you-go system, where we buy about 250 MB for 10 dollars, which makes Skyping, Youtubing, and Facebook soooo expensive! It’s pretty slow as well because I learned that the whole African continent depends on only two fiber optic cables.  So, I finally just decided to get a Blackberry so that I could get unlimited internet (you can add me on BBM or WhatsApp if you want, but I can’t promise that I’ll respond promptly)

I’ve spent the entire week getting acquainted with the city, my housemates, and other people in the program, and it’s been the vacation of a lifetime.  Last Sunday, all the IAPO (International Academic Programmes Office) took all the international students, about 400 of us, on a big bus tour of the peninsula.  We drove through downtown Cape Town, passed the Rugby and Soccer Stadium that hosted the World Cup last year, down Victoria Road (the South African equivalent to PCH) and along the Cape Town coastline, past a bunch of gorgeous beaches, bays, coves, etc.  The pictures I posted won’t do the actual thing justice, so maybe those of you reading this will just have to visit me to really appreciate the true beauty of this place!  We stopped at Boulders Beach to see the penguins—they’re SOOOO cute and just waddling along the shore and sleeping :) :) :) Then we stopped at Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope, the southwestern most tip of Africa, and took some  SWEET pictures of the beach and scenery.  We even saw ostriches and baboons along the way!

This week was orientation week, where we had to sit through a ton of boring lectures on safety and culture shock put on by the university.  The coolest part of it was this drum workshop where we all got to play on real African drums with this drum corps!  The most annoying process about registration here is that it’s entirely paper-based, where we have to get pre-approved for courses by UCT and have to run around campus getting signatures on a form for actual approval by faculty advisors.  I never thought I’d say this, but this really makes me appreciate Tele-Bears.  For now, I’m signed up for two bio classes, a South African literature class, and hopefully some sort of African culture class. 

The coolest part of my week was hiking to the tallest point in Cape Town, Devil’s Peak.  I fell sick the day before, but my housemate gave me this packet of miracle drugs, which I believe to be aspirin and vitamin c and magic, because I was completely fine the morning of the hike.  This hike was easily one of the tougher ones I’ve done, with some parts that were straight up rock climbing, for a total of about eight hours.  The scenery was breath-taking, absolutely beautiful and the view from the top was unparalleled by anything I’ve ever seen.  On Friday night, my house went out to Long Street, in the center of town, to go clubbing and dancing.  It’s so much fun hanging out with the international students and dancing with locals until the wee hours of the morning!  We only went to a few places, but it’s only the first week, so there’s plenty of time to hit up all the good places over the next five months.  Today, my housemates and I went to the Old Biscuit Mill, a huge farmer’s market with great food from all over the world.  We got there late, but I still got a cinnamon sugar crepe and took a shot of honey liquor in a chocolate shot glass!  It’s held every weekend, so I now know how I’m going to spend my Saturday mornings from here on out if I’m not out of town traveling.

I am undoubtedly falling in love with Cape Town.  The people are nice and beautiful, the environment is natural and pristine, the food is good, and the nightlife is awesome!  I can’t wait to go out and explore the historical parts of the city a little more.  I’m already planning to go shark cage diving and bungee jumping, and I’m hoping to go to Botswana/Zimbabwe/Zambia and Victoria Falls over Spring Break!

Cheers!