Cape Town,
South Africa
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Katie left for her safari early this morning, and Becca and Matt had an afternoon of tours, so Lauren and I were left to our own devices. We'd planned to get up and see about getting out to the wine lands, but we both ended up sleeping in. She called me right as I woke up, around 11am. We showered quickly and agreed to just see what we could get ourselves into. I had shopping to do, and she was leaving for her safari on Monday morning and would only have Thursday to get the rest of the things she needed, so we started out with the idea of going shopping. However, as we got off the boat it started to downpour. I was only wearing a T-shirt and jeans so my entire shirt got soaked. Shopping for the day ended up consisting of a light wind breaker to keep me dry. Rain ruined the wine lands plan, but we went to the information desk to find out about booking one later in the week and found a great one for Thursday that would take us to five different wineries. We booked it, because what better way to spend the last day in South Africa than drinking wine, and asked for some ideas of things to do on a rainy day. The young guy who was helping us told us about a bar made entirely of ice. Thinking that sounded like a lot of fun, we decided to go grab some lunch and try it out. We ate lunch at Fish market, a fish and chips place right on the water, and had the greasiest meal I have ever ingested in my life. The calamari was absolutely amazing, long strips of squid with not a lot of batter but a ton of grease, but still delicious. The prawns were whole, so we had to pick the little bodies apart to get to the meat. I'd never done that before, and it was kind of fun. Luckily Becca wasn't with us because she hates seeing the eyeballs still on the shrimp, but Lauren and I took pictures throughout the whole process. The fish, hake, was good when I could pick it out of the fried coating, but the fries were the worst. I kid you not; they were 15% potato and 85% grease. To go along with our incredibly healthy meal, we each had a beer, which was a really bad idea. We thought we'd be adventurous and try a label we'd never heard of before, but the one I got made the fish taste fishier, so it wasn't at all a pleasant experience. After about two sips, I had to dump it. After a couple of fries too, Lauren and I started feeding the masses of gulls that were sitting on the deck where we were eating outside of the restaurant. Well, not intentionally anyway. A gull pooped on her and when she got up to get a napkin, they flocked to her plate. I'm not a fan of the birds so I was definitely the silly American girl with her arms waving around over her head trying to fight them off. But they're vultures and didn't really care that I wasn't enjoying their presence. They saw food, as if they hadn't been eating everyone's lunch all afternoon, and nothing was getting between them and their fifty-seventh snack. After lunch we made our way to the Ice Lounge, constructed in a big white tent right on the water. You walk into the tent and go to the left to get your ticket and this incredibly fashionable baby blue poncho with fur trim, but not gloves. I would have enjoyed the experience so much more if I would have had gloves because then I could have stayed in the ice lounge section for longer than ten minutes. One of the girls gave us a quick tour of the place and then left us to enjoy it on our own. It was really neat, with ice sculptures and an ice slide and ice curtains, and of course the entire bar, complete with barstools and ice buckets, carved out of ice. Typical of me I went picture crazy but Lauren went out outside to the bar at the other end of the tent, as they don't serve drinks inside. I headed out to meet her a few minutes later, but you have to go through the plastic curtains and a big door to keep the ice facility at the correct temperature. The door was heavy so I struggled with it for a few minutes and then tripped over the lip a little bit. So not only was I embarrassed about basically falling into the bar before I'd even had a drink, I was the only one wearing that silly poncho. Lauren was standing at the gift table just laughing at me, but also in her normal clothes. A few other seated people, who were also in regular clothes, looked up and chuckled at me. It was pretty funny, the big blue Eskimo tripping all over the place. I handed my poncho to an attendant, who told me I'd just get another one at the entrance if I wanted to go in again. My hands needed to thaw, so we decided to get a drink. We saw this woman with a chocolate milky colored drink poured over ice in a martini glass, so we decided to try that. It turned out to be an African liquor of coffee and exotic fruit, which tasted really good. It was almost like a fruitier chocolate martini, without the vodka. We sipped at those while we warmed up, then took our drinks back into the frozen lounge because when you're at an ice bar, you've got to drink your beverage in the actual ice bar! We made it about fifteen minutes this time. We set our drinks on the ice table next to the ice benches where we curled our feet up under our ponchos. I was okay because I had worn closed-toed shoes but Lauren was wearing flip-flops, and when she put them back on they had pretty much frozen from us walking around in the rain. She dared me to lick one of the sculptures because she thought it would be funny if my tongue froze to one of the sculptures, Dumb and Dumber style. Lick it I obviously did not, but I did touch it and it was amazing how it didn't even feel slippery or cold like ice, just cool glass. We took our final pictures and then spent the rest of the time hanging out at the outside bar and talking to the workers. One of them invited us back that evening and told us the two of us could get in for free since we'd already been there, and we agreed to try to make it after our evening of jazz we had planned. We did a little bit more shopping around the wharf before grabbing a quick bite of sushi, since it had been awhile since we'd had it and we were missing it immensely. By the time we finished, we were running a little bit late to meet Becca and Matt, so we hauled to get back to the ship but ended up meeting them in the line to get back on. We got ready quickly and headed to the Union to try to get Lauren a ticket for the SAS Jazz Safari. The three of us had our tickets already, but we figured if worst came to worst we would meet Lauren over on Long Street for the jazz festival that we assumed we were going to for the evening. However, she ended up snagging a ticket and thank goodness she did because we definitely didn't go to Long Street. First, we went to a warehouse on the other side of Cape Town to listen to two musicians play music for us. We arrived at this old brick building with no signs on it, a falling down wooden balcony, and a doorway with a door covered in graffiti. We went inside and the hallway was just a cement floor and bare wooden walls, and at this point we didn't have a clue what we were getting ourselves into. But we walked through another door into a large room with chairs set up in front of a piano and two young men sitting on a stage. Our tour guide proceeded to introduce us to these two musicians before they started to play the piano, bass, and saxophone for the next hour. I'd heard jazz before, but I'd never really gotten into it, but when you're sitting with the musicians five, ten feet in front of you, watching their eyes close, their mouths open, their cheeks crinkle, and their bodies sway limply over their instruments because they get so into their music, it's hard not to have an appreciation for it. After fifteen minutes, I'd completely fallen in love with jazz. There is something so sensual about it. It's something the musicians and the audience can get into, really feel it as you go through the music. I loved the pieces that would start out slow, build and build and build until the pianist's fingers were moving a mile a minute and all of us in the audience were all shaking our heads and pounding our feet on the floor with the beat before it would just slow down again, but not end. It builds in you and you feel it, you clench your fists and your breathing comes in sharp, quick breaths because you just want it to peak so you can relax but at the same time its so intensely wonderful you could enjoy it for hours. It reminded me of running, how you'd get to the point of exhaustion and just want to reach the end but your body has just gotten so accustomed to moving that way so that you're moving like a robot but you can feel the ache of the activity from the pounding in your chest. You want it to end but by this point you're so accustomed to it that you could just keep on going, but when it does stop it's such a rush, a wave of excitement and a release of energy. I just loved it. They couldn't have played long enough for me. We had the opportunity to ask them questions after they finished their set, and we learned that they'd both gotten involved through church. They both were discovered at church and started playing together that way, and as they improved their names got out into the music world, now so that they're playing with Robby Jansen, the Godfather of Jazz, and other famous musicians, and they're only nineteen and twenty. After talking to us for a few minutes, we had to be on our way to our next stop which, consequently, was Robby Jansen's home for dinner. To think that waiting in the Union, all of us students were standing around discussing how we'd been ripped off because we'd paid fifty bucks for a ride to Long Street for the jazz festival that we could have paid ten bucks for on our own. How wrong we were. A wonderful night of intimate, live jazz and dinner with one of South Africa's most famous jazz musicians. I couldn't believe it. Even the professor who was facilitating this trip didn't know what to expect with the ternary. All she knew was that it involved listening to different kinds of jazz. And then we find ourselves at the home of Robby Jansen, sitting at his table while his wife and family served us home-cooked chicken curry and potatoes with rice, as we listened to his jazz on the stereo. He told us stories of how he had disappointed his father when he told him he wanted to be a musician, especially in the days of apartheid when he needed to have a real career that would provide him with the means to make a living. However, he pursued his dream and made an international name for himself. He also told us the story of how he met our guide for the first time. At that time, our guide had been working as a journalist and had gone to his house with a partner to interview him. Robby explained how he asked our guide if he had a gift for Robby, since he wasn't going to be benefiting from providing the story, and our guide would get the monetary gain from it. Therefore, he expected a gift. Our guide, however, being new and never having met Robby before, had nothing for him but asked for the interview anyway. Robby, a little miffed but being a gentleman, invited the two in for the interview that ended up lasting for three hours. The two have been friends ever since, and that's how we SAS kids got to have dinner with him in his home. His daughter was helping serve us as well, and after we ate she sat down in a chair next to me, and I apologized to her for not bringing anything to thank them. I had felt so bad, the first story he told us was one in which he had expected a gift from visitors, and here we had all come, empty handed. She assured me, however, that our presence was gift enough. These people, the culture, is just so incredibly welcoming and grateful. They were the ones who invited fifteen strangers into their modest home, who made an incredible meal for us, and completely catered to us. It was another holy shit moment, that I'm actually doing this thing. I'm going around the world, into people's homes and talking to them. Not only that, but this time I was in South Africa eating in the home of the Godfather of Jazz and listening to him play his saxophone after our meal. I really don't think all of this is going to really sink in until after I get home and can look back on it all. I'm having the time of my life now as it is, but sometimes it's all such a blur. From one experience to the next, can it really be happening? Seriously, someone tell me that I'm not just having the longest dream in history and that's all real. But it is. All too quickly our evening with Robby and family was over, and we drove back to the ship. It was almost midnight by this point and we were tired but not enough to go back to bed, so we wandered around the wharf trying to find a bar to go hang out in, but everything was closing up. We were too tired to go out to Long Street, and I had a township tour early the next morning, so we stopped in the only place that was open, KFC, for a quick dessert before going back to bed. Katie will be glad to know when she comes back that she was missed. It's so quiet in the room without her. As small as it is, without her around it gets lonely. I'm already starting to wonder what I'm going to do without her and Lauren when we get to San Diego in May. Thank goodness they're in San Diego, so it will be easy for me to visit them. When you travel around the world with people, you tend to bond on a whole new level. Regardless, it's too soon to start thinking about the end, because, after all, we're only at our third stop!
