Hanging in Capetown
Trip Start
Jan 04, 2008
1
4
23
Trip End
Jan 31, 2008
Cape Town,
South Africa
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Unfortunately, it was a bumpy for most of the flight, so I didn't get much sleep. At one point, things were going smooth, so I got up to go pee. As luck would have it, the plane hit turbulence and I made quite a mess. Oopse.
Arriving into Cape Town was a lot easier than I thought it would be. It seems to be a bright modern city. Actually, as far as culture shock, I would have to say its next to nothing. The city itself is very "English" in nature, with clean wide streets and easy to read road signs. I know that it will be less western as I move along in my adventure
Bo-Kapp
. The weather is surprisingly cool (I think about 22 degrees) and it was even raining for a while. I would never think I was in Africa! At least I can sing that 80's song about "Touching the rain down in Africa".
Once I arrived at my hostel, I took a quick shower and set out to explore the city. The rain stopped and sun was threatening to show. I set out to the waterfront that has the typical collection of tourist traps. Its very pretty and the traditional African performers were amusing to watch.
From there I proceeded to walk up a seemly endless hill to check out the Bo-Kapp District. This area is very similar to La Boca in Buenos Aries in that the residents paint their houses in bright colours. There are several interesting shops including Monkey Bizz which sells dolls crafted out of beads by people living in the Townships. I will stop back here on my way back to pick up one of these dolls. They are the "must have" souvenirs from Cape Town.
The rest of my day consisted of wandering about the city and exploring
Capetown
. Somehow I managed to get a sunburn, even though it wasn't really sunny at any point. Which brings me to an interesting point... I deliberately left things out of my luggage to save space and weight. One of these was aloe Vera for sun burns. Well now I need it! The other thing I missed were my sandals for the shower. The hostel I am staying has a common shower and I have to run down the hall in my bare feet to get to the shower. During my wanderings I immediately started to notice something odd. All residences are protected like fortresses... There are bars on the windows, barbed wire electrified fences and some even have security guards. House after house is a mini jail. I found this to be a bit eerie.
My meal tonight consisted of true African fare... just kidding. I had Pizza. It was ok.. more of the Itialian stuAfter dinner I returned to the hostel compound (its surrounded by a wall with barbed wire). For the rest of the night I sat around the bar with a half dozen English backpackers and played drinking games. When I lost the game they sang "Blame Canada". I did my best to keep Canada's drinking reputation in tact, but by 1am I had to go to bed.
