Circle of Life

South Africa

Just a little heads up for you before I dive into my South African experience. For the next month, we will be in port most of the time, with breaks on the ship of about 3 or 4 days. This is going to make it extremely difficult for me to write my random ridiculous blogs, so I might just have to focus on my countries. I shall try my best to keep you entertained. Oh…and for those of you who keep hounding me for pictures: I have spent a ridiculous amount of money on internet minutes so far and I don’t want to anymore, so I’m not going to waste 20 minutes on a picture. When I say I have free internet, it means I am at a hotel or internet café and cannot load my pictures as I don’t have them. So please stop asking…I will give you the picture tour when I get home.

Ok…now that business is taken care of let’s dive into my future place of residence: South Africa. The night before pulling into Cape Town, Team Bauer and I attempted to sleep out on the deck, but really just ended up pulling an all nighter. We did, however, stay on the deck the whole time, despite rain and wind. Jack would be proud…we are the deck warriors. We got to see our first ever moon-set (you know like sunset, only moon set)…that was awesome. The sky was totally black and the moon was big and orange and it just slowly did its thing, going down the horizon. It was pretty neat. At 5: 26 the sun was supposed to rise, so we went up to the 7th deck at the front of the boat. I was surprised at the number of people up there already (hello, we are college students. The only time we see this part of the day is coming from the OTHER side). When I made my way through the people, I saw one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. The sun hadn’t yet peaked over the horizon, but the base of the sky was bright orange. Silouhetted by the light was Table Mountain (among other mountains), a flat top mountain famous in Cape Town. Do you remember the beginning of the Lion King when the sun is coming up and there’s the ants crawling on the flat top tree and it’s all red and orange? Yah….it was like that…exactly how I had always imagined Africa would look like. It was absolutely beautiful. So we took tons of pictures and had a grand old time and then we anxiously awaited the time when we would be able to get off the ship.

(oh, as a side note…Desmond Tutu spoke to us about Apartheid in Global Studies the couple days before we pulled into port…that was pretty cool. It’s also pretty sweet when you see him walking down the hallway wearing his socks pulled up to his knees with his sandals…I love it. He might be the cutest old man on the planet)

When the time of debarkation finally came, me, captain, baby jesus, teron, eric, and…garret? I think that’s his name…anyway, we all decided to go to long street for some looking around and shopping. However, being the stubborn, poor college students that we are, we refused to take a taxi, and we found ourselves having to ask for directions about every 5 minutes, but it was awesome. It took us awhile to reach our destination A) because we didn’t know where we were going and B) because we were taking pictures of everything. Cape Town is a beautiful city and I’m not kidding when I say I want to go live there. Not only is the city beautiful…so are the MEN! If you read that little blip of a blog that I wrote while in Africa you know what I’m talking about…if not…ohhh man. I have never seen guys with such an amazing sense of fashion. Alright..it’s time for the elaboration:

Imagine…(first of all, if you know me at all, you know that I find black boys extremely attractive)…ok…so…imagine…all around you eye candy dressed in button down shirts (long sleeve), nice fitting jeans (none of that “I’m gonna let my ass hang out”), and amazing man shoes (which generally consist of leather square toed shoes) and a belt to match. Annnnnd I’m drooling just thinking about it again…oh baby. As I said…all American men…TAKE NOTES!

Upon reaching Long Street…we didn’t really know where to begin. As the name entails…it’s an extremely long street with shops, restaurants and bars galore. We just kind of did the wandering thing, found some cool shops, including a music store and a native market hidden between buildings. I had to resist the urge to buy about a million pairs of earrings…those markets are out to get me I tell ya. After a bit, the boys (as usual) got sick of shopping so they went into this place called the purple….something. I forget…anyway, it was a big purple bar. They sipped on some beers while us girls finished our shopping, then we met them and continued to wander. Baby Dan and I got some local coffee…that was good stuff ( sleeping on the deck = not sleeping). We saw some 25 year old ish guy with a zip up teddy bear back pack…it was amazing ( ps boys, this is not the fashion I speak of when I tell you to take notes…remember that). Anyway, after some more wandering, we went into this antique shop thing and run into none other than Team Bauer, Pretty Sarah…and a couple other people but I don’t remember who it was (the consequences of being a blog slacker). Anyway, Team Bauer came along with us, as the rest of the girls he was hanging out with had to get back to the ship for one reason or another. Hunger started to tap us on the shoulders, so we went to this restaurant called…ummm…yah I forgot that too. Clearly not important. Anyway…they were having a special of buy one drink and get a second one free…so I was double fisting some deliciousness and the food was great. After dinner we decided to make our way back to the ship, drop off our purchases and get ready for a night of fun on Long Street (hey…we’re college kids). We went back to the boat, made ourselves beautiful and then headed out for a night of dancing. On our day walk of Long Street we had found this awesome looking bar called Cool Runnings, so we decided to check that out. The inside was completely covered in Jamaican style murals. It was pretty sweet, to say the least. I had a couple shots, including my first ever Jag Bomb in honor of Micah (in the LEFT hand) and then started to shake it. I love dancing…if you don’t know this about me, then you probably don’t know me at all. Anyway I was wearing this really fun skirt and necklace that I had bought earlier in the day, and they rocked for dancing. By this time, I didn’t have any hair anymore, but I rocked it out anyway. In fact, the bartender behind the bar told me that Shinade (I don’t know how to spell that) O’ Conner had nothing on me. That made me feel better about being a baldy. I met a couple of cool South African boys that bought me drinks and then it was time to head out and go to sleep.
We stayed on the ship for lunch the next day ( free food is the best) and then decided that we wanted to check out this shopping area that our cab driver had told us about. We were under the impression that it was a huge local market thing, but it turned out to be a giant shopping mall. Our adventure on the way there was pretty…interesting. Yet another of my many near death experiences on this trip. It was raining outside, and the defrost didn’t work in the taxi. So the windows are fogging up because, yes it’s raining, but it’s HOT and humid. So we have foggy windows. THEN…by some unknown force, the windshield wipers stop working. Yep…all done…no more wipers and a foggy rainy windshield. Oh and did I mention that we were on the freeway?!? Heh…great experience. I wasn’t scared when the cab driver kept going…no way, not at all. By the grace of the good Lord in heaven we made it to the mall safe, but we were split up from the other cab that our friends were in, so it was me, baby dan, and Tiffany conquering the giant African mall alone. We searched the mall for the other half of our group ( Team Bauer and some other chicks) and wound up empty handed (this mall was GIGANTIC) so we decided to start some shopping. At first I was really disappointed that it was a big mall…think regular mall on steroids. It was definitely the biggest one I have ever been in. Anyway, I was bummed because I was looking for a bit more of a cultural experience than wandering around a mall, but then I realized something…not all of Africa consists of people who sit and make crafts to be sold on the streets. THIS was a cultural experience, because all the people who live in Cape Town came to shop here…most of the locals do this, and there were some cool things that we don’t have in America, so that made me feel better. The first store we went into was called Jay Jay’s and there was a live DJ in the back and this random guy walking around with a mic. Turns out he was in charge of going up to customers, giving them challenges, and if they did it they got a free piece of clothing from the store. It was pretty sweet. I wasn’t asked to do anything, but Baby Dan participated in the limbo and kicked some serious ass. I have never seen a boy get that low before…it was pretty awesome. I bought 5 tee shirts and a tank top thing for like 300 Rand, which turned out to be about 30 bucks…I love cheap prices. After wandering around for a bit more, we finally found Team Bauer, and he brought us back to the rest of his group. Everyone else wanted to leave to catch a rugby game, so me, Team Bauer, and Baby Dan were left to explore the gigantic mall. They had everything from Deisel, to Nike, to a little African market inside the mall. It was fun…I didn’t end up buying anything else, but it was a good time. Around 5 ish we decided to head back to the ship. Our taxi driver was really cool. He told us about his son who was going to college and I asked him about the Med schools in the area. According to him, they have very good medical programs in Cape Town, and tuition is only like three thousand dollars or something. My plan is to talk to my advisor, see what they think about Cape Town Med Schools, and then if they are good, I seriously want to go there. Then you all can come visit me…ok? Ok. The three of us were starving, so we wandered around the pier area (which reminded me of Fisherman’s Wharf in San Fran) and settled on a nice little place with outside seating overlooking the seal area. We ordered a delicious appetizer with some cheese and pita bread (my favorite was goat cheese…if you have never had it…stop reading, go to the store and indulge yourself…it I so good). We also got a round of Savannah Dry, a fantastically delicious cider (rather than beer). I’m not the biggest beer fan, so I was in heaven. It was sooooo good. It started to rain, so we went inside and ate our dinner in there. I had some calamari, chicken wings, and little hot dog things in a basket. Oh and spring rolls. It was very good, then I had some dessert while the boys indulged in Don Pedros, which basically are ice cream with either Kaluha or Whiskey at the bottom. Feeling full and slightly buzzed, we went back onto the ship to get ready to go out again for more dancing. That night was actually the night of the Long Street Festival, in which all of Long Street is blocked off and there are bands and dancing and such out in the street. Sort of like Carnival on a smaller scale. It seems that the party just follows SAS. While waiting in purser’s square to meet up with people, we ran into our friend Roberto, who had just found out that his ATM card had been compromised in Brazil and he ended up losing about 1300 dollars. THIS IS NOT GOOD NEWS. We decided to postpone the going out until Roberto was done talking to his dad so we could show him a good time. It ended up being me, team bauer, baby dan and Roberto. We arrived at Long Street and wandered the different bars. I had my first Irish Car Bomb (1/2 pint Genus, a shot of Bailey’s and a shot of Jack and CHUG) in honor of team bauer and then we went to a couple other bars before ending up back at cool runnings. I rocked the party at Cool Runnings this night…them South Africans loooooove dancing with me for some reason. Oh man it was awesome. There was one point where I was in an Andrea sandwhich between two random African boys who didn’t know each other…haha. One’s name was Vinny and I don’t know the other guy’s name but he bought me a drink and proceeded to ask me if there was going to be anything else happening between us that night…haha yah I said NO real quick, thanked him for the drink and went on the search for team bauer. He had met some british boys who were cool and fun to dance with. I love dancing. So much. It was a great time. When it was time to go, Vinny found me again and gave me his phone number, hoping I would call him when I got back to Cape Town from my safari…riiight. That’s gonna happen. His number is now a part of my wall décor in my room. It makes for a good story. Anyway, we took off, as I had to be up the next morning for my SAS safari at 5. It turns out leaving early wasn’t necessary, as I ended up not sleeping at all that night, but oh well. I packed my stuff at around 5 that morning and met up with my safari group at 5 30 in the union. We got our packed breakfasts and lunches from the group leaders and then loaded into a bus headed for the airport. When I had first met up with the group I was feeling fine and dandy, but as the bus got closer and closer to the airport, the hangover started to completely take over my body. Headache + exhaustion + raspy voice from the bar smoke + sensitive eyes = hung over Andrea in South Africa. I wasn’t the only one suffering on the trip so that made me feel better…a little. I didn’t really mind…going out had been my choice and TOTALLY worth it, so it was all fine. I didn’t really know anyone on my safari besides Andrew, a guy from Berkley, and I knew of this girl Julie who actually goes to Wazzu. We bonded real quick…cougs have a tendency to do that (except for those lame ones on the boat who I say GO COUGS to and they just look at me like I have fungus on my forehead…lame o’s…SHOW SOME COUGAR PRIDE PEOPLE!)…sorry…mini vent session…anyway…all travels went well and we ended up at Kruger National Park. PS IT IS HOT IN AFRICA! I was wearing sweats for the plane ride and as soon as I got off I was sooooo warm. Anyway, we pulled up to our lodge and my jaw hit the ground…I have found the reason why Semester at Sea trips are so expensive….because they get you the nicest place you could possibly stay in and proceed to spoil you with food. The lodge was SO nice…as soon as we got out of the vans, we were offered cocktails on a tray (which were really just orange juice, but they called them cocktails). There were two pools, a nice lounge area, restaurants, and we our rooms were awesome too. I was assigned to room with Tiffany, a girl I had not yet met from California. It worked out nicely…They fed us and then we were scheduled for our first safari drive that afternoon. We piled into safari jeeps ( you know, with the three rows of seats with no sides on the car), loaded on the bug spray (MALARIA IS BAD!) and headed out. My driver’s name was Stu, and he was absolutely fascinated by the concept of Semester at Sea. He kept asking us tons of questions about it…it was funny. On that first drive we saw elephants, monkeys, rhinos, giraffe, water buffalo (the most dangerous animal in the bush), impala (those damn things are EVERYWHERE), and then there was a call that there was a leopard in a tree spotted, so we sped over there only to find that there was a huge amount of cars, and we had to be out of the park by 6, so we didn’t get a chance to spot it…what a tease man. I was bummed, but this was only the beginning. After a nice buffet BBQ dinner it was time for bed…I was utterly exhausted from no sleep the night before and the hangover and everything…I ended up going to sleep at like 9 30, while the rest of the SAS kids swam around in the pool and such. We got wake up calls at like 5, and had to be out and ready to go by 5 30 for our morning drive. Ouch. Totally worth it though…we had a day of driving, stopping for breakfast at this little shop inside the park. We saw a ton of animals that day, adding more elephants, rhinos, giraffe, and impala to the list and also throwing in a snake, some kudus, some other antelope like things that I don’t remember the name of, baboons. zebras and just about any other animal you can think of that is not a lion or a leopard. Damn. I just wanted to see Simba ok! That morning drive lasted about 6 ½ hours…that’s a long time to be in a jeep staring out at the bush. Oh…let me paint the picture…the bush/ savannah isn’t really the huge grass plain with a few trees that I had imagined. There are trees everywhere…and bushes…and its hard to spot animals sometimes as they are hidden by the foliage. So staring at that for 6 ½ hours, sometimes going awhile without seeing anything make you…lets say…a little bit sleepy and, lets say you start to do the head nod. I believe I described this phenomenon in an earlier blog. The weather was warm, the movement of the truck just right…YES I AM ADMITTING TO NAPPING WHILE ON AN AFRICAN SAFARI! Pretty much every drive we went on I ended up falling asleep at one point or another. I wasn’t the only person…everyone was caught snoozing. After the 6 ½ hour drive, we went back to the lodge for lunch and a nap, then were scheduled for a night drive. This, I was stoked for. WE HAD to see a lion on a night drive….RIGHT? WRONG! Rather than piling into a bunch of small jeeps, the whole group got in these two huge jeep things with spotlights. It was cool, except people are loud and we didn’t see a whole lot of animals….except we DID see a hyena chasing an impala…dinner time! Then some lame kid in the back of the jeep yelled KILL! And the hyena startled and ran away…GAH! Frustrating…oh well. I really did enjoy the night drive though…the sunset was beautiful and Julie and I had some good talking time. We came back, had a late dinner, and then crashed only to be woken up by another 5 30 wake up call. Ugh…pile into the jeeps, load on bug spray…we were becoming the masters of the safari routine. My driver this time was Heiny…a rather determined young man who was on a mission to find us some cats. During the course of the trip, we had come up with a number of strategies to lure cats our way, including singing songs from the Lion King, to promising Meow Mix, and we failed every time, so we figured we would leave it up to Heiny this time…turns out…it worked beautifully! We were on a mission…we didn’t stop long (if at all) for all of the other animals we had seen, and went to the cat grounds. We saw some LION….POOP! on the road, fresh lion poo…I never thought I would be so excited over some fecal matter in my entire life…but fresh poop means lion near by…right? YES! About a mile up the road, there they were…4 females lying on the side of the road…ohhh man I was in heaven. I can’t wait to show you all pictures. It was so awesome. After drooling for awhile, we decided to try and find a leopard…some kids had seen one the day before, but we still wanted to see them. There were a couple of calls over the walkie talkie informing us of leopard sightings, but each time we got to the place where they were, they had just left apparently. Bummer…but you know what? I saw my lion so it was ok. We stopped at the little shop for breakfast again and I got a couple things, then we finished the drive and went back to the lodge for lunch and a nap again. We had another night drive scheduled, but this time Julie and I managed to get into the one small jeep that they had, rather than the two huge ones. I was really excited about this…we were seeing our regular foray of animals when we got a radio call that there was a lion on the side of the road about two miles away. (oh…I totally forgot this part…our guide’s name was Tex…or something like that…anyway…he was this younger guy who was promising us cats, and, since we were on a cat hunt, he had to carry a big ol gun…it was sweet…I felt like a bush warrior…only without the nakedness, the paint, and the lip plates…). So we sped over to the place where the lion was and there was just one other jeep there. I looked to the right and saw him…the beautiful male lion just chilling, laying down, in the grass. The cameras started going like crazy, mine included. It was soooo amazing. I don’t really know how to describe it. The other jeep left, so we had him all to our selves. The pictures are awesome…ohhh man. I was in heaven basically…we left after awhile because we wanted to find the females that are always close by, but we didn’t find them. I didn’t really care…it was awesome either way. That night me, Julie, Andrew, Marlena (really cool chick from my psych class) and this other girl Sarah stayed up and played cards and talked for awhile before going to sleep. The next day we packed our stuff and got ready to go, then had an elephant experience thing scheduled. We were split up into two groups…I was in the second, meaning we had to wait a bit longer before going to see the elephants. When we got there it ended up being a place with two elephants in captivity. I really didn’t (and still don’t) know how to feel about it…we had just spent the past three days seeing elephants roaming free in the wild, and here they were, all kept in a big cage and tied up. They did tricks and everything…I really didn’t enjoy it at all…it made me sad for the elephants to be honest. Oh well…after the elephants, we did a bit of shopping at the stores and then headed out for the airport. To be honest, I was so excited to get back to Cape Town. The safari was great, but I am in love with Cape Town and wanted to spend much more time there…and well, Team Bauer and all my friends were also there. The flight went fine again, and we headed back to the ship. Team Bauer was nowhere to be found, and neither were any of my other close friends. It all worked out fine though because I did run into Amanda eventually, so me, Julie and Amanda decided to go grab some dinner. We went to this Mexican place (SO GOOD) and then went to long street for a bit of dancing. We hit up Cool Runnings, but it was pretty deserted…I think we forgot about the fact that it was a Wednesday, and well…people have to work in south Africa…they aren’t all traveling around the world on a ship. We also went back to the Irish pub for another car bomb, and then didn’t last that long, as I had to be up awake at 4 30 to be ready for cage diving the next day. Still no team bauer…I was a bit bummed, but just went to bed knowing I would see everyone in the morning. I woke up and went up to the computer lab for some fast internet access (its faster when everyone is passed out and not using it) and ran into Team Shadow (Anna…totally smashed), Captain, Baby Jesus, and Piano Man who informed me that “Kevin just staggered down to your room looking for you.” TEAM BAUER! I went down there and found him outside my door…not sober, but its all fine. They had ended up finding some local musicians who showed them the local side of Cape Town…yes I’m jealous. We gathered the cage diving group and piled into the tour guide vans. Kevin and I saw in the back with Matt (the Matt from Brazil). Kevin was so talkative and excited to show me everything he had done…I got the whole picture tour and found out he had gone to Cape Point, a township (basically the slums on crack), and the place where Nelson Mendela was kept prisoner during Apartheid. His stories were awesome…to be honest, I was kinda bummed that I missed out on everything. The safari was cool, but I really feel like the missed out on the culture of south Africa…to all of you who are thinking of doing semester at sea, I would put some serious thought into a safari…and if you do decide to do it…only go for a couple days…don’t use up all your time in Africa on it. Ok…anyway…the van ride was about two hours and I didn’t really sleep, as team bauer and I were telling our stories. We pulled up to this little house and found out that was where we were eating breakfast. Inside there were two tables, one already had people, and the other one was for us. We were served homemade pancakes, muffins and toast. Very good food…then we were briefed on the whole ‘you are about to go swimming with great white sharks’ thing…I was SO excited…hello…I was that kid that would lay on the floor, glued to the TV during shark week…this is like my dream come true here people. We jumped back into the van for a quick ride down to the dock and then boarded the boat. It was a double decker, and had its own bathrooms and such…not complaining at all. The people who were at the other table at breakfast joined us, and it turns out a couple of them were from the states and were in Africa for work…ROUGH LIFE! They had been there for a few weeks…lucky bums. Anyway…we sat up top and began our journey into the ocean to find sharks. The water was pretty rough and Dannie and I proclaimed the adventure EXTREME boating/cage diving…right… as if diving into the ocean with great whites isn’t extreme enough. The waves would splash us and it all was windy but I had a great time. I just love the ocean. It took us probably 45 minutes to reach the spot where we would be getting into the water. There were a few other boats around, but Baby Dan and I decided that we had the best chum so the sharks would come to US! The guides started to dump the chum and also threw a half of a head of some gigantic fish into the water. It took awhile, but eventually the sharks started to come. It was so cool…I love sharks. They scare me a lot, but I love them. Kevin decided to help out the chumming process by puking 9 times (too much alcohol + extreme motion sickness = the sharks are definitely coming to our boat because we have chum AND puke). The first shark that came grabbed the fish head and threw it up in the air then yanked it off the line…the guides were like..’yah, that wasn’t supposed to happen…’ just like the sharks aren’t supposed to be able to get into the cage and eat me?!?! Hmmmm a little scared at this point, but still very excited. They threw the cage in the water and suited some people up in wet suits, gave them snorkels and goggles and told them to get in. Um…ok. People had a hard time getting used to the snorkels at first, but after that everything was fine. We had about 3 or 4 sharks that were consistently coming back to our boat…they are shy apparently, so they would circle around the boat and not come close for awhile, and then they would decide that they DID want the fish head and go in for the kill. That was when the guides would throw the head right next to the cage so the shark would be right next to the people in the water. It was sweet. My turn didn’t come for awhile as there were a lot of people and I didn’t mind waiting. When it was finally my turn, me, Captain, and Baby Jesus suited up…or at least tried to. Haha wet suits are hard to get into and we were cracking up. Kevin also got ready to go. After posing for some great wet suit shots we got our weight belts strapped on and climbed into the cage. Thank the Lord Jesus for wetsuits. The water was very cold…my hands were hating life but it was ok. The water was really murky, so I couldn’t really see more than about a foot away from the cage. We hung out in the cage for about EVER, but the sharks seemed to not want to come around anymore. So we were just singing and being ridiculous in the cage. Dannie said I was the kind of person that would make everyone laugh so hard in the cage that we would all die…not from shark but from drowning from laughing too hard…this method of death threatened us, as we were all having a great time. Then finally the guides were yelling to go down and look, as there was a shark coming…nope. False alarm…no shark for you. After about ten minutes of this (going under water peering for a shark, and not seeing anything) we finally had a winner. The guides told us to go down and I was looking and not seeing anything, and then all of a sudden BOOM…great white shark in front of my face. It only lasted for a split second but it was so awesome anyway. After that I got tapped on the shoulder and was told to get out because other people still hadn’t gone. Bummer…I wanted to stay, but its ok. The boat had free water and snacks, so I grabbed a drink and then went up top to watch all the sharks in the water. Even though being in the cage was cool, I rather enjoyed being up top because you could see all of the sharks doing their thing, rather than just one splashing around. After everyone had gone, we pulled the cage out of the water and headed back for land. The ride back was good, but cold as we were all wet. Captain and I cuddled and then we were back on the boat. The adventure had been great. Once on land again, the vans took us back to the house where we were served lunch (home made spaghetti) and they tried to sell us the video of our experience…nah. I don’t think any of us bought one. After lunch, it was back to the van for the ride back to the ship. We ended up getting back at around 5 30 ish I think, and we decided we wanted to go out for one last dinner in South Africa. On-ship time was 9, so we took quick showers and got ready then me, team bauer, piano man, captain, and baby jesus left. Baby Jesus went on a post card search, so four of us went to this local cider brewing place and had the cider and ordered pizza. We were all pretty tired and I was so bummed about leaving Africa. I kid you not when I say I will be going back there for an extended period of time someday. When the pizza was gone we wandered around for a bit a bought some stuff in the shops on the pier. Then we found a gelato place….delicious. Some random guy asked me if I had cancer…I’m guessing this was due to the fact that I had just shaved my head. I laughed it off, but inwardly thought to myself…DO I SERIOUSLY LOOK LIKE A CANCER PATIENT?!?! We enjoyed the gelato (I had coffee and some caramel stuff) and then had to head back to the ship. I was not a happy camper. What made it even worse was that we had to fuel up and didn’t actually end up leaving port until about 4 the next day…what an evil tease. South Africa…right there at the end of my fingertips and I can’t get off the ship. Bleh. Watching Africa fade away as we sailed into the ocean was truly a sad moment…but I guess I just have to think of the times to be had when I go back.