Our first water safari.

Tuesday, August 4th.

Our wakeup call came at 6am today. It was going to be a long day, but fun filled. We left windy, cloudy and cold Cape Town and flew to sunny and clear skies Durban, a city on the northeast side of South Africa. Durban has about 3 million people in it so it is a sizable city with modern amenities. The flight to Durban was uneventful and it seemed like we were flying over the southwest of the US, with mainly dry river valleys and  mountains. After landing, we boarded a bus for a long drive to the St. Lucia estuary, a world heritage site where we could see hippos and possibly some crocodiles in their habitat. On the way, our tour guide gave us some history about the area, but I can't seem to remember any relevant facts right now. I get very tired when Don starts talking about history, so I end up napping during his talks. Although supposedly we are going to have a history test at the end of the trip. I know what grade I will be getting. :)

The bus drive took us through the countryside with mountains and plenty of farms full of sugarcane. We finally arrived at the estuary at 3pm. We all needed a little excitement to wake us up. The area looked similar to Homestead, near Miami, just a little smaller. It was near the Indian Ocean and pretty low to sea level. Our guide told us that hippos roam the streets at night looking for freshwater to drink. The people in the town don't really go out at night because of this.

Hippos aren't very ferocious in nature but they get angry and defensive when they are scared. Weighing 2 tons, hippos can run about 25 mph on land. I don't even think the Kenyans can run that fast! Hippos kill more people in South Africa than any other animal. Their teeth are large and their jaws have very powerful chomping power.

We boarded a large pontoon boat that had an upper and lower deck for sightseeing.  Our group went up top because the weather was sunny and breezy, and the views seemed a little better from up there.The water was muddy and shallow in the estuary. Not very inviting for taking a swim.  We left the dock and almost immediately saw a sunbathing crocodile.  It was about 5 feet long and it's color was a light brown with some darker flakes mixed in.

After the croc excitement we drove about a minute up the river and spotted some hippos in the water.  Our first hippo sighting!  There were a few hippos cooling down in the water. They would keep their heads about water like a gator would, then go under for about 30 seconds before rising to the surface again. Hippos can hold their breath for 6 minutes. I took a ton of pictures of pods of hippos sleeping on the riverbanks, fisheagles looking for dinner and hungry hippos munching on some trees leaves. Hippos are funny, round creatures with huge mouths. The boat ride took about 2 hours and as the sun started going down the hippos that were sleeping on the riverbanks started waking up and stirring around. They wake up in the evening to eat and drink. Far off in the distance Laurie spotted an animal that looked like a large antelope.  We arrived  back at the dock after seeing a lot of hippos and a couple of crocs, and hurried onto the bus for a quick trip to see the Indian Ocean.

We drove past the hippo crossing sign and down to the beach just before dark so we could all say that we got to touch and see the Indian Ocean. The beach was very beautiful and the water and waves were even prettier. The water was in the 70's, unlike the 50 degrees Atlantic Ocean down in Cape Town. The currents bring warmer water from north Africa down to the south in the Indian Ocean. As the sun was setting behind us, our tour group was taking pictures and enjoying some laughs on the beach, wrapping up a long travel day. As we were walking back to the bus to leave we passed a group of mongoose that were playing in the sand dunes. I thought they were ferrets but was corrected by our tour guide.

We departed the beach and drove to the hotel where dinner was waiting for us. Dinner that night was a buffet of pork, beef, a nice assortment of salads and vegetables.  Of course dessert was available and it was chocolate cake and malva, an authentic South African dessert. We had an excellent conversation with our new friends Matt and Marg at dinner about how Mo makes her co-workers cry. Then we all went off to bed because the next day's wakeup call was coming at 6:15.

Robben Island...we thought we were going...

Monday, August 3rd.

Our Monday morning started off Sunny and a little breezy, and that was the end of the sun for the rest of the day.  I found a good bakery that was next door to the hotel, so instead of having breakfast at the hotel, I walked over to grab a couple of pastries.  The hotel breakfast was very good, but after 4 days, it's tough to eat omelets anymore.  I walked back to the hotel and worked on a few emails and then woke Laurie up.  She asked me what the weather was like and I told her it was sunny, a bit breezy but very nice.  Whoops, that was a mistake.  It turned out to be windy, cloudy and cold.  Cape town people say the weather changes quickly and it's very unpredictable. Now I know what they meant.

We bought tickets to go over to Robben Island where the political prisoners of south Africa were held during Apartheid. It is where Nelson Mandela was held, but many other captives that were fighting for freedom were held there as well.  Getting over to the island meant taking a ferry, and we had heard that when the weather is bad, they cancel the trip. It was tough getting tickets to go over to the island because it was so popular, but we managed to buy them online Friday, when we got to Cape Town, for the Monday ferry at 1pm.  We grabbed lunch over at the waterfront in hopes of catching the ferry after we were finished.  When we got to the ferry building, we found out that the ferry was canceled. bummer!  We did get a refund, but this was going to be one of the highlights of our trip, and I know we were all looking forward to going.  Our friends that we met on this trip, Marg and Matt, worked so hard getting their ferry tickets, and I was even more bummed for them.

We made the best of a canceled ferry trip day though.  We took a walk by the ocean, even though it was windy and cold. This was our last day in Cape Town and we were going to see all that we could see of the city before we left on Tuesday.  Our walk took us along the shore, past the world cup stadium that Cape Town built in 2010, over to Seaside where there was a red and white striped lighthouse. In front of the lighthouse, there was a little greenway park where we got to pet a couple of dogs that were out playing in the grass.

After we got our dog fix, we walked through a beautiful park on the way back to the hotel.  The park had many ducks, ponds and plenty of running trails. Side note: there are many places to run and exercise in Cape Town.  They even have exercise parks along the water where people can go and work out right next to the ocean.  I would love to have that in Plant City. hahaha!  BTW, we have no ocean or reason to put one of those workout parks in Plant City where we live. It would barely get used, and I don't think they should do it just for my sake. hahah! We ended up back at the hotel at 4:30 and were getting a little hungry.  It seems like all we did on this trip so far was eat, walk and get a little sleep.  We ate at Balducci, a restaurant on the waterfront.  I had sushi and it was wonderful.  Mrs. Healy had a burger without the bun and Laurie and Mo had a somewhat tasteless pizza that the taxi driver ended up with the leftovers as his tip on the way home. Just kidding. I tipped him, but he did end up with an entire pizza of leftovers. For such a windy, misty, cloudy day, it ended up being a fun day all around.

It is Wednesday night and we are in Swaziland, another country in Africa. We saw many hippos and some wonderful scenery yesterday and took our first safari this morning. :)  I will try and post some pictures tomorrow.  good night!

More Cape Town

I have been so tired for the past few nights that I haven't had a chance to sit down and write about what we have been doing for the past few days in Cape Town.  We are sitting in the Cape Town airport waiting on our flight to Durban South Africa.

When I left off, we had hiked Lion's Head on the first day that we arrived.  On Saturday, August 1st, we met our tour group at 7:15am and got an idea of what to expect on the trip and what we were going to be doing.

We boarded a bus and drove around Cape Town to get the lay of the land.  We saw parts of Camps Bay and Maidens Cove that were very nice beaches.

Camps Bay Beach

We drove down the coastline towards the southern part of South Africa. We stopped at a little fishing/tourist village called Hout Bay. There were about 20 vendors that were setup with arts and crafts and they had some coffee shops as well.

                                     


                                          

I am going to have to upload pictures later when my internet is better.  Here's what we have been up to.

view from Chapmans Peak rd.

             
 

The crew

                                      

After Hout Bay we traveled around the coastline on Chapman’s Peak Drive.  The drive takes you along the mountain side down to the Cape of Good Hope.  The scenery was amazing along the drive.  We passed by small towns that were bustling and seemed to have very poor areas.  Many people boarded taxis to get into Cape Town so they could work.  The taxis pretty much load as many people up that need to get to town, that way the cost isn’t so much.  There was a beautiful beach that we passed along the way where people were riding horses on the beach.  The surf looked to be good, but the water was still cold.  Even in the summertime it is still cold.  Approximately 50 degrees. As we drove further, we were told to lookout for wild game like antelope, sometimes baboons and ostrich were spotted.  We spotted ostrich because we drove past the ostrich farm. That’s about the extent of our wild game we saw, except a few antelope (I can’t remember the African name for them right now) far off in the distance. 

We entered Table Mountain National Park where the Cape of Good Hope is.  The Cape of Good Hope is the most South-western point of the African continent. It is named the Cape of Good Hope because when sailors made it past this point, there was good hope that they would make it to Europe. Of course this was named back in the 1500’s. Fun Fact: The most southern point of the African continent is about 60 miles further down the coastline.

We passed a wild ostrich on the side of the road on the way in.  He was very fluffy.  Supposedly ostrich meat is red meat that tastes like steak.  I would like to taste it!  We took pictures at the “South-Western point” sign and then headed up to walk up to the lighthouse.  The walk to the lighthouse was filled with baboons and baby baboons that were grooming each other.  They were so funny. It seemed like they were bored because that is pretty much all they did, was groom one another.  They were on the side of the pathway that lead up to the light house and they were very used to people walking by and taking pictures of them. The baboons smelled pretty bad, which is probably why they were grooming one another.  Unfortunately grooming doesn’t overcome the smell of never bathing.  J When we made it to the top of the lighthouse lookout, I imagined what it would be like sailing past this point using only the mountains as reference points.  The ocean was so vast and endless, but seeing the lighthouse, especially around these parts of the world where the water gets so rough, was probably a welcoming feeling. 

You talkin' to me?

After the light house walk (By the way, this tour keeps you very busy from sunup, sometimes sooner, to sundown. There is a lot of walking and much to see and do every day) we ventured over to grab lunch where the penguins live in a town called Simons Town. Lunch was wonderful. I had sea bass and it tasted like butter.  Laurie and Mo had chicken.  Big surprise there. J  When lunch was over, we walked down the road to the penguin colony. The penguins were small animals with very defined black and white features.  They were very funny with the way they walked, laid down and sat still.  I could see where Danny Devito got his walk from when he played the penguin in the batman movie. One of the penguins were sitting in the chair pose, practicing yoga.  Others were playing in the water or laying in their nests. 

Namaste

Play time!

We stopped by the gardens on the way back to Cape Town to walk around and look at the flowers.  There weren’t many flowers blooming because it was their wintertime.  I am sure this is a beautiful garden in the spring and summer.  We ate dinner in the hotel this night and I am glad because we were all worn out from a long day of travel. 

Sunday August 2^nd

Our wakeup call was another early one. Today we were going to be driving up to the cable car station at Table Mountain (it shuts down for 2 weeks during the winter for maintenance. Just happens to be shut down while we were there.) to take in some views, then on to signal hill to take some pictures, then take a trip through Cape Town by some very colorful houses, over to a beach called Lagoon beach.  The sights were very pretty from the cable car station, signal hill. 

                                           
                                           
                                          


                                        

We drove through Cape Town and stopped at this area with very colorful houses.  In 1834 Britain released and banned all ownership of slaves. The slaves celebrated their freedom by painting their houses various colors.  We walked around this portion of town and got some wonderful pictures of the houses.

                                       
 


We left this area and drove over to Lagoon Beach where we took some more pictures of Table Mountain and Cape Town.


                                       



After our visit at the beach we rode down to the waterfront area.  Here we took a little tour of the Shimansky diamonds store where they told us about diamond mining in Cape Town, then lead us through to their retail store.  The associate said that he was going to email me with some diamond pricing, but we haven’t received an email from him yet…I guess it wasn’t meant to be. The rest of the day was at our leisure.  We grabbed lunch by the waterfront, which was wonderful, then walked back to the hotel to drop some bags off before we took another walk.  We decided to take a city walk tour through Cape Town that lead us down to Long Street (this is the party street because there are so many bars. But we were here on Sunday afternoon so there wasn’t much happening) through Long Street market where many people had open air shops setup and were selling all kinds of African made items. Mo and Mrs. Healy bought a couple of scarves that they found a good deal on.  We walked down a few other streets that were pretty sketchy because it was Sunday and there weren’t many people out except ones that lived on the streets.  We made it back to the hotel around 4:30pm just in time to get ready to go to dinner down at Camps Bay.  

We wanted to see a Cape Town sunset and Camps Bay seemed to be a nice place to take in a sunset and inner.  We got to Camps Bay and walked around a little before we found a 2^nd level restaurant that looked good for food and sunset viewing.  It worked out perfectly where we were able to sit down, eat and enjoy a beautiful sunset over the Atlantic Ocean.  We also saw a man getting arrested on the sidewalk (We think he was drunk) and plenty of people partying at the bars in Camps bay.  I guess they didn’t have to work in the morning.  All in all it was a wonderful day full of great scenery and a lot of walking.  We haven’t had a bad meal or experience in Cape Town.  I would consider it like the Santa Barbara, California of Africa.  The views, beaches, food and people are wonderful.   

P.S. If some of these sentences don’t make sense, I am very tired and will end up editing it later.  We are up the coast and have seen hippos, rhinos and crocs today.  We are going on a safari tomorrow.  I'll write and post pictures as soon as I can.