Afrikan at Heart

It has been called to my attention that this blog didn't get through the first time, however I have in my "sent" box proof that I did send it to my blogspot via email, so I blame SAS (as usual). Mauritius to come tomorrow. And I'm halfway through my India visit. Time is a curious matter.

So, South Africa was the port that I was probably the most excited about before embarking on this voyage. I was actually was planning on going abroad during winter quarter to the new Stanford overseas program at Cape Town. But during last winter quarter when everyone was finding out where they would be studying abroad in the Fall I had an “oh shit” moment. I realized that many of my friends would be off campus, I wasn’t going to get very good housing because I was using my tier 3 housing lottery number and it just sounded lonely. But all the deadlines had passed for applying to be abroad in the Fall. That’s when I came across Semester at Sea and fell in love with the idea. And even though I was excited that I was going to get the opportunity to visit 11 countries, I still had a burning desire to get to South Africa. But then Morocco and Ghana blew my mind and I tried to convince myself that I was just excited to get to Africa. But I didn’t fully convince myself as evidence by my giddiness on the ship sailing to Cape Town.

I had a safari the first 3 days and nothing planned for the last 3. My group was actually the first to get off the ship and step onto South African soil (or pavement, or whatever). I kind of wish I had run to the front of the group so I could be the first off, but being the 15th person off the ship out of 800 still felt pretty cool. So we were off to the airport to go to Kariega Game Reserve (I bet there is a website if you want to see our standard of living- which was unbelievable by the way in case you are too lazy to type that into google). And guess who was at the airport?! Rugby players! Okay maybe that’s only really cool to me, but my mom made me watch Invictus before leaving for SAS. And there were pictures of Nelson Mandela at the airport and holy cow did that movie do a great job at Morgan’s make-up! Anyway, it was all a pretty unreal experience, and I hadn’t even seen any animals yet!

So the safari. Well actually one more thing about the plane ride. Turns out that South African’s aren’t as cheap as American’s when it comes to complementary food on planes and we had amazing juice boxes and yummy meat sandwiches. That was the way there at least. On the way back we had some kind of meat sandwich that was florescent opal in some areas. I took a picture to prove it because I was a little shocked and didn’t think you all would believe me. It kind of looked like the inside of a muscle shell on the beach. Anyway, that was weird, but off topic. The animals. So we dined like royalty, buffet style with all kinds of foods, and PIZZA. I also tried ostrich and alligator, neither of which I’m a fan of, but at least I tried it! My sister is probably shaking her head right now in disbelief, but hey, when in Africa right?

Well, then we went on a game drive. Our tour guide, Timbre (or at least that’s what it sounded like) was a very nice, but serious type of guy. He told us right away that we might not see every animal we want to. They are in their natural habitat and we have to track them. If we were disappointed about that, we should have gone to a zoo. I liked his attitude. I was not signing up to see lions in fake plastic rock beds behind a fence. So we start driving along the dirt road and on one side of the reserve were the giraffes, impala, zebra, wildebeest, water buffalo, and some others that I can’t think of at the moment. On the other side were the lions, elephants, rhinos, hippos, and food for the lions (more impala and such). Over the course of the 3 days I saw all of those animals! Sadly, the first night I didn’t feel so good after the food and went to bed early but didn’t sleep much, and when I did I’m fairly positive I dreamt of Pepto-Bismol. So I missed the morning game drive and didn’t get to see the warthogs which is actually upsetting since I had just rewatched Lion King a couple days before (greatest decision of my life, I swear) and I really wanted to see Pumba. Oh well, I still had a great time and got to see the lions and the cubs, who were like teenagers in size. It was definitely a once in a life time experience that I want to have again someday.

Every morning was a 5am wake up call, and we were up late seeing nocturnal animals, so I was really tired the day I got back to the ship, but still managed to walk around Green Square Market and get some really cool crafts. I’m stalking up on gifts for Christmas and I’m really excited about my purchases from the market. The people are so nice and pretty fun to bargain with. It’s a fine line between getting the price lower, and not robbing them of the little money that they do make. It’s also good to get out there early in the trip because SAS takes over every city we go to and the locals learn that they can actually get a lot more money out of us than then usual European tourists.

The last most exciting thing I did was pet a Cheetah! Sadly, all of my friends had safaris the last 3 days so I really didn’t know anyone who was around Cape Town when I got back, so I probably didn’t “do Cape Town” right. I couldn’t safely travel on my own and it literally was like everyone I even just sort of knew (like well enough to tag along with them) was gone. So I didn’t get to go to Boulder Beach which was crawling with penguins, and I didn’t get to go to the aquarium, etc. But I did do one more SAS trip to a Cheetah reserve. And surprisingly, I think the best part about it was the owls! They are my new favorite animal. The Cheetahs were majestic don’t get me wrong, and learning about how endangered they are was moving and petting one was mind-blowing, but  the owls. They were so soft and so loving and SOO cute. Some of them looked like Hedwig (Harry Potter reference for you deprived adults) and one was only a month or two old and still covered in its fluffy feathers. They were just all over these tables for us to pet and hold and I can’t even describe how cool it was. Then we put on a garden glove and learned about birds of prey and they landed on us! Someone even got a video of this hawk like bird landing on me and me petting it.

I am so lucky.