Mountain Top Experience… almost

So we’ve arrived on another continent, Africa.  The flight wasn’t bad; we just went straight to the east from Sao Paulo and landed in Johannesburg, South Africa.  The plan was to just stay a night and head to Cape Town.  We found a hostel near the Jo-burg international airport so that the chances of getting caught in traffic would be slim. It was a private room, which was nice and they also provided transport from the airport.

Oh, wait a second I forgot to tell you about my experience landing in the airport at Johannesburg.  So we were told at the counter when we were leaving Sao Paulo that we’d need to keep all of our documents available when we land.  I figured that it was just that we needed it for customs, okay, no biggie.  When we land and exit the plane there were security officials waiting at the door. “Show me your passport.” “What is the purpose of your visit?” “Thank you, have a nice day.”  We walk further down the hall and are about to set foot on the moving walk when another security person comes up behind us “HEY, YOU TWO!” Naturally we turn around to see who was yelling, and at whom.   She reaches for both of our collars and says “Stop.” “Didn’t you hear the security official calling you?” Mu and I look at each other “I didn’t hear anyone, did you?” “Nope.” Then another security person comes up, flashes her badge and says “Let me see your passport.” “What is the purpose of your visit?” “Okay, thank you, have a nice day.”  Wow, security here is intense, man. I remember walking by that lady down the hall but she didn’t say anything back there. Huh.  So, we continue down the hall to customs. Okay, off we go (well, took a while b/c they needed back-up to investigate Mu’s passport, as usual).  As we wheel our stuff to the exit right before us, off to the side another guard “Hey, stop.” “Let me see your passport.” “What is the purpose of your visit?” “What is in this box?” Man, really. Three checks, two before we got to immigration and one still afterwards. Wow. 

Anyhow, we stayed the night at the Jo-burg hostel, Shoestrings, and head out in the morning to the airport.  We get there early enough so we can get through security.  We figured that since this would be a domestic flight there wouldn’t be any problems. Well….“Come on through the metal detector. Random pat down. Oh, Gators, Tim Tebow’s team yeah?”   I don’t know about you guys but going through my mind is Random, HA! (with all the disgust I can muster).  I wouldn’t be surprised if I got taken to a back room and asked again “What is the purpose of your visit, really?” Ah, but I complied, I’m not letting security officials ruin my `Round the World trip, they’re just doing their job and I’m just traveling the world.

Moving on, Cape Town! We’ve arrived. How nice. The sun is out. The air is clean. The roads are nice.  The landscape is beautiful. Our taxi driver takes us to our hostel, Zebra Crossing.  We get our room and go ahead and take a walk around.  From the front gate of the hostel you can look and see Table Mountain. So Cool.  As we’re walking down the road, heading to the grocery store, we are stopped in our tracks as we look at the top of the mountain.  Clouds are rolling in, but not like we’ve ever seen before.  The Mountain is flat at the top and higher than the clouds so as the wind carries the clouds you can see that they are flowing over the mountain top like a torrent of water. The clouds flow down the slopes of the mountain like a snowy avalanche and then, they disappear.  Wow, so beautiful, we took a bunch of pictures and filmed the whole thing.  (Everyone around us looks at us like “There go those tourists again.”)

Clouds flowing over Table Mountain (view from our hostel)

The next day, we chose to brave the heights of the mountain.  We left bright and early so that the heat wouldn’t be too great.  To save some of our South African Rand we decide to walk there, after all, it’s just right there. So an hour after our departure from the hostel (walking uphill all the way, mind you) we get to the base of the mountain.  “Why did we listen to the rest of the hostel guests and do this to ourselves.” By the time we got to the mountain it looked much bigger. Everyone at the hostel told us it would be a challenging hike up Platteklip Gorge to the top of the mountain but it wouldn’t be too bad as it is mostly stairs. Hmm. Yeah! We got there and ran into a couple coming off some other path. “I wouldn’t go up there if I were you. You should instead hike this path we just did. It’s already late in the day (10am) and the sun is already so high (at least 85 degrees F)”. That sounded like a better idea to us especially since there were no trees providing shade on this mountain, and this whole face of the mountain was exposed to the sun. So, being sane we decide, “You guys are right, we’ll take that path (Kloof Corner Hike)." So this path only leads you half way up the mountain, but it takes you to the back side where there is a great view of Camp’s Bay and has quite some shade.  (SIGN ME UP!)  So we trek up the mountain, taking pictures, laughing and enjoying the view of Cape Town down below. But the further we go, the hotter it gets.  I think we were trekking through 90 degrees plus with one bottle of water, one can of iced tea, one orange and two sandwiches each. It took us one hour to make it to the half way point and by the time we’d reached it we’d finished almost all of the water and we were completely exhausted. I gained a few more shades of darker skin and my lips were cracking.  So glad we made it to the shade.  We sat for about 20 minutes and just let the heat radiate away from our bodies.  We took a few pictures, ate some lunch, watched paragliders on the adjacent mountain (Lion’s Head) float down to the beach, and read our Bibles and prayed.  Truly a great view and great experience. We stayed for maybe another hour then, actually started to feel a bit chilly so we decide to head back down. It took us just as long to go down as going up. (Walking down a rocky mountain feels more treacherous than up because you are making sure that you don’t roll all the way down, ouch.) We get to the bottom and take a taxi back to the hostel.  (No Way are we going to make it for another hour walk.)

Vernon Hiking on Table Mountain

View of Cape Town from Table Mountain

Muthoni hiking the Mountain with Camps Bay in the background, boy it was HOT!

The hike was "easier" because of the stairs, millions of them

Lion's Head (we'll hike this one next time)

Well, as we sit in the cab we decide that we will go to the street market in town, known as Green Market. (If you’ve never been to one you should go. They sell all sorts of curios (trinkets, carvings, paintings, etc.  And you can bargain for the best price.) We look around, find some painted ostrich eggs and wonder if we should buy, but decide to skip because we can probably find them in Kenya for less.  We sat at a restaurant and had some juice and ice cream as we watched some older women singing a traditional song and dancing in the square.  Then we walked to a Botanical Garden right around the corner. (I feel so tired again just writing about this day, wow.)  We snapped some photos there and now we decide, yeah, we are completely exhausted… so we walk to the hostel (about 20 more minutes on a 90 degree F day.) 

The next day was Sunday, so we looked for a church in the area that actually spoke in English. (South Africa has a number of languages). We walked to one that looked promising, but they were just finishing up. So we head down the road towards church bells, walk in, and find that the entire thing was in Afrikaans. We left and walked by one that had music pouring out into the streets, peeked in for a listen, French. Um… Nope.  So, having prayed all along the way that God would make clear for us where to go it became obvious that we should just commune with the Lord on our own.  So we sat on the front porch of the Hostel, prayed and read our bibles.  I’d been thinking a lot about the poor people we had seen in the streets as we’d walked.  I’d already decided when we were in Brazil that if I have anything to give when I meet a poor person I would give it. So I read in the Gospels where Jesus teaches his disciples that “the poor will always be among you and you can help them anytime you want.” And then I read where he taught about the sheep and goats and how the sheep are counted as righteous because they gave to the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the prisoner… etc. But the goats would be left out of His blessing because they did not do the same.  Personally, I want to be counted among the righteous so at every opportunity I want to give (not that I can work for God’s acceptance, but as an expression of my faith and gratitude I will do what He says I ought to do.)  It was a good and much needed time of reflection.  Later that day we just headed over to a pool at a hotel next door to chill out (literally) for several hours. It was nice.

Monday, oh Monday, what a day!  We arranged for a tour guide to take us to the Cape of Good Hope along with a few other stops along the way.  He picked us up around 8:30am. We hopped into the van with the rest of the tour group. There were eleven of us: two Brazilians, three Chinese, one Australian, one Canadian, two Europeans (not sure where from), One Ameri-German (me) and one Kenyan-Tanzanian (Mu).  Our tour guide was from South Africa. His name was Seli, a former Cote d`Ivoire footballer. We head off to the south of Cape Town and see the landscape, so nice.  Many rich fancy houses.  Our first destination was Hout Bay.  Here we got out of the van and paid the fare for a ferry boat. As the boat moved along we came to a rocky island out in the bay. Covering this island were about six thousand seals. WOAH!! Look at them, there are soooo many!! Take Pictures! AHH! UUU! Wow, so cool we get to see seals that aren’t in captivity. They were swimming around, lounging on the rocks, making all sorts of sounds… and (oh… eww, what’s that smell? Ack!)  Yeah, those things really stink a rancid kind of smell that I haven’t ever had the “joy” of smelling. So, trying not to breathe in too much we take all of our pictures and video.  Oh, by the way, on the way back to the port, I saw a whale swim by the boat. SWEET!

Getting ready to hop on the Ferry at Hout's Bay

6,000 Stinky Seals!

What are you thinking about Seal?

Hout's Bay

So we continued on the tour, making our way through more of the beautiful South African landscape. We stopped again and took pictures from a cliff overlooking Hout Bay. As we road along Seli told us more about S. Africa until we arrived at our next stop, Boulders.  We walked down a boardwalk and what did we see… Penguins!!! African Penguins.  Live and in the flesh… and also not in captivity. The Penguin colony is said to have a population of about 2,200. Wow, these guys are small. They were all standing on the beach soaking in the sun, not really even moving. (Come on penguin, do something.)  Some came waddling out of the water (ha ha ha, look at that guy walk, I’ve only really seen this in the movies.) Then further up the beach we saw some new borns… wow. They didn’t look anything like the parents. Their feathers were brown and fluffy. They sat in a dug out hole in the sand underneath their parents (I believe it’s the dad that does this with the young.)  Amazing – we’ve gotten to see Seals and Penguins on the same day.

Attention!

African Penguins

Next we took the van to the Table Mountain National Park.  The van stopped on the roadside, we strapped on our helmets, jumped on a mountain bike, grabbed our bottled water and hit the road for 7km ride.  It was beautiful looking over the landscape as we rode along.  Though I was kind of nervous b/c Seli had been warning us along the way to beware of baboons. “They are dangerous. I had to fight one before and broke my hand. I don’t want to have to do that again so if you see one, get away as fast as you can.” Yeah, every rustle in the bushes below me caught my attention, I’m not about to be taken out by a baboon, I don’t care how bad they think they are, I’ll box the heck out of one if it came down to it. Luckily we went through with no ill encounters and actually by the time we hit 7km I wanted more, but we had to stop for lunch.  After the picnic lunch, we loaded the bikes and drove on to Cape Point (look on the map, it’s way down there – southernmost part of Africa).  Seli tells us that we have a half hour to go to the lighthouse which looks pretty far up (10 minutes up, 10 minutes to take pics, and 10 minutes back).  We ventured up, well Mu stopped near the top b/c her stomach was too full from lunch to go on.  I got to the top, took pics (well tried to take pics because by then my camera was on its last bit of battery).  We came down, me carrying Mu on my back for a little of it and hopped back in the van.  At the Cape of Good Hope, our next destination, we only had 20 minutes to take pictures. Mu and I took a picture in front of the sign and then ventured out to the rocks in the water to take more pictures.  “Hey guys we’re leaving!” Yeah, pretty much at every stop on this tour Mu and I were last on the van as we really tried to soak in as much as we could.  

Wow, how Beautiful.

Muthoni loves this lone tree.

7 km Bike Ride at Table Mountain Reserve Park... stay to the left

More Beauty

View from Cape Point

We can see how far to some places we're going in a few months from this light house

The water was so blue

Where in the World are V&M?

Observing the rocks at the Cape of Good Hope

Venturing out to the water at the Cape of Good Hope

Finally we headed back to Cape Town. I stayed up but everyone else on the bus was knocked out.  Seli dropped folks off and we asked him to take us to the V&A Waterfront instead of the hostel.   We ate dinner at a steak house, exactly what we needed after such a long day. We had some tea (I’ve come down with another cold in S. Africa for which I blame smokers in every hostel we’ve been to), and we had burgers and fries. (It was hard to find any traditional S. African dishes in Cape Town.) Then, having little Rand left (we had to pay the tour guide cash) we walked from the waterfront back to the hostel.  Cape Town is a pretty safe place these days so we had no problems (except the fact that we were pretty tired and the 45 minute walk wasn’t so appealing).  We got to the hostel, showered and turned in for the night.

V & A Waterfront in Cape Town

Waterfront view of Table  Mountain

Sunset as we walk back from the Waterfront (that statue is made of Coca-Cola crates)

On Tuesday our flight back to Joburg was leaving at 2pm so we could sleep in.  We sat around the hostel, talked to the others there and pretty much waited for our ride to the airport.  We had some miscommunication with our ride so we wound up at the airport 15 minutes before departure. Needless to say we didn’t make the flight.  At customer service we wound up getting a ticket to another airport, Lanseria, which was supposedly not far from Joburg.  The idea was that we would catch a shuttle for a minimal fee and transfer to the international airport in Joburg, where we would get picked up by the hostel for another night. The flight left in a few hours so we run to a restarant, grabbed lunch, went through security (no Randomness here), then waited for the flight.

Ready for take-off

We arrived in Lanseria and found that there really weren’t any shuttles going to the Joburg airport. “Oh, what? But they said… Grrrr.” So we stood around wondering what to do. There were taxi’s and there were pre-booked vans.  Mu talked to the taxi drivers and told them that we needed a ride to the international airport. They said it would take 40 minutes and cost 550 Rand (divide by 8 for dollars). Woah! We didn’t have that kind of money on us. We only had 200 Rand for the ride and the rest of what we had was for the hostel that night.  We negotiated with the drivers and one of them agreed to 380 Rand. It was a nice ride.  We got to see parts of Joburg (neighborhoods, numerous companies, casinos, all sorts of restaurants) we wouldn’t have seen and were pretty impressed by it. Finally, we arrived at airport and eventually the hostel.  We grabbed some food at the neighboring Protea Hotel’s restaurant (we had it the first night we landed too, delicious and not too pricy), then finally turned in for the night.

We woke up, grabbed breakfast, went to airport, got through security with less scrutiny and caught our flight. Praise the Lord.

Next up Nairobi, Kenya.