Thursday, February 28, 2008

Cape Town

Josh and I began a three week loop down to Cape Town, across the southern coast and then inland from Durban through the Drakensburg Mountains. The trip began with a 27 hour train ride from Pretoria to Stellenbosch where we stayed with a mutual friend Jenny Tracy who was studying abroad there for the semester. After doing some wine tasting and catching up we headed to Cape Town in our Volkswagon City Chico rental car. Our plan was to climb Table Mountain that morning but the weather intervened and it was completely socked in. Instead we orgainzed a trip through a township and to Robben Island where Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners were kept during apartheid. The prison is a spooky place and our tour guide was a former inmate who explained what they went through. We saw the lime quarry where they dug everyday and the cave within it that they famously referred to as the Congress of the New South Africa. What is funny is that many of them did hold the highest offices once apartheid ended including Mandela who became the President.

This picture above is of a medicine man in the township Langa. Josh explained to him the 100 year curse that is hanging over the Cubs and asked him if he could do anything about it. They switched hats and apparently the curse has been lifted. Now the Cubs have the best record in baseball, coincidence?
After several days of the 'Table Cloth' dominating Table Mountain there was a break in the weather and we hiked up one of the trails to the plateaued summit. There is a tram that leads to the top but we were confident with our pocket knives that we could fend off any baboons that tried to rob us of our shiny objects. The weather changes rapidly and after eating some lunch on the top overlooking Cape Town the fog appeared out of nowhere and we moved down. It can get so thick that you can lose the trail. I took the picture above on the way down. The mist rolled over the side and down the mountain incredibly fast before it evaporated at a lower elevation.

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