South Africa!

Happy Holidays...again!

I hope all of your holidays were wonderful and merry. My holiday was fabulous in South Africa and my Nam holiday with my mom and sister will start in 4 days...not like I'm counting down or anything :)

It is funny to know that I have survived over a year in Nam. And I must say that a holiday to the Cape was a great way to celebrate surviving a year with some awesome friends who have quickly become my family. When we were traveling around the Cape, going to wineries, swimming with penguins and looking at the gorgeous views from Cape of Good Hope and Table Mountain I wondered why would anyone not do Peace Corps? Here I am half way around the world, traveling to places I would probably never see otherwise. I am used to living poor and can really make a buck go a long way (no matter how cheap you are in America, you learn you can be much cheaper when you are living on 100 USD a month in Africa) which makes it easier to see more and not mind taking a lot of public transport, sleeping in dirty hostels and eating a lot of pb and banana sandwiches (my new fav meal by the way). As I was pondering why everyone isn't in the PC with a friend, I was quickly reminded what I was doing a month ago...eating lentils and rice on the floor of my dirty house where the entire door of my fridge has fallen off, the water had been off for 4 days and it was at least 110 degrees out. Not to mention children were chanting for me to come out and play and begging for food and water. Then you add all the frustrations of teaching in a school where no one taught for the entire 3rd term. My life could be a lot worse in PC...I have water(well somehow have water), electricity and I love love love my village, learners and teachers who really have become some of my best friends in Namibia. It's just funny how a few days on holiday can really make you appreciate life and give you a little amnesia. I guess I just feel really really lucky to be able to live the life I am living right now. I face a lot of challenges at site...some that are just too big to mention here, but how many people can say that they lived in a village for 2 years, made some amazing friends and memories, and traveled Africa on holidays?

So here are some highlights of my SA holiday!

Stellenbosch

Stellenbosch was our first stop on our little tour of the Cape. My friend Loren and I took the train to Stell as soon as we arrived in CT for a little 3 day vaca before our friends met us in CT. We just fell in love with it. There are lots of wineries around the town (we took a great wine tour through our hostel and went to a few of them...so fun!). It is also a university town and the university campus is beautiful. It has the mountains in the background and hiking trails running through it. The town itslef is just adorable. There are tons of shops and restaurants. We actually didn't buy anything, but its always fun to look at all the stuff we could buy if we had money/were traveling with our parents :) If you ever find yourself in South Africa, I would say you should definitely make a turn by Stellenbosch...my friend Loren and I are seriously thinking about looking into grad school there...so if we do end up there you will have a free place to stay!

Simon's Town

Loren and I also spent some time in Simon's Town...it is a sleepy little beach town. There was not a whole lot of shopping or things to do, but it was home to boulder beach with penguins! It is the coolest thing. There are just penguins chilling on the beach, on the boulders and swimming in the water. The best part is that they are there naturally. It is not a zoo or anything. They choose to stay there. And htey are not afraid of people at all. You will literally be standing in the water and a few penguins will jet by you in the water. You will climb a boulder and a cute little penguin couple will be snuggling together right next to you.

It took a lot of self control to not go and pick up a penguin and take it home with me. I am not kidding. They are that cute. It would also not be hard to nab one off the beach...there were about 3000 in the colony. But the little sign saying that penguins bite reminded me that picking up a penguin might not be the best idea in the world. So I resisted.

Cape Point

One day we decided we wanted to head to Cape Point but really did not want to pay for an overpriced tour. So we met up with another American who was traveling around the world who also wanted to see the point. He rented a car and 7 of PCVs piled into this little car/van thing to explore Cape Point.

This was maybe one of my favourite days of the holiday. We jumped into the car around 8 am and it was overcast and windy. At first we were a little bummed about the weather, but after a few visualizations of sunny weather (I had just read that book The Secret and wanted to test if it really worked) the sun came out and burned off all the clouds and rain. We went along the Eastern coast of the point, jumping out of the car for pictures, coffee and oohs and awes. We finally reached the Cape Point Nature Reserve, got a map and explored all of the natural beauties of the point. There was so much to do and see. Two of the vols we went with had read up on all the "must see" places, so they navigated us around.

All over the point there are signs warning about baboons, how they are dangerous and how you cannot feed them. Baboons are nothing new for us and we know how nasty they can be. But these baboons seem to be extra evil. We saw a troop of baboons with babies in the middle of the road. So we stop to look at the babies (even if they are evil, who can resist baby baboons? Plus a car in front of us stopped as well...we were kind of trapped). As we are stopped a big male baboon comes running towards us. I am sitting in the back seat next to a rolled down window. As he comes we see a little aggressiveness in his sway and start freaking out. My friend has to reach accross me to roll up the window just as he reaches the door. The baboon looks at the rolled up window and starts attacking one of tires. I think he was going for the hubcab. He finally got bored (and maybe realized we were not going to give him any food)and ran back to the rest of his biting fighting family.

We saw the Cape of Good Hope, the old light house, lots of ocean, one of the most beautiful beaches in the world (it was gorgeous), and just lots of land. We got into the park around 11 or 12 and had to be out by 7. By the end we were literally speeding along the little paths, jumping out of the car for pictures and jumping back in to get to the next site. We got out just in time and took our time making it back up the west coast. We curved around the moutains overlooking the sea, listening to music and laughing with the windows down watching the sunset over the sea. It was just a great relaxing day...one of those days when you wonder why wouldn't anyone do the PC if they could have a day like this.

Table Mountain

The first full day my friend Loren and I were in Cape Town after Stellebosch we decided to hike Table Mountain. It was a clear day and didn't feel too windy. So we went to the shop, packed some peanuts and raisins, bread, cheese and apples and made our way to the mountain. As soon as we got to the mountain we felt a little wind, but figured that was normal and started to climb with our new friend Robert who we met walking up to the mountain. About 10 minutes into the hike Loren and I realized this was going to be a lot more work than we planned!

Long story short, it ended up being quite a windy day...and probably a pretty dangerous day to climb the mountain. We were literally almost blown away on the way up. We kind of knew it was going to be a long/rough climb when we saw a mass exodus of people climbing down from the top when they closed the cable car and all the little tourist things on the top of the mountain. But we continued our climb up. And 2 hours later we were on the top of a gorgeous abandoned mountain. The views were awesome though. You can see all the city and have a great view of the sea. We spent about 45 minutes at the top gobbling down handfuls of peanuts and raisins and then decided we had enough of the wind (it was blowing like crazy) and were going to start to make our trip down.

The trip down was a little more crazy than the trip up. The wind was just insane. We took our time walking down though, careful to not slip on any rocks, but still trying to keep up our speed so we could beat the cloud making its way down the mountain as well. On the way up we saw a lady covered in blood after tripping on a rock...I guess she lost both her front teeth and broke her nose! Needless to say we watched our step. But we made it down safe and sound!

I really don't think I have ever felt wind that strong in my life! But it was a fun day of climbing. The mountain is really really beautiful. The views from the top were gorgeous. The only downfall was that for the next 5-6 days Loren and I could barely walk. I wish you could have seen us...we looked like a bunch of grandmas, especially when it came to walking down stairs! It's funny because both Loren and I run when we are at site, but apparently we should have been running up and down mountains to prepare...oh well, I suppose I will keep that in mind for next time!

Wine, Wine, Wine

Oh the wine in South Africa is AMAZING! It makes up for all the cheap boxed wine we drink here on our PC budgets. There are vineyards everywhere. Everytime I saw a vineyard I would just dream of what kind of delicious wines that were made and bottled within the gates. Luckily, I didn't just dream about the wines but actually got to drink a lot of them!

We went on a wine tour with our hostel one day, which was fun and good because we had cellar tours (my friend thought they kept saying "salad tours" and kept wondering where they salads were...haha...who doesn't love those SA accents). Another day the 2 American guys we met rented a car again and a few of my friends and I joined them on a winery hopping tour. It was a lot of fun. We just went from winery to winery doing tastings. The best part of tastings here is that they are cheap...even cheap on a PC budget. They are seriously 1-3 USD per tasting. We had one tasting where we drank 12 wines for just 15Rand (thats about 1.50 USD).

From all my wine drinking, I can highly recommend a South African Pinotage. I had never had a Pinotage before South Africa, but they are great. And it is only really grown in SA. I also like the SA Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc. Just in case you were looking for some classy SA wines!

Cape Town

Oh Cape Town! It's a great city. Lots of things to do. Lots of bars. Lots of places to eat. And lots of diverse people. We had a lot of fun. It was interesting to see another place and be in a real city (I always thought Windhoek was a big city...but its really nothing compared to CT). It was also really interesting to see how the city is still divided racially. You literally cross one street and then you see where the coloureds (many coloureds live in CT. Coloureds are people who have both Black African roots and white roots. I know it sounds very unpolitically correct to say it, but thats the term we use here) work and shop. You won't see a single tourist in this area. It is just really interesting.

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Well...I know I wrote a lot. I know I always do that. So just pick and choose what you want to read/skim the whole thing. I understand if you don't read the whole thing!

I hope you all have had a great holiday season. I do miss you all a lot. Spending the holidays over here is different. I actually don't really get too homesick because I just pretend its not really the holiday season. It is easy to do because it is so hot here and people just don't celebrate like we do at home. I think it will make all those American holidays all the more better when I really get to experience them in a year or so!

My mom and sister come soooooon! I will make sure to give them a flashdrive full of pictures to post on here for you all to see.

Happy New Year!! Only one more year until I make it home!!