Cape Town Part II

Sunday was the busiest day of my life. I woke up at 6 a.m. to go skydiving (I am going to write a whole blog entry just on skydiving), about 20 people went so it took a while for everyone to fall from the plane. Then I went on a wine tour at 1 p.m. I got to go to 4 different wineries and tasted over 20 different wines. The last winery had a Cheetah farm which was awesome. Some people paid to pet the Cheetahs but since I am allergic to cats I didn't want to spend money to sneeze. Then I went to Moyo, a restaurant in the trees! It was very cold but worth it. This is a very short summary of my day, but time does not permit me to write more right now.

Monday I was planning on climbing Table Mountain again but it rained so my roommate and I went to the biggest mall in all of South Africa. I do not like shopping so we just walked around and people watched. For people who do like shopping, this place would have been heaven for you. It had so many name brand shops, but expensive too. We actually ran into one of the skydiving guys in the mall. It was funny because I saw him first and knew right away it was him but Amanda, my roommate, did not think so, so I did not say anything to him but he actually came up to us and asked if we were the Americans that went skydiving the day before. What a coincidence! Out of all the people in South Africa we run into someone we knew. Overall this day was pretty boring compared to the past few days. The rest of the evening everyone lounged around the ship. That night a bunch of us went to a small sushi shop in the mall right on the water front and then headed to The Dubliner for drinks and then ended up at Mitchell's Brewery. Nothing really exciting happened that night.
Tuesday I went on an overnight Safari to the Aquila wildlife reserve. A group of 22 Semester at Sea students left the ship around 10 a.m. and took a 2 hour bus ride to the reserve. When we arrived we were met with champagne and then got to eat a delicious buffet style lunch. Right outside of the dining area was a pond with crocodiles in it. They were a brown color because of the water they lived in. After lunch we got into safari jeeps and off we went on our first tour of the safari grounds. First we past hippopotamus' who were laying on an island pretty far away but I got really close pictures so that I could actually see what they look like, because from where we were they just looked like big rocks. Then we pasted a giraffe and a few zebra's running around the bushes. Next we stopped right next to three ostriches that were eating stuff from the dirt. After that we ventured into rhinoceros territory. They were so large I could not believe it, and there was a baby rhino so the mother kept standing in front of it to protect it. The baby was so young that the safari guides did not know what sex it was yet. We then set out to the top of a hill and got out of the jeeps for a stretch. Once again we were given champagne. After about a 30 minute break we headed for the lions. The lions are separated from the rest of the animals, so we had to drive through an electric fence to see them. There were 3 Jeeps full of SAS students. My Jeep was the last. The first Jeep was stopped right in front of the lions when a water bottle fell from the Jeep and the lions pounced on it. It was the craziest thing, my Jeep guide, Liza, got really nervous and backed out of the fence and then we watched as the 2 other Jeeps were trapped as the lions walked around and blocked the road. Liza was telling us a story of how she got surrounded by the lions once with a Jeep full of people who could not speak English. One lion was coming closer and closer to jumping onto the Jeep so Liza put the Jeep into reverse and sped out quickly; she hit one of the female lions but did not hurt her. It is so crazy how dangerous these animals are and how crazy we are for trying to get close to them. Since my jeep didn't really get to go in Liza was going to try and get in from the other entrance on the other side of the mountain. So we were driving really fast to get there before dark and all of a sudden Liza slammed on the breaks. She was about to run right into buffalo. My heart was racing. Liza jolted the jeep into reverse and zoomed away really fast. No one really knew what was going on so we just sat there with frightened faces. Then Liza stopped to explain what just happened. She said that if we would have stopped for a longer period of time the buffalo would have charged the jeep. She said we were lucky that they didn't come after us. After that we called it a day and went back to the lodge for dinner. After dinner we had a big bon fire and looked at the stars. We were told to stay inside after dark because the buffalo have been running over the fences and endangering guests. So of course I had to venture out and look for the buffalo but they did not come that night. The next day at 7 a.m. I rode a horse for the first time around the Safari. We got really close to the Rhinoceros' and the protecting mother started walking towards us so we trotted away out of sight. Then I saw two elephants climbing a mountain, I was afraid they were going to fall over but the guides said they do it all the time. Then a wildebeest decided to run along with the horses. We didn't have to worry about it coming after us because it was intimidated by all the horses. There were a ton of springbok running around everywhere, for those of you who may not know what they are; springbok are similar to deer but smaller and cuter. After the hour and a half horseback ride we went back to the lodge for breakfast and waited for the other half of the group to get back from quad biking. Only seven of us did the horseback riding and the rest rode quad bikes around the safari. Around noon we went on another jeep tour. First we went back to the lions and were able to get really really close to them. I think my heart was racing more here than it was during skydiving. Next we saw elephants who decided to surround my jeep and pretend that they were going to charge us. This was another heart pounding moment because these elephants could have crushed us in a second if they wanted. So our guide was yelling at them to get away and they actually listened. Next we saw cheetahs but they were behind a fence so we couldn't play with them which made me sad. After that everyone loaded into the vans and we headed back to the ship. That night was the most fun so far this voyage. My roommate, Amanda, two guys from the safari, and I were going to meet up with two of the tour guides we made friends with to go out for dinner. The tour guides did not show up so the four of us jumped in a taxi and headed for Long Street. We ate dinner at The Dubliner and the guys kept ordering us all rounds of shots. Then we ended up at Hemisphere. This is a club on the thirty first floor of some random building. People were not allowed in unless they were really dressed up- no flip flops or sneakers. There was a 50 RAND cover charge which is pretty expensive for a Cape Town club. That's about $6. If this club were in a city such as New York the cover charge would be like $150. So we get in and one of the guys we were with gets us a VIP lounge and in the lounge we got bottle service. We had two bottles of Sky vodka and all you can drink red bull. I think I only had one drink and headed straight for the dance floor. I was dancing with this white South African man who was there with a bunch of his buddies for a bachelor party. He wanted to get me a drink but I said no and walked away. I was not about to get involved with a local. So for the rest of the night I stuck with Semester at Sea dance partners. I felt so grown up, it was wonderful. On the taxi ride home our taxi driver told us that only the white rich Africans go there and only on very special occasions. I LOVE CAPE TOWN.

I slept in the next morning and then just walked around town with my roommate Amanda. We ran into the tour guides from the Safari and they took us out to lunch. We had a platter of all different kinds of seafood. Then we had to go back to the ship for "onboard ship time," this is basically 2 hours before the ship leaves so that incase people are running late they have a time buffer. I was so sad to leave Cape Town, I can not wait to visit again in 2010 for the World Cup.