Upendi

"In Upendi, where the passionfruit grows sweet!

And it's so divine that you lose your mind

As it sweeps you off your feet!"

There is nowhere in the world like Cape Town. I know I can’t say it enough, but this city has every opportunity that a person could want. You can literally spend a day in Cape Town and have every different type of fun that you could want. For example, as you’ll read later on, today (Wednesday, although it’s Thursday at 1:14 AM right now as I’m writing this) I have done everything going to the beach to climbing a mountain.

So, on Sunday night it was my housemate Akeem’s 21^st birthday, so we all decided to have a good night and go out to Long Street. We had planned on going to see a reggae/jazz-type band perform, but by the time we got there the concert was over. However, my friend Alex had already made friends with a South African named China, who ended up being so easy to talk to. He seemed to be about 30 or so, and was a DJ at the bar we were at. I ended up spending at least a half hour just talking to him about anything and everything, which was cool because most places you go the locals hate Americans, and especially hate American tourists. South Africans, however, love Americans and are so willing to talk to us and get to know us, which is great because I planned on meeting many South Africans when I came here and really embracing their culture. Luckily, China invited us back to this same bar on Saturday because his band is playing a selection of Bob Marley songs because Sunday is Bob Marley’s birthday, so I’m very excited to go back on Saturday and hang out with a bunch of South Africans!

Monday ended up being what at the time I considered to be one of my best days thus far. We all woke up kind of early, but ended up leaving much later (as we slowly adjust to African time and the “chill” lifestyle of Cape Town) to go to Muizenberg beach. Muizenberg is considered to be the birthplace of surfing in Africa, and has warmer water than the Atlantic side beaches, so I was very excited to get a chance to go out there. Unfortunately, the weather happened to be working against us, and it was a very windy day. So windy in fact that when I came home I had approximately a quarter inch of sand stuck on my body. After we decided to leave Muizenberg, we walked along the water through St. James and into Kalk Bay, where our RA Remy took us to a local fish and chips spot. Normally, I am not a big fish eater, but the hake and chips that I had at that restaurant has convinced me that I love fish. We also then took the train back home. Apparently, trains in Cape Town are free? Both on the way to the beach and on the way back no one was around to ask anyone for the price of a fare, so we just hopped on and off at our spots. After coming home and hanging out, we all decided to go out to a bar in Claremont called Tin Roof, which seems to be a local hotspot among UCT students. One thing I will say about South African DJs is that they definitely have better taste than DJs back in the states, because they are so good about playing old school music that no one has heard in months but LOVES to hear.

Tuesday was a full morning of UCT orientation, where we learned about the incredibly long and tedious process of class registration. I, unluckily enough, happened to be one of the individuals who was assigned to pre-register for classes on Tuesday, in addition to the confusion of orientation. Suffice it to say, I will never get angry about the GW class registration process again, after knowing what it is like here. In order to register for classes, there is a 3-pronged process. First, you have to do what I did on Tuesday, which is pre-register. Pre-registration consists of bringing a couple of documents to the IAPO office. One would think it would be that simple and it couldn’t be that horrible, right? Instead, pre-registration consists of standing on a 2-hour long line, only to make it up to the final computer stand for someone to take 2 minutes to enter your information into a database. All I can say about that is TIA (which means “this is Africa” if you haven’t seen Blood Diamond and/or aren’t familiar with the K’Naan song, but it is an expression that we’ve all come to use to explain anything that seems very different from the US… I think the hashtag #firstworldproblems would also do many of the situations justice). Having left my house at 1:30 PM to do this, I ended up getting back to Devonshire at 5:30PM.  That, however, seems to be nothing compared to the lines I have to wait on in order to actually register for classes on Friday, nor compared to the amount of time I have to spend walking around to individual departments asking them to “pre-approve” me for courses. TIA! Tuesday night we ended up going back to Long Street and having a couple of drinks there, but I left early with some friends because I was getting really tired. However, once I got back with my friends to another house, I spent 45 minutes waiting for the guardian angel (a car service that brings us at night from house to house (this program totally hooks us up with all the best amenities!) which is similar to a GW 4ride). Again, all I can say is TIA!

Today, Wednesday, was one of the best days I’ve had in Cape Town thus far. Since I had nothing to do, a bunch of my housemates and I decided to head down to the beach. We decided not to take the train this time, because the beach we went to (Clifton 4^th, considered perhaps the best beach in Cape Town) is more accessible by taxi. However, we ended up taking the large minibus taxi service instead of a small car. Suffice it to say, personal space is non-existent in those. At one point, I counted 18 people sitting in one of these, and apparently that’s nothing compared to how packed they usually end up being. In order to get people to come into these cabs, a heckler will sit with his head out the window and yell to people his destination, and sometimes he’ll even get out and request people to come in. Not only did we take one of these, but we actually took two, because the first only brought us into Cape Town, so we needed another to bring us out to the beach. Luckily, it only cost in total 12 rand, the equivalent of perhaps $1.75. We spent most of the afternoon relaxing on the most beautiful beach I’ve ever been to. The wind was nonexistent, and though the sun was beating down on us, it was so easy to just jump into the water and cool off. After a couple of hours on the beach, we decided to leave to go get some “chow”, and ended up eating at a restaurant called Tuscany Beach in Camps Bay, one of the nicest and most wealthy parts of Cape Town. The houses in Camps Bay are what you would picture as the most ideal place to live: gorgeous architecture, large amounts of space, and the best location ever (right across from a beach). This restaurant had outdoor seating which was phenomenal, and perhaps the most apt way to describe the strip of road in Camps Bay where it’s located is that it is very similar to South Beach strips, but infinitely cooler because it’s in Africa. After that some people went back home, but I decided to stay with a few friends and wait to see the sunset. The hike up Lion’s Head (a mountain in Cape Town) was much easier than the hike up Table Mountain, although my friends and I were the only 4 people in “sloppies” (flip-flops), so perhaps next time I climb that I will be wearing better shoes. The reason we climbed this mountain was because we wanted to watch the sun set into the Atlantic Ocean. For anyone who has never seen a sun literally drop into the horizon, you have to do it one day in your life. The sunset off the Lincoln Memorial had been my favorite sunset, but it was blown away a thousandfold by this sunset. The hike down happened to be even easier (because we chose not to go in the direction this time that said “use of chains ahead, use at your own risk”). However, if I thought I had been blown away enough by the visual of the sunset, walking down the path around Lion’s Head and seeing all of Cape Town lit up with lights was only just slightly less thrilling. After having such a long day, I decided to spend the night in, and just hung out with some of my housemates and had a great time relaxing and unwinding on our outdoor patio.

I don’t know if I could ever say enough just how incredibly beautiful Cape Town is. I’ve already had a couple conversations with people where we wonder what we did in a past life to deserve to be so lucky as to come to this incredible city. I don’t think any other city in the world can ever have as many different activities to offer as Cape Town does. For the reason, I certainly plan on taking advantage of all those opportunities. Next week we are going to be traveling the Garden Route, which includes stops at the world’s highest commercial bungee jump, an elephant park, an ostrich farm (where you ride an ostrich and then eat ostrich meet after), and other incredible visuals. On Saturday I might be going skydiving. So, if I can’t update this blog until after I finish all that, suffice it to say that when I return there will be many more epic adventures to document. All of this also has happened/will happen in the first 3 weeks of my stay in Cape Town, so I cannot even imagine what’s in store for the rest of the semester.