South Africa

Top of Table Mountain

I think that South Africa was the country I was most excited for. After getting only 4 hours of sleep, I woke up at 5:30am to see the MV Explorer come into the Cape Town port. There was an amazing view of Table Mountain which I was going to climb later that morning. We got off the ship around 9:30 and took a taxi to Table Mountain. I've only been on one hike before and that was in Colorado last summer. I didn't think that any other hike could be harder than that one but I was wrong. Table Mountain was like climbing a million stairs. Not only that, but there was so much fog that I could barely see anything that was further than 5 feet away from me. It took my group a little less than two hours to climb, there were a few stops...finally when we got to the top of the mountain we got lunch and the fog started to clear enough for us to take pictures. 

We decided to rappel down...it is the tallest commercial abseil in the world! 

 
I was so nervous but so excited too. When we got to the edge and were about to start rappelling down, our instructors told us to take our hands off the rope for a picture...I think that was the scariest part! 

 
About half way down, there was a complete drop off so we were just hanging, slowly going down, looking at the most beautiful view of Cape Town. 
We rappelled about 150 meters down and then had to hike another 20 minutes to get to the top. Once we got there we took the cable car down, hopped in a cab and went to Cape Point to see penguins! 

That night we had dinner and went out to a bar called Mitchelle's. There was an American flag hanging at the bar with signatures from SASers from all different voyages! I signed the flag and went back to the ship because we were leaving at 1:30am for shark cage diving! Our group was supposed to leave at 4:30am but the weather in Cape Town wasn't that great and our guide wanted us to be able to shark dive. 

After driving for 5 hours, we finally made it to Mossel Bay. We had to get into wetsuits that covered us from head to toe. The water was FREEZING and we were in the cage for probably 30 minutes. The guides baited the ship and at one point a shark literally came 2 inches away from my face it was so SCARY! I couldn't believe that right in front of me was a Great White!!!!! I have the video of us shark diving! 

Later we hung around the town for a little and then headed to lunch that was about 2 hours away. I don't think I've ever been in a bus for as long as I was for this trip. It was fine though because we got to do so many things. There were about 50 people who booked this same trip so we just hung out at our hotel that night with everyone.

The third day I.......can't write about it right now but I will the next time I get internet and I don't have to send my blog posts via email! LOOK UP BLOUKSRAN ON GOOGLE! THAT'S WHAT I DID! let's just say it has to do with dropping 213 meters..... 

Our hotel was pretty close to the Aquila Safari. I've never been on a safari before and it was AWESOME. I couldn't believe how close I was to lions! Not only that, but I got to PET an elephant and fed it an orange!!! 

 
IT WAS SO AWESOME! After the safari we started to head back to the ship. Our group made a stop at Mozoli's which was the place to be on a Sunday afternoon. It was so packed that it was hard to move around. We got some lunch there but only stayed for about 30 minutes because our bus driver didn't want us to be there when the sun went down. When we got back to the ship we got ready and went to dinner in Cape Town. Unfortunately most of the places were closed by the time we go there. We went to a bar after called Caprese. It was a lot of fun! 

The next day we went sand boarding!! It was so hard to get the hang out it though. I ended up just using the sled they had to go down the dunes. 

 We lucked out with weather on the last day, it was HOT. 

After a couple of hours of sand boarding we went into town to the market. I was so tired I could barely bargain but I did get some cool stuff. We went to a grocery store because we were going to have to be on the ship for 10 days straight and lets be real the food on the ship gets really old pretty quickly. 

South Africa was amazing! I can't believe I did so many things in such a short period of time!! When am I ever going to be able to do any of those things back at home?! Just a typical weekend for a SASer I guess...I don't know how I'm going to be able to adjust to normal life when I go back to school...it sounds so boring!!