The end!

After all of our adventures throughout Africa, we decided to spend the last 4 days in Cape Town, relaxing in our apartment and on the beach. Here's a picture of our apartment from the garden.
We are about a 10 minute walk from the Camps Bay Beach where the views of the mountains behind Camps Bay (The 12 Apostles as they are called can be seen).

You can also take a short stroll over the rocks to the beaches of Clifton Bay.

We also spent one morning walking around the top of Table Mountain. While you can hike to the top, we decided that since we had already hiked Mt. Kilimanjaro during this trip, we'd conquered enough mountains... not to mention our hike up Kili was 7 weeks ago and we hadn't done anything remotely active since... so we took the cable car up to the top instead. The top of the mountained offer amazing views of Camps Bay...

The 12 Apostles covered with a blanket of clouds...

And Cape Town...

What a great way to end our adventures in Africa. The next day we headed to the airport and flew back to The States. As always, the adventures didn't end... the flight was over-sold. Since we hadn't checked in online (who knew you could do that on international flights), we didn't have any seats when we checked in and there was a good chance that we would have to fly on a flight the next day instead. So we waited around the airport for about 2 hours until the flight had finished checking in to see what was left... one seat in premier economy and one seat in business class, thank you!

It was tough to come home, unpack and put everything away. It's almost like we never even left. This has been an amazing trip, one that we will never forget. We met a lot of great people that have touched our lives and experienced things that have changed us forever... So with that it's on to the next adventure...

Road trip in the Garden Route

We had such a great time driving to visit Cape Agulhas, that we decided to do a longer, 3 day road trip to see some of the Garden Route in South Africa. The Garden Route is part of the southern coast and stretches from Mossel Bay to Port Elizabeth. The day we started our trip was the only overcast day during our entire 2 week stay in Cape Town! So, it was a perfect day to do some driving. Our first stop on the trip was lunch in Mossel Bay. For some reason, this bay was the only sunny spot on the southern coast, so we spend a bit of time soaking up the sun.

We continued on to look for a place to stay, passing through Wilderness (a real city name) and ending up in Knysna. We got a room in a hostel and visiting a local townie bar called Oldies. Everyone there was super nice and really excited (surprisingly) about having tourists there. Quite pleasant. The next day we wanted to do some more adrenaline adventures like we did in Swakopmund (quad biking and absailing) but it was all booked up for the day. Instead we spent the morning walking around the coast of Knysna. It has absolutely amazing views!

Later that afternoon, we took a catamaran cruise through the bay and enjoyed a bit of wine and champagne! Aahh... what a tough life we're leading.

The next day we headed back west to Gans Bay to go shark diving... yes SHARK DIVING! It was awesome. After getting suited up in our rain coats, we headed out into the Atlantic on a boat with about 20 other people.

I think we ended up about 7 miles off the coast of Gans Bay, set anchor and started setting the bait for the sharks. The bait included seal oil and pieces of tuna dumped into the water. In addition, there was a fake foam seal that was thrown in the water. And last, but not least, there was a piece of tuna tied to the end of a string. The way the shark diving works is that they place a cage like this one in the water, tied to the boat.

You get suited up in a thick wet suit (the water is about 50 degrees) and get into the cage with 6 other people. You don't wear a snorkel or scuba gear. Instead, you wait above water until a shark is seen. Then the captain of the boat yells, "down, on your right". You grab some breathe, go down under water and watch the sharks swim by!

It took about 10 minutes from the time they dumped the seal oil in the water until we saw our first shark! And it was huge! About 12 feet long. (You can see it next to the cage which is about 14 feet long)!

After this excitement, we started getting suited up to go into the cage ourselves. When we were in the cage, we saw some really exciting stuff. The captain would toss the line with the tuna bait in the water to tempt the sharks. The sharks would start to come after it and then the captain would pull the bait towards the boat, right in front of the cage. At the last second, he would pull it out of the water so that the shark wouldn't be rewarded for his efforts here. One time we were in the cage, the bait came right in front of us and right behind it was a shark with teeth bared! YIKES! Even though we were in the cage, it definitely still made us jump to the back of that cage. AWESOME! We had to take turns in the cage with the other people on the boat, but we got as many chances as we wanted. Given the temperature of the water, even though you had a wet suit, it was still freezing cold, so you could only be comfortable. In the end as a boat we saw about 11 sharks!

The only bad thing about the shark diving was that the water where we were was really rough and a lot of people of the boat were getting sea sick. We did take some motion sickness medicine, but it wasn't quite enough. We both felt queezy the entire trip, which kind of stunk.

After we had had our fill of sharks, the boat then took us over to Seal Island (the reason there are so many sharks in this area of water). This island has about 60,000 seals on it! While seals look all cute and cudley, they smell soooooooooo bad. Needless to say, it wasn't what the doctor ordered when you're already feeling a bit sea sick.

We returned to land and headed back to Cape Town... what an awesome road trip!

Cape Agulhas

Since the Cape of Good Hope wasn't really the place where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans come together, on another day we decided to take a road trip to Cape Agulhas, the actual location where the oceans meet. We again took a drive along the winding road of the coast...
This time, however, we had a bit more fun in our car... The last car that we were given to drive had to be returned to the rental company because it was leaking tons of oil. We insisted on an automatic (it's too much to think about driving on the wrong side of the road and shifting!!) and they didn't have that many choices. So with a little persuading, we ended up being upgraded for free to a BMW 320! Needless to say, we had some fun tearing up the curves in this car. :)

After a beautiful drive along some of the southern coast of South Africa, we finally made it to Cape Agulhas... This was about it at the Cape.

Of course we then had to stick our right feet into the Atlantic Ocean...And our left feet into the Indian Ocean.

After admiring the coast for a bit longer, it was back to Cape Town...

Robbens Island

One of our excursions in Cape Town was a trip out to Robbens Island. This is an island of the coast of Cape Town that is most famous for housing prisoners that fought the apartheid system in South Africa, including Nelson Mandela. In addition to these prisoners starting in the 1960's, Robbens Island has been home to prisoners, the mentally ill and lepers off and on for over 300 years. Today, the island is mostly a tourist attraction. Although there is a small population on the island, mostly former prisoners and guards (living side by side, a little weird).

The ferry ride to the island gave us some amazing view of Cape Town and Table Mountain.

The political prisoners during apartheid were brought onto the island in boats like this one, in a compartment on the very bottom level of the boat with no windows and no fresh air. While in prison, the men were forced to work in the limestone quarries. They worked in the quarries for 10 hours everyday. There was only one shady place, the larger cave in this picture, that the prisoners had to use as a toilet, lunch and break spot. However, all the prisoners would use this cave for was a school. They would tell a guard that they were going in the cave to use the toilet, but instead they would take turns going in there to read things other inmates had inscribed in the sand. So the prisoners would teach each other history, math, philosophy, etc.Inside the prison, we had a tour with a former inmate. He showed us the dorm style rooms where up to 80 men would sleep in one room. The most "dangerous" prisoners (like Nelson Mandela) were housed by themselves in isolated rooms with just a mat to sleep on. Here is the picture of Nelson Mandela's cell from the courtyard of the prison. It's the middle window.

The pictures below are those of Nelson Mandela's cell inside with an example of the type of bed that the prisoners would have.

The prison on the island was finally closed in 1991 after all of the political prisoners were released and the common criminals were transferred to other prisons. The interesting thing about the walls of the prison, both inside and out, have recently been repainted in very, sort of, soothing colors (beige and green), giving the entire prison the look of a hospital or something. It really took away from the true struggle of the people housed here. During the time they were here, the paint was peeling. It was a sad place to be. We talked to our guide about the paint job, and he said that most of the former inmates were not in favor of the repainting. We're not sure why they painted the walls, but it almost makes the entire place feel... fake, for a lack of better words. It doesn't preserve the true meaning of the prison.

Cape of Good Hope

Unfortunately our time in Africa has come to an end... We are now back in Boston and back at work, trying to get back into the swing of things here.

But before we conclude our blog, we have to fill you in on all of the other adventures that we have in Cape Town during our last week there. When we last left you, we had spent a beautiful day sipping wine in the wine country around Cape Town. A few days later we took a short road trip with some of our overlanding friends to the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point. The scenery along the southwestern coast of South Africa is just amazing. You drive along roads right on the edge of mountains that overlook the ocean. A truly beautiful sight.

A stop on the beach in the Cape of Good Hope National Park for a picnic lunch was very relaxing and beautiful until we got our first taste of the baboons! There are signs all of the Cape of Good Hope area warning not to feed the baboons and not to get near them as they can be dangerous... So we just finished up our lunch on the beach and some of us head over to a little swimming area to take a dip in the freezing cold water (~50 degrees). All of a sudden we see this family of baboons, probably about 20 of them, come running from the trees onto the beach. Mass chaos! They start grabbing everyone's food right from their coolers, blankets, grills, anywhere. The rangers start to chase them with sticks, but these are persistent little suckers. There are 2 large males and while one of them is distracting the rangers, the other one starts to go after food. Our friend Doug was the only one left at our blankets when the baboons came running, so he was forced to try to save as much stuff as he could... while a few baboons circled him! Justin and the other guys with us came running to Doug's aid, but the baboons are just not afraid of people. The boys quickly gathered up all of our stuff and chucked it into the cars, but the baboons still got away with all of our bread!

(Allie, here is your red-assed baboon!!)

After reliving all of the baboon moments, we packed up our things and headed on to the Cape of Good Hope. While this is often thought to be the point at which the Indian and Atlantic Oceans come together (probably because it's such a beautiful landscape and it's at the tip of a small peninsula), the oceans actually meet about 150 miles to the east of the Cape of Good Hope at Cape Agulhas (we'll get to that later). Although we didn't get to see where the oceans meet on this visit, we did get to see amazing scenery and the most southwestern point on the African continent. From the Cape of Good Hope, it's just another 10 minute drive to Cape Point where there is a lighthouse at the top of the hill that warns ships of the rocks surrounding the point. Apparently, it's not a very good lighthouse as there have been many more shipwrecks since the lighthouse was built in the 1600's than before (that may be due in part to heavier traffic :)).

We were pretty far away from home...

On our way down from the lighthouse, we had encounter 2 with the baboons. We walked up to our cars and there were 3 baboons sitting on the roof of our car!!! After looking and photographing them for 15 minutes, we'd had our laughs and were ready to go. One of the guys with us, Quentin, decided to try to throw some water from his water bottle at them to scare them off... bad idea! The big one that you see here actually jumped off the car and started chasing him! The baboon gave up chase oretty quickly (thank God) , but then he returned to the roof of the car. After that failed attempt, we decided to just wait until the baboons got off the roof. It took about another 10 minutes, and they finally decided to move on. Needless to say, we jumped in the car and pulled out of that parking lot as fast as humanly possible! Enough close encoutners with cheeky monkeys to last a lifetime!

On our way back to Cape Town, we made a quick stop at Boulders Beach, which has one of the largest penguin colonies in South Africa. It was so cute to see the little guys waddling around!

We stopped on the way home to watch yet another amazing Africa sunset over the cliffs of the ocean with some wine and cheese from our trip to the vineyards.

Relaxing in Cape Town

After our short wine tour, we arrived in Cape Town last Friday morning to end our overland trip! We stayed on night in a hostel with the others, said our goodbyes to the people who weren't staying in Cape Town for extra days and then moved into our apartment in Camps Bay. Ah, a real bed! With our blind luck, we happened to pick a really great place to stay in Cape Town. It's about a 10 minute drive to the city center and about a 10 minute walk to the beach and restaurants of Camps Bay. We have an amazing view of the sunset and the mountains from our porch, too! Just what we need after 6 weeks of traveling Africa.

In our first few days in Cape Town, we had a good bye dinner at a restaurant that served wild game (kudu, springbok, ostrich, crocodile, etc) for all of the overlanders. Most of us stayed on for at least a week or so later, so we only had to part ways with a few people. We organized a wine tour for a few of us to more wineries in the Cape Town region. This time we tasted some really excellent wines. Unfortunately, although they do not export to the US, most gave us contact info of people who distribute the wines in the US. Yeah!

The rest of this week we did a trip down to the Cape of Good Hope and Robbens Island. We'll talk about that a bit more in our next posts!

Last Night of Overland

We had a long and HOT drive from Orange River into the wine country of the Western Cape of South Africa. We arrived hot, sticky and ready for a pool. There was a 'pool' at this campsite, but it was about the size of a hot tub. No matter, the water was cool and refreshing and about 12 of us jumped about 5 seconds after putting up our tents. Our campsite was at a vineyard called "The Highlands" that was part of a co-op that produced wines under the label "Birdview" (they don't export to the US). The view was amazing, and later in the afternoon, the owner of the vineyard gave us a wine tasting of about 7 wines into which his grapes go. The wines were decent but not that exciting... our consensus was "crappy but free!"