So I've had two more weekends--make that three weekends now given my delay-- that I've yet to post anything about any the details are slowly fading away into distant fuzzy memory so I better get some of it down.
2 weeks ago:
Every friday there is a Friday Night Market right in Muizenberg. It is so awesome! Actually feels a bit like the bay area. There is a farmer's market, tons of amazing prepared food, a beer and wine bar, lots of local artisans displaying their work, live music, vintage clothing racks, and all these picnic tables in the middle for everyone to sit, eat, relax communal-style. It's amazing and the only time I even come close to feeling like a local :)
To bed early with me after that!
Saturday morning 8am pick-up for a wine tour through the Stellenbosch region. Woot woot! I was definitely looking forward to this. I wanted to see how different it was from Sonoma/Napa. Well... it started early for one. We had glasses set up at our first winery by 9:15am! Started with three. A white, rose, then red. Sizeable pours. All is good. Then, he comes back with 6 MORE bottles! SIX. We had NINE freaking pours at our first winery so I was definitely tipsy by like 10 in the morning. I ate my Cliff Bar first thing when we climbed back in our van--It didn't quite do the trick though. We visited two more wineries before lunch and got a tour at one of them. We should have skipped that part because it was a sad little 8 minute tour given by a really creepy man with one wandering eye who snapped at anyone who dared to ask a question.
The wine was alright. I don't want to be a snob, but I guess I am one. Thanks Mom and Dad!! No I had a great experience and tried to stay open minded and not taint anyone else's opinion but it was no Napa/Sonoma wine, let's just say that! They are known for their whites much more than their reds and the whites (and the sparkling and roses) were actually really delicious. But the reds stank. The scenery, however, was impeccable and surpassed expectations! Every winery had a different vibe, tasting style, view, etc. All gorgeous. Wonderful. Grand. Tasting was incredibly cheap. And by the end even the reds tasted yummy. Hehe
We topped the tour off at the fifth winery, which also had cheese tasting. MMmmm CHEESE. So nummy. But I was so tired. And drunk, let's be honest. So of course it's the perfect time to all head to Cape Town. Duh! Had Dinner of Fish and Chips at a harbor restaurant on the beautiful V&A Waterfront. It was my first time seeing the waterfront, but when I went back a few days later it felt like the first time. Fancy that! Not sure if dinner was good... A few of us made the wise decision to cab it back to Muizenberg after dinner. Yep. Who's growing up??
It's meeee!
Next day was Mzoli's!!!!!!!!! Okay so the description of this plate is just really incomplete until you've been there but I'll give it a go.
Inside a township. A
It was about a 30-40min car ride into the township (not quite sure which one it is in). No ordinary car ride though. About 18 of us pack into an 11 person van driven by the lovely Carl, who is our driver for program during the week. We each pay 30 Rand for the trip there-and-back. It was one of the least comfortable car/van rides of my life. So squished and I had about 180lbs sitting on my lap. Ow!
All of a sudden, I hear, "Out, out, out". It was frantic spilling out of the van but I didn't really see anything that looked like a big restaurant party anywhere. Just the typical township corner. With more white people. Some of the veterans led us to this butcher shop. Tiny shop with about 4 guys behind the counter yelling in languages I don't understand about the piles and slabs of fresh raw pink meat behind the glass. Ribs, beef, pork, lamb, chicken, sausage, ostrich. Meat (deep guttural fatty voice).
We order I don't know how many lbs of meat. An entire tray full two layers high (like a cafeteria tray). It was sort of an obscene amount of meat for 4 people but when in rome... And it came out at a little under $5pp.
We handed off our tray to the BBQ (Braai) guys and then headed back out to the street. One of the girls who has been here for months and months led us to the "shop" to buy drinks. It was a tiny window cut out of a corrugated tin shack with only room for the one salesguy inside. We each get a water and a six-pack and head over to the "restaurant". It is a huge fenced in area with a canopy shade and about 20 rows of super long picnic tables. Our group of like 40 claims two. Its hot and sweaty inside. But its full of all kinds of different people from all over. I think there was about a 60:40 breakdown of tourists:locals. There was some live African drum music going. Cracked my Hunter's and was having a good time.
After about a half hour there was all this commotion from the kitchen to the back corner and the fence was knocked down for a minute. Later, we found out that the owner of Mzoli's had gotten stabbed out on the street earlier that morning and they found the guy who did it and took him to the back and did I-don't-know-what with him. I can imagine though. The commotion was them all throwing him out. Crazy!!!
Our food, a combination of chicken, lamb, and beef smothered in some delicious sauce came out a few minutes later. And then. We grubbed out. It was messy. Really messy. No napkins, no silverware, no plates, remember? So the four of us where just hanging out heads over the tray munching on it all. Quickly. Because it was so good and because everyone else was eating so quickly I didn't think there would be anything left for me. When we ordered we had talked about taking whatever we didn't finish back to our houses. Unnecessary conversation because the plate was empty before I knew it. Mmmmmmmmmm! It was gooooood though. We just hung out the rest of the morning/afternoon until our 3:00 pickup. Things got a little crazy before that. Just drunken fools getting drunk and Youngin' newbs getting drunk for the first or third time and the rest of us rolling our eyes or laughing at them. Not even quite sure how but a couple people ended up bleeding and many more were puking. No napkins. Ick! It was definitely an experience but worth doing for sure! Although a bunch of people have it down as un-skippable each and every weekend. I am not one of them.
Then we went back to our house to find a whole bunch of new people moving in. I think 10 in total. That's a lot. Basically just spent the evening asking everyone and getting asked "Name? Which program you in? How old are you? Where are you from?" Didn't really get a good feel for anyone until a few days later because it was straight up memorization that first day.
Next day was my first day of childcare. So yes, this is all out of order chronologically but I couldn't wait to write about the kids and wanted to get my first impressions down fresh. Talk of Mzoli's could wait.
Fast forward to the next weekend and I am SICK! Granted I have been a little sick since a few days after arriving in SA because new surroundings, new bugs, and my immune system was just trying to figure it all out. But after a week the 'dorable snotty little children I was halfway to dead. I had started to feel really bad that Wednesday before and had picked up some medicine and drank a lot of water and hoped for the best. Didn't get it. By Saturday I had no voice. None. I was coughing, like this phlegm-y racking cough ever 49 seconds. I was achy and exhausted. I had a headache from all the coughing. My head, nasal passages, chest, every sinus in my body was so congested I felt like I weighed 400lbs, I couldn't hear very well, an breathing through my nose felt as likely as climbing Everest. Bad. I was supposed to climb Table Mountain that day but... stayed in bed instead. That sucked but I just wanted to get better!
Sunday, I felt a little better. Had some energy and only about 80% congested. I had already booked and paid for a Peninsula tour. Wasn't gonna lose that money! And I wanted to meet and hang out with some of the new peeps. I went. Probably not a very bright idea in hindsight but it was fun!
The tour was really fun. Nice chill day making new buddies and seeing marvellous sights. Figured it wouldn't be too hard on my sad sick self. We got to see the entire peninsula (btw Aussies, Brits, and SAs say that word REALLY funny: "peninshoola"). STUNNING. Every time we turned a corner and every new view we saw was jaw-droppingly gorgeous. Can't believe all of this beauteous nature is all packed into such a small place. We stopped in Bo Kaap, which I had visited the week before with James, Kate, Dean, and Chloe. But it was cool to actually hear a bit more of the history. It began as a Vietnamese neighborhood back right after they were released from slavery. During that time they were greatly restricted in the ways they could express their culture. So when the were finally free, they went crazy and painted all of their houses these amazingly bright bold colors. After some time, a large Muslim population moved into Bo Kaap as well and there are mosques on every third corner all decorated in the same bold colors. Most recently, and large population of college students have been colonizing the area so its really trendy and young and fairly safe. So its a very interesting mix of cultures and people and has a super cool vibe to it (Oh! and the gay neighborhood borders it too). We had several cars of guys in their twenties in full muslim garb drive by blasting African drum music. So weird!!
We drove around and past the West Coast Beaches and towns and only stopped for long enough to figure out we HAD to come back. Paradise. AHH! Especially Camps Bay and Clifton. Pretty upscale neighborhoods and ridiculously so in comparison to whats just over the mountains from them. We went to Cape Point (Nature Reserve), which is the most SW point of the African continent and hiked up to the lighthouse where views were unreal. You could see the entire peninsula from up there, so Atlantic ocean on both sides and all the bays along both coasts, and mountains shooting straight up from the coasts: table mountain, lions head, muizenberg mountain, the 12 apostles. We even spotted a couple buildings in our "home town" (Muizenberg). There's a lot of super cool history about explorers and shipwrecks and such. Something like 300 shipwrecks right around that point. Only downside was all the bugs at the top! Gross and of course they all fell in love with me most of all! I had on a bright yellow/green skirt and they just swarmed. Got my first bug bites of the trip and was itching off imaginary bugs for the next hour. Still worth it though. And if I'm okay with bugs you KNOW the view was good!
We came back around to the eastern side of the peninsula and went to see the penguins again. I'd gone to Simon's Town to Boulder Beach a couple weeks before with Doni and Tyler, but there's no getting tired of penguins! So cute and awkward and little. And they are almost always in pairs because they mate for life and its adorable! You can climb through the boulders to like secret hidden little white sand beaches and privately obsess over the closest little jackass penguins (that's really their name).
Next up: Lunch. Finally! It was about 2:30 by this point and we'd left the house at 8:15am. We went to Kalkies at the Kalk Bay harbor. Its a sort of grungy but awesome hole-in-the-wall seafood place just sitting on the dock with a canopy over top. I got my first fish and chips, which are apparently a big deal! Its one of the classic 'Cape' dishes.
Side note:
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