Two Oceans and a Mountain

"God spent a great deal more time creating South Africa. He gave Cape Town two oceans and a mountain – no city can compare.” - Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Cape Town is one of the most photogenic cities in the world. While my days Monday to Friday consist of a grueling literature review and starring at a screen, you just can't describe the beauty of looking out the window and seeing mountains. For my non-lit review adventures in this breathtaking place, pictures are always better than words.

The Mzoli's experience that inspired the last blog post

Beer, meat, craziness. That's about it.

Ginormous pile of  amazing meat and chicken. The white stuff is 'pup' which is basically mashed maize, I loved it. Reminded me of my days in Ghana.

No silverwear, just hands and meat.

 Waterfront Cape Town Fun

It's so beautiful, it almost looks photoshopped.

That lego like guy, "Elliot" is an 18 meter tall structure made entirely of Coke bottle trays, 42,000 to be exact, that were used during the World Cu in 2010. This was part of a reuse, recycle campaign.

That's Raji and I, sitting on Elliot. He's a big guy.

A Captonian Sunset

 

Bye Sun!

RUGBY!! 

 South Africa has made me an official rugby fan. I am no sport person, but that is one fun sport to watch, it's brute muscle force, no padding or even many rules, you get that ball to the endzone no matter what it takes! Unlike American football where play stops after every tackle, this just keeps going, it turns into a wrestling/boxing thing to get the ball out of the pile of people and onward. The game does not stop unless someone is being taken out in a stretcher (which happens often). It's very fast paced and entertaining. 

My new fascination with  rugby comes at an interesting times as South Africa is hosting the Junior Rugby World Championship (kind of like the sub-20 world cup of FIFA). For about $3 USD you can watch up to three games, and my university is one of the hosting stadiums.

 We've watched some interesting matches (Samoa v. Wales, Ireland v. England, Italy v. Fiji), it's interesting that this is considered such a strong national pride thing, but yet is a very White player sport. When we watched England v. South Africa, there were more people of color in the English team that there was in South African one (there is only one token guy in the South African professional team, and none in the junior team). However, fans do come in all colors, and the crowds have been fascinating and fun. Had no idea there were so many Irish people in South Africa!

 

This is my favorite part of the game, they throw players up in the air to catch the ball. It's kind of like cheerleading throws.

Wales v. Samoa. The Samoan team did an incredible opening chant/dance thing, that was just awesome. Unfortunately, they got creamed 74, 3. It was painful to watch.

The Scrum! This is the formation in which game is restarted if stopped, similar to football, except a lot more fun to watch.

Why do the ball boys need wear short shorts? I do not know. Actually the prevalence of short shorts and entirely too tight jerseys in this game is just ridiculous.

A day of surfing and fun in Muzenberg

One of those 'small world' and coincidence moments came together last week. My roommate Raji, spent a year in high school in a small town in Thailand, during which she made a Capetonian friend, Grant, who was teaching English at the time at the school in front of her high school.(One of only 10 foreigners in the area). Nine years later, Raji finds herself in Cape Town now that Grant, after years of traveling, has returned and settled down. So of course, these two had to connect during her time here.

I had never gone surfing, and was on my bucket list of things to do in South Africa. We had planned last Saturday to be our surfing day since it was forecasted to be one of the mildest days of winter. Of course, we had no idea how to get to some of the novice-friendly beaches. (Cape Town has no reliable form of public transportation, and things are unfortunately pretty spaced out, so getting around gets difficult. Look forward to our adventures this week when we will rent a car and attempt to drive on the other side of the road and the car...). 

Raji called Grant to see if they could meet up on Sunday, and it turns out coincidentally Saturday he was scheduled to do a work event in Muzenberg in the morning (one of the best surfing spots in Cape Town) and was planning on taking the afternoon to surf. And so a day of old friends, surfing and conservation work came together.

Grant works in the area of nature preservation work, we had a great tour of the are and learned tons about plant life in Cape Town. Cape Town is actually home of the most plant diversity per area than anywhere else in the world ( for more info read this blurb about Cape Floral Region), including the Amazon. So there is a lot of work to conserve and take care of this great richness. We joined a group of volunteers and the City of Cape Town to remove alien plants in the Muzenberg coastal region and replant native plants. Then some well deserved surfing fun.

 

Hard at work. Beautiful mountains, always.

Grant & Raji

Volunteers.

I swear getting into that wetsuit was a bigger workout than the actual surfing. Those things are crazy tight!

The water is FREEZING.

Look at that little boy go! He was like 8. In the back you can see me trying to maneuver that board past the choppy waves.

Riding a wave, even just kneeling is hands down, one of the greatest feelings in the world. Simply cannot describe it. Everyone should try it.

Sharks Sharks Sharks. All Cape Town coastal area in both the Atlantic and Indian Ocean sides are shark infested. There are 'shark watchers' whose sole job is to stand on the mountains and watch for sharks approaching the beach, if which an alarm will sound so people will get out of the water. Thankfully the alarm did not go off while we were surfing. But it sure added some fun to the surfing experience. On July 7th I will be doing cage diving with Great White Sharks. In cage underwater with sharks inches from my face? Yup, I'm gonna pee my wetsuit.

Shark Flag. The color is suppose to mean how the shark outlook and weather are looking. I believe dark is good.

Muzenberg beauty

 

Campus Views

Can't hate work too much when your already beautiful campus is surrounded by mountains.  

The view from the library, when it's cloudy those mountains just look so heavenly. Can't wait to hikeTable Mountain next week. Let's see if I make it to the top!