Monday March 14th 2011

On Monday morning we woke up early because Andy got a bus to drive us into Cape Town for a few hours. I was exhausted and just about slept the whole way there. On the way we stopped on of the giant hills (mountains?) view areas right off the highway. It ended up being pretty interesting.

The view was gorgeous, of course, but there were also a group of men jumping off the cliff and hang gliding over the mountains. Their sail things were beautiful. We also stopped to buy a few souvenirs from a man selling them on a blanket near the little wall around the edge. I bought a beautiful little hippo carved out of some kind of dark green rock. As we were walking back to the van we noticed a wild baboon wandering around the parking area. It’s illegal to feed them because they can be quite dangerous and you don’t want to encourage them to approach humans. Anyway I was willing to give the creature a wide berth, but then it spotted one of the girls in our van eating an apple. She shrieked and chucked the apple out at in and while it was distracted the rest of us walked around it and quickly hopped in the car. We watched it for a few minutes before Andy decided to get out and get a try and get a few close pictures with it. He got really close and I was convinced it was going to jump up and rip his face off any second, but thank goodness it didn’t.

Once we got into town, we all split up. Andy, Jane and Jillian went to buy supplies for the Swop Shop. Emma went for a walk around Cape Town and me, Jo and Alex went shopping. We went out to lunch and then headed for the mall. It was Jo’s birthday so we all wanted to buy dresses to wear out that night. We all found (exorbitantly priced) dresses and then got a little lost in the mall before meeting up with the rest of the group and heading back to Kleinbaai.

I once again passed out in my seat and was a little grumpy when Andy woke me up and shoved us all out the van. He had stopped at Cheetah Outreach, a cheetah conservation place. They raise cheetahs and you can get a really close look at them. The cheetahs were absolutely beautiful. There was one that was right up against the fence literally inches from us. I love the little squeaky sounds they make!

We hung out for a while before pilling in the van and heading home. After that we puttered around for a while before getting ready putting on our dresses and heading out. We had to go to a new place tonight because Ernie’s was officially closed. We went to some Seaman’s Tapas Bar but I didn’t find it too exciting. There was a jukebox but no real area to dance and the boys were playing darts. (Darts and dancing do not go together…) So we basically hung out and chatted, before heading home.