Our first morning we headed to Mimi's, a wonderful little restaurant in Observatory, for breakfast. I don't know what my mom liked better, the fresh yogurt and latte or the view of Table Mountain from our table. After breakfast we took the Jammie up to UCT, where I had to turn in a paper. UCT is so beautiful and has an amazing view, so we would have ended up there anyways. Once the academic business was over with, we walked down the mountain and hailed a minibus for downtown. Luckily, we didn't get one that was too dodgy or broken down. The first stop in Cape Town was Vida e Cafe, a lovely coffee chain that serves the best coffee and snacks. It's right in this little cobblestone area that's always bustling, so it was the perfect place to stop and people watch while sipping away. From there we went to Green Market Square, the hectic and immense African curio market that takes up a whole city block. We went on a rampage and bought dozens of gifts and trinkets. My mom is an excellent bargainer! I had no idea. We bought things for prices I never even knew possible. Long Street was next on our list. We went into various shops, took in the sights, and explored the African Music Store. We also took a very nice stroll through the Company Gardens, a spot I hadn't been to yet. The Company Gardens is like the Central Park of Cape Town, but more landscaped like an actual garden. Large trees, beautiful flowers and shady pathways make it a great spot. Along the paths are various sculptures and art installations. At the edge of the Gardens are numerous museums which were all being renovated in anticipation of the World Cup (now less than fifty days away!). Finished with our walk, we headed back towards Green Market Square and had some lunch at a little cafe I'd always wanted to try. We each had a glass of wine and shared the most amazing roasted veggie salad.
Once back at my house we started looking for a replacement hotel. What we ended up finding was a very nice place called the Courtyard, which happened to be not far from my house. When we got to the hotel, it seemed as if we were the only people staying there. It's a spacious hotel with lots of courtyards (hence the name) and a great view of the mountain. The lobby had a complementary bar service, apples and other fruit, cookies, muffins, and coffee. Our room was great. I say 'our' because I stayed with my mom the whole time. Saying in a nice hotel was such a luxury after spending ten days in the bush. The room even had cable and internet.
That night my mom took my and four friends and me out to dinner downtown. We initially tried to go to Mama Africa, an infamous African restuarant on Long Street, but were unable to because we didn't have reservations. Instead we went to Cape to Cuba, a restaurant with a great vibe right across the street. They were only serving tapas and it was delicious. I'd never had tapas before and thought it was great. We ordered so much food and drinks. For dessert we had a couple desert-beverages. Before long it was time to head home, where we watched a crazy movie while falling asleep.
On her second day in Cape Town, my mom and I went on a guided Peninsula and wine lands tour. In the morning we took the hotel taxi service to the waterfront and had a quick breakfast before leaving for the tour. Our first stop was Boulders Beach, where we got to see the penguins. A bunch of them had babies. It was such a beautiful day. Not too hot but very sunny and pleasant. And not too windy, which is always a treat. After the penguins we went to Cape Point, where we hiked up to the lighthouse and around on the paths a little bit. Our tour guide knew so much, and it was fun chatting with her. We were with three other women on the morning tour. A mother and daughter from Spain and a friend of theirs from Germany. The six of us, including our tour guide, had a great time. After the morning tour my mom and I grabbed lunch at a nice restaurant at the waterfront. We also had a scoop of melty vanilla ice cream dipped in chocolate sauce and watched the boats go by. In the afternoon we set off for Stellenbosch for some wine tasting. We first went to Spier, a vineyard that is absolutely made with wine tasting in mind. It's beautifully landscaped and set up, with many different buildings housing restaurants, distilleries, and the tasting room and wine shop. We tasted five wines and bought two bottles, a white and a rose. After Spier we went on a tour of the town of Stellenbosch. I had never seen the town and was surprised at how beautiful it was. Most of the architecture is of the Cape Dutch style, meaning whitewashed buildings with the decorative rooftops. We went to a second vineyard where we did more tasting as well as a cellar tour where we got to see how the wine was made. There were grapes all over the floor as well as three resident dogs, all three of which made me miss Roxy, which in turn made me miss Oliver. In the cellar there were thousands of barrels of wine. Our guide explained that the wood from the barrels came from all over the world, which I thought was pretty cool. It turns out none of the trees in South Africa have wood strong/dense enough to make wine barrels because trees here grow too fast, making their wood too porous to hold wine. I enjoyed seeing how wine was made, since I'm most often only on the consuming end. We bought two bottles from the second vineyard, a red and a white. I'm having a glass of white wine from this vineyard as I write this post, actually. It's quite delicious. Along with our wine tasting we had a cheese tasting. The cheeses were good, even though I thought the cheese my mom and I had at our cheese tasting in Chicago on Christmas Eve was better ;) We headed back to Cape Town after this last wine tasting feeling a little loopy.
At Cape Point
A beautiful day at the waterfront
Heaven is wine cellar
The third day, Wednesday, we woke up early and went running. Can you imagine a true Caldwell girls trip without running? We took a cab to the waterfront and ran to Camps Bay. It was such a beautiful morning for a run. Not too hot or windy, and the sun was to our backs. Running along the seaside trail is always such a treat. When we got to Camps Bay we stopped for breakfast before taking a stroll along the beach. I had a test that afternoon (whomp, whomp) and afterwards we went back to the hotel, did some laundry and packed, and relaxed. That night we went to dinner at The Wild Fig, a restaurant right next to our hotel. It's funny, because our good friend of the family, Victor, who frequently conducts the Cape Town Symphony, had recommended it to us as one of his favorite restaurants and it just happened to be right next to the hotel. It totally deserves the rave reviews because dinner was out of this world. I can't even explain it to you, it was just delicious.
The next morning we left for Kruger. Our flight left at 5:15 and I slept the entire way. From the Joburg airport we got a cab to a hotel in a nearby suburb where we were scheduled to meet up with our tour group. Our tour group ended up consisting of us and six Norwegian students, four girls and two guys, studying in Cape Town at the Cape Peninsula School. Gustav and Nicholas were our tour guides. They were both young, and Nicholas ended up being younger than me. So we set off in our bus named Pavarotti and five hours later we were in Kruger. Kruger is beautiful. I was expecting more flat and arid land expances like in Botswana, but Kruger had lush and rolling hills. The first day we were there we went on a mini game drive and saw a few animals. My mom and I had upgraded to accommodated lodgings so we got to stay in little huts instead of tents. I did not know what to expect since I was used to living a rudimentary existence in manky old tents. I am so glad we upgraded. The first place we stayed was like a mini lodge. It had extremely comfortable beds, electricity, a shower, a kitchen with a fridge, and air conditioning. We went to the campsite for dinner but retired to our cool indoor sanctuary right after eating. Sleep was so good that night.
Kruger is a beautiful place
The next morning we took off for the next campsite. Along the way we incorporated a morning game drive and saw a ton of animals. We got to see three huge lions! They were just lounging on the side of the road. It was awesome. We stopped at the campsite for lunch and then had an afternoon game drive. On this one we saw a herd of hundreds of buffalo. It was crazy to see so many in one place. We also saw baby monkeys playing on the side of the road. They were so cute. In addition we saw numerous giraffes and zebras. The second place we stayed was in the main camp at Kruger and it was so busy. The campsite was like a little transient city plopped in the middle of a nature reserve. A cool thing about Kruger is that you can't just go on a walk through the park if you want. You have to schedule it with the park officials and they supply you with an armed guard and a guide. We didn't do any of that. Our second hut was awesome. It was this circular, thatched-roof hut with the kitchen and fridge outside on the porch with instructions to place a chair against the fridge so the monkeys couldn't get in. Again, there were extremely comfortable beds with the softest sheets and air conditioning. That night we had dinner at the campsite and hung out for a while afterwards. Everyone on the tour was really cool and friendly and we all got along well. The Norwegians were all second year students and were friends from back in Norway. They were really funny and had some great stories. The guides were great. Gustav was quite, but he knew a lot about the wildlife and had some great stories from growing up on a farm. We found out he's planning on opening up his own lodge with his fiance, which is so fitting for him. He's a real sweetheart. Nicholas was great fun to have around the campfire. He's had some crazy adventures, and has even had malaria and lived to tell the tale. So we had story time around the campfire and got to know each other a little better before heading to bed.
Herd of buffalo
On the third day we left Kruger for a private game reserve right outside the park. On the way we passed a huge elephant munching on some leaves right on the side of the road. It was amazing! We were so close to him and got to watch him grabbing the leaves with his trunk and stuffing them into his mouth. I loved it. After a bit of a drive we arrived at the next campsite. This place had really neat buildings and huts, with colorful geometric designs painted on the sides. After getting camp set up and eating lunch, we went on a tour of the village across the road from the camp. Our village guide took us all around and explained to us how all the electricity and water are funded and installed by the government. So everybody gets water, electricity, etc. for free. The question is how often do the lights actually turn on when you flick the switch and does one light bulb for an entire house really count as electricity. But that's besides the point of our quaint little tour, which made my mom and me quite uncomfortable. It felt strange to be led through these people's homes and lives like they're in a perpetual Colonial Williamsburg. Not so cool. What was cool was what you got to see when you looked beyond the strange. This village was beautiful in its surroundings and simplicity. There were beautiful gardens and trees and flowers everywhere, not all landscaped like most places but free as well as cared for. People's houses are like compounds, where a plot of land is fenced off and on it are various separate buildings each with a specific function. I really liked this one building in a compound that had been painted in bright colors unlike any of the rest. It was quite pretty. We made a stop into the witch doctor's hut, where there were bones in jars and bottles filled with various tonics. The door had a creepy black hand-print smudged onto it and the whole thing gave me a weird feeling. 
In the witchdoctor's hut
Pretty building
Village living
After the tour we had a night game drive back at Kruger. I had a lot of expectations for this tour, but it fell short. We didn't see many animals, at least nothing in the big five. One cool thing was we saw a battle royale between two wildebeests. One wildebeest was up in the other's territory so they duked it out. By far the biggest moment of the game drive was when, after feeling like something was touching my foot for five minutes, I finally looked down to find the BIGGEST BUG EVER laying there beside my foot. AHHHH! I freaked out and kicked the thing off the bus. It was terrifying and enormous and I have pictures to prove it. But what was really the coolest part of the night drive was the sunset, which, like most African sunsets, blew my mind.
AHHHH!
That's a bingo. Kruger sunset.
The next morning we left camp after a quick morning game walk. The site we were at didn't have much large game on it, but we did get to see a giraffe and a large kudu. We also saw two enormous spiders. Our lunatic guide Axen said they weren't poisonous, but I think otherwise. The drive back to Joburg was breathtaking. We drove through mountains that are beautiful in their own right, but we stopped at some truly amazing spots along the way. First we stopped at God's Window, a spot where you can see into a large gorge/valley between the mountains. There was also a very pretty spot where you were right at the edge of a drop-off and you could see these really interestingly shaped mountains, like huts. After driving a bit longer we stopped at the Bourke's Luck Potholes in the Blyde River Canyon. They were so cool! I'd never seen anything like them. First you walk out over this rocky ledge to a waterfall (beautiful) and then after crossing some bridges you're right over the Potholes! The water from the waterfall caused these wild holes to form in the rock. They were amazing. After the Potholes we booked it to the airport where my mom and I shared some amazing nachos and some salad. Then it was home to Cape Town.
The view from God's Window
Another view from the Window
At the Potholes
Bourke's Luck Potholes!
-Sarah
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