happy honeymoon to adam and lindsey

We were honored to have Adam and Lindsey spend a few days of their honeymoon with us in Cape Town and we tried to make the place look as presentable as possible with minimal good weather.  Though, Cape Town can still impress in the rain.

Here are a few pictures from our day spent driving around Cape Point, which was probably the best-weather day.  We learned from Lindsey that the lighter colored ostriches are the females.   This tidbit of information has helped us out a lot with ostrich viewing--we saw a mother with her seven chicks on our spring break trip.

Cheers to our happy honeymooners!!

This is the view from our lunch bench.

The crew eating a little lunch with a beautiful view.

A troop of baboons that was frolicking around at high tide.

This is a sea-pool that holds water during low-tide, but allows new water to come in during high tide.  It is a really cool concept and allows for many easily-maintainable swimming pools to be built in the Cape Town area.  It is interesting that we haven't seen this concept used anywhere else.

Also note, Jim wins the contest of first to jump into the 55 degree ocean water.  

The fight was a draw.

Yet Jim claims victory.  The backdrop for our pool wrestling match was pretty amazing.

Male ostrich with stunning black feathers.

Female ostrich with a serene, light-grey, mono-chromatic look.

This is the picture that makes me think of Cape Point as stormy and forbidding.

More evidence of the storminess with Jennifer and Adam donning full hoods.

Here is the whole crew out at the point.

robben island (cape town)

When our friends Adam and Lindsey were in town a few weeks ago, I went out to Robben Island with them for a tour. Unfortunately, I got a little seasick on the ride out!! (No vomiting, thank goodness). I was a little too shaky to take the bus portion of the tour around the island, but we did enjoy being led through the part of the prison where political prisoners were held, including Nelson Mandela for much of his 27-year imprisonment.

Our guide had been a political prisoner himself in the 1980s. He was arrested in Limpopo when he was a young man after getting involved with the African National Congress (ANC) while a college student. He was held at Robben Island for about four years. He returned to work as a guide only after losing his job in the northern part of the country.  He spoke a little about how difficult it was to return to the place where he had been a prisoner, but that after a year or so of leading tours he started to enjoy teaching foreigners (like us) about what had happened at the prison. He had a lot of positive things to tell us about the way the political prisoners supported one another - they had schools, political classes and meetings, and reading clubs within the prison.

On the ride back to Cape Town, we got seats on the top of the ferry instead of down below and it was a much more pleasant ride with beautiful views.

The entrance to the prison on the island. The prison is now a museum.

A prison yard.

A yard in the prison. It was incredibly bleak on the island - no trees whatsoever.

A group cell, where up to 40 men would sleep on the floor (see the mat and blanket) in rows. Later, in the 1980s, they got bunkbeds in the cell. The men would be taken out to work in the mornings, and brought back again around 4 in the afternoon for the night. They would hold classes for reading, math, and politics to make sure everyone held there was educated. They'd bribe guards or criminal prisoners for newspapers so they could keep up with political happenings, and would share clippings amongst all the political prisoners, reading aloud and analyzing what the news meant (political prisoners were not allowed newspapers).

A private prisoner's cell, fully furnished as it would have been during the time Nelson Mandela was imprisoned. More important or risky political prisoners were kept in their own cells, instead of in group cells.

A guard tower

I found the most interesting part of the tour was spending time in a block of prisoner's cells. The museum has posted words written by various prisoners about their time at Robben Island, along with artifacts from some prisoners, in the cells they stayed in. I liked this one, because of the positive messages in it about compassion, critical thinking and the value in asking questions.

The political prisoners advocated for greater rights in prison - the right to educate themselves, to learn trades, and to play sports. According to our guide, things were getting better by the 1980s, and they had proper sports leagues. I liked this hand-drawn certificate for a table-tennis champion.

The harbor at Robben Island with a view back toward Table Mountain.

It was pretty interesting passing these giant ships on the small ferry!

Lindsey and Adam, enjoying the ride!

hier kom die bokke! (newlands stadium, cape town)

No, we haven't learned any Afrikaans, we just picked up a cardboard sign :)

This past Saturday, Jim, our roommate Patrick and I all bought standing-room tickets to the national rugby team, The Springboks, home game against the Australian team (the Wallabies, appropriately!). We enjoyed the energy in the stadium (although Jim and I agreed that Michigan football gives it a run for the money) and the beer garden before the game.

Jim and Patrick got to see the national anthem played, which was apparently really beautiful and emotional for the stadium. I was in the bathroom! We'll have to go again.

The Springboks won the game handily. The final score was something like 28 to 7. We're starting to learn the rules of rugby, although we had a lot of questions for the South African college students standing in front of us. One of them had studied abroad at the University of Kansas! Jim was excited to say "As they say in Lawrenceville, Rock Chalk Jayhawks" to him.

Speaking of languages, Jim is learning some Xhosa from Ntombe, the woman who cleans his classroom. He can greet people, ask if they speak Xhosa, and ask how they are doing. He is getting better at the back-of-the-throat "clicking" noise that is (I think) unique to this language and comes up in a lot of words, including the word "Xhosa." Pronounce it by making a click in the back of your throat while trying to say "kho-sa."  Ntombe is proud of his progress; he's trying to teach me as he goes, but I haven't improved much.

Enjoying a brew with Table Mountain behind us. The stadium sits at the foot of the back side of Table Mountain, so the views are beautiful.

Jim and Patrick both proudly wear their "Boks" gear

The stadium! We think it seats around 40,000.

Action shot! I think the Springboks have just scored a "try," worth 5 points.

sunny sunday fishing hole (muizenberg)

The trip to the whale watching, beach walking, rock fishing, surf capitol of the Western Suburbs of Cape Town.

Jennifer and I decided to go out fishing today, which was more of my inclination, but Jennifer thought it would be fun too, partly due to the awesome weather (65 and sunny)--so we set off to find a fishing hole on the rocky shoreline near Kalk Bay.  After searching a few recommended locations we decided the boardwalk near Muizenberg would be our best chance of having a good time.  It turns out we were right about the destination, but the fish were not hungry.

Besides being our first oceanic fishing trip--we tried once two weeks ago in an inland lagoon--it was our first time exploring the surfing beach of Muizenberg.  The surfers were out in full force as there are usually hundreds of individuals in the water at any given time.  We were astounded by the beauty as we looked across False Bay at snow-capped mountains and out into the bay where Southern Right Whales were playing on the surface.  We saw many whales breach and one of them we are pretty sure was a juvenile--they're in the birthing season now.  On our walk back to the beach after fishing I looked down and saw an abalone shell.  Abalone are extremely rare and are illegal to take from the water, but this was just the shell, so I picked it up and brought it home.  Abalone is very popular in jewelry because of the iridescent shine on the inside of the shell.  In addition to being beautiful it is delicious, which are the reasons it is so rarely found.

Here are some pictures from the outing:

Hi there, this is the beach and you should notice the snow on the mountains that are less than 5,000 ft. in elevation.  Our weather was pretty cold and wet for a couple weeks (the entire time Adam and Lindsey were visiting)

Climbing through the rocks; all part of the adventure!

Here are the tidal pools we walked through to make a few casts.  Plus awesome mountains in the background.

Here is me trying to get as much distance on my cast as possible.

This is the view towards Kalk Bay and Simon's Town.

It is refreshing to get doused in a few waves.  I choose my standing rocks wisely.

Very wet and cold.  Good thing it was sunny out.

day trip whale sightings! (hermanus)

A couple of weeks ago we drove to Hermanus, a town east of Cape Town on the coast of the Atlantic (still not as far as Cape Agulhas, where the Atlantic and Indian oceans meet) that is famous for whale sightings. Our roommate Patrick, Jim and I made a fun party, which was good because the 2-hour drive there and back made for a long day!

We stopped for a couple of wine tastings on the way, and really enjoyed the winding drive along the coast. The weather was pretty miserable, though, spitting rain and cloudy all day (except for a few "sun breaks" when we saw the whales!) so we'll have to repeat the trip on a nice day as the views across False Bay and over to Cape Point should be incredible.

Standing on the shore on some cliffs above the bay, it was pretty impossible to miss the whales. They came within a few hundred yards of the shore, and were very active. We saw side fins and tail fins, blows and baby blows, and Jim even saw a breach (I missed it). We captured quite a few on camera with our long lens.

A rainbow above the bay

Roadside baboons on the coastal drive. Babies!!

A view of some of the nearby vineyards