2016-08-10: Cape Town
Today, we simply just walked around Cape Town. We walked along the port. It was cool to see all the ships. One was a sailboat made all out of steel and said was designed to sail on a race from the Arctic to the Antarctic!
Along the port was a small market full of small restaurants and shops. We had lunch there. It was great.
It was cool to see boba tea there too!
We found many shops along the way. One made huge bronze sculptures! They were life sized. They even had elephants.
Right next to the shop was a swinging bridge. It was fun to see it swing from side to side.
2016-08-11: Cape Town
Table Mountain
Hout Bay
2016-08-12 Cape Town
Today I stayed at home during the morning to do my schoolwork, while my mom and dad went to a cafe called the “Truth Cafe”. It was a good environment for me to do my work.
Later my parents came home and took me to lunch. It was the first Asian restaurant we ate at in Cape Town. It was cool to find out that there were multiple kitchens, each with their own specialty in cooking styles. The restaurant was a very hip place, with low hanging lights over each table, Chinese designed screens, and awesome music.
After lunch, we walked to a Gothic church that had towers that were very tall, skinny, and mossy.
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When we walked into the entrance, I saw a cafe called “Heaven”. As we walked in, the person at the counter said,
”Welcome to Heaven! Look at this,” as he pointed to a sign that said “Finally, you don’t have to die to go to heaven.”
“This guy sure is pushing it,” I thought as we walked passed the cafe and into the church.
As soon as we reached the tables a shorter guy looked up at us from his newspaper and said:
“Hello, welcome to Cape Town. How do you like it?”
“We’ve been enjoying it,” said my mom.
“I want to get out of here,” I thought. “This is kind of suspicious.”
All of a sudden the man stood up very rapidly, which almost made me jump!
“Come here and pray, or take pictures, do whatever you want!” he said. “This is a very old church. We took this unused space and made a cafe,” He explained as he pointed toward the cafe section of the church.
I looked around. The church did still have benches for praying. I also noticed that there wasn’t any side niches for Saints,
“Very unusual . . .” I thought. . . THEN all of a sudden he said,
“There is a playground back there for children. . . 5 and under!” He added, eyeing me as if I would go in there. I looked through the glass and saw a bunch of baby toys, wooden books with flaps and stuff.
He then pointed at donation bins and said, “Give us money to give the homeless food. If you give them money, they buy drugs and alcohol.”
At this point I realized that he worked here, and wasn’t a threat.
We then walked out, strode through the beggars, towards a cafe that sells African Doughnuts. It was recommended by the waitress at the Truth Cafe.
As we walked there, my dad told me, “This is a neighborhood that is famous for its colorful buildings.”
I looked ahead and only saw a lime green building. I thought, “That’s it?”
Later, though, I saw many more colorful buildings, and felt glad to have saved the color pencils from the airplane service to add color to my sketches.
When we arrived at the Cafe, I was really bummed out when I saw what it was. It was basically a small grocery store (size of a bedroom) that made these triangular pastries and African Doughnuts. We asked the store manager for the Doughnuts, but he said gruffly,
”No doughnuts after 12:00 – all sold out…..But, you can pay me now and reserve a doughnut for tomorrow” he added hastily.
We politely refused and walked away sadly.
Though I was happy, because we got to go to the Truth cafe. I really liked it. They had all these cool machines everywhere and funky art.
We hung around there then had dinner at Downtown Ramen. My favorite part was the old arcade Pac-Man machine that you could play for free!
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2016-08-13 Cape Town
“Oh, and THIS wine, is a Rose wine, taste it. . . It tastes like peach, cherries, and. . .”
blabbed the guide. I thought, at least I got some fizzy grape juice to drink. I looked around at our other companions, an Italian couple. I was at our first vineyard of the wine tour, KWV. It was a group of farmers who joined together to create a combined wine company.
As we toured the grounds, we walked into a hall full of barrels about my height. They had German carvings with many kinds of wood, each adding their own flavor to the wine. Sometimes, they even switched the wine from barrel to barrel, so that there was a mix of tastes. But of course I couldn’t drink it.
We also saw some stainless steel tanks. The fermenting wine really needs to have their temperature controlled, and the stainless steel can keep the temperature right.
We then walked into a room that really surprised me. It was full of barrels almost six times my height.
It was really amazing to find out that if you drank a bottle of wine from the barrel a day, it would take 377 years to empty the whole container. I also was amazed at how they had made this barrel. Portugal had Sequoia trees shipped over from America to create these barrels, then they shipped the barrels over here. The Sequoia barrels weren’t water-tight so they had to put leaves between the planks to block the water.
Also if you know your history right, the dutch had founded Cape Town, these people brought with them grapes, and peaches. They knew that they could create wine really well here, but didn’t really know how to make wine taste good: They knew that they had to grow grapes, pick the grapes, juice them, and let them get old. After a while the Cape Town wine fermented and the Dutch back at the homeland up north requested some wine , and the dutch sailors, not knowing the rules of wine, put the wine in salty fish barrels, adding some flavor, a bit to the disliking of the Homeland.
The French then came down to Cape Town and gave the dutch a lesson about wine, and how to make GOOD wine. When the French came they also established a part of Cape Town called the French Corner. After the tour of the grounds, we walked back for THE MOST EXCITING part of this tour, we got to test the wines here. They all smelled pretty much the same to me, just some were stronger, or less strong. Though I did get to try my first ever white, sparkling, grape juice. After that we drove to another private winery, and went to a dutch villa that had been turned into a restaurant and hotel for lunch.
After lunch, I saw something rather exotic, I saw two peacocks walking around eating. After watching them for a while in the rain we got in the car and had a scenic drive of rainbows on our way home.
2016-08-15 Cape Town
The waves crashed against the jagged rocks, spraying the icy water everywhere, then washed back, revealing the hardy barnacles. I felt the hard wind on my face, in front of me a fierce ocean, and behind me a huge sharp mountain, protruding from the flat, barren, rocky plain. I was at the Cape of Good Hope, the place where the first white man set foot in South Africa, the Portuguese.
On a mission to find a way to the Indies Bartolomeu Dias set foot on the Cape of Despair (AKA Cape of Storms), he and his crew had not seen any land for almost two weeks, so they renamed it Cape of Good Hope. Dias was assigned to find a route to the Indies, around Africa. Many men thought that he would sail off the end of the world.
Before Cape of Good Hope I had visited Cape Point, and Hout Bay.
We first went to Hout Bay, we were planning to go see Seal Island, but not for the seals, we wanted to see the sharks eat the seals, we have seen plenty of seals.
We got to the port and bought tickets for the boat ride. We got on and as I looked out, I realized how big the swell was, they looked like they would be fun to sail over if I were in my tiny boat instead of this huge one. I looked into the water and saw a ton of jellyfish, small ones, and big ones. They all had the same shape though, a boxy head and a few strands of tentacles (4-8). We then started turning around, and heading back into the port, I was very confused, I asked my mom if she knew why we were going in, she said she didn’t. We speculated that perhaps, a few people got freaked out because of the huge waves, and wanted to go back. But once on shore we read the sign and found out that it was changed to a “Bay Cruise”. We were really disappointed at the amount of money we spent for a small cruise.
Calm Inside of the Hout Bay
After the cruise we drove to the Cape Point Nature Reserve called “Table Mountain National Park”, though it really includes everything that we will visit today, except for the Bay Cruise. We got in and took a tram up to the top of the Cape Point Mountain, instead of hiking, to save us time for seeing the penguins at the end of this day. When we reached the top we had a really good view of a small cove in the beach, the blue, foaming waves slowly, but powerfully came in and out of the beach. We then climbed to the top, I was surprised at what the lighthouse on the top was made out of, it was fully made out of cast iron! It had a light that was as bright as 300,000 candles! A ship as far a 63 kilometers out could see the light, but the lighthouse proved to be ineffective since it was usually covered in fog or mist.
We then drove down to the Cape of Good Hope. This was the most Southernmost point that my dad and I had ever been to on the globe. I was amazed at how rough the sea was, and this was a bright and sunny day, I cannot imagine what it is like on a windy day. The Cape of Good Hope was originally called the Cape of Despair because the two seas, the Atlantic and Indian oceans meet, causing swirling areas where the heavy wind is constantly changing, which means that you always have to change the direction your sail is pointing. Also, there are two currents, the Indian current at the upper level going one way, and the Atlantic current at the lower level going a different way, causing chaos underwater too.
We climbed around on the rocks, then drove back. When we drove back I found out that elephants, buffalo, and ostrich used to live here, but nowadays only ostrich are here. We also found an ostrich on the road, it looked pretty cool to see it eating flowers. I learned that ostriches eat small pebbles to help their stomach grind the things that they eat.
Now I was going to the place that I was really looking forward to – driving to Boulder Beach to go see the African Penguins. We first had lunch, then walked down to the beach to see the penguins. When we walked through the trail, we heard them calling as we walked through. The babies were the cutest of them all, with their grey fur and wobbly walk. We walked down to the observation platform of the beach. This was pretty cool. You could see all the action going on, from chicks being fed, to penguins going out to fish, to penguins coming back to feed their chicks, to breeding couples.
To launch, penguins waddled out to where the water gently came in. Then they would belly flop onto the water, swimming out and ducking under the rolling waves. The penguins coming back is a different story. All of a sudden they come out of nowhere in a group, leaping out of the water and flying momentarily through the air and bursting out from under the wave. They then get up quickly and waddle to their young.
The chicks seem to have a hard life. they needed to fight each other to eat from the parent, and if their parents aren’t nearby, they get beaten up by other penguins.
I think that the saddest thing I saw was a penguin limping around with only one foot, the other lost, probably bitten off by a seal, sea-lion, or I know. . . A SHARK! I thought that he couldn’t catch fish anymore, but later, I saw him limping toward the water, and as soon as he got in, he was as agile as any other penguin. We stayed around exploring the grounds, glad that these critters were saved from a devastating extinction.
2016-08-16 Cape Town
I think that I had really blew it this time, I looked into the mirror and saw the face that had always either been smiling or dejected, but today there was a angry and frustrated face staring at me, with uncombed hair, and red eyes with bags under them. I thought about the math argument I had just had with my mom. She was trying to teach me how to find three prime factors that have a product of 1001 when multiplied together.
Equation:
1001=7 * 143
143=11* 13
Answer=7,11,13
Anyhow, it was very confusing. I tried writing it out, but I think that that was too late, our monsters had taken over, my mom had lost her temper and sent me in tears. I slowly apologized admitting that my frustration had shut my mind from a very abundant education. We all resolved to be more patient and understanding, and I told my mom some tips on teaching a bit better, and we all resolved to try not to do what we did today.
After the conversation, we decided to not waste our last day inside of the room, but enjoy the rest of our day at the beach in Camps Bay. When we arrived, I saw how big the waves were, and knew that there wasn’t going to be much time in the water.
We first hiked out to climb on the rocks. We climbed around, and found a nice flat rock to sit on. It was about 50 feet long, 50 feet wide, and high enough for no waves to get us wet. From the boulder, we could see the smaller boulders get pummeled by waves and cause an explosion. Also on the boulder, we saw tide pools, with small fish swimming around in them.
We then found a nice place to eat.
We noticed that the waves had died down a little, so we changed to our swim suits. We walked down to the sandy beach and got in the water, we couldn’t get out that far, because of the rip-tide. I played with the local kids. They welcomed me nicely and we played together in the water. We would run in when the wave drew back and when the waves rolled in, we ran away. It was fun.
On the sand, I was taught how to do cartwheels by my mom.
When we exited the beach, I walked to the public shower to rinse off, there were a bunch of black girls there, as soon as I arrived, they had all disappeared. Then after I finished, they all appeared again, but left again when the boys came to shower. It felt a little strange.
