Vacances de la Toussaint: Cape Town!!

I left our hotel in Marseille completely in the dark (literally) at around 4 am on November 3rd to walk to the train station, where I had to catch the shuttle to the airport. I successfully made it to the airport, and the next 30 hours of my life was spent traveling. Funnn. This was my itinerary:
6:55 am - Depart Marseille
8:05 am - Arrive Milan
11:15 am - Depart Milan
12:30 pm - Arrive Rome
5:40 pm - Depart Rome
9:45 pm - Arrive Cairo
11:00 pm - Depart Cairo
7:05 am - Arrive Johannesburg

I finally arrived in Johannesburg, exhausted, looking exactly like I'd been traveling for the past 30 hours, and also overjoyed to see my wonderful, awesome friend Roxanne, who was my former college apartment-mate. She's currently interning in Johannesburg for an environmental engineering consulting company. I chose to visit her in Johannesburg because: 1) I had never ever been to Africa and really wanted to go, and 2) When else would I know somebody in Africa? So yes, I went all the way to the southern hemisphere for a week. And it started off...well, quite terribly. Basically, Roxanne and I were supposed to fly to Cape Town not long after my arrival in Johannesburg, so after she met me we went to go check in for our next flight (which was supposed to be around noon). We got to the departures area and were looking for the check-in counters for our airline. We couldn't find them, so we asked a few police officers. They looked at us like we were crazy, and this is the dialogue that followed...

Police: 1time (the airline)? They're bankrupt, you didn't hear?
Us: *nervous laugh* ...you're kidding right?
Police: No, they went bankrupt, it was all over the news!
Us: Oh...crap.

Then we freaked out for a good 5 minutes, and then went and sat in a cafe while Roxanne called her co-worker, Duncan, who had dropped her off. He ended up calling their boss, and we found out that while the airline wouldn't be able to reimburse us, the bank of the company would, because the original plane tickets were bought by the company since Roxanne didn't have a South African credit card. Then Duncan bought us new tickets for that night, and it all worked out. It was still a pretty terrible ordeal though. We thought for sure we were screwed. But, we got on a plane to Cape Town that night, and our CouchSurfing host met us at the airport. His name was Maarten, and he turned out to be a really nice guy, who had a really nice house too. We even got our own room and bathroom! Pretty sweet. Turns out that he was free most of the week since he had his own company, so he could make his own hours, meaning he could actually drive us around while we were there! Here's how we spent our time in Cape Town:

Day One
Maarten was free that day to drive us around, so he basically gave us his own tour of Cape Town. We started off with a brief walk around this old fort (very little actually remains of it) that had a great view of Hout Bay, where he lived. Then he took us to this seemingly random pier, which turned out was quite the popular hangout spot for seals!! And we didn't have to pay any annoying tourist ticket prices. It was completely free, and we got to be like 2 feet away from a seal.

Seals. SO CUTE!

After squealing over seals, we went and saw one of the many beaches in Cape Town, frolicked in the sand for a bit, and then had lunch at Ocean Basket, a popular chain in Cape Town. I tried legit fish and chips for the first time, which was pretty damn good. After that, we headed out to an ostrich farm--yes that's right, I said ostrich farm--where we got to pet ostriches, feed ostriches, sit on an ostrich, stand on ostrich eggs, and see the smallest ostrich in the world (named Tom Thumb), though not necessarily in that order.

Standing on ostrich eggs!

With Tom Thumb =D

Sitting on an ostrich

Roxanne sitting on the ostrich

Once we finished hanging out with the ostriches, Maarten took us on a very beautiful, scenic mountain drive, where we got to see some amazing views of Cape Town. After that, we headed to dinner at a restaurant called The Lookout, which was right on the harbor. It was quite nice; a nice finish to our first day in Cape Town.

Day Two
Our second day, Roxanne and I decided to tackle a hike up Table Mountain, which is one of the main tourist attractions for Cape Town. The reason it's called Table Mountain? Well, it looks like a gigantic table because it's completely flat at the top. Kind of like the place in Up! You know what I'm talking about, right? The cliffs that Paradise Falls stream down from? They're totally flat at the top, which is basically what Table Mountain looks like. So yes, we decided to climb all the way up, which is quite a feat for me, because I am not a very active person, which you should know if you are my friend. Haha. There was a sign at the bottom that said it should take about an hour. It took us two. But once we got to the top...well, it was worth it. The view was absolutely incredible. Some photos...

View from the bottom

The top!

View of the bay

Needless to say, we felt like totally awesome people once we finished the hike, so we walked around the top for a while, then took the cable car back down, and got victory ice cream. Then we headed back to Maarten's house, where we ordered pizza for dinner. After that we decided to go out for drinks at this Tahitian-themed bar called Pakalolo, which was...well, kind of a failure because no one was out, seeing as it was a Tuesday night. So it was a quiet night, but still good. You know, girls' night. =)

Day Three
On the third day in Cape Town, Maarten was free to drive us around again, so he took us to a vineyard (supposedly the oldest vineyard in South Africa) called Groot Constantia, which was pretty cool, but all we really did was walk around and take pictures.

In the vineyard!

No wine tastings or anything, unfortunately. Then he drove us to Simon's Town, where we visited a gemstone factory (pretty cool), and then saw penguins!!! Again for free, because he knew how to see them without paying.  

Penguins! =D

After seeing the penguins, Maarten drove us to Table Mountain National Park, which included Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope. It was SO beautiful there, especially at Cape Point. And also really, really windy. As you can see from these photos.

Being touristy

That's the Cape of Good Hope!

Gorggggeeeeoooouuuuusssss

So windy! lol.

It was pretty cool going to the Cape of Good Hope, too, since it is the most southwestern point in Africa!

Yeah, we're awesome.

With Maarten!

After that, Maarten took us to his favorite beach in Cape Town, called Llandudno Beach. I have to admit, it was the COOLEST beach I have ever been to. It had all of these enormous boulders that formed caves and passageways, so awesome.

Gigantaboulder

In a cave!

Had a great view of Table Mountain in the background too =)

Being awesome again =P

Then we watched the sunset on another part of the beach. Freaking gorgeous.

Tell me you're not jealous of that.

That night we made dinner with Maarten, which was a nice, peaceful end to the day. 

Day Four
On the fourth (and final) day, Roxanne and I went...PARAGLIDING. That's right. Paragliding. It did kind of happen in a very roundabout way though. We had made a reservation, but they called us in the morning saying the wind wasn't right for paragliding, so we wouldn't be able to do it. So we settled on the idea of spending the day at the beach. When we got to the beach, however, they called again and said the wind had changed, so we COULD go. They came and picked us up, but once we got to the top of the cliff we had to wait about half an hour because the wind was, once again, being uncooperative. But FINALLY, we got to go. I actually tripped while running down the hill...not my most graceful moment. But it happened! I flew!

That's actually Roxanne, she went first.

Me in the air =D

View from the air!

Pretty. Damn. Awesome. However, I feel like I overhyped it in my mind, because when we actually did it, it wasn't nearly as exciting as I thought it'd be. The ride didn't last very long...maybe like 5 minutes. But, it was still pretty cool. And I can now say I've been paragliding! =D Then we went home, had KFC for dinner, and Maarten drove us to the airport so we could go back to Johannesburg. And that was our trip to Cape Town!