Knysna Elephant Park

After our trip into Wilderness, we drove on to see our first elephants! Knysna Elephant Park was the one on our way next. We would have liked to actually ride them. That would have been possible in Knysna, but we should have booked that in advance. So no riding and no sunset cruise. But Elephants!
We got a tour and food for them to feed. Knysna Elephant Park is a pretty small area, so it is more like a zoo than anything. And very very touristy. People come, get buckets of food, get put in a wagon behind a tractor and cruised some hundred meters into the field. The elephants have to sleeps indoors, in giant cages, because they would trample down the fences of the estate otherways.

During the day the elephants play around in the pond closeby and everytime a herd of humans comes to the barrier, they know they are getting fed.
So they come from the water, let the people feed them, some can be touched and the guide tells you to take pictures with them. You are supposed to stay close to the guide, because the elephants know them and they are wild animals after all. It's pretty much tourist-tide-over, but it is a chance to see elephants in close up, touch, feed, experience. Sebastian enjoyed it a lot, I didn't like our "German" guide. He didn't seem interested (understandable with I don't know how many tourists coming through there every day) and some of the answers he gave me turned out to be wrong.

Into Wilderness with a local

Wilderness National Park

Janine showed us how to braai, Matthew took us hiking next morning: into Wilderness with a local! Like a little mountain lion he lead the way through the beautiful forest, helped us over the river by boat and showed us a wonderful waterfall.

Matthew & Janine

It was wonderful to have a local guide like this. He grew up in George right at the foot of a mountain that is part of the National Park. He admitted, that living here, he sometimes forgets how privileged he is to have beauty like that right on his doorstep. Showing foreigners around makes him appreciate it a lot.
Janine used to live in Jo'berg and moved down here a while ago. Matthew wanted to show her the waterfalls for quite a while, but they never went there. So it was perfect to seize the opportunity like this! We had the most personal guide and Janine came to see the waterfalls at last!


It was beautiful up there. In rainier times all the stone is part of the waterfall. Because of the water shortage there was only a little water running. It was crystal clear and very wonderful to look at!

Waterfall

National Braai Day with Janine

Today (meaning Tuesday, September 24th) was Heritage Day in South Africa. It is a national holiday and informally known as National Braai Day, were South Africans braai (make a barbeque)! We were shark diving today and drove on to Wilderness afterwards. We stopped at a private game reserve in Little Brak River, where I would have wanted to go on a horse back safari, if it wasn’t too late in the evening (4:30pm), so they closed.

Arriving in a wonderful backpackers I found in a very resourceful little guidebook called “Coast to Coast”. Christian found it lying around in our house and recommended it, I found the new version of it at the car rental office! It’s pocket sized and has very little to every place you could want to visit, but the few things in there are truly awesome! We arrived at the Beach House Backpackers and met Janine J

We were hungry and a little sick, because the so called “lunch” we had at White Shark Arfica were truly crappy. In busier times the bar serves pizza from a stone oven. But there weren't so many guests and the bar wasn't that busy. So no pizza. Janine, our wonderful host for that evening told us that we should definitely have a South African barbeque (Braai), after all it was National Braai Day!

Sebastian & Janine

She can get the braai started for us and tell us how to braai the South African way. We only had to get what we wanted to put on the grill. That we did: we went to the close by Spar, bought Boerewors and Sirloin Steak. Janine told us to get maize cobs, but we didn't do that, we decided to go without veggies and bought buns (low GI!) instead. Janine provided us with two potatoes spiced à la Janine in foil anyway (thanks!). She showed us how to spice the steak as well - the South African way! By accident she used coconut instead of salt, but that worked just fine! We had the most wonderful and very romantic braai there and a wonderful evening with pool, Savannah for me, beer for Sebastian and wonderful company!

Annie's Place

See the roof with the balcony:
that's Annie's place

After diving with the sharks we drove on to our next destination: Wilderness. The wonderful free south african guidebook "coast to coast" suggested to stay at Beach Lodge and Backpackers "Annie's place". What a wonderful suggestion! Not only did we meet Janine and Matthew there, we also had the most adorable room and the most amazing view in the morning. Even though we had a late night with all the braaing we still woke up early to take a walk along the beach in the morning. It was marvelous!

the view outside our window

Lost and Found

We stayed in different backpackers/ B&B nearly every night. The first three seemed to start a pattern (which I thankfully didn't keep up...).
At Blue Whale Lodge in Mossel Bay:I accidentally took the bible (in Africans) from the room.
In Wilderness at Annie's place I forgot my shower gel.
And in Plettenberg Bay we took the room key with us (which we brought back right away).

The rest of the accommodations weren't that awesome, I didn't forget or take something. I called about the bible, which obviously was for free anyway and we were allowed yo keep it :) - but I really do miss my shower gel!

Baboons

(Pawiane for the German followers)
They are supposed to be everywhere - I am starting to belief this everywhere is nowhere! We traveled 8 days, we saw many "don't feed the baboons"-signs, but we didn't see one single baboon! I'm starting to belief the whole baboon thing is only a myth to excite tourists in the parking lots and make them take there leftovers with them :)

Shark Diving

Out into the bay close to Seal Island

Today (we just ignored our colds – thanks to Aspirin provided by my mom) we went shark diving! Actually Sebastian wanted to dive, I just wanted to see. So we spent R1350 (around 100€) to go on a boat and Sebastian in a Cage with great white sharks around us.

Getting ready to dive

I didn’t go in the cage – it was awesome anyway! I had a wonderful time watching the seals on Seal Island while waiting for the white sharks to catch the scent of the disgusting mixture they purred into the water. I was wondering about the difference to the sea lions in San Francisco before, now I know one difference: they sound different! The Californian sea lions make very distinct loud sounds. A little bit like birds maybe. The seals here sound like a whole farm! Mostly like sheep, a large herd of them, but there was a little cow and chicken in the sound cloud as well! I tried to capture that with my little camera, we will see how that turns out! But it was very windy, so I don’t have high hopes for the sound quality. It was amazing! Seal Island is a tini-tiny island in the middle of the bay and in their high times there are up to 4000 seals on that tiny spot of land.

Sebastian in the cage

Because of that there also are a lot of sharks living in this area permanently. The population of white sharks here is around 350! Normally white sharks move from one place to another. Here they took a residence, because of the never ending supply of seals. There are some even bigger great whites that only come on the peaks of the seal population and rove around the rest of the African shore of the Indian Ocean the rest of the year. But the “smaller” great whites live here permanently.

Nr. 6

White Shark Africa set anchor right next to Seal Island. They brought fish heads as bite and a disgusting mixture of sardines and something to tip in the water to attract the sharks via scent. It took maybe 20 minutes before the first little shark arrived, little meaning maybe 2-3m. They let the cage down into the water and the first group of divers put on their wetsuits. The crew consisted of 5 men: a skipper, one shooting a video of the trip, one who purred the mixture into the water and one that played with the bite for the sharks. The last one also gave the commands for the divers, when to get down. I didn’t see one single shark coming the way they do in the movies – with their flapper cutting through the water. They approached under the surface. Over the trip I learn to look for the right things and I could see them coming from underneath.

Nr. 7

We saw 7 different sharks. The last two were very big, around 8m. The crew knew them and they had names. And they actually fought for the bite! One got caught with his teeth in the cage the second set of divers where in. It was kind of a climax! The two guys from Cologne (besides some Belgians, there were only Gemans on that boat… - guess shark diving is something only Germans do) who did the trip a few weeks ago but didn’t get to see sharks and got a voucher to go again for it, were well rewarded!

We were in the water for maybe 2-3 hours, afterwards we had “lunch” (the most crappiest sandwiches we had ever had) at the office of organization and watched the video that was shot while on the boat. Pretty simple trick to get even more money out of us, but we did get it anyway – I guess we will never go shark diving again :)

on the way back

Mossel Bay

Mossel Bay

We arrived after sunset, but managed to find a decent place to stay despite the school hockey championships going on in Mossel Bay these days: Blue Whale B&B. Nice people, full English breakfast (again without the beans…) and a room that would be perfect, if it didn’t smell like the house I visited with my cousin in Wales once – old carpets and curtains.

Unfortunately both of us came down with a flew right in the beginning of the holidays. So we didn’t do that much on our first day. We started our day late, wanted to go on a boat trip to Seal Island, which didn’t go, because the boat was broken and we ended up walking around this wonderful little town and enjoying it. We did visit the shark lab in the afternoon, though! That was tiny but very interesting! We found out hoe sharks are hatched and born. Very interesting. Tiny lab though.

We ended our day at a dinner at Pavilion, recommended by Lonely Planet, at the beach, with burger and roasted vegetable salad. It was wonderful, only a little cold – but nothing a hot bath couldn’t cure!

Through sheep land

Somewhere besides N2 between Cape Town and Mossel Bay

It took us a while to get started, but after a very late breakfast at Euro House - full English for Sebastian, who was missing the baked beans badly. But after checking Victoria Warft for shops that could repair his father’s Pentax we were on our way! Down the N2 towards Garden Route!

I expected something like when the girls and I drove up to East Coast National Park, ostriches by the road and to on - but missed it by far! We drove through smooth hills and meadows with mostly sheep-farms. There was canola (“Raps” – for the German readers) around us and sheep on the farmlands. Not so much different from Germany, besides the wideness of it all – and the number of the sheep in the herds! A little further there were actually ostrich farms as well, so ostriches yes, but not wild.

We passed wonderful landscapes and mountains far away, which we saw with clouds and without on top. It was beautiful! Our destination for today: Mossel Bay.

The African Café

Saturday 4:57pm (40 minutes - early thanks to Franz and Tjark, I remembered to check the flight details of qatar online!) Sebastian arrived in Cape Town! I rented a car for our road trip this week, so I could pick him up from the airport J. I managed quite well driving left! I actually caught myself checking the street the right way: right-left-right, not left-right-left like I trained my whole life. So I am adjusting to South Afican traffic! 

African Café Vegetable Soup

For his first night here I wanted to go out get African food (he didn’t like the idea that much, because he hated the African food he had in his year studying in Paris). I had read in my guidebooks about the African Café quite close to where I live and wanted to check it out. (Even my housemate told me not to go there, but I didn’t listen…). We thought about Addis in Cape, a nice Ethiopian restaurant close by, but I wanted to go to Cafè Africa. So we did. 

Ethiopian Iab
Cape Malay Dhal Curry in Roti
African Café Cassava Bread
Botswana Seswaa Masala
Xhosa Imifino Patties

To get to know African food it is actually quite good! It’s an all you can eat menue, where you get to taste everything on the menue and you can order more of whatever, if you wish. The first few courses where nice! Differently baked dough, Egyptian with chick peas, little other baked things. The main courses where exactly like Sebastian remembered them from Paris. For me all of them were too hot, for I can’t eat hot-spicy stuff at all. I tried everything, but I couldn’t eat much. And we were nearly full of all the starters we had before. The desert was very nice anyway (carrot-ginger cake).

So they did give us an impression of African cuisine indeed. But it was horribly touristic… All the other guests beside us where obviously tourists, too. If the language didn’t give them away than the reaction to the dancing and singing staff. And yes. The waiters started singing, dancing and drumming after they brought us the mains. Tiny room, tourists, drums and black people singing African songs…. I seriously thought it would have better to listen to Sebastian or Bukle – and it was pretty expensive, too!

Laundry Day

Today I finally had to admit that I don't have any more clean cloths with me. And I think I have bedbugs! I have little bitemarks all over my body!
So I decided to get my laundry done. Challenging for we do have 4 different washing machines in the house, but none is working. I checked out "I love my laundry" last weekend, there would have been food and wifi as well, but they only do cold wash. Bugs might not die in cold water - I thought.
So I went to the place my house mate recommended: Laundry on Long. They defeated her bedbugs she said. I love the place! It's not very spectacular, a little room with washing machines, tumblers and dryers - with a german lady running the place. I asked her if she does hot washing. She doesn't and she couldn't think of any laundry in town that does laundry hot! You would have to install your washing machine differently, if you want to do hot washing with it. Seems like south african people don't do laundry at different water temperatures! They do have different washing liquid that works with cold water. So no boiling the bugs out. But she thought it will get out. She was wonderful and Long Street is so close to my home that I left it with her. And I brought the two duvets and my pillow and all my other clothes to her as well. I think in the end I had 16 kg, two duvets and a pillow there. And: they deliver! If I had known before, I could have gotten my laundry picked up as well! I will absolutely keep that in mind!
I still can't quite get over the Southafricans only doing cold laundry! Hopefully the bedbugs will be done anyway! 

Papaya and Paw Paw

Remember I posted about Papaya before? Turns out I made a mistake back there! I actually had Paw Paw that day -today I had Papaya! It looks almost the same, only a little smaller (I can eat a whole papaya, I couln’t eat the whole paw paw that day) and sweeter. Where paw paw remindet me more of pumpkin, papaya is closer to mango, I would say.

Lunch at Café Mozart

After school Karin and I go out for lunch. Both of us like eating a proper meal for lunch and it gives us the opportunity to talk about out cases. In the first weeks we tried the places closes to our school: Roxy’s, Maria’s (greek), Vandarian (indian) and places Garden Center. Today we went into town to Café Mozart, where we could nearly sit in the sun. It is a wonderful little place and they have buffet for lunch for R35 including a glass of wine. It was delicious and it is incredible how cheap it is to eat out here in Cape Town. Karin and I both loved it and we paid R70 together. That is something around 5€ - and we got mints!

Surfing with Seals

Muizenberg beach

Today, finally we went surfing again! The weather wasn’t all sunny and fun, but actually in the water that doesn’t matter. It was pretty cloudy and drizzling now and than. But the waves were nice! I still can’t read the surf forecast properly…

Anyway we went! Andrea and her housemate Pauli came along and had a beginners lesson also. Karin and I had a lesson with Alfonso again. The tide was pretty much in, so we had higher waves than first time. But this time I stood at my first wave!

Arriving at Muizenberg we were told right away that there were whales in the bay and we could see them! Behind the little black surfers on their boards were bigger black parts coming out of the waves!

Oceanview from Muizenberg

As if that wasn’t amazing enough, I had an encounter with a seal on my last wave for the day. I saw the body-boarders besides me check the water with nervous excitement, than the something swam towards me: a seal! Literally right next to me he brought his head over the water, looked at me and went down again. I was so excited (and nervous, because, when there are seals there might be sharks) that I couldn’t even catch my last wave, but had to paddle out.

I had a house in Cape Town...

Yesterday Christian moved out. He was supposed to find a replacement for him in the house, which he tried and thought he succeeded and he was worried about not getting his deposit back, as happened to others in this house before. He asked me to be there, when our landlady came, as support. He was all settled and packed, ready to leave the house. She came and went through the contract with him. Because he didn’t want to loose his deposit, he didn’t pay the rent for September. The deposit he was supposed to get back and the rent would balance each other. He told this to Ray (our landlady) and asked her to check the room, if there is any reason, why he shouldn’t get his deposit back. She agreed with him on the point that he would get his deposit back. Than the whole situation got really weird and pretty much out of hand.

Ray said he hadn’t paid, and therefore needs to give her the money for this month. And because he didn’t find a replacement (the one he thought he had didn’t show up and didn’t want the room, when we called her), she will keep the deposit as well. Christian said he won’t pay any more, because he didn’t owe her anything. He left the room as he received it and he did his best to find a replacement.

Ray hadn’t arrived alone. She brought someone: a fat guy with greasy hair, a shirt with big flowery print and a parrot in his shoulder. She didn’t introduce him, he didn’t say who he was, he came, sat in the kitchen and let his parrot pick his face.

When Christian refused to give Ray money, she turned to him (still didn’t give us a name) and said, well that is why she brought a detective. She called him and showed him the leasing-agreement ant repeated her point over and over again. They both started to go against Christian, who got even more nervous, loud and angry. Somehow I felt like they had a point, Christian should have paid the rent. And maybe he could have tried harder to find a replacement than having an email saying someone wants to secure the place (that someone never contacted Ray). But I did understand Christians position as well. He didn’t do anything wrong, she knew that he was moving out early and he tried his best.

From that point on they didn’t really communicate at all any more. Everyone was talking and trying to make a point. Christian, nervously wandering around the room already all the time started getting his last things together and decided to just leave.

That made Ray and “the detective” come up with jail, Interpol and the German embassy. The said they would call the police, he would be arrested and they would through him into jail. Ray was also going on about how nice the last German tenants used to be and she couldn’t see that coming, and she just wanted to be nice by letting him stay for a shorter period and that he had such a good live here and so on.

Christian actually left the house just like that - Luckily for him the safety-door was open, other ways his departure wouldn’t have been so dramatic.

The whole scene felt like hours. Ray stayed a little longer, to once more explain, how she wants people find replacements and how lucky Christian was to have lived here. When she finally left nearly all my housemates were there. We discussed the situation for a while. Many strange things came up. No one really believed that the fat man with the parrot was a real detective (I asked Christian about that later, he said, he had seen the man and the parrot before, when Ray fetched a fridge from the house). I was pretty scared and worried about Christian, but no one really believed she would actually go after him at all. Gavin, Christians roommate wanted to open a bank account with the leasing contract and couldn’t, because the bank said, the contract wasn’t legally approved. He used to pay the money to a Nedbank account, but had to switch to Capitec, because the Nedbank account was supposedly shut down. Armand (another housemate) still put his rent into that account. They also told me stories about people living in the house without ever signing the contract at all. David (housemate, living downstairs) said, that the whole house runs as a business, but Ray doesn’t pay any taxes for it.

These and a lot of other weird stories came up and all of us are pretty sure, nothing Ray does is legally correct. Which gives me the impression that all landlords here have some skeletons in their closets. My friend Andrea, which I spend Saturday with told me, that her landlord rents out several houses throughout Cape Town, but doesn’t own any of them. He rent them out, collects the rent, but never gives it to the rightful owners. He doesn’t pay the cleaning lady or does anything he says he will do for the house. He pretty much lives a wealthy live with the money he gets from his tenants.

Seems to me there is a lot of criminal energy even in the lending sector here.

Cafe Haas

Trying to get WiFi on a Sunday, I went a place my fellow swiss intern collegues told me about and Lonley Plant told me to go Café Haas on Rose Street.

It’s impressive, how Cafés in Cape Town tend to be bigger on the inside, like the Tardis. You can see a tiny room through the windows from the outside, inside it goes around one corner, through doors, to a courtyard, sometimes upstairs and so on. There are so many waiters, that you think it should be quick to get whatever there. Getting coffee actually is and most of the coffee is pretty decent. But getting the password to the internet seems to be tricky. Here at Café Haas the waiters wear all black and a black top hat. It looks wonderful, but doesn’t make the service any faster.

Not fast, but resourceful: The waiter cleaning the table beside me just dipped his table cloth in the water jar, the girl left there, to clean the table with. :)

Saturday with Andrea

I didn’t have any plans for Saturday, besides sleeping in and checking out a place called “I love my Laundry”. Some time before noon, Andrea texted me if I had plans. We met at I love my laundry and spent the whole afternoon walking around town checking out places and going to the movies! I love my laundry is a wonderful place, I fell in love with it right away, but I will post about that, when I actually did my laundry there!

We searched for Café Mozart, a place supposed to be nice. Like many places here I didn’t find it right away, even though I had passed it many times before. We had freshly pressed juices and a delicious scone there. And we could sit in the sun! It really is a nice place!

Clock Tower at V & A Waterfront

Walking round in the city isn’t that beautiful when the sun is shining like yesterday, because you are always in the shade of the huge buildings. So we headed north to V & A Waterfront. A place a lot like Pier 36 in San Francisco, but with seals, not with sea lions. We wanted to go to Robben Island, the Island in Table Bay, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 17 years (that’s what the guide said, Wikipedia says 20 year – anyhow an incredible long time). 

Seals

To go there we should have booked a day in advance, so we changed our plans and hoped spontaneously on a boat that took us round the harbour for half an hour. Not so life changing after all, but we did see seals and had an amazing view of Table Mountain, Lions Head and Signal Hill! 

Lions Head with weather-changing cloud and Signal Hill

The clouds were impressive, and the boat guide told us, how you could tell the weather by looking at the clouds at the mountains. See the cloud around Lions Head, that looks like it’s a chimney? That’s the cloud that predicts that the weather changes and that rain is on the way. And it was true: it started raining in the night and a huge rain-storm hit the city in the morning. I wanted to hike up Table Mountain with my housemate today, but the weather didn’t allow any movement outside of the house till noon.

Table Mountain from middle of the Bay at V & A Waterfront

Granadillos & Paw Paw

I did already write about fruit. But still fruits here are all different from at home! Yes there are apples and pears and of course - as I learned the season just began- strawberries. But there are all the exotic fruits that we do have in Germany, but they are expensive and taste boring.

My new favourite is Maracuja! I bought a bag that said Granadillos on the label and head small (a little bigger than walnut in their husk, when they fall of the tree) round purple-ish hard round fruit inside. I learned, that you cut it in half and eat the inside with a spoon – kind of like a hard cooked egg.

It is delicious! There is actually not a lot to eat in the inside, but it is a little sour, fresh and also a little sweet. Like maracuja J I do think that Granadillo, Maracuja and Passion Fruit are several names for the same fruit. Still have to conform that, will ask Wiki!

Next thing I tried is Paw Paw, that I knew a little under the name Papaja. It has the size of a longish pumpkin, but the skin is much softer. It also has pips inside, little black ones, that you remove before eating. Than it tastes a little pumpkin, mango and melon - not very sweet, but a little sweet anyway. The consistency is like melon, but not so wet. And the pips inside are pretty much just lying around there and fall out pretty easy.

Both Paw Paw and Maracuja would be great in yoghurt I guess.

Hope Street Night Market

Thursday evenings, there is a market that starts at 5pm and runs to 8:30pm right nex to our school in Hope Street! It's the City Bowl Market and it is wonderful!
It is indoors in a kind of city hall and there are a lot of stands with different foods and there is a wine tasting. It has a very lively atmosphere and the food is amazing! I had a burger, Karin had an Egyptian rice-humus-something with yoghurt on top and Luzia (who brought us there for her last evening) had some mixed meat and potato platter. Everything was delicious and the brownies we had for dessert where exactly how brownies are supposed to be. We also did some wine tasting, but I'm still not a wine person. so I guess I couldn't appreciate that the way I could :)

There were also some stands with jewellery and cloths, we tried things on and wanted to buy some, but we didn't have enough money with us. Seems that's no problem here at all: I will get my dress delivered today, Karin will get her vest soon, also delivered to her! What a service!

The designers that made my dress were a gay couple and they were wonderful to talk to and I was surprised to see gays in my second week in Cape Town, for both of my guide books say that it is pretty unusual and very hard to be gay in South Africa! Maybe that changed for the better already. I really enjoyed the market, I loved the food and I am looking forward to getting my dress today.

Lions Head at Sundown

After playasketball on Tuesday evening without any shoes on (which made me pretty sore about everywhere), a small group of us decided to hike up Lions Head to see the sunset there.

Starting the way up

I started with Karin, Luzia (my fellow interns), Andrea and two housemates of hers. I have never been up to Lions Head before, so I didn't know, how the hike would be. Half way up, the rest of my group decided, that they don't want to climb down the way with the chains and handles in darkness. They wanted to go a little further back and watch the sunset there.





We had a wonderful view down all the way up! The weather was perfect, the sky was clear except for the table cloth over Table Mountain, which we had a pretty amazing view of:

Table Mountain with a little table cloth on top

A little further we also saw the Twelve Apostles all the way down to the Cape. Behind the little horizon you see there is nothing for miles and miles and miles - and than the South Pole!

the Twelve Apostles

A little further around the Hill you could see the scenery to the other side: Robben Island (where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for so many years), Sea Point, Signal Hill and further north the Northern Suburbs.

Signal Hill

Top of Lions Head

We were already half way up and it was still half an hour to sundown, so I did want to climb all the way up! Lucky for me I knew that a group of interns at German School went up there half an hour before us (Christian, my German house mate was with them). So I kind of switched groups, climb up the rest of the hill - there are two ways up - I took the easy one around the hill, not straight up.

Table Mountain sighted by the sunset

The view from the top was seriously worth 20 minutes more climbing! It is spectacular, to see table mountain beside you, all the way down to Cape Point, Robben Island and further up to north for so far! Cape Town really is a huge City!

 

Sunset into the South Atlantic Ocean from Lions Head

To the west the only thing you see is water, I guess the next thing out there would be South America. The sky was clear for all the way up, shortly before sundown the thin line of clouds appeared on the horizon. It made sundown even more wonderful!


The group I started with was afraid it would be too dark to get down from the top. It actually wasn't that dark at all. It stayed light for quite a while and later the lights of the city gave enough light to walk easily.

So it would have been easy to come down Lions Head after dark, if one of the group hadn't fell! One of Christian's colleagues missed a step right under the top - it wasn't dark at all at that point, he just wasn't careful enough where to step. So he missed a step and fell like 1 1/2 meter. Luckily he was caught by a bush! But he did hurt his ankle. A few minutes later a physiotherapist passed us and stopped to help. She use my tank top as a bandage and I had some pain killers with me, so we could help him at least a little.We still had to get him down on one leg. The two boys did a lot of carrying, I just took the bags. The first part which we thought would be hard actually was pretty easy, because you could go a long way on your but. The hurt one could do that well also, so it took us way longer than expected, but we managed. After that three guys, that passed us on their way up, as we started down on one foot less caught up with us on our way down and helped with carrying him.Close to the parking lot even a few security guards came and helped. Nevertheless, the few kept being spectacular, even the hurt one in pain could appreciate that.

Table Mountain with cloth

and the twelve Apostles

By the time we reached the parking lot, where a friend of the interns of German School picked us up and drove us home, it was fully dark and we had one more spectacular view over Cape Town.

Cape Town at night from Lions Head

Subsequent entry: as I kind of feared my top got disposed in the hospital. The doctors couldn't find anything broken or damaged. He got crutches and a bandage.

WiFi & Fruits

Being without WiFi at my house drives me crazy, but also makes me try out all the places around here that have WiFi!

The kids at school do have exams at the moment, so they can't come to counseling in the mornings. So this week Karin and I started at 1:30pm at the schools. That gives me time to check out places in the morning - what is way more satisfying than after work, because everything closes at 5pm around here. Literally everything. All the shops in the city close latest at 6pm, so everyone gets home before dark. Besides not having wifi, that is the next irritating thing for me here: you do not go out when it is dark. Shops and Cafés close, everyone hurries home and if you do want to go out after dark you get a cab for any tiny distance.

Searching for WiFi I checked out a Café right around the corner of my place: Franks. They do have pretty god muesli there! Granola with plain yoghurth and honey. Seriously awesome. But the WiFi sucks. It kicked me out in the middle of typing. So I checked out another place in the afternoon, a huge bakery that used to be a german one, now it's called Euro House. I had a red velvet cupcake and learned that it is made out of beetroot, to make it velvet! I could actually taste the beetroot after being told.


I used the opportunity to ask the waiter/chef about seasonal fruits at the moment. He went back to the kitchen and came back with a big box full of strawberries! He gave me some to taste and I guess I will be eating strawberries the next weeks!

I already tried to eat Guava and learned that you could actually eat it with the skin, kind of like an apple (on my first try I ate it like a kiwi, cutting it in half, eating it with a spoon). My next experiment will be Paw Paw (Papaya) and Granadillas.

West Coast National Park

On Saturday, my fellow interns and I rent a car to drive up to West Coast National Park! It´s a 1 1/2 h drive there and very pretty. As soon as the road leaves Cape Town, there are Farmstalls on the side of the roadsm next to the petrol stations. A Farmstall is a little market, kind of a farmers market, where one can buy local goods, freshly baked bread, homemade jam cockies, rusks and other food in jars. You could also eat there. So next time on a road trip I will have breakfast at such a place. It will be wonderful!

Niniane (multinational/captonian Intern) came with us, to drive us. South Africa drives on the left side of the road, so I didn't dare driving from the start. But I tried as soon as we left city-traffic! And it actually was pretty simple. Sometimes you use the windshield wiper instead of the tuning light, but that's not so bad.

But driving had it's down sides: I didn't see the first ostrich, we passed on the road, because I had to concentrate. But there where many more to come

As we passed the entrance of the park there was this sign: 

I was to surprised by it to take a picture right away, but I toke one on our way back! Only a few meters after the sign, there it was: the first tortoise right next to the street! And also many more to come:

First thing we did in the park (after taking a lot of pictures of the tortoises, which amazed me so much), was getting something to eat at the restaurant. It was a beautiful white house at the beach of the bay, with a beautiful garden.

Driving on, we had to stop every few kilometers, because of the beautiful view. The weather wasn't that kind to us, but it was much better