On To Cape Town!

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We spent Thursday morning traveling from Windhoek to Cape Town South Africa. What normally would be a pretty short flight was made four hours long because we had to fly to Walvis Bay first and then down to Cape Town. Oh well, we’ve all gained a lot of patience for flying this trip.

The first thing I noticed about Cape Town was the Cape Flats that surrounded the airport. These informal settlements reminded me a lot of Katatura except that there was a lot more graffiti.  Gangs are a huge problem in Cape Town and that is why there is so much more decorations on the make shift houses.

Some of the cape flats

Coming into Cape Town

We are staying very close to down town Cape Town/ the Harbor at a little place called St. Paul’s Guest house. It’s quite cute, and you can tell it is a very old building with a lot of character….and no AC and not a whole lot of breezes blowing through. Thankfully we’re all used to sleeping in saunas by now.  We settled in and then hit Long Street for a bit of shopping. Long Street is vibrant; full of shops, restaurants, bars, and hostels. It’s colorful, loud, busy and full of people from around the world. We hit up the open market for a while before grabbing burgers and fries at a little Cuban restaurant.  I’ve decided that the problem with Namibian and SA food is that they don’t know how to properly deep fry food.  Fries tend to be very mushy and unappetizing here.  Obviously these cooks just need to hang out at the MN state fair to find out how deep fried food is supposed to be done.

Thursday night we had to watch Cry Freedom. It might be a great movie. However due to our exhausted state of being, and the over whelming heat being crammed into a tiny dining room on hard straight back chairs for 2 hours and 40 minutes we really couldn’t focus  on the movie very well. It was a disaster.  Poor planning by our professors since this movie could have easily been watched during one of our empty evenings in Windhoek- where there is a large room with comfy chairs, and we generally weren't quite so exhausted.