After a long day (or two) of travel, we (Andrea, Brittany, Caitlin, Jo, Lindsay, Morena and Sarah) arrived safe with our bags at the Cape Town airport, and were greeted by Ilze and Craig of Southern Destinations. We dropped off our luggage at Ashanti Lodge – the gorgeous hostel that will be our home for the next couple weeks. 
Ilze and Craig took us on a tour of the city while we waited until we could check in at Ashanti. Craig was great pointing out landmarks like Table Mountain, Lions Head, Devils Peak and “sleeping elephant”, as well as correcting our knowledge of the local flora and fauna. Yes, those are indeed pine trees, and no that is not a turkey chicken, but a guinea fowl. They took us to a beautiful view of the city – Signal Hill – and from there we were overlooking Cape Bay as well as the newly built Green Point Stadium which hosted a World Cup semi-final. From here we also had a great view of Robben Island.
After checking in at the hostel, and organizing ourselves briefly into our 8 person dorm room, we went out to Long Street for lunch at a Caribbean place and watched part of the Manchester vs. Arsenal game. We might have enjoyed a couple beverages, which Brittany feels did nothing for our jet lag.
We followed up our lunch and beverages with a trip to Camps Bay – slightly delayed by the fact that the one taxi driver decided when we asked to go to the beach, we really meant a private country club. Not the case – we over loaded the second taxi, which required Caitlin to sit on the ground, next to the driver – and arrived safely at our intended destination.
Arriving on the beach, we attempted to take some jumping photos, and essentially failed miserably. Take a look at our only successful picture. We looked like sufficient idiots, that a local came over and introduced himself and asked after our accents… Andrea said “what accent” and thus our first friend was made. The sunset was gorgeous – Andrea pointed out the “sailors moon” – turns out this “moon” was really just… the sun. Brittany commented on the interesting clouds, which were “upside down since we are on the other side of the world” – Morena had a brief moment before the epiphany that this was indeed false. Moron.
We broke out a hackey sack and attempted some beach hackey – barefoot and sand did not help any of our skills, but we had fun nonetheless. Our new friends, Scott and Gareth live in Hermanus, so we will try and meet up with them when we are in Hermanus next weekend. The water was really cold, we were really hoping it would help our cankle situation post flight, however it failed drastically. Morena still has sausage toes as of the writing of this the next morning.
We walked along by the restaurants, and were impressed at the number of gorgeous people in Cape Town – Craig had warned us of this, but seeing is believing. After walking along all the restaurants and bypassing all of them, we went back to an Italian restaurant and ate some dinner and shared a bottle of wine – again, not good for the jet lag. Dinner was a relatively quiet affair, perhaps the 48 hours without sleep (or… a shower) was finally getting to us.
After catching a taxi back to Ashanti Lodge, we were all pretty excited to finally get to shower. If we had to rank the shower on a scale from one to amazing, I think we’d all give it at least an amazing.
Quite quickly after our showers, we were all in bed and attempting to read – Caitlin fell asleep with her book, then proceeded to kick it off the bed. Thanks for waking us up… Jo charged her iPhone, and proceeded to wake us up with her alarm. Thanks Jo. Andrea talks in her sleep… Thanks Andrea. And poor Morena just couldn’t sleep. Otherwise, a great night, and first day in Cape Town.
Cheers from Cape Town.
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