A Week in South Africa!!!!!

AJ, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and I

80's night

















Well we now have survived one full night of Cape Town!!! We have had a great time thus far but I don’t believe that we have slept at all since we arrived here. We ended up walking around long street after we left the internet café (long street is the main strip with all the shops restaurants and bars on it downtown). We stopped in and talked to one of the tour agents for a while where there was a group of friends from the ship that were about to leave on a bungee jumping adventure. They will drive about 8 hours out of town to a bridge and do the jump from there I forget how far of a drop it is but it seemed like it was a mile up in the air or something crazy like that. But it is the tallest bunngee jumping site in the world. I also had some friends go sky diving yesterday that said that they had a blast. They said that they showed up and the guy grabbed two of them put them in the plane and went over just a couple of minutes of instructions then threw them out of the plane. They said that it was pretty crazy. Anyways we arranged for a 16 passenger van for Thursday to take us around the wine county all day so will be nice. He also talked about a tour that would take us down to cape point which is the most south western part of south Africa that on the way you stop at one of their famous beaches with the penguins on it.

To answer the question that you are all waiting for, I just thought about it. We found out late last night when we got back onto the ship after exploring Long Street. That we will end up staying in Cape Town for a week which is two days longer than originally planned. Then after some time at sea we will stop at a small set of islands called the Maldives which is East of Madagascar. We stopped at a travel agent who had some brochures on it; it is supposedly really beautiful, with a strong attraction for the Europeans. We will spend three days there and then be on our way as previously scheduled to India if everything goes as planned. At first I had the attitude that it really didn’t matter where we went because it was not our choice and there was nothing that I could do about it. But the more I thought about it I really am sad that we are not going to get to do a Safari, maybe I will have to save that big game hunt for later. On our way into Cape Town AJ and I were talking to one of his business professors and he said that so far his wife has one elephant down and he has gotten four. Pretty crazy!!

So last night we drive all over town trying to find something to eat for some of the people in our group but all of the restaurants were closing because it was getting pretty late. It was pretty obnoxious, an entourage of taxis driving from place to place. We ended up going to this night spot Cool Runnings it is like a Ragea Bob Marley hang out. It was lots of fun, half of it was inside and half of it was outside. We made a good observation that these days when we are in port you order food thinking you know what you are ordering. But truly every time the food comes out you are always surprised. There was a group of 15 or so of us, and after a while we got to know the owner that for some reason felt compelled to take care of some of the drinks for us so that was nice.
But 5:30 am came way to early this morning!!! We were supposed to be down at the bottom of the pier at 5:30 but the buses didn’t end up leaving to go shark diving until around 6am. It is about a 2 hour drive that we slept on and off most of the way. It was nice to see different parts of South Africa when we would wake up from time to time. It is very rocky and very mountainous. We drove by several of the townships (which is what they call the scauter shanty towns in Africa) they were similar to those that I have told you about in the past in Brazil and Venezuela but seemed to be much poorer looking. The main difference was that they were built outside of town on flat land where the other ports the people built them on the sides of the mountains right next to town. It is just like in the commercials on TV. If there is one definite thing that I will have learned from the trip it is that how fortunate we all are back in the states. We take having so much for granted, it’s unbelievable. God has been so good to all us. Giving us food, a place to eat, family, and friends and something a simple as work or a job. Something so basic that many around the world can’t claim to have, not because they are lazy rather that there is just no work.
After arriving at the dive site we had a lit breakfast and sat around for nearly two hours until they told us that the waters were too rough to take us out plus it would make the visibility really bad. So we could either loose our deposit or reschedule many rescheduled by AJ and I decided that we didn’t want to. And if we do decide to do it later in the trip if it gets warmer that we can arrange in it town for even cheaper.
Well I better run I hope that you enjoy the photos and there are more posted on the other web shots web site. Here is the link again if you need it. http://community.webshots.com/user/chadgriggs God Bless!!!!
Chad