I'm finally blogging live! Matt left last night for Joburg, and Michael left this morning to go back to the US, so I'm now on my own in Cape Town. The last few days of our travels were some of the best, and I'll be sure to return to the sites we saw around Cape Town before my time here is up.
We traveled Wednesday to De Hoop Nature Reserve, about a three hour drive from Cape Town. I was passed out for the entire ride and missed a lot of the beautiful scenery entering the park, but once I got there I knew that this place was special. Combine the unbelievable sand dunes of Death Valley with the bushlands of Africa and put it all together on the coast overlooking the Indian Ocean and the highest density concentration of whales around South Africa and you've got De Hoop. The pictures do not do this place justice. It is simply the most beautiful place I have ever been in my life. We chilled Wednesday afternoon on the beach, hiked around the reserve on Thursday morning, and spent Thursday afternoon exploring the rugged coast line and the majestic sand dunes. We saw probably 5 or 6 whales, which was cool, though I still don't quite understand the appeal of whale watching - it seems like a ridiculously snobby activity to pay to see a tail for about 5 seconds. Walking along the sand dunes and overlooking the ocean was one of the most relaxing and serene things I've done in my lifetime.
Thursday night, after a 2 and a half hour drive, we arrived in Stellenbosch. Though most people will scoff when you tell them you're in wine country in South Africa ("no way it compares to France"), they are all horribly mistaken. Some of the best wines in the world come from Stellenbosch, and it's in an incredibly beautiful setting surrounded by mountains and rolling plains. We took it easy Thursday night in preparation for our big day on Friday - the wine country tour. We visited 4 different wineries and sampled at least 25 different wines. We also had a cellar tour, where we learned about how wine was made and what gives different wine different flavoring, in addition to a cheese tasting at one of the wineries. We also got a fat lunch (with more wine, of course) and got driven around all day - all for the price of $45. Luckily no one else on our tour (2 Germans, 2 Brits, and 2 Canadians) was a wine snob, and I don' think one single tasting was spit out the entire day. By the end of the day we were all feeling very warm and fuzzy and friendly and loving life to the fullest. We passed out very early Friday night (partially by choice so we could get up early, partially because of the wine), but the wine tour was maybe the highlight of the trip. Though I still find it incredibly pretentious that people are wine connoisseurs, I can understand that there are definitely vastly different tastes to wine and can see how it can be made into a hobby.
We awoke Saturday morning with miserable weather - raining and no visibility - but decided we would set out for The Cape of Good Hope anyways. We didn't really expect to be able to see much because of the weather, and upon arriving at the park it seemed like it would be the case - we were the second car to pull into the lot. We waited for about an hour for the storm to die down a bit and set out to walk up towards the lighthouse, when, much to our surprise, everything started to clear up. Though still cloudy, we had stunning views of "the end of the world". This is another place where pictures cannot possibly do justice - if you visit Cape Point in person you'll know what I'm talking about. It's crazy to think that we were at the most southern point in all of Africa, and there was nothing for more than 8500 km south of us until Antarctica (and who really cares about Antarctica anyways?) A truly majestic place, and it surpassed all expectations.
Today I'm going to check into my orientation hotel and then meet up with Will Hummel to go to watch the Spain v. Netherlands game down at the Fan Fest at the waterfront in Cape Town. I cannot imagine the party that is going to ensue after this game, but I'm sure it'll be insane. Go Dutch!
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