July 7
It’s 8 pm, we’ve just finished dinner and I’m still incredibly hungover. I have a new worst hangover ever story – the day after the World Cup semifinals. Getting our tickets was incredibly stressful – at first I thought they would be fake, then I thought that they wouldn’t be shipped to us in time. The latter turned out to be true; we had to pick them up at the Cape Grace Hotel about 3 hours before game time. The good news: they upgraded us from Category 3 to Category 2, so we were 15 rows back from the field. The game was a lot of fun – and they have no limit on how many beers you can get at once (we each got 4) – and we got to see 5 goals and cheer on the Netherlands to victory. After the game we went to this crazy club called Fez, where we somehow got in for free and without having to wait in a long line. To give you an idea of the club: after the Spanish national team won their round of 16 game over Portugal this is where they (and Mick Jagger) all went for the after party. Needless to say it was nuts in there, and the next morning I immediately regretted how much I had drank. I slept for pretty much the entire day until dinner and felt horrible for most of it, but it was definitely worth it for the craziness from the night before.
Our time in Cape Town has made me unbelievably excited to live here for the next four and a half months. Our first day we went to Kirstenbosch, a beautiful botanical garden (though we didn’t spend much time there), and hiked from Kirstenbosch up the back side of Table Mountain. It was one of the most challenging hike’s I’ve ever done, as it was basically a straight vertical climb of 1100 meters, including rock climbing up a gorge. When we got to the top of the gorge we broke through the clouds below and had a relatively easy walk to the highest part of Table Mountain. The views you get up there are indescribable, especially with a layer of clouds below you on one side (the ocean) and it being perfectly clear on the other side (down into Cape Town). I know it will not be my last time on top of that mountain, though it may be my last time going up through Kirstenbosch given the difficulty of the hike. That night we went to a bar down on Long Street with our newest travel partner, Matt Misbin, and his roommates’ best friend who now lives in Cape Town. He showed us a good time and now I have a better idea for the nightlife around Cape Town.
Tuesday morning, before going to the game, we walked around all of Cape Town. I have never in my life seen a city buzzing (literally, with the sound of the vuvuzela audible everywhere) like that. It was the day of the last World Cup game in the biggest city in South Africa, quite possibly the biggest tourist day in Cape Town history. We went down to a bunch of local markets and explored, then made our way to the Bo Kaap, which flows right into the central business district of downtown Cape Town. It was really cool to see residential life that seemed so chill flow directly into the city itself, and made me realize how diverse a city Cape Town really is. We were walking through the Bo Kaap and walked through a park where we met a group of 5 local guys about our age and chatted with them for a little over an hour. It was a great way to see some local culture and see how, despite the fact that Cape Town may seem like a big American city on the surface, it is far from it at the heart. I think I’m going to like it here.
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