The Garden Route, German style!!!

I don't think i really need to tell you what a roadtrip with 8 college kids is like, but when you factor in a mercedes benz, a german at the helm (he kept saying things like "in my country we don't have speed limits" as an excuse for doing 120 in a 60) and when you keep in mind we're driving on the left hand side of the road, while trying to spot baboons... yeah it got wild. but we only drove into oncoming traffic once, and hit nothing. The Garden route is a very famous and picturesque road along the coast of south Africa, picture the amalfi drive but with wildlife parks and instead of crazy italian drivers honking at you for going to slow, it's laid back South Africans honking at you because the crazy german you put in charge keeps trying to pass 3 and 4 tractor trailers at a time. One of the first things we noticed about our adventure was that we gambled wrong, we didn't bring any music thinking that the SA radio was going to be the 8th wonder of the world, full of reggae, crazy drum driven world rock and perhaps some African Hip-hop. Why would anyone ever think that?!?! Soft rock, channel after channel of soft rock, current pop hits that even 6 21 year old college girls couldn't stand. "and here is another mariah carey hit, followed by celine dion and the newest diddy from gloria estefan" and that was when we heard music, most of the time I was just scrolling through static. But when that one Bob Marley song came on, boy did we blast it. It was awesome to be on the road in africa, even if it was a Pop Safari. our first destination was to a town that's claim to fame is that you can ride the ostritches, we pasted hundreds of these farms, offering ostritch rides tours, burgers and weddings (!?!?!?!!???). Unfortunately ostritch riding is a tempermental sport, it had rained one day in the last month and therefore the ground was too slippery to strap a human to a walking bird. So we piled in the bus and continued (soundtrack: softrock and romantic power ballads). We instead went to the zoo, i mean hey, it's no safari but we were desperate to do something, it was very fun, several people actually petted the cheetahs and tiger cubs (i had just eaten a rather large amount of biltong- or South African beef jerky- and thought it best to abstain from getting in a cage with man eating cubs). Then we got back in the car (soundtrack, yanni i think) and headed to the hostel in a town called Wilderness (judging from our night there you probably don't need the -er in the name wildness would be fine) The Hostel was awesome, right on the beach, bar on the hill, family run, there were only two bad things about it, totally disorganized (they overbooked two nights in a row, i slept on the floor twice) and run by a group of guys who seemed to like nothing more than antagonizing one of our travelling buddies (he had never dealt with anti-american sentiment, and he stayed up most of the night sitting round a fire of white South Africans getting lectured about our horrible government, he hates it two, but it gets old when you get tag teamed for several hours). The next day it was bungy jump, the world's highest, I refrained from doing it, something about hanging on my head for 15 minutes after being bounced on my head for 30 seconds. However if I had known that it was going to be 5 hour ordeal I would have, by the time we were out of there and back in the bus the sun was setting and the day was over (soundtrack: annoying techno) we returned to wilderness ate some more ostritch (i had ostritch alfredo... yep you read that right). the next day we had to head back, as bad as the music had been so far, we realized we had made an even bigger blunder it was valentines day, we spent the rest of the ride listening to the most excruciatingly bad music until we landed back in capetown where we all decided, NO MORE LYRICS and turned on the classical channel as we cruised into the townships by accident (that was rather surreal). The trip ended with the most amazing fish and chips on the shore (a staple here) and more classical as we highwayed back to the rent-a-car center.


And that essentially was the end of our vacation, we finally went to school for the first time on friday and today. The classes seem not overly challenging, but not overly easy. We are actually in the university (most of my previous experiences with study abroad have been with teachers piped in just for americans) and although if you happen to be taking a class with the word Africa in it it is most likely Americans, luckily i'm taking astronomy where i seem to be the only american. This weekend we went to two concerts, one of the bands reminded me of jethro tull (must have been the flute). Then yesterday me 1 german and the other American guy climbed Table Mountain, which had been touted as "a nice easy climb, with one tough and steep part at the end" so we decided to go around 9 in the morning, which would have been the perfect time, if the cabby who has been driving cabs for 20 years knew how to get to the number one tourist attraction in capetown, the mountain. Instead he just said "oh we'll just go into the center and ask someone" 1.5 hours later we made it to the base of the mountain. "!##$#$@!!! That's a steep mountain!" 2 hours of rock steps later we made it to the top, there was no joy, I'm a fairly good hiker, I mean hell I walked across spain, but all three of us and the three we met up with were crying by the top, and stopping every 3 minutes. our only joy was joking about the way Arne (the german) called the gorge a "george" and was constantly misinterpretting our talking about the Endorphin rush we would get at the top by asking "hey guys what is this Dolphin rush at the top?" We get to the top, have a meal, only to be informed via text that the group going to that nights concert at a Botanical gardens leaves in an hour and a half. Well only one thing to do as we see the table cloth set (the tablecloth is the cloud cover that naturally appears over the mountain, it really is incredible , a low level cloud flys over the mountain and disappears as it falls off the cliff into the warmer air- or at least it's something scientific like that) "time for us to run down the mountain while it is completely foggy!!" Safe, very safe. we made it though and we were relaxing at the kirstenbosch gardens just an hour later (it might have been the most sophisticated thing i've done to date, I felt that we even lacked one of those woven twig picnic baskets) listening to a Ska reggae band that was absolutely amazing. more when i get it e