We started our trip by experiencing a bit of the local politics. We had a South African staying in the same hostel as us and he advised us to watch the 'State of the Nation' speech by the President. It was as entertaining as he had promised - a large number of members of parliament either walked out or were escorted out by the police, and we later found out that someone had been punched too!
Cape Town is famous for its winelands so we took a tour around some of the local vineyards. We tried lots of different wines and a few cheeses as well as learning about the different grapes used and the ways the wines were made and sold. Oh and we got very very drunk. Just in case we weren't quite drunk enough, we then went back to our hostel and ended up drinking even more wine!
The next morning we were horrendously hungover but had already booked ton go on a township tour at 8:30am! Needless to say neither of us were quite feeling it but it was still an interesting tour. We were shown around some of the hostels where 2 FAMILIES shared a tiny room and each hostel had 16 families! There were also some nicer houses in the township which were owned by government employees eg doctors, teachers. You could definitely see how poor the quality of life was for some of these people living in the townships but I think Andy and I had become desensitised to it after spending so long in India so we actually thought their living conditions were reasonably good!
We then did our tour of the Garden Route for 5 days but we'll do that in a separate blog post given how much we squeezed into 5 days!
On our return to Cape Town we had 4 days left to squeeze in everything else we wanted to do. Most of this involved hiking. We spent a lovely afternoon hiking up the Lion's Head which is a smaller mountains next to the famous Table Mountain and so gives a lovely view of it and the rest of Cape Town.
We wouldn't be the McAleers if we didn't climb Table Mountain too! Thankfully we did it on the day that we did as every day after that had thick rolling clouds over the top of it so we wouldn't have been able to see much from the top (and probably wouldn't have been able to get the cable car back down either!). The guide map said that it wasn't 'technically difficult, just a long hard slog' - they definitely hit the nail on the head with that one! I was a broken (but triumphant!) woman by the top! Andy kept me well supplied in chocolate and biltong on our hike up so it wasn't too bad. The views from the top were stunning, definitely worth the hike.
Robben Island was our next stop in Cape Town. This was where Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners were held. We were given a tour around the main parts of the island and then an ex-prisoner showed us around the inside of the prison including Nelson Mandela's cell. It was shocking to see the conditions that the prisoners were forced to live in eg black prisoners were not allowed long trousers, coats or shoes even in winter. The ferry rides to and from the island were interesting (if a little bumpy!) as we saw whales!
Last but not least, we figured we hadn't been up close and personal with enough animals recently so we went shark cage diving! The idea of it was scary enough for me, and this was only intensified when we arrived and saw the size of the sharks and how close they came to the cage! However, once we got into the water, I completely forgot about the sharks as I was too busy trying not to die of hypothermia! The water was absolutely freezing! We were in wet suits so eventually warmed up enough to start remembering about the sharks again! The guide kept throwing out a massive tuna head on a rope to attract the sharks who would then swim right up to the cage (and on occasions banged against it but thankfully not when we were in it!). Unfortunately the visibility wasn't great that day but you could still see the massive shark swimming across you!
We're now on our mahoosive journey from Cape Town to Buenos Aires via Doha and São Paulo (obviously) - 24 out of about 37 hours done so far!
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