Arrival in Cape Town

Day 40 - Sunday July 4th, Cape Town

We arrived in Cape Town this morning - another very long bus ride - around 10am. I woke up on the bus not incredibly well rested, but excited. The Fourth of July is maybe my favorite holiday and though we were far from the land of freedom and fireworks, I was determined to still have a great one...find some beers, maybe a hot dog, and hopefully some stuff to blow up. We were renting a whole (very simple) house/flat from a local through airbnb.com, so I was pretty confident some grilling and sitting in the backyard sun like true Americans would actually take place. Unfortunately, we got word from the owner that she had assumed we weren't coming for some reason and had rented it to someone else. She said she had somewhere else we could stay though and said we could talk around 4pm. We texted back asking for the address, got some food and headed down to the waterfront.

It was a beautiful day and the Cape Town V&A Waterfront (Victoria and Albert after the queen and her son, but no one ever calls it that) is pretty spectacular. We lucked out weather-wise - the Cape is normally rainy and cool in the winter, but we got a wonderful sunny warm day to hang out on the water. As Brian said, it sure was nice of them to turn on summer for the 4th. We appreciate that, South Africa. The huge private yachts around the marina were a testament to the wealth of the Cape and probably is part of the reason people rave about the Cape - the wealth and appearance of CT make it feel very Western. Other than the schoolchildren in native dress singing for donations, it would be easy to forget you were in Africa. We also made reservations to go see Robben Island, the prison where many political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela, were held during the apartheid era. I'd picked up "A Long Walk to Freedom" in Nairobi, so it was a sight I really wanted to make sure we got to.

Around 1 or 2, I started to get worried because we still hadn't heard from the flat owner, Liezel. We called, sent texts, and called again and left a voicemail. No response. We waited and waited and the anxiety was killing me (and probably Brian by extension since he was stuck with me) - I had just wanted a shower and some Independence Day wonderfulness and it was beginning to look like we didn't even have beds for the night. A semifinal was being held in Cape Town in two days time, so the city was flooded with visitors and the thought of finding somewhere for a week at this late stage was downright nauseating in how impossible it would be. We started calling hostels I'd written down (from when we thought we might come earlier than our booking was)...they were all full. We asked for recommendations for other places and called them...all full. We continued calling, getting turned down, and asking for recs. The 8th or 9th place we called had availability at low rates (just a bit above what we would have spent on the apt) and we took it immediately. Unfortunately, the place was a 10-15 dollar cab ride from the city center (a little in the boonies, to be honest) and in addition to looking like that would cramp our style the rest of the week (or cost us a ton of money in transport), when we finally ended up there, emotionally exhausted (or maybe that was just me. Yeah, probably just me), any chance of Independence Day wonderful-ness was out the window. I probably took this harder than I should have, but after 6 weeks of traveling in the third world and yet another restless night on a bus criss-crossing the country, I'd just about had it. All I could think about was how great a time my friends in America were having without me on my favorite holiday. I was so distraught I couldn't even finish my free drink.

Brian, saint that he is for putting up with me while I was unhappy, did the best to cheer me up and I was heartened by the fact that the hostel we ended up at was very nice and the people running it seemed great. Growing boy that he is, he went for second dinner in the hostel kitchen while I busied myself with trying to figure out how to fit all the Cape's attractions into the next few days we had available. I decided we'd climb Table Mountain on Monday if the weather was good and Brian met Martin and Trish, a hilarious Australian couple with whom we would end up spending a lot of time. So the day at least ended on a positive note.