Graham, a fellow couchsurfer from Cape Town, invited me to his friend’s birthday celebration at an Italian restaurant on Kloof st., called Nonna Lina. The food was nyummy and met a bunch of new people and saw some familiars. Every time I looked over at the bar, Graham and the birthday boy were taking shots – dangerous scene, ha. Headed over to Long st bars with the whole crew, went to The Waiting Room and one other bar. Fun night, lots of dancing, singing, and general merriment. Mom also called me and got to talk to her for the first time! Calls are expensive, so looks like we won’t be talking much unless there’s something urgent. Sad. Bars closed at 4 am and then we spent a while trying to figure out how the 17 (or so) of us were getting home. Since I didn’t live far, my British friend John walked me home and he took a cab. First, however, we hit up a hot-dog-type stand served by Mohammed, where I convinced a bunch of people I was South African. Delicious sausages - I tried out all the sauces. Passed out at 5 am…
…only to be woken up at 8 am by a man and a vuvuzela. Let me tell you about vuvuzelas: they’re plastic blow horns that everyone and their mother seem to have in South Africa. Apparently they’re popular at football (soccer) games and can easily blow off your ears with their loud honking sound. So yes. 8 am. I thought he’d stop. He didn’t stop til noon. He must be practicing for the World Cup, but a little early, dude. I actually need to get myself a vuvuzela. Revenge.
Sean picked me up at 1:30 for his braai (South African bbq) and beer pong tournament. I wanted to get him some sausages and beer so wandered over to the gas station around the corner. Realization #1: convenience stores in SA don’t sell beer. Realization #2: nor do grocery stores. You have to go to liquor stores for that. Weird. Realization #3: if you bring American-looking hot dogs to a braai, you will get made fun of. Apparently they don’t grill that… they grill REAL meat, like boereworst and chicken and steak pieces. For my sake, they grilled them anyway and freaked out when they began to “blister”. Before the braai, we went to the beach b/c some of Sean’s friends were skim boarding. BEACH, people. WINTER. Yes, it’s possible. I got my tan on and even took a quick dip… a little chilly. The braai (my first official one!) was delicious, the night was fun, beer pong got competitive.
Today I met up with another couchsurfer, Vijay, who just got to Cape Town from Buenos Aires, to take a train to Simon’s Town – about an hour away. The ride is gorgeous – it’s along the seafront and there are parts where you can potentially get wet in the train from a wave that crashes outside. Train stopped in Fish Hoek, a fisherman’s town, and everyone got off. Not til 5 min later did we investigate and realize we were supposed to get off too to take the last part of the trip by bus, which we missed. So we spent an hour on the bus waiting for it to take off. Hour later, we scope out Simon’s Town, which is where their Navy is located. Nice little town too, very chill. Perused through a sculpture garden, took some pictures, and headed to a recommended restaurant where we ate bobouti and peppered mackerel. Both very lekker (yummy in Dutch and Afrikaans). Bobouti is curried minced meat with all kinds of flavors in it (apricot, chutney, raisins, etc.), topped with an egg-milk mix. Helena and I had made it the other night for dinner and I fell in love with it. Headed back to the bus, then train. While we didn’t get to hop-on/hop-off at some of the stops as we had hoped to (it was the last train), we saw a gorgeous sunset…
Then we got ripped off by a cab going home. Ha.
P.s. I am hearing a vuvuzela again…
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