South Africa!

South Africa was absolutely AMAZING…undoubtedly my favorite port thus far. Rather than coming into an industrial port and having to take shuttles or taxis to the city, we docked at a gorgeous waterfront port right in the middle of shopping, dining, music, nightlife, etc. It only took about 5 seconds to walk off the ship and be in the midst of all sorts of things to do. Table Mountain looms over the entire city and just completes the perfect silhouette of the Cape Town waterfront. On our way in, we saw whales at breakfast, and penguins swimming in the water around our ship! The weather was perfect and the views coming into port were sensational. We spent the day just exploring the waterfront area and trying to make plans for our other days in town. The street running by the water had restaurants, shops, and all sorts of street performers like magicians and musicians. We did a lot of walking and shopping, both at the modern mall (looks just like somewhere I’d shop at home!), and in outdoor marketplaces. They have a cool moving bridge that retracts whenever a ship comes through, and we saw a seal swimming underneath that! Lots of cool waterline in Cape Town! We booked a few trips and met a few locals and had some great steak burgers for dinner before heading out for the night. Cape Town nightlife is crazy and we got home about 2 hours before we had wake up for our trip the next day!

Miraculously, we DID wake up in time for our trip that day, and we got on a shuttle for…SHARK DIVING! We took the shuttle about 2 hours away with a great group of other travelers from all over the world. Once we got to the final location, we were swept into a room for breakfast and a brief overview of our day, and then we hopped on a little boat and went out into a beautiful bay of crystal clear blue waters. There were about 20 people on the boat, but only 5 could fit in the shark cage, so the first group got suited up while the rest of looked out for sharks! Once they threw out the “chum”, it was only about 10 seconds before the first great white came barreling toward it, mouth open, and emerged from the water when they pulled the bait away. We were all a little shocked and very excited, and we watched the first group make their way into the cage and continued to marvel at the multiple sharks coming right next to the boat. Chloe and I got ready to enter the cage next, so we got into wetsuits and booties, pulled on our masks, threw some weights over our shoulders, and climbed into the cage. The water was FREEZING but the excitement of being in the cage outweighed that thought. So we would just hang out in the cage looking around until one of the men on the boat would shout “DOWN!” and we would all grab a specific bar on the INSIDE of the cage to pull ourselves farther under the water and view the shark that they had spotted. They would come SO close to the cage and it was completely surreal. At one point, they pulled the bait into the cage and the shark after it slammed his head into us, right next to Chloe! There was one area of the cage of about 8 inches where there were no bars (apparently for cameras), and the shark just happened to get his nose right in that spot and into our cage, Chloe could have pet him if she wasn’t so afraid of him biting her! We weren’t afraid before that, but we were so scared of all the sharks that came near us after that! Eventually, they pulled us out of the cage so that the next group could get in, and we spent the rest of the time eating snacks and watching everyone else have their turn. We definitely had the best time though, because no one else was run into by the sharks! About 11 great whites came by over the course of the day, but all of them returned multiple times, so there was never more than a 2-minute interval without sightings of a great white. It was absolutely crazy! After we got back to the shore, we had some more snacks and everyone took warm showers and got back on the shuttle to Cape Town. When we got back in, Chloe and I were exhausted and spent our evening watching a movie and eating popcorn- something that both of us love to do and hadn’t been able to in over a month! It was a nice night.

The next day, we woke up early again to meet up with the taxi driver (George) that had driven us out on the first night. He had agreed to meet me, Chloe, and our friend Drew, and take us to a few sights for the whole day for a great price. We started out by driving about an hour to the wine lands, and stopped at a great place called Spier. We walked around the grounds, and saw many different eagles and other birds, and cheetahs that they have at the reserve. After we looked at the animals, we had a wine and cheese tasting. We were poured three glasses of wine and given small portions of three types of cheeses to go with them. The man helping us explained how to properly taste the wine and all the dynamics of the wines and cheeses and why they went together. It was really good and we finished off the tasting with some chocolate truffles that Drew purchased. After that, we found George and he took us into the town of Stellenbosch for lunch. We stopped at this really great, modern café and had lunch, and then walked around the town and did some shopping for about an hour. The town was really cute and I would have spent more time there if Drew wasn’t so tired of shopping with girls and ready to get back to Cape Town. So George took us back, telling us all about apartheid and the “blacks, whites, and coloreds”. We had already made plans for the evening and were short on time, so Drew decided to go back to the ship but Chloe and I wanted to go to Table Mountain so we dropped Drew off and George drove us up to the base of the mountain where we could take a cable car to the top and save the time it would take to hike. We hopped on the cable car with a bunch of pushy tourists and soon we were on our way to the top, while the car rotated and gave us a 360 degree view of the waterfront and everything below us. It was a little cloudy at the top, but we still had a fantastic view of Cape Town…on one side we could see the buildings and the waterfront and the ship, and on the other side we could see the beach and gorgeous natural aspects of Cape Town. When we were done at Table Mountain, George took us back to the ship and we got dinner before heading out for another night on the town!

I had to wake up super early the next morning to catch a flight to Johannesburg for a three-day safari in Kruger National Park. I have always wanted to go there and I was so excited to finally see the park that shares my family name! We arrived via South African Air in the early afternoon, dropped off our stuff at a fantastic hotel, and immediately went out for an afternoon drive in the park. We all got into safari jeeps with 9 people and a guide, our guide was named Stefan and he was great. He knew everything about all the animals we saw and catered to everything we asked for! We saw the sunset in the park and also saw all sorts of deer-like animals including impala and waterbucks, as well as zebras, a white rhino, baboons, water buffalo, and hippos. We went back to the hotel for the most AMAZING dinner I have had since starting Semester At Sea. Everyone went to bed early in preparation for our drive the next day that left at 5 AM. We woke up early for coffee, grabbed our box breakfasts, and hopped into our safari jeeps for a full day in the park. Throughout the day, we saw so many animals- giraffes, elephants, warthogs, crocodiles, more hippos, all sorts of birds (including a hornbill- AKA Zazu from the Lion King), and LIONS! Stefan said it is rare to see leopards, but we wanted to see one…and by the end of the day, we had seen one of those too! We went back to the hotel for dinner again and back to bed for another early drive the next day. At 5 AM, we went back into the park for a couple hours before we would have to leave for our flight back to Cape Town. We saw many of the same animals, but we told Stefan that we wanted to see a male lion and a black rhino. There are only about 300 black rhinos in the whole park, which is HUGE- we didn’t even see a mere fraction of it over the three days, but guess what- we found one! And we saw a male lion! We also saw a family of elephants, a family of hyenas, and giraffes drinking out of a water hole (which is hilarious). Stefan was a fantastic guide and said that it was one of the best drives ever. We seriously saw everything we wanted to see, including the prestigious “big 5”- water buffalo, lion, leopard, rhino, and elephant. After our morning drive, we got on our return flight to Cape Town and arrived shortly before “on-ship time”. I ran by the mall one last time for a few final souvenirs and then got back on the ship. We stood on the deck to see the ship off and waved goodbye to all the people on the dock and a city that I will certainly be back to visit. The view of the waterfront at night was gorgeous and we sailed away to the sounds of cars and ships honking their goodbyes, in response to our horn being sounded as we left the port.