Bafana Bafana!

What a beautiful day in Cape Town! Bafana Bafana (the South African soccer team) played tonight, so the whole city was pulsing with energy. Most of the people we see during the day are tourists as well, but everyone gets behind the South African team when their team isn't playing. Last night I went to dinner with UNC friends Joel, Sunny, and Dan and Joel and Sunny, who have been in Cape Town for a while now,  strongly encouraged Dan and I to get tickets for  the hop-on hop-off  city sightseeing Cape Town tour. WE decided to take their advice and so most of our day was spent on the bus, which took us to see St. George’s Cathedral (Desmond Tutu’s church), the Mount Nelson Hotel, the Table Mountain visitors center, Camps Bay, and Sea Point. It was such a treat to sit on the top of the double-decker bus and look out at the beautiful vistas without worrying about where we were heading or looking out for pickpockets, crowds, and crazy drivers! We were on the bus from about 8:30 to 11:30 and had a little bit of time to kill before our 3pm tour of Robben Island, so we hung around the waterfront, ate some fish and chips from a place right out on the water and then went to explore Woolworths department store in the Waterfront mall. The visit to Robben Island was incredible. You have to take a 30 minute ferry ride to get there, which was a treat in and of itself because Cape Town is so beautiful from the sea. The island is much bigger than I thought it would be (5km on one side by 3km on the other), and we went on a bus to see the old guards house, the limestone quarry where Nelson Mandela and others worked, the special guest house where visiting dignitaries can stay (Nelson Mandela and Hillary Clinton stayed there when she was First Lady), the various churches and mosques, the old leper colony from the days when the Dutch controlled South Africa and used the island as a storeroom, prison, and leper colony, as well as a canon built in 1947 which was intended to be used in WW2. A lot of Americans were on the tour with us, so our tour guide (who was once the general secretary of the Pan African Congress and was imprisoned on the island for years during the 70s and 80s) kept telling us stories about famous Americans he toured around. When he was taking then-senator Obama around, he apparently said “Mr. Obama, I’m going to show you something just now, but you have to promise me that you won’t tell President Bush about our weapon or mass destruction”. It really is amazing how American politics and culture influence so many people. I feel so ignorant here in a world where most people speak at least three languages and know far more about the BP oil spill than I do.  I don’t even know where all of the countries playing in the world cup are!! By the time we got off the ferry (around 6pm) the Waterfront area was already packed with fans from around sporting Bafana Bafana gear and claiming seats near the hundreds of big screen TVs set up to watch the 8:30pm game against Uruguay. Luckily we were able to nab a seat at a delicious Italian restaurant with a good view of the screen where we settled in to watch the game. Tomorrow we plan to complete the bus tour by going on the blue route (the mini peninsula tour rather than the red city tour), and spend some time exploring Camps Bay and Sea Point, both beautiful beach areas nearby. Just now, I ought to be getting to bed. I'm hoping to get in a nice run along the wind-free coastline where all of the really nice apartments in Cape Town are, and I can't wait! -MEA