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Thursday Jun 03, 2010

Amazingly disasterous

"Five beautiful ladies, which shall I kill first?"

This pretty much sums up my first day in Cape Town; uncomfortable conversations and random situations.

A rambling local greeted us when we got off the train in Cape Town Station offering someone on the phone '10,000Rand for the girl on the left'. He smiled at us giggling, and we laughed nervously back. I realised later that he was simply making fun of the European view of the 'murder capital' that after ten weeks I found to have a little less substance than originally suggested to me. It was people who had never travelled who told me about the stereotypes of Cape Town and South Africa in general and after my trip I think their views to be a little subjective.

Our trek up Table Mountain fitted into the unplanned aspect of the day, we began in the early morning on what should have been a two hour hike up the mountain and emerged six hours later exhausted, bright red and defeated having failed to reach the top. Hung-over from the night before we had set off onto the Pipe track route and cut across onto the Diagonal Route, three hours into the hike we hadn't seen anyone for at least an hour and we were on what can only be described as cliff top edges. One girl was praying to God sat with a Chanel shoulder bag and designer glasses on, one girl was climbing in bare-feet having abandoned her flip-flops a good while ago and another panicking trying to recall emergency numbers!!

Having said that it was a fantastic accident, because the views were unreal and sitting on the mountain with no one else around eating basics crackers and bananas was actually pretty amazing.

After the mountain we went to Camps bay, which is a hot tourist area, unfortunately being a group of backpackers dressed head to toe in 'scrags' and sweaty and bedraggled from a trek up a mountain got us disapproving looks. I wouldn't say the area was a true beauty of South Africa but it is worth a visit, if only to see hundreds of visitors crying in agony from cramp that the literally freezing water promises.

One problem that we found was that Cape Town trains finish at around 7pm unknown to us, we got to the station at 7.05pm and missed our last train, we found ourselves cramming eight people into a six person taxi, which the taxi drivers encourage if only for the big fare they can gather. This is not advisable as we found ourselves pulled over by the police at 9pm in the middle of nowhere. The taxi driver got a 600Rand fine and increased the fare!

The night ended in typical fashion being pulled over in a taxi by the police in the middle of nowhere after we missed the last train, nine of us crammed into a six person taxi avoided the disapproving glances of the officers. I inappropriately laughed out loud finding the whole day hysterical and amazing because it was my first weekend in Cape Town and I will always remember its disastrously brilliant events!!

FYI we returned the next week and made it to the top and walked through a cloud: highly advised activity.

Posted by Natalie ( 3:27 PM )
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