Howzit foks?
Spent Saturday afternoon exploring Table Mountain National Park with some people from my house. We took a taxi to an entrance near Kirstenbosch Gardens and made our way upwards. Our original plan was to reach the top of Table Mountain, but we realized that could only really be done by starting in the morning so you don’t hike in the dead heat. Instead we got to the top of the foothills before the rocky mountain climb, and just walked along that area back towards campus. The trails in the park are phenomenal. They wind around the mountain base and give you gorgeous views of suburban Cape Town. We finally made our way down to Rhodes Memorial on campus and took the Jammie shuttle home. I must say it was a nice afternoon with most of the lads from the house and Taryn (or Ptaryndactal – our name for her), the only girl to come with, ha.
The Wolf Pack overlooking Table Bay on the base of Devil’s Peak
Sunday was a relaxing morning and afternoon spent reading for class and watching movies. Later in the afternoon a few of us went hiking up Lion’s Head, which is a small mountain peak on Signal Hill that overlooks the city. There was a full moon on Sunday and we figured watching the sunset and the moon rise would be a nice way to cap of the weekend. The mountain was packed with people hiking upwards. I felt like I was in a queue to get to heaven or something, ha. Eventually we staked out a place on a few rocks and just relaxed and talked to each other while the gorgeous sun disappeared into the Atlantic. The ocean is just so brilliant; it was weird thinking that all the way over there is South America. It’s difficult to imagine! Needless to say, the full moon was beautiful. With a cloudless night and starts beginning to appear in the sky, the night could not have gotten much better. We finally made our way down the mountain with the hoard of people around 10:00pm. I had my handy dandy headlamp torch to get us down. The moon was so bright though, that a flashlight was barely needed. I will definitely be doing that again.
The 12 Apostles
Monday involved my Ecology practical in the afternoon. We actually took some busses to Stellenbosch to do some river sampling to study the invertebrate population. Although it took five hours, it was really cool to be doing some real tests instead of being stuck in a lab pretending like we are biologists. The prac finished around 6:00pm and I ended up getting some take away pad thai from Asian Supermarket (my go-to take away).
Doing a SASS5 assessment of the river (don’t ask me what that means)
On a food note, since campus pretty removed from most of the town area, there are some restaurants on upper campus and food venders that have cheap, good food. My usual is Souper Sandwich and I get a hummus and chukka (veggies) sub that is toasted and spicy! It is one of the things that gets me up in the morning to go to class. I also get veggie noodles or veggie chop suey from Rainbow Chinese. Every day at 1:00pm me and a bunch of other people meet in line and spend the meridian break (designated lunch hour in the middle of the day) talking and enjoying our delicious sandwiches.
I had a dream/woke up and thought it was happening, that our house was being plotted to be broken into to steal our fridges. I was peeking out my window searching for people. If you are reading this, consider this a treat of mine, sharing this awfully embarrassing sleep story of mine. I think I have been watching too much 24 and think I am Jack Bauer and going to save the world. It’s not going to stop me from watching though, ha.
It’s been nice to talk to people lately, especially when they are in College Library procrastinating (Betsy, cough). Thanks for keeping me cheery!
That’s it for now, cheers.