Wine tasting

A great Saturday: Decided to check out a "food, wine and livestyle" thing in the centre of Cape Town. Paid R50 (NOK45) without quite knowing what that would get us (us = Bernd, Justin and me, we share a dorm. Helen and Greg, you should have been there also!). We got a lot. Have tasted an unknown number of South African wines and eaten a lot af nice food, including olives, cheese, Thai food, chocolate, mustard, chili sauces, bread...And my holiday still isn't nearly over yet.

The pictures don't match the text. But I have no pictures from the wine tasting day, so I put these in instead. Paul, Leah and Fefe at Cape Town Backpackers, and view from Table Mountain, looking at the cable car.

Cape Town

After five nights in Cape Town (and luckily, five more to go) I can confirm all those "it's such a wonderful city"-statements. It truly is. Beautiful scenery (mountains! ocean!), good roads (after four months in Kenya you really know how to appreciate a good road..), friendly people and amazing food. I don't think I've had the chance to get really hungry at all this week, every time I'm about to get hungry, I eat a lot (too much!) of fantastic food, and there are so many nice places that I want to try before I leave.

And I've done a fair bit of shopping. Found an amazing bead shop, and those who know me well can easily imagine my enthusiasm when I found an entire shop (two floors!)dedicated to beads. And dirt cheap! Already bought a lot (and I really mean A LOT!), don't know how to be able to get it all back with me.

And I've done some tourist things as well: went to Cape Point on Wednesday, which is the most southwestern point of Africa (not quite the most Southern though) with three friends I met the day before. That's one of the advantages of staying in a hostel - you meet great people all the time.

Top picture: windy at Cape Point. Bottom: Still windy at Cape Point.

Update

I'm still alive even though I haven't posted anything lately. Since I can't provide any pictures at the moment (hopefully that will happen sooner rather than later), let me just briefly sum up the past three weeks events:

-Inspired by the African haistyles, I had my hair braided by my next door neighbour. And of course, when doing it the African way, you add a lot of synthetic hair to make it longer and thicker.

-We got our first school holiday on March 29. Inga and I flew to Nairobi, and the next day I continued (together with a friend who came to visit me for Easter) by train to Mombasa, and from there by matatu (those private minivans, infamous for overloading and having frequent accidents) to Watamu, which is a tiny town along the coast of Kenya.

-Spent all of Easter more in the Indian Ocean than out of it, it was great! Went scuba diving every day, and on impulse I signed up for a PADI rescue diver course as well. So amongst admiring the beautiful coral reefs, the millions of fish, big and small (even a shark, hiding in a small cave), octopuses and shrimps, I practised how to calm a panicked diver down, rescue people at the surface, giving first aid and control my own stress level. What a great week!

-After Watamu I was in Mombasa for two nights and a day, doing tourist things. Got invited to stay with a really nice family who had a beautiful home.

-Went by bus (not without complications, of course, but I made it in the end) to Dar es Salaam last Thursday, and spent the weekend with two Norwegian friends.

-Yesterday I flew to Cape Town where I'll stay for the next ten days. Haven't seen much of the city yet, so I'll desribe it better later.

And that's my holiday so far. Absolutely no reason to complain about it, so I won't.