No Sea Days Are Fun!

Lizzy, Jan (looking creepy), Beth, Aurelie, Alina, and me at the first wine tasting

Aurelie, Lizzy, and Alina at another! Living the life! 

I love these girls! 

            Okay, friends and family back home, I’m not dead! I know that I haven’t made a blog post in four days, which is weird for me, but I’ve been quite busy, which is especially weird since the weather has kept us inland! So, the past few days haven’t included great white sharks, but they’ve still been a lot of fun! I guess I’ll start with Saturday’s news and go from there.

            The volunteers- Lizzy, Beth, Alina, Aurelie and I- got up and made breakfast together before getting picked up by Jan and his girlfriend Jen in the volunteer bus at about ten. It turned out to be a day of driving around Gansbaai, Hermanus, and the surrounding area, watching baboons run along the side of the road, and getting intoxicated at free wine and beer tastings. There are a lot of vineyards around Cape Town, and the volunteers ended up going to three different wine and beer tastings with Jen and Jan, and admiring the beautiful South African scenery during the drives in between. It was a cloudy and slightly drizzly day, but South Africa is an absolutely beautiful place no matter what the weather.

            We returned to the volunteer house at about four that afternoon, and relaxed for a while. We were originally planning on just making dinner here, but the other Alina and her boyfriend Lalo told us that they were going out to a pizzeria in Gansbaai for dinner and invited the rest of us to join them. Maarten soon came over to the house to hang out with us and he said he’d come too. It turned out to be one of the busiest, and best, no sea days that I’ve had in my time here with White Shark Projects.

            Sunday was a pretty simple day here at the volunteer house- during the day at least. It was Lizzy and Beth’s last full day with us, and we were all pretty sad that we’d soon see them go. The volunteers knew we’d go out into town that evening for their last night to have fun. At first I said that I would stay in that evening instead of going out, and I really thought I would until most of the other volunteers had left. There’s one guy in Gansbaai that serves as pretty much the only taxi service, and his car is big enough to seat four passengers, so he first came to the volunteer house and picked up Aurelie, Alina, Beth and Lizzy, planning to come back to pick up Maarten, who’d agreed to come out as well. After talking to just Maarten after they were gone, he talked me into going out as well. At first I wasn’t too enthusiastic about it, but I later thanked Maarten for convincing me to go out with everyone else. We didn’t stay out too late because we knew we were getting picked up at nine the next morning to head to Cape Town. It turned into a really fun night.

            The next morning Karla picked us all up at the volunteer house to drive over to the beautiful city of Cape Town. The bus contained me, Karla, Beth, Lizzy, Alina, Aurelie and Maarten, as well as the other Alina, Lalo, and Gerome, who are taking a diving course in a town on the way to Cape Town, not to mention Beth and Lizzy’s luggage. The volunteer bus was pretty full!

            It was a cold, wet day out in Cape Town, but it still turned into a really great day. Our first stop was picking up a new White Shark Projects volunteer at Atlantic Point Backpackers, the same hostel that I stayed in my first night in Africa. Her name is Amber, and, like most of the other volunteers I’ve met, she’s from the UK. It’s a really alien feeling for me to be the only American around here, but in a way I like it. The only person that I think sounds like I do here is Maarten, who grew up in Canada.

            After picking up Amber, we went to eat lunch and hang out around the waterfront of Cape Town. Eventually, after several hours of walking and driving around that great city, it was time to drop off and say goodbye to Lizzy and Beth. It had been two great weeks with them, but now it was time for them to return home to Wales. We all exchanged hugs and promises to keep in touch, then officially said goodbye. I said this when Cake left, and I’ll say it again. It’s crazy how people can come into your life, begin to truly feel like family, then be gone again in a matter of two short weeks. Sitting in the living room with Lizzy, Beth and Cake that one night during load shedding, the room lit only by candles, listening and singing along to Green Day from my phone (is it ironic for an American to love an album titled American Idiot?) is an experience I’ll probably never forget. I’ll really miss Lizzy and Beth.

            Today has been a really simple day here at the volunteer house. This morning after breakfast we pulled out the South African version of Monopoly-yes, that exists- and spent the next couple of hours playing that. We went grocery shopping early this afternoon- usually we go on Mondays but we didn’t get home until after dark last night, so we postponed it until today. It feels emptier and quieter here today with Cake, Lizzy and Beth gone, even though we now have Amber as well. Maarten has been here most of the afternoon hanging out with us, and he probably will be until later tonight. Tonight is my night to cook dinner, so I’ll get started on that pretty soon. I guess this extra long blog post should make up for the several days of no news. This post’s food for thought: “Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.”- Maya Angelou