Africa Safari Blog

Week 4 (1st – 7th of March) 

Molweni Ndamkelekile EKAPA, yiveki yesine ndilapha e Jenman. Ndisebenza kakuhle noxa Ndinokubanda kancinci Nemo yezulu yakhona etshisayo kwiqondo elingu 35°C. Kodwa yindlele yayo leyo…

For all those who aren’t fluent in Xhosa:

Hello and welcome to my forth week here in Cape Town and with Jenman. I am still doing fine even if I have a little cold – what really sounds ridiculous considering an outside temperature of 35°C – but that’s the way it is…

And this cold won’t hold me back from keeping on training for our trail run. To be honest I just have no choice because this run is taking place on 2nd of April, so there aren’t even four weeks left to get into shape for an 18km run through Cape Town’s mountains. But at least I’m not the only one to do it; Katja, Lisa and Sarah signed up for the 8km and Garth (Jenman’s managing director) and I are doing the 18km run. This stupid pride… But our weekly running club is highly motivated and we are all looking forward to our next run on Wednesday.

And by the way I don’t understand a single word of what I wrote in Xhosa, but that’s what our maid Valentia told me. Sorry if I have insulted my boss or anyone else, but since she’s an honest and very lovable person, I think I can trust her.

This week my new housemates arrived. The first one was Robert, who is also from Germany. He still is pretty quite, but Nicklas and I we are giving our best to get Robert used to living in Cape Town and going out in Cape Town. Nicklas is from Sweden and has travelled to many places all over the world during the last few years and has proven being a good party mate this weekend. On Saturday, two law students (also from Germany) moved in, but unfortunately I can’t remember their names, you must excuse me

Friday we went to a braai at a friend’s house in Rondebosch, which is – according to Google Maps – an 11.2km respectively 14 minutes drive from our place. So much for theory. Thanks to Cape Town’s rarely existing street signs it almost took us one hour to get there. At the petrol station where we stopped to ask for the correct way, no one had ever heard of the street. That would not even be so bad, if we hadn’t found out later that our destination was only two streets away from the petrol station. So maybe the city should invest in some additional street signs or at least in free maps for foreigners. But finally we found the place and had a really nice evening.

For Saturday we had booked the ferry to Robben Island, which departed at 15.00. It’s really worth it to arrive a little bit earlier at the ferry station, to get a seat on the upper deck – where you have a fantastic view at Cape Town’s skyline…at least that’s what the people sitting upstairs told us. The tour itself on Robben Island was very interesting, since a former prisoner told us about his time there and the experiences he made. The highlight of the tour was, of course, Nelson Mandela’s former prison cell, at which everyone could have a quick look and take a photo, before the next tourists did the same. My personal second highlight was to finally see penguins…When I first heard there are penguins living in South Africa I could hardly believe it, but it’s true.  On our way back we ran to the ferry and succeeded in getting a seat on the upper deck. The view is really fantastic but you shouldn’t forget to take a windbreaker, of course I hadn’t one

Since Sunday temperatures exceeded 30°C I spent the entire day at Clifton and it was the first time I really appreciated the ice-cold sea.

See you next week
Tobias