Pictures! ... the link

Hey Folks,

I have finally edited the over 1600 photos to within a little over 900! My apologies for the late post, but I wanted to add captions to the pictures since I stopped posting. To view, just click the link below. Enjoy and take your time :)

Kelly's Photos

The Local Club - Zar

South Africa does have a nightlife and the Cape Royale Luxury Hotel & Spa makes it easy for you to go out. I hit up Zar, the club within the hotel, after eating my delicious goat meal (see previous post). The club was nice, had great service and a calm hip hop atmosphere... if that's possible, lol.

Unexpected Turn of Events

Well folks, as you may have noticed I stopped writing on my blog completely after 8/26/11. The reason: I was robbed. No worries though, only my material items were stolen from our condo/hotel room, although deeply cherished. I am still elated to have been able to take such a trip, and I hope to return to South Africa and still would like to stay in the lovely hotel and residence regardless of the incident. I will not condemn the whole place for a couple of people's behavior. I am happy to say that the security and local police department were spectacular in keeping me calm and informed about the process. Although my items have yet to be returned to me, I feel blessed to have taken the trip and had the experience. We cannot fret over material things.

I am going to continue to write about my trip experiences, I just had to take some time to get that out. Picture album link to come soon as well.

Cheers,
Kelly

It's That Time... Goat Time!

I am at El Burro about to try goat in South Africa. Yall know I gotta have my goat. My reservation was for 6:30p, but little did I know, the goat doesn't start tiIl 7pm... Special! Anyway, I decided to order a mojito and the Calamares a La Sarten. I will let you know how it goes.
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El Burro was Great! The goat was perfectly done and marinated. The accompanying rice and beans were seasoned to perfection and complemented the goat in the makeshift tacos. They also gave me five (5) sauces to spice up the experience.

Afterward I stopped by the Gelato Mania place for two scoops of sweet goodness. I got Aunt Fran two scoops as well. I had the Turkish Delight with Vanilla and Aunt Fran had Ferrero Rocher with Vanilla as well. Perfect finish after a wonderful dinner.

I am in Hogwartz for sure!

Tonight is the first official concert. We are at the South African College School and performing a wonderful lineup, which will include the San Peoples "The Click Song". The San or Bushmen are the folks you saw in "The God's Must Be Crazy." And "The Click Song" is actually called Qongqothwane and was sung by the famous Miriam Makeba.
Today, in order to get us prepared, we visited the !Khwa ttu (the ! refers to the click sound). The !Khwa ttu is where we participated in a guided tour, understood the use for the Fynbos plant, and visited a traditional San village. After our excursion we ate a meal of Eland (the local big animal)Babooti, rice, and a crispy tortilla like thing... Delicious! (Pictures to come later).
So now we are in the auditorium of the school and it reminds me of Hogwartz because of the four houses shown in the stain glass windows of the hall. And the have a wicked tiled floor in the foyer that I can run-n-slide all the way across. (Video of that to come). Well ttyl for now, gotta go sell CD's.
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Pictures from the Winelands

The art here was vivid and real!

wild stool in the purchasing area

Dumbo! in the garden

Jump-Roping Girl

Planking?, lol

Iron bathroom

Welcoming us to the tasting room

Mohawk Man

These are my own names of course.

Visiting the Winelands today

Today we are starting out in Stellenbosch wine country. Our first winery is Le Roux where I tasted and bought La Chanson, South Africa's only red sparkling wine. It had a delicious aroma and flavor of strawberry and plum. Wine will definitely be coming home with me. On to the next winery...
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Weather Permitted

The weather was dictating our day, but as it turned out, the sun shown all the way. We visited Camps Bay and saw the Twelve Apostles, the ocean water is about 9 degrees celsius so the people created tidal pools. The road around Chapman's Peak lies at a vertical drop of 540 m to the sea floor, that journey in a big charter bus was not a bore. We passed through Long Beach, yes I said Long Beach, on our way to the Cape of Good Hope and saw where sailors and ships would no longer float. You see, two currents meet in this place - the Benguela and Agulhas currents collide apace. One is warm and the other is cold, this story will never get old. Cape Agulhas is where the two oceans meet, the Indian and Atlantic cannot be beat! Cape Point was next on the list - I ate pizza, fed the birds, and was sprayed by sea mist. Check out the pictures. Later we went to Boulder Colony to visit the penguins, I have nothing to rhyme with this, so enjoy the pics.

12 Apostles

Watching the two currents meet

p.s. I lost all my penguin photos and video somehow, I will have to get pics from someone in the group who was there. :(

Bo-Kaap, District 6, and Robben Island in the Rain

Today's adventure took us through the city of Cape Town beginning with Bo-Kaap in the Malay Quarter. This area is the most colorful part of Cape Town and we learned that the Muslim faith is as old as Cape Town itself. 

Next we visited the District Six Museum where we learned that, under an apartheid government, the multicultural District six was declared a White neighborhood in 1966. Noor was our guide and we purchased his book about his family, life, and what it was like to go through apartheid and come out the other side with forgiveness. This neighborhood was originally a diverse mix of subcultures; everyone in the district was forced out to their own townships or to the Cape Flats. Interracial families were required to separate because of skin color which meant that they had to request a permit from the police just to visit loved ones, including children. Just recently people have started to move back to the land that was striped from them. In the photo there are pictures of some of the original street signs and an aerial map of District six.

Lastly we went to the infamous Robben Island. We took the catamaran ferry across the choppy Atlantic Ocean; a roller coaster ride like no other! The swells were between 4-7 meters, I had to go out the port side to take pictures - thank goodness for sea-legs! While on our tour we were told stories of civil rights and social justice activists like Robert Sobukwe, Albert Luthulie, and (you all know of) Nelson Mandela. Robert Sobukwe was given the (worlds) smallest prison on the island for constructing a protest march that started as a small crowd at first, but because of the outcome, 20,000 people later joined in a peaceful protest that ended in police using machine guns to mow them down. The original protest was held because colored people were required to carry around a pass booklet when they were outside their designated areas and Sobukwe, as well as others, decided to walk to the police station without his. He was quickly arrested and charged. After serving his sentence here on the mainland, the Minister of Justice prolonged his sentence and sent him to Robben Island where he spent about six years in this single prison with no contact from others. When he was released in 1969, due to the aforementioned 20,000 people in the civil uprisings, he could not speak.

Other interesting facts: Robben Island was used as a place to house and treat Lepers and the mentally ill, then it was a defense station during WWII, and finally just for prison purposes  - even though it was like a prison for lepers and the mentally ill back in the 1840's. Originally there were no trees on the island until 1890 when the British brought Eucalyptus trees which ruined the fresh water system, as a result fresh water must be shipped in. One good thing about the trees - the bird population has increased. There are about 129 species of bird on the island.  In 1976 Robben Island had 1,500 political prisoners - the highest amount ever recorded. Robben Island was not just a prison during apartheid; it was a place where people became educated in the face of adversity. The educated taught the uneducated and many people came out of prison with degrees and skills because it was turned into a university of sorts.

I am in Moses Masemola's cell

 Nelson Mandela's Holding Cell (above and below pic)

We walked throughout the prison and read the stories of prisoners and the struggles they endured, including Nelson Mandela. Although prisoners succumbed to brutal torture, they still believed in reconciliation - forgiveness and do not take revenge. A practice taught by Martin Luther King and Mahatma Ghandi. They call them the three M's because they all fought for the same thing: social justice.