Day 5 - September 3, 2006

Again, it took me a couple of hours to fall asleep, but around 3am I fell asleep and woke up around 9:50am. The Cape Town city tour started at 11am, so we had about 1 hr to get ready. I decided to wash my hair this morning with the new shower set-up, and it felt good to have clean hair. I put in charged batteries into my digital camera, and then we were ready to go.

We used a UCT bus to tour around town with our tour guide, Colleen. She spent a lot of time giving us the background history of South Africa and of all the sites we visited. I'm really glad I had my digital camera, since I took many photos. First we drove to the city centre to the Castle of Good Hope, Parliament buildings, Courthouse where Mandela gave his first speech and old slave quarters. Then, we drove to Bo Kaap, the Cape Malay/Muslim quarter of town. The tour guide said that the Muslim slaves were the most educated (king of kings slaves) and all were professionals and had skills. They opened the first schools for blacks and coloureds and were really influential. We passed by several mosques as well.

Then, it was time for lunch, so we headed to Long Street, where we had gone as a smaller group for dinner before. We had lunch at the Long Street Cafe, which was a pretty nice cafe/bar setting. The total lunch came to R52, which is a little more than $7, and I had a main dish plus 2 soft drinks.

After lunch, we went to Signal Hill, a high point overlooking the city, which also had really great views of Table Mountain, Devil's Peak and Lion's Head. We ended up taking lots of pictures, including a group picture. We stayed there for a bit, and then headed down to the beach areas. Unfortuntely, we could not go on the cable car to the top of Table Mountain because high winds were a danger to the route.

The area below Signal Hill is one of the most affluent parts of Cape Town and reminded many of us of Los Angeles, especially the Orange County/Newport Beach parts, where there are sprawling beach houses overlooking the ocean. The beaches were also beautiful, with nice restaurants and hotels on the shore. We stopped on a vista point by Camps Bay beach and took lots of pictures. The scenery was amazing, with the mountains in the background and oceans in front.

In sharp contrast, we headed to the townships next. We did not get down from the bus but instead drove through Langa. The differences were obvious, and we saw small houses, shacks and shantytowns. Then, we passed by some coloured townships, which were nicer and more affluent. We even drove past a majority Indian Muslim township, which was nicer than the others too. This concluded our tour, as we headed back to Rondebosch.

The tour ended around 5:15, and we had a movie screening scheduled for 7:30, so we all grabbed dinner in between. Many of us headed to Chippie's, a Portuguese fast food joint a short walk from Ivydene. I got a grilled calamari dish. Then, we went to the Mountain flat, which got better internet reception, and I checked my internet for a while. At 7:30, all of us gathered in the Mountain flat, and we watched "Amandla," a movie about how songs fueled the resistance against apartheid. It was pretty well made, and we had a short discussion afterwards.

After the movie, we all headed back to our individual flats. We ended up getting a little bit of internet connection in the Dolphin flat, so we all gathered in the common room to chat and surf the internet for a little bit. Since we have to get up at 7am for the 8am bus tomorrow, we all changed and went to bed around midnight.