Cape Town: 9.5/10

We flew Vic Falls to Jo'burg to Cape Town on Sunday. I'm not sure, but it seems that all flights in South Africa have to go through Jo'burg. Which is a pain, because it's a badly designed airport with horribly misleading signs. To get between terminals requires going through the parking garage. Even if they are on adjoining floors. The signs are useless; we frequently followed a sign one way only to get confused at the dead end & then catch sight of another saying to go back the way we came. This happened at least 3 times. Also, the South African Airways (SAA) people were particularly unhelpful. Every time we talked to them it looked like they were solving Mensa problems on their computers. They always needed help from their colleagues, too. The worst part was the look of absolute blank bewilderment we'd get in response to perfectly reasonable, comprehensible questions such as, "Can I put points on my Star Alliance [of which SAA is a member] card for this [SAA] flight?" They would say "Huh?!?!?!" as befuddledly as though SE had asked to recharge his banana in midair. This happened every time! & it wasn't because they didn't speak English - they do, very well. It was was almost as puzzling as frustrating.

Anyway, we managed to make it through to Cape Town. We'd heard lots of good things about it & it didn't disappoint. We stayed at the Extreme Hotel which is hands down the coolest hotel ever. It's affiliated with the Extreme Sports Channel, which they have playing all the time. The elevators & bathrooms are themed - for instance, one elevator is a shark-diving cage. Outside each room is a light that is red or blue to indicate "privacy" or not. The rooms themselves aren't very big but everything is fitted together in such a way that it doesn't seem small. The bed was huge & fluffy & there were UK & Australian charger plates right in the wall. There's a Bose clock radio in every room, free wireless internet, plus an outlet in the safe so you can charge laptops, phones etc. inside. Cabs waited outside & fares could be put on our room. The breakfast buffet was the best we had anywhere in Africa, the bar reminded us strongly of the Hudson Hotel in NYC, & all of this was for ~US$150 per night. Plus all the employees were super nice & helpful. We finally managed to stop swooning over every new awesome thing we noticed & go to dinner at Blues in Camps Bay, an upscale section of town. It wasn't as lively as we expected but we did arrive at 9 pm on an off-season Sunday. We got the recommended seafood-for-2 platter & it was so good. I've never liked non-fried calamari because I find it rubbery but this was amazingly tender in scrumptious sauce. We had some tiger & queen prawns, which would be called shrimp in America, as well as fish, lobster & crayfish. They should do seafood towers like that in the States. I don't much like oysters or mussels & they always put so many in a tower, it rarely makes sense for me to order one. & stuff from the raw bar is good but it's so nice to have it hot & flavored as well. Dipping things in sauce just isn't the same. Afterwards, we were too tired from struggling with airlines all day to enjoy the nightlife so we went to bed.

The next day, after careful consideration, we hired a driver to show us around Cape Town. We rode the cable car up Table Mountain, which is gorgeous. The Cape area is its own unique floral region, fynbos, because of the cold Benguela & warm Agulhas currents that collide there. The Indian & Atlantic Oceans also meet at Cape Point. There are about 6000 plants & some animals in the area that are found nowhere else in the world. The African penguins at Boulder Park are not as cute as the emperors down in Antarctica but they are still adorable.

It's bizarre to see them without a backdrop of snow or glaciers. We also went to the Cape of Good Hope & Cape Point Lighthouse. On our way back to the hotel we met some overfriendly baboons. One of them tried to open the doors of the car parked in front of us!

Our guide said they've even been known to break into houses looking for food. After our extensive day of sightseeing we checked out Long Street, which is a pretty hip & young crowd. We decided on Mama Africa where we tried ostrich, crocodile, kudu & springbok (we got the mixed grill, we're not piggies) for the first time & actually liked them very much. I think that may have had more to do with the excellence of the chef than the taste of the meat, though, since we'd tried some springbok biltong (jerky) in Kruger & hated it. Crocodile & ostrich taste like stronger-flavored chicken, while kudu & springbok remind me of beef. I also had a crazy drink called the Wagon Wheel or something. It was tequila & Tia Maria with a shot of Bailey's & some other creamy liqueur dumped in at the end. Kind of like a really alcoholic Irish car bomb, plus it was on fire. I was quite tipsy afterwards as you can imagine. We just went home though, because we had to get up early for shark diving!

Cape Town is known for its dive tours with great white sharks. We went on Great White Ecoventures with maybe 15 other people. They took us out to a boat from Gansbaai. I was nauseous half the time & the wetsuits were cold & clammy but it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. You just put on a goggle mask & get in the cage with a few other people & go underwater when the spotter yells out. The sharks swim right by & try to eat the bait, it's mind-blowing.

We saw about 8 separate sharks continuously for 2 hours which was very lucky, according to our captain, since it's quite common not to see any at all or just for 5 minutes. SE & I watched them until we were too cold. We should have stayed in a little longer though, because the biggest shark actually bit the cage! That was a fantastic end to our day. We rushed back to the hotel to get our bags & stressed out extremely trying to get to our flight on time. I thought superstitiously that we'd been so lucky all day that we couldn't miss it & I was right this time. We had to fly through Jo'burg again (5th time in a week!) & then took the overnight to Cairo.