Busy first day!

September 24, 2006 1:15 am Atlanta time, 7:15 am Capetown

I don't have Internet access in this apartment but I wanted to at least write out a post and will post it from my colleague's apartment later today. I posted the one from the plane last night.
I got in around 8 am local time to an absolutely gorgeous day in Capetown. The weather was just gorgeous - sunny and cool. Aaron, one of the other folks from BlueCube, came to pick me up and take me to the apartment I'm sharing. The apartment is OK - nothing spectacular (although it has a great view) but it's clean and comfortable and after spending the past two nights on a plane, it is high luxury!

Lucky for me, I had managed to catch a few hours of sleep on the plane. I actually probably slept for nearly 8 hours, so I really did ok. They had already made plans with Francois - one of the contractors we work with here - to go on a game drive yesterday. So of course, I went along.
We were a little early when we got there so we took a detour to this fossil park, where in the past 5 years, they've excavated what they believe to be a river bed where several animals got trapped in an estuary. There were pygmy giraffes, long-neck giraffes, whales and seals, all in bone form and all several million years old. Pretty impressive stuff. Also, apparently, in the region, they found bones of a now-extinct africa bear.

We were lucky to have Francois with us because he managed to get us the 'extra' stuff that most tourists don't get. They took us into their closed excavation site, which was very cool. After that short detour, we were on our way to see some living, breathing animals :)

But first, lunch! We ate at the game reserve - a really lovely area.

While we were waiting for lunch, we noticed that one of the park guides was walking around outside with a baby ostrich. Judy and I went out to take pictures and check it out. It was only 2 days old and really quite cute! I'll post pictures when I can. Apparently, the guide's wife had found it that morning - it had gotten lost so he was going to try to find it a group to put it back with.

I had a traditional South African dish called boboti (sp?) which was a sort of meat pie. It was Ok. I was expecting it to be spicier since they said it was minced, curried meat but they use a lot of fruit-based chutneys to spice their food so it was pretty unusual. At that point, I was so hungry, they could have put a live wildebeest on my plate and I'd have dug in though!

The only real problem I had was that after lunch, I felt something on my arm. Went to squoosh what I thought was just a little bug and realized it was a tick. And apparently, a nasty red tick that, had it bitten me, would have given me tick fever (nothing deadly but basically a nasty flu that wouldn't have been a whole lot of fun). So of course, I spent the rest of the day feeling like I had bugs on me, particularly when I was on the game drive!

The place is one of the many private wilderness parks in the area. No real predators, but lots of antelope, a few zebras, buffalo, wildebeest, ostrich galore and 3 rather elusive giraffes. We managed to see pretty much everything and at the very end, we went hunting for the giraffes. Our guide spotted them in the sand dunes at one edge of the park so off we went. Once we got as close as we could without the vehicle getting stuck, he actually let us get out and walk to get a closer view. I've never gotten out of the vehicle while on safari so that was pretty cool. We saw them, probably 200 yards away, but didn't get a really great view. But we noticed they had moved closer to the road on the other side of the dunes so we headed back into the car to try to chase them. We got to the road and saw them in the distance. We turned the engine off and waited and giraffes, being cool and curious creatures, basically walked up to us. It was amazing. I had forgotten how gorgeous those animals are. I got about a billion pictures, plus some video. I'll upload all my photos tomorrow and post them. I managed to get a few up today but the videos are fantastic!

After the drive was over, the guide took us back to where the lions were. They have 2 lions but they are in an enclosure. Since I'm not really a big fan of animals in cages, I wasn't really impressed but then he took us in the back, to where the lions dens are. He called them (and they came!) and they came into their little pens in the back. We were maybe 3 feet from these creatures. And they really didn't seem very happy! The lion kept jumping at the cage and growling. You really have no idea how big and scary and gorgeous those beasts are until you've seen them up close. Simba and Nala (yes, that was what they were called) were just beautiful and cool (I have lots of video of that too) but I felt really sad to see them caged, particularly since it really seemed like they were not happy to be there. Still an amazingly cool experience though. It was wierd seeing them so close after just reading the Lionboy series too :)

The game drive had been COLD - it's still spring here and the wind is pretty chilly. We had blankets on the vehicle but once we got back, we were all sort of frozen so we stopped for coffees and teas and to warm up a bit.

(By the way... I'm lying in bed on Sunday morning as I type this. I can hear birds outside and something that really sounds like a baboon. I wonder ...)

We left the game reserve around 6:30. Since it was quite late and most of the other places we could have visited were closed, Francois decided to take us for 'sundowners.' We have basically learned to just follow and trust him, so we let him guide us and as we wound through the streets, BOOM, all of a sudden, we were at the beach. At sunset. We parked and got out and Francois pulled out cold beers from the back of his Land Rover for everyone. (The guy is like a South African Willy Wonka, I swear!). We wandered around on the beach, watched the giant waves coming in from the Atlantic, picked up some shells and took photos as the sun went down. It was simply amazing.

After that, we just headed home. Francois dropped us off and we headed back to our flats to clean up a bit and do some geeky checking of emails, downloading of photos etc. At one point, all five of us were sitting around, laptops open. Us 'Cubers really know how to live it up on a Saturday night!

We headed out for dinner pretty soon though and ate at a really nice Italian place, just a few minutes walk from the flats. After a couple of glasses of wine and a good Italian meal, plus the remaining jet lag, I think I was asleep before my head hit the pillow!

I slept pretty well, although I got up around 5:30 and then was fairly restless until 7 or so when I finally woke up. It's now 7:45 and I should probably get my ass up and get cleaned up. We're meeting at 9 to go to Table Mountain and then into Capetown to check out the city.

I'm sure I've missed a bunch of stuff in this post but I wanted to get the highlights down before I forgot. I'll do my best to blog daily, at least on days like this. Once the week starts up, it'll be mostly work so there won't be a whole lot of interesting stuff.

Anyway, more soon!