South Africa, here we go...

Dear Reader,
If you get the chance, please travel to Cape Town one day. It's beautiful.

-Timothy

People had given us some really great reviews of Cape Town, and it really is everything it's cracked up to be. I'm getting ahead of myself; please excuse me for taking so long to write this, I've been distracted by my surroudings recently. We arrived on May 1st, after some complications getting into the country (long-ish story), and we met our friend Pete (Miller) at the airport. It was the Pete Miller that we met at OPC last summer, the one with flowing blond locks of hair like that of a Swedish diety, and the one who invited us to stay at his house in South Africa should we ever be in the neighbourhood. Well here we were, in the neighbourhood, being warmly welcomed by Pete (with his flowing locks sadly chopped off), Katie (his wife, and fellow leader at OPC), and Hannah Miller (a VERY new addition - just 8 weeks old!). The Miller family welcomed us in, introduced us to Somerset West (their stunning town about 50 km east of Cape Town), and showed us the way things go in South Africa: Mountain biking, Ocean views, and of course, a "Braai" on our first night. A Braai is like a souped up barbeque where you normally eat this amazing sausage roll called "Boerwors" (pronounced something like "boorvorsh", sort of).

First impressions: "Do people here realize how incredible this place is?"

For our first few days we hung out with the Miller family, saw Kurstenbosch (largest botanical Gardens in Africa?...possibly the world?), hiked Table Mountain, Mountain biked near Stallenbosch (beautiful, if you were wondering), saw vineyards, and played Ultimate Frisbee! Pete has friends on the South African national team, so this was GOOD Ulti...and I was shocked at how rusty I was at first. Yikes.

After those first few days, we met up with old family friends of ours (the Gammon's), and we've now spent the last week at their house, which is right in Cape Town itself (so we could see more of the city via the Metro system). I hadn't seen The Gammon's for a few years, so it was crazy to reconnect here in Africa and see them again. This week Remy and I have seen Robben Island (where Mandela, and many others, were imprisoned), the Cape Town waterfront, downtown, and we've also been introduced to some awesome music (and been to two local shows!) thanks to Jessica Gammon, who is currently in second year at UCT (University of Cape Town). There is a lot to be done in Cape Town, and there is no way we will do it all. However, I did have the goal of seeing a Giraffe, and I'm pumped to say that it has been accomplished! Glorious. I signed up for a day trip Safari to a (relatively) small wildlife reserve just 3 hours outside of Cape Town, because I didn't have time to travel across the country to Kruger National Park or something...but it was breathtaking. All you could see stretching around in every direction were open plains and the Cape Fold Mountains rising up everywhere. I was actually fourtunate enough to see a lot of amazing wildlife on the Safari, and the highlight was definetly the two Giraffe's we saw hanging out together on a hillside.

Also, today I went down to the Cape Town waterfront where the "Tour D'Afrique" bike race was finishing. It is a bike race that takes place over 4 month's and stretches over 12,000 km from Cairo to Cape Town. I was there at the finish line to cheer on a teacher from Crescent School - Mr. (Jamie) Macrae! It was awesome. For you Crescent boys reading this: Mr. Macrae definitely had a solid cheering squad of students from the GAP (Get Ahead Project) School from Queenstown, South Africa (who Mr. Macrae has been raising money for by doing this bike race - about $40,000 at this point I was told!). It was awesome to be there for the finish of this amazing race, and it was crazy and unreal to meet up with a Crescent Teacher in the middle of Cape Town. I didn't see that one coming when I planned this trip.

So that has been South Africa so far. On Monday we're meeting back up with Pete to get involved with volunteering in some of the townships for our final week here. Pete is really involved in serving in some of the poor communities around the Cape, and we're hoping to help out for a few days with some AIDS patients, children and families in 2 of the townships around Cape Town. So the tourist stint is coming to an end.

Hopefully I'll be able to update soon about how the volunteering goes, and on May 18th we are off to Amsterdam, where we spend 4 days chilling (and meeting up with Remy's dad), before heading back to Canada all together. I can't believe all that we've experienced, and I'm bracing myself for a bit of culture shock in a couple of weeks. Time to try and process everything.

Peace.