Mawembo!: The Peninsula and Mzoli's

I forgot to mention that we had a braai (that's South African speak for BBQ) with an a capella group from Stanford called Talisman about two weeks ago. They sing African songs and come to South Africa during spring break every year to tour. And they're amazing. You should look them up.

Some other funny South African sayings:

lekker = good, great, happy, amazing, fine, etc. can be used in almost any tense or setting i.e. "I feel quite lekker" or "these are very lekker" even an exclamation of "lekker!" is appropriate.

just now = like in 5 minutes "I'll do it just now"

now now = like in a while "I'll do it now now (i.e. NOT now)"

howzit = standard greeting to be answered with "no, fine" if you want to say you ARE fine

is it? = is it? BUT they use it for EVERYTHING... "I like potatoes" - "Is it?" (i.e. Do you really?)

mawembi = Xhosa greeting for multiple people, you can say molo if it's just to one person - people say molo sisi and molo bhuti quite often (hello sister / brother) or molo tata / mama if they're greeting someone older

unjani = how are you? in Xhosa

Okay, enough of that. Let me talk about what I did today and yesterday!

Yesterday we woke up really early (too early) to go on a peninsula tour. We got on the bus and drove to Hout Bay which was amazingly picturesque. We stopped on the wharf and some people got fish and chips and calamari. It reminded me a lot of places like Half Moon Bay just because it had a small town feel and there were seagulls everywhere. Our guide, Colleen, talked about the bay and apparently it has the highest density of great white sharks anywhere in the world. There's an island off shore called Seal Island where there are TONS of seals and the sharks basically just circle it constantly and eat seals. Yum.

We drove along the cliffs until we got to this place called Chapman's Peak where we could see all of Hout Bay and the sheer cliffs on the other side. (This place makes Devil's Slide look weak- if you google "the sentinel" and Hout Bay it's this sheer cliff that drops like 2000 feet straight into the sea.) Got out, took some pics, yadda yadda yadda.

We kept driving until we got around the other side of the peninsula. We stopped at Muizenberg briefly and kept going until we got to this small town where we had lunch (more calamari yum).

Next we drove all the way to the end of the peninsula (and saw ostriches on the way!) We got to the Cape of Good Hope and got out to walk to the end of Africa. It's not actually technically the end because Cape Agulhas is farther south, but I guess this cape is more dramatic? It's also more important historically, which I won't get into here. The walk was actually more of a hike because the cape is NOT flat. There are two lighthouses on it. One has this huge pole with arrows pointing to a whole bunch of major cities in the world and gives distances to each. The other one is at the very tip of the peninsula. We didn't have much time here so most people didn't walk all the way to the end, but I was like umm no, and I ran to the end, took one picture and ran back. As I was running back I saw a Dacie. They're these cute little animals about the size of squirrels whose closest relatives are ELEPHANTS. I wanted to keep it, but I didn't.

Next we drove to Simon's Town to see the penguin colony! Apparently it started in the 1980's with just two couples of penguins, but today there are around 4000 penguins there. You can walk up really really close to them and take pictures, so that was pretty cool. And they walk exactly like you would expect penguins to walk, so funny.

I don't know how long that day took to read, but it took 12 hours to do, so I was exhausted last night when I got back and barely woke up in time to go on the trip today to Mzoli's.

Mzoli's is this giant meat market in the township of Gugulethu. It's become very popular with both locals and tourists and it was definitely an experience. Basically you go buy your meat in one part (it's basically like a butcher's shop - there's chicken, beef, pork, lamb, etc.) and then you take your meat over to another part of Mzoli's where there are tons of BBQs and they cook it for you. So many people go that sometimes it can take 3 hours to get food. When you do get the food it's kind of hilarious. It's literally just a giant bowl of MEAT and everyone digs in. No utensils, no napkins. It's a vegetarian's worst nightmare. AND there's live music, and as the afternoon goes on everyone kind of just ends up dancing in the street. It was great.

Here are some pics: