Cape Town - Day 4

It's my fourth day and I now look Southeast Asian. I need some aloe cuz my face is on fire!

It's Saturday, and it means nothing to me because when you're on vacation, everyday is a Saturday! However it does mean that Emma doesn't have to work so she and I went to a weekly Saturday market held at the Old Biscuit Mill in the Woodstock neighborhood. That area is one of Cape Town's oldest neighborhoods and escaped the Group Areas Act during apartheid, so it's always been racially diverse. Some say it's gritty and dangerous, but during the daytime it's definitely very authentic and has loads of character. The market itself was buzzing with people and had several different sections with food, houseware, boutique clothing, etc... It was seriously so charming and aesthetically pleasing that I wanted to become Capetonian (?) right then and there. Let's talk about the food first shall we? Vendors abound with their homemade ice cream, cheeses, mushroom kebabs, salami, honey, olives, vinegar, pastries, brick oven pizzas, fresh seafood, etc... I settled on an almond croissant and coffee :) There were also dozens of private vendors and stores and I explored them all. Emma had to leave a little after 10am for band practice, so I said I'd stay behind and check out more stores. When you travel, it's really easy to get caught up in the sightseeing, so doing something like this makes you feel kind of "normal" again. Much appreciated.

After I left the Old Biscuit Mill, I caught my first minibus taxi into city center again. The minibus taxis I've been told are "not for the faint of heart." That means I was immediately interested, haha. Bungee jumping (esp. in Victoria Falls) is not my thing, but a crazy taxi ride I will take any day. Basically there's a minivan with four rows of seats and a sliding door that's intended to maybe hold a dozen people. The objective for them is to cram in around 20. There's a driver and a ticket guy who leans out the window and shouts out the destinations at people walking on the street. If you need a ride, you can also just hail them down. I managed to flag one down, get in, and ride the rest of the way on one butt cheek. I counted about 18 adults and 2 children in my van...not bad! The minibus dropped everyone off at the taxi stand in town, and I had no idea that place existed! There were rows of shops set up in basically storage lockers. The most interesting one I passed was a "photography studio" with a beach backdrop and a guy photographing a family of three holding an umbrella in his left hand and a digital point and shoot in his right. Fancy.

The rest of the day I spent walking up Long St. and Kloof St. and checking out some of the stores, and sat in a little cafe for 2 hours reading the local paper and sipping on mint water. Then my intention was to find a minibus up to Table Mountain cable car, but failed miserably and got slightly lost and ended up walking back to the minibus place via a nice shady park. Eventually managed to find a minibus willing to head that way and haggled on the price...I lost. But R20 ($2.50) really isn't a terrible hit to my budget.

Table Mountain National Park has a special during the summer months and the cable car is half price if you go after 6pm. Since the sun doesn't set until around 8pm, that was still plenty of time to hike a bit up top and get in some good pictures and catch the sunset. Unfortunately the sunset tonight was a bust but the sky was still a brilliant orange before the sun dipped into the clouds. By the time I got down the mountain it was already dark. No more minibuses and I was thinking of a way to get down. A young couple was getting in a taxi so I asked if they'd like to split it, which would at least get me in town. It turns out they were an American couple from California on their honeymoon. The guy is a Harvard Law graduate turned lawyer, and the girl is a Korean-American girl named Esther who went to Yale, lol. No we didn't introduce ourselves like "Hi, I'm Jing and I went to Harvard." It just came up.

Came back to an invitation to go clubbing in honor of Chinese New Year. Tempting, but pass.