Weekend Pictures

Weekend 13-15 April

Click here to see all the good pictures that I took this past weekend!

Cocodrile Meat, Nice Views, Baboons and Salsa Dancing!!

This weekend was amazing!! Elizabeth is back from her trip to Kanya and Uganda!
On Saturday morning I took a hike for 4 hours near Hout Bay with Isabel ( very nice and fit-- 60 year old woman that works for the Foundation). The hike was amazing! We walked and walked up the mountain but all the time I could see better views, it was great, I had never really hiked like that before and I could not believe what I have been missing its sooo nice, and also you get a really good workout! I saw a shipreck, I could see table mountain from an interesting view and also I could see Hout Bay.
Then Elizabeth and I went to dinner at this really good restaurant, that suposedely is number one in Cape Town, its called Aubergine and I ate cocodrile meat, it was actually very good. Then, on Sunday Caroline, Elizabeth and I had a FUN DAY! We went to eat lunch at this really good place that is called the Black Marlin and we had real good seafood and it was very funny cause a baboon went inside the restaurant and walked around the tables and the tourists were so scared, we were eating outside so the baboon did not steal our food but it was very funny because all the tourists where all freaking out!… Also it was really embarrassing because Caroline and I thought that a guest was our waiter and we ask him to move the umbrella and Elizabeth almost died, and afterwards when I realized that he did not work there I was very very embarrassed!!

After our lunch adventure we took a drive all over.. we bumped into sooo many baboons on our way! We saw dozens of them! Actually they look kind of gross when there are so many because they are a little bit dirty, and it was very funny because one was just sitting in a sign on the road and it looked very weird.

We also went to these surfing beaches and saw some surfers and then we went to a bar and salsa dancing afterwards. It was such a fun weekend, full of pretty places and views.
I am also getting very excited because today I went to see the travel agent that I am booking my overland trip to Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe and I am looking forward to my trip. I leave next month!!! Can’t believe that it is so soon.

Some Recent thoughts and stuff

Elizabeth, my roommate has been gone for two weeks and she comes back tomorrow! I am very excited to see her again because I have been a little bit lonely at the flat, specially because the TV does not work, there is no Internet and also at night I don’t usually go out alone because it is dangerous to walk around Cape Town at night by myself.. so I am kind of stuck in my appt..
The good thing about this is that I've had some time to think… about myself and about my future and stuff, maybe I have thought to much! Because sometimes I have trouble falling asleep… everything is so uncertain! When I left Mexico to come to SA everything was soo hectic, the thesis, the exam and then moving here.. so I didn’t apply to many law schools.... actually I only applied to two.. and I got rejected to one and the other one had some problems with my papers of the university and the people at UDLA where acting as complete idiots and I decided that maybe next year I will apply again and get a better LSAT and also some work experience. Actually I think that I need to work at least for a while before I go back to school. Well, with that off my back then I decided that I WILL find a job… now, the problem is where? And this is a double question, first, where geographically.. and then, what kind of job? I had not given much thought to all of this because of the reasons stated above… so now I am in a major direction crisis point in my life.. I don't know where I will live this summer!!
At least I will still work for the Foundation until May 11, then on the 13 I will take this amazing overland trip to the bushes of Africa, passing through Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe… I will go to two Safaris.. in Chobe and Etosha National Parks, to the dunes in Namibia, Orange River, the Okavango Delta in Botswana and to Victoria Falls.. I will be disconnected form the world for 21 days... after the trip I will return to UDLA for the official ceremony of the graduation, and then ....who knows?
I am trying not to stress about this whole uncertain situation.. but I guess that it will all solve out once I go back and when this experience is finished, so for now I will just make the most out of it because this place is amazing right now and I am having the time of my life!

Grootbos

The last weekend I spent it with Sanja at her house. Her family owns a hotel that it is also a private nature reserve.. the place is AMAZING! I never thought it would be sooo nice.. they have all natural indigenous species in the reserve, the fynbos (which is an ecosystem that has many many species of low plants) is one of the most well conserved in South Africa. It is so interesting because last year they had a fire, and everyone thought that it would all be burnt and devastated, but on the other hand... something amazing happened, the fynbos can only be regenerated by a fire... the Protea Flower Seed (one of the most pretty flowers of the fynbos) can only grow after a fire! so this year was the year that the whole mountain flowered and it looked amazing!
Also at Grootbos they have many things to do, you can hike, go whale watching (on whale season), white shark cage diving, horse back riding, or airplane riding... Since I went to visit Sanja we spent some time at her house, but I also went to the beach and saw mussels (I got very excited cause I had never seen mussels in their natural habitat) and then I also took an amazing airplane ride, from above I saw a great white shark and also about 200 dolphins swimming together.. it was very awesome.
I am really lucky that I had the opportunity to go to Gansbaai and stay at Grootbos... if you want to check out the website of the hotel it is www.grootbos.com
To see the pictures of the airplane ride go to this link:

airplane ride in Gansbaai

The Shackled Continent

If you are interested in understanding the problems of Sub-saharan Africa, this is definitely the book to read. Robert Guest writes for The Economist, he has a very objective view of the problems of Africa, and he answers most of the questions of "why is Africa still poor?"
It is a very good book, specially the for the people that are not very familiar with African Politics it explains everything in a very simple way.

My visit to Robben Island

This is the place where Nelson Mandela was a political prisoner during apartheid. I visited the island and it was very illustrating. The guides are ex political prisoners that explain how the situations where at the jail—it was kind of horrible actually. It is amazing to see the way this man takes things.
He was imprisoned there for 11 years and when someone in the group ask him how he felt about giving the tour and reviving all these memories. He said that all his life he had fought for a free South Africa, in which all men were equal and he was imprisoned many years for standing up to his convictions. But now history proved him right, and he was honored to give these tours to the new faces of South Africa, a rainbow nation, and that yes, he lived difficult times in Robben Island but that he is living the principles of forgiveness and reconciliation. Hatred will not take us anywhere, he said. I think that my trip to Robben Island was definitely worth it and I would recommend this trip to anyone that comes here, it represents a lot of the history of this country.
Oh, and if someone is interested in reading about the whole struggle read LONG WALK TO FREEDOM, by Nelson Mandela.
This is a quote from Ahmed Kathrada ( I talked about him before in the blog) its in the museum before you take the ferry to the island.

The Townships

There are a couple townships near Cape Town (Gugulethu, Khayelitsha, Nyanga and Langa are the largest). When the apartheid government had the Group Areas Act, and they literally kicked all the blacks away from the zones that will turn into “white” zones in the city and near the ocean so the whites could live in a blissful way without having to interact with the blacks, so they made them move to the townships. Well today people are not by bound to stay at the townships as before but they stay there because that is where their houses are now and their life is set there, now the townships are not necessarily all shacks, they have different types of housing ranging from shacks to normal cement houses with flowers and everything, also, the townships have all different businesses like grocery stores, and even night clubs! The government has been working very hard to improve the ways of the township and therefore there is a lot of government housing.
What I have found funny when visited the townships is that there are many beauty salons, they convert trading containers into little beauty salons and they are usually decorated very colorful on the outside, also as in many poor places coca-cola sponsors the painting of many places so therefore there are coke signs everywhere near.
I also think that today there is kind of a trend to go to the township, most tour companies in Cape Town offer “township tours” and supposedly take the tourist for a day in the life of a township person. I personally think this is crap, and in a way its just going there to watch and do nothing, but in the other hand it also makes people that have never seen poverty to realize that not everyone lives like in Europe or the USA, and also, sometimes they eat at the local restaurant which brings money to the community.




These are some pictures I took the other day in Guguletu...