SAClips

Preview of Mgloth's blog at TravelPod. Read the full blog here: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mgloth/3/1203933600/tpod.html This blog preview was made by TravelPod using the TripAdvisor™ TripWow slideshow creator. Entry from: Cape Town, South Africa Entry Title: "Cape Town, South Africa" Entry: "Hey everyone! I arrived in Cape Town on the 19th. I woke up early and watched the sunrise as we pulled into port, in front of Table Mountain. I had breakfast on the ship and waited until we could disembark. I started by taking a walk to Long Street. This is where everything goes down. There were tons of restaurants and bars and people. The market was close to there and I did some shopping. I purchased a lot of authentic African memorabilia. After shopping and getting lunch I went to hike Table Mountain. It was a 2 and a half hour hike to the top. Parts of it were basically rock climbing too. It was hard, but well worth it. Once I reached the top I felt so accomplished. The views of Cape Town were gorgeous and I have great pictures. Sorry I haven't been able to post any pictures but I only have a certain amount of MB transfer with my Internet on the ship so I will try and get to an internet café in Mauritius and post some pictures. I should have more time there. It's going to be like our spring break and probably pretty lax. Although I doubt anything on this voyage will be that lax. Every port I don't sleep and I cram as much in as I can. The second day I had a flight to Gorge (pronounced George) South Africa. This is home of the world highest bungee jump at 216 meters. A group of us planned to get up at about 4/4:30am to get to the airport and catch a 6:50am flight. My friend Erica was supposed to call my room and wake me up. At 6:10 I got that call... She asked if we should go. Even though I got in at about 2:30 from Long Street and was probably still a little drunk, without hesitation I said let's go now! I threw on some clothes, grabbed my wallet and camera and was out the door running. We ran to the taxi stand and were screaming airport, airport! Our taxi driver started running to his cab where we took a death ride to the airport. We made it in about half the time it should have taken. Needless to say he got a nice tip for that. We ran through the airport and made our flight at the last possible second. Thank god! So now we're in Gorge and we take an hour long shuttle ride to the Bloukrans Bridge, the highest road bridge in the Southern Hemisphere and the largest single span concrete arch bridge in the world. On our journey we got to see so much of South Africa. It is more amazing that you can even imagine. We saw Cliffside mansions, rivers, gorges, and great views of the Indian Ocean. The jump was unreal. It was the most terrifying and mind-blowing experience at the same time. I can't even describe the feeling. We returned to Cape Town the same day and had a great sushi dinner at the waterfront. The next morning my 3-day safari began. This was another early flight, but I made it without a problem. This time I set my own alarm clock, haha Erica. When we arrived we took an afternoon safari drive while drinking wine in our jeep. There were 3 jeeps on this organized SAS safari and my jeep was by far the best group of kids. We had a blast. We didn't see a lot the first day except for some impala, monkeys, and warthogs. That night there was a great dinner set up for us with a performance from some of the locals. They performed something called a gumboots dance. There were drummers and people dancing in tall rain boots, stomping and clapping against the boots. It was similar to what we would call stomping in the states. The next morning we began our all day safari at 5am. I was watching the sunrise from my jeep while driving through the savannah. This day we saw a lot of different animals, including hippos, rhinos, giraffe, zebra, crocodile, various antelope, and baboons. I think that's most of what I saw. Unfortunately our group wasn't lucky enough to see any of the felines, such as lions or cheetahs or leopards. That night we partied at our lodge and it was two girls 21st birthdays. We got a little rowdy since another SAS group arrived that night. There were about 50 kids from Semester at Sea at this lodge and we were all drinking and went in the pool and had chicken fights. It was great. The next morning we went on a ..." Read and see more at: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mgloth/3/1203933600/tpod.html Photos from this trip: 1. "Sunrise - Table Mountain" 2. "Peak Table Mountain" 3. "Lake" 4. "Bloukrans Bridge" 5. "Hienas" 6. "Giraffe" 7. "Warthog" 8. "Wildabeast" 9. "Elephants" 10. "Hippo" 11. "Rhino" 12. "Village" 13. "Village Girls" See this TripWow and more at http://tripwow.tripadvisor.com/tripwow/ta-00d3-ae52-6b44?ytv4=1