Adventure in South Africa!

Hi Everyone! I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and are enjoying the Holiday Season! In this update, I’d like to share with you our adventures in South Africa. This adventure started with an 11.5  hour flight from Amsterdam direct to Cape Town. It was a long flight, but we didn’t change any time zones, so luckily we weren’t too jet lagged. This was my first time in Africa and I was quite anxious about what to expect. We’d heard lots of concerns about safety, but aside from staying alert and not being out and about after dark, we felt very safe. Thank goodness for Uber, as that was our main form of transportation! Something to keep in mind, Cape Town is easy to explore on your own, but South Africa is a huge country and we found it incredible helpful to explore the Garden Route and going on Safaris with the help of a guide. 

We stayed in a neighborhood called Sea Point which was right along the ocean.  There was a beautiful promenade for our morning walks, with incredible views of Lions Head and Table Mountain. Table Mountain is hard to miss, unless it’s covered in clouds, and you can see it towering over the city from almost everywhere you go. We waited for a clear day and took the cable car up to the top - 3,358 feet! From the top you can see the entire city and all the way out to Robben Island. Our visit to Robben Island was one of the most important and impactful experiences of the trip so far. We took a 20 minute ferry ride out to the island, enjoying the incredible views of the city on the way out. Before this trip, I had a simple understanding of apartheid. In school we basically learned that a) there was apartheid in South Africa, b) it was bad and c) Nelson Mandela ended it. That was about the extent of it. Touring Robben Island, seeing Nelson Mandela’s jail cell and hearing first hand from a former prisoner helped us to learn what it was truly like during that time and how horrific the racism was. I hope everyone can have a chance to visit this place, to help understand and continue to work towards true equality. 

I was very excited to discover that Cape Town had a professional ballet company and we attended a performance by the Cape Town City Ballet at the Artscape Theatre Center. The performance of Satori consisted of 3 works, beginning with Concerto Barocco. This Balanchine work was danced well, but I felt it did not showcase the dancers as well as the rest of the evening. As the night went on the pieces moved to a more contemporary feel and this is where the dancers really started to shine. It was interesting to see such a diverse group of dancers and the 2nd work of the night, by South African choreographer Michelle Reid, especially highlighted the athleticism of the male dancers. The final piece of the evening was by UK choreographer, Kenneth Tindal. This was the highlight of the evening for me. The piece had interesting musicality and played with formation and light in a unique way. The dancer’s technique was exquisite as this piece pushed the boundaries between classical ballet and contemporary movement.

We were really excited to see more beyond the city itself and through an Airbnb experience met up with Blaine Smith of Reveler Tours. We started with a one day trip to see the penguins at Boulder Beach and the Cape of Good Hope. We had a great day and got to see a lot of wildlife including ostrich and a family of baboons playing alongside the road. We had such a great time with Blaine, that we decided to take his 4 day Garden Route tour. Now we really got to see the beauty of South Africa! We had an incredible time and each day was full of adventure. Some of the highlights included Wilderness Beach, where I conquered my fear of heights and jumped off the side of a mountain to go paragliding! We saw the Cango Caves, walked with the elephants in Knysna Elephant Park and stayed in the only Wagyu beef farm in South Africa. We went on two safari drives and saw so many beautiful animals! We were lucky enough to see elephants, zebra, giraffes, hippos, lions, rhinos and even two cheetahs and five cheetah cubs! There is nothing quite like the thrill of seeing these creatures in their natural habitat, and we can’t wait to explore more of Africa in the future.

There is still so much to explore in South Africa, but this trip was hopefully not the only time we will come to this amazing country. The people were friendly, the markets full of interesting arts and crafts, the food was delicious and the scenery and animals were incredible to see. I would highly recommend putting this on your bucket list as a place to visit. Thanks for reading and please look for my next update about our time in Turkey and Israel!

Travel Tip # 8

Embrace the fear of going somewhere “scary”! I was afraid to go to Africa, but now that I’ve been, I can not wait to explore more countries on this incredible continent!