Our journey to Southern Africa - part 7:
By Marius Westgard Erichsen
South Africa:
Cape Town
We left a snow covered Oslo the 2. of December and came to Cape town early in the morning on the 3. When we came there we were met by Chris and Peter at the airport, Chris drove us to his and Marius' guest house, where we were going to stay the first day. At eleven o'clock Chris came back, and showed us some of Cape Town. The rest of the day Bodil and I walked around in the nearby streets, and shopped a little. It was harder to find flowers for "morfar" than we expected, but we finally made it. Mum even bargained the price to a presumably reasonable level, which was normally my job. In the evening we had dinner with Chris and Marius at Hard Rock Café. Peter, "Morfar" (Grandpa), and Knut (Knut was another guest, but his arrival was expected. He was with us around in Cape Town.) had dinner at another restaurant, Chris and Marius could not join them because they "had some important business to do!"
Thursday December 4.
In the morning we sneaked in to the house without "Morfar" noticing. When we came in we started singing a birthday song in Norwegian, then "Morfar" came running out of his bedroom and wondered what was going on. When he saw us he was shocked, but he was happy too. We all had a nice champagne breakfast, the champagne helped "Morfar" to overcome the chock. The sightseeing program started right off, we had a nice day at Table Mountain. In the evening we had dinner at a wine farm.
Friday December 5.
Bodil and I walked around in the city most of the day, and walked home in the rain. As everybody commented the event, we must have been the first whites ever to walk that distance. It took approximately 20 min. We enjoyed walking, it gave us better opportunity to watch the town, but we should also admit that we never really found a taxi. They had no signs, and I don't think there were any proper taxi-stops, were we could wait for one. No problem: as we got closer to the house we could see the Norwegian flag, which "morfar" got for his birthday. In the evening there was a birthday party for "Morfar". It did not look like a 70 years birthday, but it was very nice.
Click here for mum's description of the Green Market.The rest of the week
We forgot to make notes of what we did when in Cape Town, so we could only remember the first few days. One day we were in Stellenbosch. On the way out we were on a wine farm, Neethlingshof, where we tasted different wines. In Stellenbosch we saw the university. René met us at a café and showed us around. Stellenbosch was a nice town. On the way back we were in a place were they breeded cheetahs. The cheetah is related to the cat, but has dogs paws. It can run up to 100 km/h for a short distance, it is the world's fastest animal. We also went to Robben Island, which is an island that was used as a prison for political prisoners. Nelson Mandela for instance was imprisoned there. Among the visitors there were some members of PAC (Pan African Congress) who had been imprisoned there once and showed their families the place now. One of them had been in prison there for twelve years. The other places we visited was Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden, there were so many flowers there that we did not have time to see all of them. In the Two Oceans Aquarium there were fishes from both the Atlantic and the Indian ocean, there is quite a difference between the fishes. The fishes in the Atlantic ocean are grey, and some silvery, while in the Indian ocean of them have bright colors. The Bird land was also nice, the birds in Africa have much more colors than those we see in Norway. We saw Cape Point on a rainy day, but it was nice anyway. Big signs there said: "Baboons are dangerous", but we saw none of them. Never mind, we met plenty in Botswana. We also spent some more time in the city. We saw the Castle of Good Hope, a beautiful castle with lots of old arts and furniture, the National Museum and the Botanical garden down town.
Click here for mum's comments on a Amnesty International concert, and the Internet Café.
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MWE 04.12.98