From our base in Cape Town we visited a wine farm in Stellenbosch, a Cheetah conservation centre, Cape Point and shopped at the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront. Then the Drifters tour was over and we were on our own. We moved over to St. John's Backpacker Lodge and continued exploring Cape Town on our own, in particular visiting Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for a long time.

Day 19 - July 15

We woke up at 0730. Tomorrow would be the final day of the Drifters tour, which meant that a new place to stay tomorrow night was needed. Of course it would have been possible to keep staying here at Drifters, but it was pretty expensive at 240R a night so, we rather wanted to find somewhere cheaper.

Fortunately, we had the "Africa - The South" edition of the Lonely Planet travel guide at hand. We checked the section on accommodation in Cape Town and found a place called the St. John's Backpacker Lodge which seemed quite promising. Lonely Planet described it as "one of the best bargains in Cape Town", and since it was located right up the street, this sounded like a place for us.

After quickly eating breakfast, we walked up to St. John's to see if they had any available rooms. We spoke to a guy in the reception who was called Erroll and seemed to be running the place. He was very friendly and helpful, so we decided to reserve a double room. Although without private bath, it seemed quite cheap at 120R.

Rejoining the others at the Inn, we all drove the short distance to a wine farm near Stellenbosch. It was raining quite heavily, but fortunately the tour was inside the buildings. We were shown around and given lots of information about wine production. The highlight, however, came after the tour when we got to taste lots of different types of wines. My conclusion was that white wines were better than red wines, and the cheapest wine turned out to be by far the best one. However, I can't quite see why there is all this fuzz about wines, as in my opinion, soft drinks like Coke, Sprite, strawberry milkshake and apple juice are far superior. Most people in the world seem to disagree with me, though.

After the winetasting, we left the farm and drove into the city of Stellenbosch. The agenda said that we should explore the city, but since the rain was really pouring down now, none of us felt like staying outside. Instead we all went into a restaurant called Dros to eat lunch. I wasn't that hungry yet, so I only had a Ceasar Salad, which however turned out to be huge,and was more than enough for me. It was very good, though! May Tina ordered a pizza and it turned out to be huge as well, at least enough for two hungry persons! (And excellent value at approximately 30R).

Next on the agenda was a visit to a Cheetah park nearby. The cheetahs are, in fact, one of the most endangered species. They are not doing very well in the wild, so the object of this park was to help preserve them by educating people about them and their situation. You don't normally hear too much about the cheetahs. They are not one of the "glamour" animals like lions and tigers, but seeing them so close we could not avoid being impressed. They are some really beautiful and majestic animals. We hope this park will help increasing awareness of the cheetah's situation.

Now we were supposed to have gone hiking up Table mountain, but this was called off due to the weather. Although it was no longer raining as heavily, the clouds were hanging just below the mountain, making sure there would have been no view of the city had we gone up there. Also, the cable cars were not operating because of wind, so we had no choice but to abandon our plan and hope the weather would improve for tomorrow.

Instead we drove to the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, arriving at around 1430. This is a huge shopping and entertainment complex, and we were given three hours to explore it on our own. May Tina and I spent the whole time browsing in the shops without buying very much. However, I was lucky and came across a copy of the new Incognito album "No time like the future". It hadn't been released in Norway, yet, and I wasn't sure that it ever would be, so I definitely had to buy it. The price was 99R, which is slightly cheaper than buying it in Norway would have, but not a major difference. Around 1715 we returned to the car and met up with the others.

When arriving back at the Drifters Inn, we were given our personalised tour t-shirts. I have to say they turned out to be very nice! For the next hour, we both had a shower and got ready to go out to dinner. We drove to a restaurant called "Marco's African Place", which was located quite near the downtown area. I had chicken wings as appetiser and Pasta with chicken as a main course, and thought it was quite good. The whole place seemed very African. After a while a local band started entertaining, although I would not predict them to ever become very big stars in the music business.

We drove back at 2130 and went to bed almost immediately.

Day 20 - July 16

May Tina woke up at 0300 feeling very sick. She didn't fall asleep again that night, and finally at 0700 she threw up. It seems natural to blame the food at Marco's African place, although you can never be sure. I was feeling fine despite having eaten basically the same stuff as her.

I got up and had some yoghurt for breakfast, while May Tina stayed in bed. I brought her an apple, but she only managed a few bites. She was very much in doubt as to whether it would be a good idea for her to come along on today's excursions. Kurt finally managed to convince her, by pointing out that there wasn't very much driving and that she could sit in the frontseat.

We drove southwards towards Cape Point, making our first stop in Simon's Bay at a place called Penguin Point near the ocean. The very special thing about this place was that there were lots of penguins walking around! This came as a real surprise because we had no idea that there were penguins in South Africa, and suddenly they were almost everywhere! We were really excited by this discovery. Penguins look really cute the way they walk around, although the smell could have been better.

As we had come to expect from the Western Cape, the weather was not very nice today either. It was clouded with a very strong wind blowing. On the bright side May Tina was starting to feel slightly better, though she was still far from being in top shape.

After leaving Penguin Point we drove straight to the famous Cape Point, which also was a National Reserve Park. The scenery at the Cape Point itself was very nice with cliffs going down to the oceans. There was a historic lighthouse at the top of a small hill, and it was a quite tough walk up there. But the view was great, at one side we had the Atlantic Ocean, while the Indian Ocean was on the other hand (not that we could see any difference). We were truly on the edge of Africa.

The wind was blowing quite heavily so we didn't stay up for long. On coming back down again, I was feeling quite hungty so I bought a Samosa at a small cafe. May Tina was still not feeling 100%, so she only had something to drink.

Finally, we had to take group photos behind the "Cape Point" sign. It was quite cold standing there in the cold wind, only in our Drifters tour t-shirts waiting for a japanese tourist to take pictures of us with everybody's cameras. Actually, he was quite a sight himself as he stood there, initially with eleven cameras around his neck, putting them down one by one until he had taken all the photos.

Our final excursion was to an ostrich farm nearby where we were given an introduction to ostrich farming. Ostriches are quite fascinating, but they don't give the impression of being very smart. In fact, the young ostriches looked mentally disturbed as they stood there trying to eat imaginary food. The smell inside the farm building made May Tina much worse, so she had to leave the building.

After hanging around with the ostriches for a while, we headed back towards Cape Town, stopping for lunch at a restaurant in some small town along the way. I had a Spring Chicken pizza, while May Tina who was now feeling a little bit better, also managed to eat a little bit of her Cheese pizza.

This was our final meal together so we would soon have to say goodbye. We had all decided to give Kurt 200R each as tip. Apparently, the guides rely on the tip as an important part of their salary, and Kurt was definitely worth all the money as he had done an excellent job for us on the whole trip.

The Belgians had a crazy idea on how we should give the money to him. They bought a copy of Hustler Magazine and everybody then put their money inside, spread out on various pages throughout the magazine. When the time had come, Iain made a short speech, telling Kurt that the group had bought him a book on South Africa. He then handed over the gift to him, wrapped inside an old newspaper. Kurt seemed very surprised as he unwrapped the magazine, and for some reason couldn't believe that it had been bought in South Africa. We told him to read it page by page, and although he hesitated a little at first, he was very happy when he found all the money.

On the way back to Cape Town, Kurt once more played his favourite song "Jessie" for us. Suddenly goodbye didn't seem so sad after all :-)

Back at Drifters Inn, there was some bad news for us. Wilhelmina, who was currently in charge of the place, had tried to arrange for Drifters in Johannesburg to pick us up from the Johannesburg bus terminal on our arrival at July 26. However, they had refused to pick us up because it was too dangerous for them to drive into this area! Instead they suggested that we should take a taxi! However, after some pressure from Kurt, Wilhelmina phoned them up again and eventually they agreed to pick us up anyway. We just had to phone them and confirm our arrival time after we'd bought the bus ticket.

According to Kurt the bus terminal was a horrible place and we had to be very careful. If anybody offered to help us carry our our baggage, we should tell them to "get lost"! (actually he used a slightly stronger expression than that!)

Now was farewell time, and it was very sad to say goodbye to everybody in the group. We then walked 150 meters up the street to St. John's Lodge. Gone was the security of being in the Drifters group, and we were truly on our own.

Most of the people in the group were going straight back home, and at that time we felt a little bit envious of them because of that. It was not that we were not enjoying the holiday because we definitely were, but more that we had seen so much, had so many new impressions, that it would have been nice to take some time off to digest everything. However, this was not to be, and we were soon looking forward to the rest of the holiday.

Arriving at St. John's we were greeted by Erroll. There were several available rooms which we could choose between, so we took the one which was closest to the bathroom. The room was quite OK, so we were happy with our decision of staying here instead of at Drifters. There was a kitchen and two living rooms with televisions for the guests to use. However, we soon realized that nobody else but us were staying there. This was quite a surprise given how strongly this place had been recommended in Lonely Planet. We had thought that Lonely Planet was the backpacker's bible, and that every place listed inside it would be full, but apparently this is not so.

May Tina was still not feeling 100%, so we decided to just have a quiet evening at St. John's. We went to the 7-11 down the street and bought some groceries, came back to the hostel and ate in the kitchen. The rest of the evening we just relaxed, watching some TV and updating our diaries. Nobody else, except for an older guy which didn't look much like a backpacker (we referred to him as the "Super-backpacker"), was seen all night. We went early to bed at 2130.

Day 21 - July 17

Today we got up at 0800, which was probably the longest we'd slept during the whole holiday. It was very nice not having to get out of bed at a specific time. We went down to the kitchen and ate our own food (bread) for breakfast. Nobody disturbed us which was not surprising given the number of guests.

We talked to Erroll about some practical matters and again he was very helpful. First thing on the agenda was to buy Greyhound tickets from Durban to Piet Retief and from Piet Retief to Johannesburg. We walked down to a shopping center down the road, where Erroll had said tickets could be purchased. The street was quite busy and it felt perfectly safe to walk there. On the way we passed at least six Internet Cafes, so this really seems to be a big thing in South Africa.

At the shopping center we went to Computicket and bought our tickets. It was nice to see that the Greyhound time schedules we had obtained from the Internet before leaving home were correct.

The weather was really nice today except for some wind, so we decided to walk down to the Waterfront. It was quite a nice walk along the ocean, at least until we were surprised by a huge wave splashing all over us and making us rather wet!

Arriving at the Waterfront, we weren't quite sure what to do next. In the end we decided to visit the tourist information and ask how to get up the Table Mountain. However, unfortunately it turned out that due to strong wind, the cable car running up the mountain was closed today. This was a shame since today there were no clouds to obstruct the view!

While at the tourist information, we inquired about the "Walk to Freedom tour" which had looked quite interesting in a brochure we'd seen at Drifters and St. John's. It cost only 130R per person, so we decided to book the tour for tomorrow. The tour operator would pick us up at St. John's, which we thought was very convenient.

If we couldn't go up the mountain, at least we had to visit Robben Island, which is where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison. The ferry was leaving from the Waterfront area, so we went to check the ferry schedule. Fortunately, there was a ferry leaving at 1200, which suited us perfectly since we would then be able to get something to eat first. The tickets for the ferry was 100R each, but this also included a guided tour of the island.

At this moment we were not carrying neither camera nor videocamera, since we were slightly worried about getting mugged, and we had been repeatedly warned against advertising our tourist status by carrying such equipment around. When travelling with Drifters this had never been a concern, since we felt completely safe with the other group members around , but now it was just the two of us. May Tina then had the brilliant idea that we should buy an instant camera as this would not attract very much attention, and losing it would be no big deal.

After purchasing the camera, we had a quick lunch at KFC. It was quite interesting to see how big KFC were in South Africa, while McDonald's were almost non-existent. Apparently chicken is very popular with the black population. There were several other fastfood chains specialising in chicken, one called Chicken Licken was also seen many places.

For some reason, I don't know why, I had always imagined the Robben Island ferry as a very old wooden boat. However, nothing could have been further from the truth as it was in fact a very modern catamarans. Since we boarded quite late, all the seats inside were already taken. We walked up to the upper deck and found some available seats there, but since these were quite wet, we decided to stand on the left side of the boat. There was lots of space there because for some reason most people were standing on the right side.

As the boat was leaving, a guy came and said that we should move away from there unless we wanted to get really wet. We couldn't quite understand how this could happen since we were quite high on the upper deck, and waves looked really small. Anyway, most of the people, including us, followed his advice and moved over towards the right as far as possible. We were now standing approximately in the middle of the upper deck behind a wall.

It soon became clear that we had severly underestimated the waves! Shortly after leaving the waves were splashing in all over the left side of the deck. The people who were still standing in that place were soaked within a few seconds! Fortunately, we were both standing just far enough to the right to be protected by the wall, and we therefore didn't get too wet. However, we didn't feel comfortable at all during the trip, as we stood there almost pushing our bodies towards the wall, worrying about slipping and falling down the stairs to the lower deck.

It took 30 minutes to reach Robben Island, and as we left the ferry we were determined that on the return trip we would arrive very early to secure a seat inside.

The tour started with everybody getting on a bus and being driven around the island, while a woman gave us information about the various sights. It was difficult to absorb all this information, but what we remember most clearly was the limestone quarry where the political prisoners had to work. The island was much bigger than I had expected. I had always imagined a small island with only one building (the prison) on, but in fact the community here was almost like a small town.

The bus driver had been a political prisoner and he also held a little speach about "reconciliation". I don't know how many times we heard this word during the tour, but it was quite a few! Something that appeared quite strange was that while the political prisoners apparently were treated pretty badly, they were allowed to get some education while on the island. A few prisoners had even obtained university degrees during their time here!

Another thing that we couldn't quite figure out was a sign inside the bus which said:

We "thank" you for your "tip".

Maybe they're not happy with the tip they usually receive?

After leaving the bus we were let inside the prison itself where another former political prisoner took over as our guide. He shared his stories about life in prison with us, and he was very interesting to listen to. You could hear a pin drop as everybody was sitting totally quiet listening to him. Apparently conditions for the political prisoners were really bad in the beginning, but things gradually improved, and in the end the prisoners were almost running the show themselves. A few months later May Tina saw a program about South Africa on Discovery Channel, where the same man was interviewed about being on Robben Island.

After listening to his story, we were showed around the cells. Everybody were especially interested in Nelson Mandela's cell (No.5), although it looked exactly the same as all the other ones.

When the tour was finally over, we ran as fast as we could down to the ferry and successfully secured a place inside. When looking out of the window during the ride, it was impossible to tell that we were actually sailing above water, as the waves were continously splashing all over the ship. On arriving in Cape Town I was very sick, and had the trip been five minutes longer I definitely would have thrown up (many other passengers did!). Fortunately, I quickly recovered. May Tina managed the ride without being sick at all.

Time was now 1530 and the first thing we did was to check out the cinema inside the Waterfront. We decided to buy tickets for Star Wars, which didn't premiere until August 20th in Norway, but seemed to have been running here for a long time. The tickets cost 21R each, so it was much cheaper than the corresponding Norwegian prices would have been. Some vouchers for rides at a place called Cyberworld was also included in the price.

While waiting for the movie to begin at 1715, we walked around the shops in the Waterfront. It really was a quite busy place this Saturday afternoon. We bought some chocolate and popcorn and brought along for the movie.

The movie finished around 1940 and I thought it was reasonably entertaining, although it didn't really deserve all the attention it had been getting. May Tina thought it was very good and decided to see the other Star Wars movies on video when she returned home to Norway.

None of us felt like eating out in a restaurant tonight, so instead we went to the Pick'n'Pay inside the Waterfront and bought Lasagna for cooking in a microwave owen. We then took the bus back to Sea Point. It was very cheap at 2R each. When we got of the bus we noticed that the streets were nearly empty this late in the evening. We therefore didn't really feel very comfortable walking the few blocks up to St. John's, although in the end nothing happened. I guess the reason we felt uncomfortable was all the stories about muggings we'd heard, and not that it looked particularly dangerous in this area.

Back at St. John's everything was quiet. Apparently some other guys had moved in across the hall from our room, but they slammed the door on us when we approached, so we never even saw them. We referred to them as the "antisocials" after this.

This seemed like a good time to call home and tell our parents that we were doing fine. After phoning, we spent some time figuring out the microwave owen in the kitchen, and were eventually able to use it for preparing our Lasagne meals. I thought my Lasagne was quite okay (considering the circumstances), but May Tina was not equally impressed.

This had been our first day all by ourselves in South Africa, and no problems so far! We were feeling very pleased with ourselves when we went to bed at 2230.