The plane rides were pretty uneventful, and the seats were surprisingly comfortable. At Heathrow, in London, they shuttle you around like refugees to separate terminals through rubble. When I woke up on the second plane it was night time, and everyone was quiet. I saw on the screen in front of me that we were over the Congo (Republic of). I couldn't see anything below, but I could see stars. Stars over the Congo. That's the moment I got excited. Midway through Namibia the sun rose and all you could see an any direction was waves of gorgeous red sand. As we started our descent to Cape Town, we passed nice house tops with pools, then, sadly, sand and trash. Lots and lots of trash. The above picture is the view you're greeted with as you leave the Cape Town Airport. You're looking at the legendary Stellenbosch Mountains. It's about a 25 minute drive to Stellenbosch, and our driver, who was a student at SU was very excited that Rhianna had the number 1 single for yet another week on his countdown radio show. To the left we saw the mountain rages, and to the right, the legendary Cape Town slums/Township (see my list of things I didn't want to see).
Very unexpectedly, we have bathrooms with showers attached to our rooms! These pictures are a from a couple of days later, when I'd gotten settled in a bit.
I quickly started exploring the area, and went shopping for the first time. On my walk, a Fruit Chafer Beetle (I think, anyway) befriended me (much to my excitement) and he became my pet/prisoner for a few hours. This town is so quaint it almost makes you think it's fake (see pics). Below are my first groceries (fruit is dirt cheap, but there's nothing here I haven't seen already in MN grocery stores--sadly). Later that evening, a big (not THE huge one, though) snail found me in the building courtyard, too. I'm being welcomed.
Finally, exhausted, I went to bed....and woke up to this view:
I'm in South Africa.
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