Where in the world is Ashley Churchill?

Hey guys. It's 2:30 in the morning and I have a flight at 6, so sleeping is a bit out of the question. Cape Town was really great. It fealt amazing being part if civilized society again. I really missed that in Tanzania. Like I said, by days end tomorrow, I will be in Zambia to enjoy everything Victoria Falls have to offer. My current plans are to bungi jump off the bridge and to abseil in the gorge. I haven't really done either sport yet. So I'm really looking forward to it. I hear that Livingstone (in Zambia), is the adventure-seakers dream town. More so than Queenstown, New Zealand. We'll see.

I did some really cool things in Cape Town. The first tour I went on was a bike tour of the winelands. BIKES AND WINE DO NOT GO TOGETHER! But it was still alot of fun. The first Dutch explorers started the vinyards and now South Africa is one of the biggest wine regions in the world. The next day I went on a tour of the townships and Robben Island (One of the prisons where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated).

It was all about how the apartheid affected people of all races and how the government ran people out of their homes. While many of Cape Town's real estate is georgeous, they still have the shanty towns. The current government is trying to get rid of them and put place people regular lower income housing. But even those are more expensive to maintain than the shanties (or 'informal structures', as they call them). Where talking about scraps of metal people. And the people that live in them actually preferr it because they own the shanties, while they may be forced to rent other housing. Robben Island was really eye opening. This is where political prisoners were kept. I saw the cell that Nelson Mandela was in and everything.

Today I went to 'Table Mountain'. And no, I didn't climb this one. I took a cable car to the top. It was really amazing to see the whole city from up there. It wasn't even that clear of a day and you could still see so much. At the top of Table Mountain, you are at 1086 m about sea level. And it was really high up from everything else. And I couldn't beleive that on my first day on Kilimanjaro, I had reached that altitude on foot.

There is still more that I'd like to see and do in Cape Town, but that will have to wait until next time.

Peace out

AC

So I arrived in Caoe Town late last night and I am so glad to be out of Tanzania. I had a pretty good experience there, but I really need to be part of the civilized world again. I've said this many of times; when you wash all of your clothes by hand, roosters wake you up every morning, and you have to walk for an hour to get ANYTHING, you really start feeling Amish after a while. Seriously, give me a big black dress and a horse and I'm totally Amish. Today, I celebrated my reintegration into the 21st Century by seeing a movie. I saw 'Vantage Point'. It wasn't very good, but it was nice sitting back and being normal again. I'm starting to feel less cut off from the world as well. I don't speak swahili well enough to really understand the radio and TV in Tanzania, which makes it hard keeping up to speed with the rest of the world. But everything in South Africa in english. Which is awesome. Its also much colder than I expected. I don't think we surpassed 20 degrees today. With that and how modern it is, I have a hard time beleiving that I'm still in Africa.

Ok, so let me tell you about my needlessly long trip into Cape Town. Almost every flight in the southern regions of Africa connect in Johannesburg (Jo'burg for short). But to get there, I had to endure a 6 hour flight from Kilimanjaro (with two stops inbetween, Zanzibar and Dar). Now this is the point where I reiterate that Tanzania runs much slower than the rest of the world. Knowing this, I expected my flight to Jo'burg to be delayed. But I was thinking in the realm of 30-60 minutes. My flight was delayed TWO HOURS! I accept that they run on a much slower clock, but it still pisses me off. Needless to say, I missed my connection. Turning my 8 hour trip into a 14 hour trip. Like I stated earlier, I am SO happy to be out of Tanzania.