Julia's Last Day. With Us. In South Africa. So, It's Not Quite As Dramatic As The First Sentence Suggested! Or Even the Second Sentence!

Returning from Sabi Sabi (a post still to be written), I thought about all the things we wanted to accomplish before returning with Julia to the MV Explorer so they could sail off to locations unknown (actually Ghana) the next day.

We wanted to take her to Table Mountain. Up Signal Hill.  To a grocery store.  To Green Square Market. To lunch.  Back to the hotel to get her stuff.  Then to the docks in the middle of nowhere (of the port) to say our farewells.  Then Carol and I had dinner plans well outside of city centre.  Then, of course, we had to get back to the hotel from dinner.  Thinking about all the cabs we needed literally gave me a headache (actually figuratively, not literally, but since "literally" literally no longer means literally, why not overuse it?).

So I had an inspired idea -- hire a car and driver for the day.  I got the idea from another dad on the parent trip who hired a car on their first day in town.   The hotel was great and set it up even though it was probably 6pm (or even later).

It was supposed to rain all day, but the weather report proved to be wrong.  We had to have breakfast inside because of the rain, but it stopped before 9 am, when we got picked up by Raeese, our driver.  He took us up to Table Mountain.  It was a bit cloudy up top, so the views were definitely muted, but it was still great being up there.  Most importantly, Julia enjoyed it.

We saw a whole bunch of Dassies.  They were leaping from rock to rock, or just hanging out, staring at us, daring us to try and come after them (we would slip and fall to our deaths, but it was still tempting -- Dassies are like overweight Tribbles, but less trouble.)

The rain had left big puddles which we found our way through, going up, down, and around the top.  Being socked in forced us to look at the table top -- I shouted down the gorge for the echo at one point.

After we came down Table Mountain, we headed over to Signal Hill. While Table Mountain was shrouded in clouds, the lower elevations were clear.  We had great views from Signal Hill, including the Twelve Apostles, Cape Town, Robbins Island, our hotel and the World Cup soccer stadium that is considered by many to be Cape Town's anchor because of the cost of it.  Apparently it has only sold out twice since -- for both U2 and Justin Bieber (essentially the same musicians).

After Signal Hill, we went grocery shopping for Julia.  Well, she picked everything out, as we helpfully gave advice.  They are not allowed to bring vegetables, fruit, or meat on board the ship (understandable).  So, she got things like cookies, nutella (of course -- the girls are nutty over nutella), a bag of chips, and other packaged foods.

From there it was on to the Greenmarket Square (aka Green Square Market, but from the website the former is the official name, for those of you care, which has to number in something less than single digits), which if you click on this link you will get an idea of what it is.  We careened from stall to stall.  Interestingly, some of the vendors tried to pitch us to buy stuff, while others sat there silently, wisely figuring that we would stop if we wanted something.  Not surprisingly, Carol and Julia lasted longer than I did!  They bought a bunch of small things.

We then went back to the V&A for lunch, stopping at a restaurant for Julia's last good meal for a while.  Not surprisingly, it was a meat place.  I decided to get the warthog, which was the most underwhelming meat I had in South Africa. What have we learned from this?  Ostrich is the best, while wildebeest, impala, and kudu all get kudos.  Springbok was tougher than I expected, but warthog is without doubt the worst of the wilds.

A quick pop back to the hotel to get Julia's bag (she had to check out earlier, but left her bag in our hotel room), and we headed back to the docks.  Even having been there once, it was quite confusing, so we had to guess where the turn-in was.  Our driver got it wrong the first time, but not by much.

On board the ship (boarding was easy -- the hordes of students looking to reboard would not be till later), we first went to Julia's room so she could drop her stuff.  We hung there until the shipboard announcement called for voyagers and parents to come to the lounge for the farewell reception.  Moments later, the disembodied voice clarified that the reception was just for voyagers whose parents had been on the parent trip!  Pretty funny, as we imagined a number of other students showing up for free food in the nice lounge that only faculty and life-long learners are allowed to use.

The reception was nice -- Nelson Mandela's great grandson gave an excellent talk to us all.  More on him in a future post.  We also had a great view of Cape Town and the mountains, because the lounge was on the 6th floor and at the front of the boat.  I had to run back to Julia's stateroom ("stateroom" is catchier than the more fitting "closet") to do a conference call.

We got kicked off the ship around 5pm.  On the way to La Colombe I had another conference call, so I missed most of the drive to the outer suburbs.