An open invitation

Although I am having a great time here in Cape Town by myself, I'd like to extend an open invitation to anyone who have a few days off at the end of February to come and join me for some South African fun in the sun. Last time I tried the same thing, inviting strangers to faraway places, I ended up in a relationship, so you never know what's going to happen, but I can promise you, it will be memorable.

I know I live in a little coachroach-infested house in Mowbray, a few kilometres from the action in Cape Town, however, there is plenty of room for one more, and the housemates have already welcomed your visit. We have two cute bathrooms with hardly any bugs at all, and our little, but sunny backyard if overflowing with frangipani flowers. It's pretty. You should see it.

The university is only 15 minutes (half an hour if we are walking with the Sudanese) away, and during your week here, I'll probably have to go there twice or so, but you can come and explore the big ivy-covered buildings, run tracks on the rugby field or take a snooze in the library.

Anyway, Mowbray and Rondebosch isn't why you've come to Cape Town! You've come to take a cable car up to Table Mountain, and weather permitting we'll be hiking back down. We might even wait til the sun has set and watch that go down in the Atlantic Ocean before admiring the view of the starstruck city. Then we'll head to the Waterfront and have dinner and enjoy the Jazz musicians next door.

The next day we'll do some historical sightseeing and head out to Robben Island. The guides at the museum are formers inmates or guards, and although you probably won't bumb into Nelson Mandela, it is supposed to be worth a visit. We'll have lunch at a veggie place called Portobello in Long Street, and if you're scared of veggies I can promise you the chocolate muffin will win you over to the green side. After Robben Island we'll head back to Long Street and to Nyoni's Kraal. A typical touristy, although fantastic restaurant with yummy food and good wine. You should be looking forward to it!

I think it's time for some sun! Today we'll catch a minibustaxi to Camps Bay. It's where Cape Towns rich and famous tan their delicious bodies, and although the glare from the Ferraris lining the street can be a bit too much, at least we'll get a huge ice cream from the Italian place at the plaza and lie on the beach for a few hours. Beach should be followed by something else on B - and then a burger at Royale (again in Long Street) will be the perfect end to a perfect day. Top it up with a Choc Brownie milkshake and you'll be in heaven.

After a scrumptillidumptious day yesterday we'll go to the Botanical Gardens. It is famous for it's flowers (naturally), but also for it's Sunday evening concerts, so if today is a Sunday we'll head there.

You can't go to South Africa without exploring the rich wine regions, and I think we should head to either Stellenbosch or Frenschoek to taste some delicious local wine today. We'll go on a tour so we won't have to fight over who's driving, and I suspect the jokes will become worse and worse proportionally with how many wineyards we've visited.

To finish off a wonderful holiday we might take the leap and tandem jump off Lion's Head, check out a safari or go face to face with the great white. It's up to whoever accepting my offer.

See you soon!

The other side of Cape Town

We're concerned about your safety

If there is one thing I dislike it is to feel unsafe. My heart starts pounding, palms gets sweaty, I start thinking about worst-case-scenarios, which are usually quite horrid and terrible, despite me never watching anything scary on tv at all, but anyway, I hate not feeling safe.

Yesterday we had had a beautiful drive around Table Mountain in a very typical tourist manner, but we got to see a lot of what is surrounding Cape Town. Kari and two of her friends decided to head back to their place, while I felt the need to just chill out and relax at home. It was around 6pm and the sun wouldn't set for hours, yet the driver of the tourist bus nearly freaked out when I told him I was planning to take a minibus taxi by myselves. "It is not safe, it is not safe" he kept saying. The pusher on the bus was a little more calm and offered to take the train with me to Mowbray, but as I am not fully orientated yet I declined and said I might have troubles finding home from the train station. He then insisted on following me to a bus which would go along the main road (same as the minibus taxis), and at least I was sure to get to Mowbray safe. After walking me across and through the central station he asked me if I wanted him to stay with me until the bus arrived, but I politely declined and said I would be fine along the 20 or so other ladies in the queue. "Ok, but go straight home now," he said, and I did.

As a white girls in Cape Town you feel everyone is looking out for you. Either because they want to rob you - or because they want to make sure you get home safe. It is extremely frustrating to always have people minding about your safety, which is after all something most of us take for granted back home. Sigbjørn came home later last night and also told me that the ladies on his minibustaxi had told him it was stupid of him to catch it by himself and a local girl even offered to follow him to his point of interest. He accepted.

Today we've been at Old Bisquit Mill Market. It is a large area with lots of stalls with yummy food - olives, cheese, freshly baked bread, muffins, crepes, and bubbly for 15R a glass (10 NOK, 2AU$). The market was situated at the end of a long road, where all you could see was black people loitering, but the second you entered the market, the demographic changed completely and it felt like you were back in Europe. Happy, white people enjoying the sun and the champers. As we walked back a minibustaxi stopped and asked us if we were going to Mowbray, but as it was only the driver and the cashier in the car we declined. Didn't want them to run away with us did we, and jumped in the next taxi with more people in.

To be honest, the system, the segregation and the social differences due to the colour of your skin makes me sick, but as the pusher on the tourist bus said last night "Better to be safe than sorry", and I can do nothing but agree with him.

On the slopes of Devil's Peak...

This is how some random internet site described Mowbray, which is the suburb of Cape Town which will be my home for the next 64 days (but who is counting...?). I arrived Cape Town, or the Kappstaad as written in Afrikaans last night after a 1400 kilometre drive straight through South Africa. Despite someone might wondering why I didn't get a direct flight to CT, it was definitively worth the time, and the drive was through a landscape one would never expect could go on for so incredible long time. The whole first day was nothing but flat, flat, flat. We stayed overnight at a little bed and breakfast somewhere after Springfontein and was served typical South African for dinner, served by an Afrikaans lady speaking like the muffin man in Shrek. After the nice meal we went to bed listening to a ceiling fan working overtime and the growls of the watch-dogs outside. Neadless to say - I didn't sleep much.

After another 800 km on the road yesterday we got to Cape Town yesterday afternoon. We were dropped off at our house in Mowbray and quickly started to orientate us. The nearest shop close at 6pm, and so does almost everything else, so it actually becomes kind of dead quiet after that time. We have five big rooms, a livingroom and a kitcken filled with coackroaches, but we can see Devil's Peak from the front door and there are frangipani flowers everywhere.

Today we bought the food we couldn't get hold of last night and headed towards the beach. Not sure which beach we were going to but the taxi driver let us off at Sea Point and we walked along Cape Town's "riviera" to Clifton's 1st beach. He has four. It was an amazing place, hot, yet windy so not too hot, and just a amazing change from the 20cm of snow that Oslo is currently battling. After a nice meal at a restaurant in Long Street we caught a taxi home around Table Mountain, sprayed up two insect repellent boxes to try combat the roaches in the bathroom, and will soon get up to more mischief and mayhem.

A ella le gusta la gasolina

It's a new year. I woke up this morning and all the snow had melted overnight. I remembered the chill from last night standing at a taxi rink in the middle of Oslo CBD and still not being able to get a taxi. I went to a Summer Party with Gamme.no yesterday and it was very much fun. I've only freelanced for them half a year or so, but appearantly they have their Summer Parties in January and Christmas Party i July. We were going to have the Norwegian dish of smalahove, but due to cancellations the last minute we ended up at a restaurant called Ylajali instead. From the name you'd think it was slightly Thai or Asian inspired, with a chill atmosphere and coconut drinks. We couldn't have been more wrong. French inspired, large tables where you nearly had to yell to be heard at the other side of the table and the waitress came and asked if we wanted an "aperitif". Can we just have four beers please, we asked, and she hummed quitely, "Sure, that's an aperitif, isn't it?"

The menu was a 5-course surprise menu consisting of grilled and smoked whale, mango ravioli with toothfish-tartar, cod soup with egg baked on 63 degrees for a helluva long time, ancient-cow-fillet, cholocate canneloni and cherry sorbet. It was very interesting and some of it very nice and we all had a good laugh about it every time the waitress was trying to explain what we would eat next. As she introduced the Chilean toothfish we started asking about the necessity of this long-travelled food, and if it hadn't been better if they'd used the supreme cod from Norway instead - also so we didn't have to feel the need to offset the CO2 emissions after our meal.

The poor waitress didn't think this was as funny as we did, but she served us our coffee and Baileys regardless.