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Journal entry brought to you by Sophie
Thursday 22nd February
I am so ANNOYED! Having a walk through room is RUBBISH! Some absolute idiots came banging through the room at a ridiculous time in the morning, drunk out of their faces and telling us it was a lovely day for the beach. NOT IMPRESSED. To make matters worse I have been bitten by a mosquito -or maybe it was a bedbug as this hostel is a bit dodgy... Anyway, enough of the rant...we were meant to be getting up early in order to go to Robben Island. However after a 45 minute trek down to the harbour we discovered that all the ferries had been cancelled because it was too windy. Cape Town weather is so unpredicatable..one minute it is boiling hot, then it could rain, then it is windy and then it is cold. It changes faster than my mother's moods and that's an achievement!
So that we didn't waste the day we decided to look around the Robben Island museum, which was harrowing, touching, informative and really put our ignorance into place. Did you know Nelson Mandela was held on that island for 18 years, or that at one time the island was used as a place to hide all the untouchables from society, or that at a Sharpville demonstration about apartheid police shot dead 69 people and left over 100 wounded, or that the ANC (African National Congress) and PAC (Pan African Congress) were banned by the government so they were forced to operate underground? There were also artefacts in the museum such as actual handcuffs used by the guards, some pyjamas and toothpaste used bu a prisoner and other interesting letters and facts.
After having our brains crammed with all this information we went back up to our hostel and got in contact with Matt and Jazz so that we could meet up with them on Camp's Bay beach (no Jon we have not been to Clifton yet and to be honest I don't think we will have time..). We caught a taxi down and eventually found them sheltering by a stone wall becuase it was so windy there, it was not even funny. The wind whipped sand at your legs and it hurt so much! Tami and I went for a cautious paddle and nearly died of cold. The water was absolutely freezing. However I was stupidly persuaded by Jazz to go all the way in the sea. I had to do a run up and when I got fully in, I was gasping for breath, it was like ice! The beach is beautiful - white sands, palm trees, gorgeous blue water, the typical postcard view basically. We caught a mini bus back with some other backpackers after a couple of hours, which was an interesting experience to say the least. We were careering round mountain roads at high speeds and I was facing backwards, which made me want to expel my guts, to put it politely.
When we got back we had a quick stoned baked pizza at a restaurant across the road, which was so good even Tami admitted that it was better than Pizza Express. SHOCK HORROR! We had decided to sign our lives away and join the pub crawl that night, which turned out to be an absolutely awesome night out. We went to five different places, all completely unique, drank lots (well I did anyway but don't panic dad I didn't drink that much vodka, just tequila and cocktails and random shots...) and met some really, really cool people. We had to do this thing in one pub where each of the girls and each of the boys were given a piece of paper with a chat up line on it and we had to find our partner with the same one. I had " do you have a licence for that body?" - and Tami had "I like your style". It was hilarious saying these to strangers, as you can imagine. In particular we met some down to earth Canadian guys called Tim, Darryl and James, who we ended up going to another club with,( with some others from our hostel and another one) and me, Tami and these Canadian guys ended up being the last ones standing. Even the organisers of the pub crawl went home before us! We are legends! All in all it was a fantastic day and I had a brilliant time. I feel much more settled in the Long Street hostel now because we met some of our fellow roomies on the crawl, which so happened to start at our place.
Well I hope I haven't bored you all and that you are all well. I miss you all lots and think about you all the time. Don't work too hard :) Keep safe and I will speak to you soon.
PS Rob - get well soon
PPS Matt and Jon - you are the greatest guys ever
PPPS Love you mum and dad!
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