We Were Blessed A Lot -- Thursday

Our tour guide today told us that if you get rained on in South Africa, you've been blessed. If this is true, then all of us could get into heaven 20 times over with the amount of blessing we recieved. I have never been that throughly drenched in my lifetime, but it didnt keep any of us from having an amazing time today!

We started off the day by walking to our tour bus and getting a short driving tour through downtown Cape Town. The rest of the day was spent getting a coastal tour of the Western Cape. We first went to Campe Bay on the Atlantic Ocean. Some huuuge clouds were rolling in, but thankfully they went away. I really wouldn't mind having a house here.

After a few minutes here, we got back on the bus and drove to Haut Bay to go on a glass-bottom boat to look at the seals. I didn't go on the boat, unfortunately. In the frenzy to get out the door in the morning, I completely forgot to grab my seasickness medicine and I didn't feel like spending the entire tour hanging off the back of the boat and not even seeing the seals. So I stayed on land and did a little market shopping and got some presents for my parents to put in their houses. Since they'll be reading this, I can't say what I got, but they are pretty awesome and the proceeds go to a seal protection program..

I didn't like this guy.. he was blowing smoke into his 'pet' seal's face and letting people sit on its back for pictures.

At this point, it started pouring rain. And when I say pouring, I mean a horizontal, face-pelting deluge. (I find out later that it was good I didn't go on the boat. The water got pretty rough, people struggled to hang onto the boat and get inside, and then got sea sick). I had some extra time until my group got back from the boat so I went to some coffee shop and got some breakfast.

After Haut Bay, we drove to the other side of Africa. It was the first time in my life that I touched the Indian Ocean. First time in my life I've seen penguins. All I could think the whole time was just, 'God, how lucky am I??'

We walked around in the freezing water and picked up some sea shells, wrote our names in the sand and loved every second of it.

The next part is my favorite! After lunch we went to the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve which is located at the bottom of Africa. Very bottom. As we were driving through the park, we could look tho the left and see the Indian Ocean and look to the right to see the Atlantic. Along side of the road, we came up on a troupe of baboons! Those things are huge and mean looking! We definately were not allowed to have the windows open because otherwise one might jump in and fight you for food.

A big baboon with a couple babies.. can you see them all? Tricky.

I wasn't expecting baboons to be so big, but they are definately almost the size of a lab retriever. With huge fangs the the strength of 3 men.

Now, here is my favorite part of the day! Our tour guide told us about this absolutely gorgeous beach, but that we should really avoid going down to it because the rip tides are so strong that you'll die, it happened. But did we listen? No; this was the one time in our lives to go check it out and we weren't going to pass it up.

Here it is!

We climbed down a million stairs down to the beach, took our shoes off and ran down to the water (but we didnt go in because the waves were HUGE!) There are absolutely no words to describe how beautiful this place is. It's a piece of heaven that I will never forget.

Our time at the beach got cut short when we saw all those dark clouds moving in, and the wind was blowing the sand so hard, it stung our legs reeaally bad. The second we made it back to the trail after climbing those million stairs, the clouds completely opened up and we were introduced once again to that horizontal rain. Except this time, the wind was blowing so hard that some of the rain felt like hail hitting you in the face!

Probably the most safe thing I've ever done in my life.. hiking on trails and climbing up rocks with cliffs no more than 10 feet away in a torrential downpour and wind blowing so hard it could blow your eyes out of their sockets. But it was amazing; freezing cold, wet, tired.. all I could do was smile, laugh and think, 'Oh my god. This is incredible. I can't believe that I'm actually here, that I'm actually experiencing this.' No words can describe how lucky and amazed I feel.

We eventally made it to the Cape of Good Hope, the southernmost point in Africa! We were at the bottom of the world! We saw two oceans at once and pointed out across the water at Antarctica.