South for the Winter

Hey everyone, I leave today so I’m afraid this will be my final post on here. I’ve really had fun with the blog, so I think I’ll have to find some other crazy project to do so I can set up another one. But yeah, seeing as this is my last post, I thought I’d try and make it a bit special. So here we go!

5 Things that would have been good to know before I came to South Africa:

1. When driving in South Africa, “Stop” actually means “Keep Going. If you’re going to hit somebody - pedestrian or otherwise - swerve, beep the horn, shout something rude out the window, whatever floats your boat... just keep going.”

2. A five-seater car can be a 7 or 8-seater car if you use your imagination.

3. In the UK it tends to only be used sarcastically, but when a South African says “Shame!” they actually mean it. So if anything bad happens here, the standard response is “Ach shame!” and you leave it at that.

4. South African tenses are messed up. Here, “just now” is used like, “I’m GOING to do it just now,” not like we Brits would say “I DID it just now”. So if someone offers to give you a lift to the shopping centre “just now,” I’m afraid you won’t be meeting Matt Smith. 

5. And “now now” means later....... yeah, we had trouble with that one too...

So that’s a few of the things I’ve learnt here, my advice to travellers is as follows:

1. If you’re meeting a South African anywhere and they say “now” AT ANY POINT in the conversation, make sure you get a specific time from them. It saves a lot of time, effort and sunburn as you wait outside Mugg and Bean, thinking they’re going to show up in the next five minutes. You’ll thank me an hour or two later.

2. Before you go anywhere in a large group, assess who are the smallest/most flexible members of the group and make sure you call shotgun before they do. It’s ok, they’ll be fine in the boot, so long as you remember they’re there.

3. Look both ways before crossing the road. Then again...again... and probably again. And just before you cross, you might want to take a minute to invent a third or fourth way to look and double-check there too. Remember, “Stop = Keep Going."

4. And don’t bring socks. You won’t use them.

As far as my final week in SA has gone, it has been so hectic that I’ve barely had time to feel sad that I’m leaving. Good old Cubañas threw an indoor beach party, so we dressed up for that. I don’t think we were quite expecting the sheer amount of sand that we found on arrival. There was a good 2-3 inches of sand covering the entire bar! Annoyingly I didn’t take my camera with me, but some of my friends took some good photos; I’ll try to get hold of a few of them instead. Savannah cider was holding a scratch card competition to win Savannah beach hats, so we ended up getting a lot of Savannah. Nobody won a hat, but we ended up with Savannah flip-flops, a Savannah beach ball, a towel, and even a Savannah stress ball (which was affectionately given to me... not sure what they meant by that?).

My other roommate, Natalie, left for Switzerland on Friday. I was working on Friday so she came into SANCCOB for a tearful (and slightly fishy-smelling) goodbye hug. When I went home to my now empty room, I found that she had decorated my bed with sweets and one of those Hawaiian flower-necklaces, as well as a short note that made me cry a little. I am going to miss Natalie a lot; she is such a fun person and was my first friend in SA. I miss coming home to French music playing on her iPod, especially French versions of Disney songs. We had fun singing them in two different languages at the same time at the dinner table. I hope you had a safe journey home Natalie! Have an awesome Christmas and I can’t wait to see you again! Je t’aime aussi!

I also did the final dive of my scuba diving course; we went diving in False Bay (Indian Ocean side, infinitely warmer than diving in the Atlantic side) and went inside a wreck. Very cool indeed! Some of the other divers saw an octopus and a cuttlefish – I must have been too busy trying to blow bubble rings or something. But yeah, got my qualification now and super happy!

I worked my last day at SANCCOB on Saturday, I got to be the supervisor on Pen 2! It was nice to be trusted with supervising a pen, but it was a little scary knowing that I was going to responsible for anything that went wrong. But other than some minor drama with the nebuliser early on, the day went relatively smoothly. I’m going to miss SANCCOB so much. I would recommend working with them to everyone! The staff are so nice to you, you get to meet and work with other volunteers from all over the world, and after each day I have worked there I went home filled with a huge sense of achievement – you get so much done in just one day and I always feel that I have made a difference. The African Penguin is now officially classed as “endangered” so the work SANCCOB does is really important to the survival of the species. Anybody out there looking to take a gap year? Spend some time working at SANCCOB. It is one of the best things you’ll ever do with your life.

I have had real fun here. I know I’ll find some time to come back again, but I’m sad to be leaving. On the other hand, I’ve run out of money, so I think going home is a good idea. But if anyone is expecting me to come home with a tan, I’m afraid you will be sorely disappointed. I’m British remember? I get sunburnt and then go pasty white again.

It’ll be really good to spend Christmas with my family and see my wife and friends again. I can’t wait for Christmas dinner, Christmas carols and Christmas weather (sorry South Africa, but 30-something degrees is not normal for Christmas. You’re doing it wrong). I’m almost looking forward to be woken up at 3am on Christmas morning by my little sister, asking me if I’ve got any scissors.

Sorry this post has been so long, I promise I won’t do it again. Thank you all for reading! See you soon guys x

And Then There Were Two

Hi again! This looks like it will be my penultimate post on here, I hope to get at least one more post in before I leave. I start home for sunny England on Monday, but I’m honestly not sure my body will be able to cope with the temperature difference. I’m going to miss the sun... and the sea... and being able to wear flip-flops to work...

The week has been relatively uneventful, but that’s mainly because I’ve gotten lazy with my “outside-work” activities. For example, there is the small matter of a mountain that I still haven’t climbed. I’m going to try and do that on Monday before I leave; if not it just gives me an excuse to come back here another time. That said, I have been out quite a lot in the evenings with my housemates. We’ve made friends with the bar staff and bouncers at Cubanas, so we’ve been getting drinks there more and more and paying for less and less. All in the spirit of Christmas though right?

SANCCOB has had a recent influx of new volunteers, and it was nice to realise how much I have learnt in the time I’ve been here. Only six short weeks ago, I too was freaking out because I found a fish scale stuck to my face.

Today we went to Canal Walk, possibly the largest shopping centre I have ever seen. Three floors the size of a football stadium of pure retail paradise! Stuff is expensive so you have to shop around, but only if you have the fitness and provisions for it. I’m surprised the centre wasn’t riddled with the skeletons of shoppers who misjudged the sheer enormity of the task ahead of them and simply expired mid-browse.

Also today was Reagan’s last day in South Africa. We are all going to miss her so much! But I wrote this post in our room while she was packing, and it was once of the funniest things I have ever seen. You know the feeling of utter bewilderment when you realise how much stuff you have managed to accumulate over six weeks? To quote her exact words, “it looked like the South African tourism industry blew up in our room.” It’s a real shame that she couldn’t fit that six-pack of Savannah cider in her bag. A real shame I tell you. I mean, she’ll have to leave it here. In our room. With me. Shame.

But seriously, I am going to miss Reagan. I’ve never known someone with as much of a get-up-and-go attitude and she really is just such an inspiring personality. It's just me and Natalie in our room now and it feels so empty! I really hope to see her again soon. I want to visit her and her aquarium sometime; I still have most of my gap year ahead of me, I could easily find the time for it.

And so I sit here, shamelessly drinking Savannah at 4pm, writing about a wonderful person who I will never forget. This one’s for you Reagan! Have a safe journey home!

Talk soon guys x

Dreaming of a White (hot) Christmas

Hello everyone!  I hope you’ve all been keeping well. The weather here is absolutely ridiculous! It’s December, yet it’s been thirty-something degrees with clear skies for the last week and my poor British eyes can’t deal with how bright it is any more. Sunglasses have become a standard item of clothing, without them your endless squinting identifies you as the clueless tourist you truly are.

The Christmas decorations are out here in storm. We saw the Christmas lights in Adderley Street being switched on last night (a week later than first anticipated, we got the dates wrong) and it was utterly amazing. Where we go for angels, snowmen, winter scenes etc, Cape Town’s centre for shopping is decked in angels, flowers, and exotic animals, all in the form of huge lighting arrangements that stretch the entire length of the street. The switching on of the lights is a really big family day here. Celebrations started at 3.30 in the afternoon and continued on until late. There was a huge concert, a parade, even fire dancers! South Africa really knows how to party.

Of course there are hints of the classic western winter Christmas too. A lot of their wrapping paper is decorated with snowflakes, and I have wondered why people would bother decorating their windows with Snow-in-a-can when the tarmac is melting outside. I guess irony is to South Africa what sarcasm is to the UK – foreigners won’t ever fully understand it.

I have been diving twice this week. Up until now we had been diving on the Indian Ocean side of the cape, but this week we ventured into the Atlantic side. I had to be resized for a thicker wetsuit because most of the Atlantic currents come from Antarctica. I don’t recall ever being in colder water in my life. I did my first deep and wreck dives, and it was 7°C at the bottom. Some of the divers broke an egg at 30 metres below the surface, and the pressure meant the yolk stayed in a perfect sphere – that was a teeny bit awesome. The approaching swarm of box jellyfish? Not so awesome. Luckily they weren’t interested in us or our egg, apparently jellyfish do not care for diver’s humour.

Work has been going really well. I love SANCCOB so much! I managed to get some pictures of a few SANCCOB duties, like setting up pens and tube-feeding birds. Getting bitten has also become the norm. Some penguins don’t need to be force fed, they can just take the fish from your hands – they’re known as “free-feeders”. It’s better for penguins to be able to free-feed as it means we don’t have to handle them as much. Unfortunately in Pen 2 there are an awful lot of free-feeders, so feeding time now bears uncanny resemblance to the January sales. And there are always some penguins who think they’re free-feeders, but they’re really not. They take the fish from you, and then don’t know what to do with it. A few seconds later they’ve thrown it on the floor and are back at your feet asking for another one - so occasionally you have to help them.

I still haven’t climbed Table Mountain, that’s something I really want to do before I leave. I hope to do that sometime in the next week and take lots of pictures. And Wednesday is night-diving day, so that should be fun. Take care and talk soon guys x