I went sea kayaking today, and saw whales and dolphins. I don't know what I was expecting - Shamu and Flipper? But they were disappointing. The dolphins swam and ignored us. The whales looked like rocks. But since I'm at the famous Jeffrey's Bay, I decided to take some surfing lessons. I was basically beaten to a pulp by my own surfboard.

The view from Island Vibe's open air bathroom. The hostel itself was right on the beach and absolutely fabulous. Would stay there again in a heartbeat.

My surf instructor and the surfboard that kicked my ass.	I look better in this picture than I actually am. If you look carefully, you'll notice that I'm "surfing" in about 2 cm worth of water.

Plett Bay, part 2.

Knysna Elephant Park.

You'd think feeding elephants would be a little cleaner, but I came out of it with an empty bucket and a hand completely covered in elephant nose mucus.	Open wide. Harry the Elephant is showing us his teeth. Later, I got to stick my entire hand in his mouth.
Fresh from the oven. You can see the shine and practically the steam rising from this elephant poo.	And here are the babies, eating the poo. Apparently, babies are born without a lot of the enzymes needed to digest food, so they eat portions of the adult poo to get those enzymes. In addition, elephants only digest 40% of their food, so there's quite a bit of nutrition left in the droppings.

Plettenberg Bay.

I've realized that everything about Africa is very in-your-face. And everything is huge. The animals, the bugs, the men. Even the puniest African male has pectoral muscles. In fact, some of my 10 year old campers had abs and biceps. African sexuality is equally huge. I went bar hopping in Soweto with some of the counselors and as soon as we hit the dance floor - I realized that my little shimmies and wiggles couldn't even compare to the full body gyrations I saw. They were sexually charged in every way, yelping was going on, and I felt like I'd landed in the middle of a soft core porn. I tried very hard not to be a prissy uptight American shocked at their behavior, but failed miserably. Even with all my "cultural awareness", I was uncomfortable witih the casual flaunting of sexuality, and was even more uncomfortable when I was pulled in for a "slow dance" and was held very very close. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. My two African roommmates at camp regularly walked around the room naked. Full frontal nudity. And every morning, they took a bath together. I got over being shy about being topless around the room, but I couldn't quite get over the hump of taking my underwear off in front of them.

The poverty here is equally in-your-face. Shacks line the highways in a way that would never happen in the U.S. Here, we hide our poor, pushing them into out-of-the-way neighborhoods so we can ignore them. Ironically enough, I've seen very few homeless people here despite the poverty level. I suppose if you're allowed to build your own shack wherever you want, you're also less likely to be on the street corner huddled in a doorway. After all, it's a natural animal instinct to find shelter for the night.

I've been riding the Baz Bus, a backpacker hop-on-hop-off bus that's pretty convenient, but a tad on the pricey side if you ask me. It was an 8 hour ride from Capetown to Plett Bay. I found Capetown to have a distinct Western flavor to it that I'm not sure I like. You can see it in the people staying at the hostels. They're not really travellers per se, but more tourists - yuppie tourists. They were much more stylish than the people I was used to in Lesotho. The girls had obviously packed a few pairs of shoes in addition to hair dryers and curling irons, and all of David Beckam's past 5 hairdo's were represented among the boys. It's like Africa Lite. Complete with Mcdonald's and strip malls, just like the U.S. The quality of the crafts down here are also lesser than what I've seen up north in Johannesburg, and they're pricier. They can be found in Western style malls, right alongside the Body Shop and Guess. I'd recommend future travellers to buy their souvenirs in Joburg and the surrounding area. I did buy a painted ostrich egg for my parents that cost entirely too much. Now I only have to pack it around for my last week and hope that either 1) it doesn't break or 2) I don't lose it by leaving it behind somewhere like I left my glasses behind in Lesotho, my guidebook behind in Nelspruit, and my hat behind in a minibus taxi. I've taken less and less photos as my holiday has worn on, I think because I feel more and more at home, so things seem more everyday and normal.

My MCAT scores are supposed to come out soon. Last night was filled with nightmares about it. I dreamed that I got my MCAT scores but couldn't make heads or tails out of the score sheet. It looked like I scored a 19 in Verbal, which made no sense because the highest possible score is a 15. I also kept having dreams about my campers. Happy dreams in which they lived with me in a house and we were taking a walk outside.

For some reason, the lady at this church thought I hitchhiked my way from Capetown to Plett Bay (8 hours). I looked down at myself, did I really look like the hitchhiking sort? To my own eyes, I looked normal and conservatively dressed. But perhaps she saw my inner wild side.

I went souvenir shopping at the Global Village in Plett Bay. There were these beautiful chess sets for sale for these extraordinarily low prices, but I couldn't see how I'd fit them into my backpack =(.

Capetown.

The flight from Jo'burg to Capetown ran on "African" time - well over the 1.5 hours it should've taken. I've been putting nothing but trash into my body for the past few weeks. My diet content and timetable is generally crazy and unpredictable, with only a few unwavering components - a bar of chocolate a day and a bag of Doritos or Simba (the S. African version of Lay's/Ruffles). Capetown's much more diverse than Jo'burg. I even saw an Asian family walk by and they looked so foreign that I stared in them in curiosity before I snapped myself back to the fact that I'm Asian too. Is this how foreign I looked to people up in Jo'burg?

As this is my last week in South Africa, I'm trying to plan out my itinerary. I'm going to make my way up to Port Elizabeth along the Garden Route and fly from Port Elizabeth (PE) back to Jo'burg for my flight back to the U.S. I'm starting to realize that I'm not going to have time to do everything. If I only had one more week... But I suppose that's how it always is. Tour of the winelands and Table Mountain made the cut though, as well as the Green Square Crafts Market. I've started collecting curios since I'm leaving soon. I negotiated a great wooden hippo from 150R down to 90R. I was extremely proud, until I got home and one of his legs promptly fell off. I suppose I got what I paid for. But it's nothing a bit of super glue can't fix.

[Single Berry Muffin] I splurged and bought a muffin at the airport. I've been packing arouund peanut butter and jelly in an effort to save money. Little did I realize that a "blueberry muffin" in South Africa means that I only get one blueberry.

Believe it or not, this little guy's closest living relative is the elephant. Living on table mountain, the "dassie" lives primarily by begging me for food when it hears the crinkling of my sandwich bag.

The views from Table Mountain were just phenomenal. One word of advice though: Regardless of how hot it is, bring warm clothing when you go up the mountain. The views would have been much more pleasant if I wasn't at risk of catching hypothermia.