USA! USA! USA!

So, you know when you think something is going to be fun and are really excited to do it and then it comes and you feel slightly let down? Well, that would be the exact opposite of how this trip has been. Cape Town was amazing and even better than I thought it would be. Seeing Katie and Nicole has been great too. Quick rundown... I met Katie at the hotel on Sunday, we watched all three games and ended up meeting up with the co-worker of a friend of mine and his friends and what was a relatively calm afternoon, turned into a long, long, but fun, night. My cousin Nicole arrived a couple days later for a few days before she moves to Zimbabwe.

As far as touristy stuff in Cape Town, we went up to Table Mountain and did the rappelling off the side, Robben Island tour, drove through Chapman's Drive, or route, down to Cape of Good Hope and then shark diving today. We spent a ton of time at the V and A Waterfront, watched a whole lot of soccer, ate a ton of good food and drank some pretty amazing wine. I NEVER want to leave the people are great, the city was full of this crazy fun energy, it feels completely safe and well, everything about this place is great. A few notes on the different things we did. Rappelling, not sure what made me think it was a good idea, we were standing on the edge waiting to go and I was fully just pretending that it was fun and I was comfortable, but I think it worked, because by the time it was my turn, I felt totally ready to go and just hopped on over and went for it. Midway down there was no longer a wall and you were just sort of dangling there, very scary. The hike back was actually more dangerous than the rappelling down. These British guys waited for me, which was nice, but we were all sort of wondering if one of us wasn't going to just slide right off the side of the mountain, which is 3000 meters high... Robben Island, half cool and half boring. The tour guide was a former political prisoner and listening to him speak and describe what it was like to be imprisoned there was very interesting and walking through the grounds and the prison cells was too. Although, it was so nicely kept that it was deceiving because it looked so nice and I'm sure it wasn't nice to be stuck there. The other part of the tour was a bus tour, and I just can't stand those.

We also went to two games, the Portugal vs N. Korea was amazing, seven goals and we were sitting right there at the corner. The Netherlands vs Cameroon game was also fun, but our seats weren't quite as good and the game wasn't quite as exciting. Our next game is Spain vs Portugal, it should be amazing! Watching the US game the other night was really fun too. We were at this place called Quay Four and they were showing the US vs Algeria and England vs Slovakia game, so it was a crazy mix of Brits and Americans. Very fun.

Yesterday we rented a car and drove around to where we are now, not sure of the name of the city, or village, it is outside of Stanford, another little town. The driving is crazy, the driver is on the right side, you drive on the left, it is all very confusing. We managed to make it all the different places we wanted to go, Cape of Good Hope, Penguins, Chapman's Peak Drive and a cool winery. We dropped Nicole off at a random train station, made sure she got on a train back to Cape Town and then we kept on our way. Of course it took way longer than we thought it would and it was dark, windy and a little scary to drive, but we did make it here. Our hotel is awesome. The guy drove us into town for dinner basically because I was so stressed after driving I didn't want to drive one more second and I wanted to have a drink. We had yet another delicious dinner and bottle of wine. Our room and the view is pretty amazing, it's right on the coast and you can see mountains and on some days whales... but not today. This morning we went shark diving. COLD. It wasn't actually as scary as I thought it would be, but the water was just freezing and being on the boat that long was hard because I was feeling seasick and people were just hanging off the side getting sick. Yuck. We've been lazing around the rest of the day, went out for some lunch, just watched Uruguay make it past Korea to the quarterfinals and now we're waiting for the US game to start in a couple of hours. USA! USA! Tomorrow we leave for Stellenbosch, and wine tasting. MY FAVORITE! I never want to leave.