Momedy Sketch: Moving right along...

I don't know about you but I'm ready to get the travelogue over with, so let us press on.
So the next day we went back to Boulders..because..why wouldn't we?

Penguin posse. They remind me of teenagers hanging out at the mall.

These two have just torpedoed through the shallow water where the kids are wading,

jumped out on the other side and waddled behind a rock. I bet they dared each other. It just had that dare devil sort of vibe to it. I have a video of this antic which I will attempt to figure out how to post at a later time.

let's blow this joint..

Earnestly soaking up some last rays.....sniff...

Thalia and I about to be blown away. Spot the penguins

After all the sea air we decided to go for a nice dinner as it was my last night in SA....sniff..

Seth and Luke were at the Waterfront, about 30 minutes away and we decided to join them. As we drove down the mountain which overlooks the Peninsula, somebody turned off the lights. It was really quite incredible. The entire side of the Peninsula that we could see went from light to dark-BAM. While I was there, SA was experiencing a power shortage and so there was a phenomenon called Load shedding, whereupon the power was cut out for a few hours at a time several times a day (it was supposed to be on a schedule but it turned out to be completely random). This was very interesting when you are in the middle of a huge mall and suddenly everything goes dark or when you are behind 5 different security gates and you are trapped for the afternoon. It was not the finest moment for SA's economy. Anyway, everyone assumed that the situation we had at hand as we wended our way down the dark mountain was load shedding. Ironically some major transformer had blown. It was also not Eskom's finest hour.

Driving in SA is an adventure in and of itself. Driving sans traffic lights (or as we call them, robots), is even more exciting. Driving with my dad under these circumstances is an extreme sport. Also, the darkness is not really something the hijackers dread. In fact on one particularly dark road as we drove around seemingly aimlessly, making every illegal U-turn it was possible to make, trying in vain to connect with Seth and Luke who had left the waterfront and were headed to the one restaurant we had seen lit up on the horizon (hooray for generator), anyway so we are driving all haphazardly around, and we see these guys with their hood (or as we call them, bonnet) up. They were frantically flagging us down. We were like, "Umm...seriously? People still actually expect other people to stop for them?!" Which led to a small debate about how sad it was that we could not longer be good samaritans versus how maybe we should just throw caution the the wind and act on faith that we will not get killed by people seemingly in distress. The not-dumb people won out and we kept driving. This was a good thing since as we came around again, we saw the same desperately pleading flagging fellows with their disabled car, however it was parked in a new spot. This seemed just a tad suspect. I still feel a bit sorry to them though..there is always a chance they were legit and had just managed to get the car going for a few blocks, right? On the other hand, there was a gas (or as we call them, petrol,) station a few blocks away and it wasn't exactly a situation of dying from exposure to the elements.

Miraculously, we met up with my brothers and with much credit to my dad, we did not get hi-jacked, did not get into an accident and discovered that the restaurant we had seen, had been seen by everyone else in Cape Town. Also concerning to us was that it appeared to be club, from the age of the people who were milling around the parking lot, which although huge, was absolutely packed with cars. By this time it was about 9:00pm or later and we were rather hungry and so it was with total amazement that we saw this spot open up right in front of our eyes. The car had to go around the block to fit into it so my mother and I found a wonderful opportunity to practise the Warrior Pose as we held the space.

We were happily surprised to find a good restaurant attached to the club where we had a very traditional South African meal and my brothers enjoyed crushing on the waitress, (who although rather ineffective ended up with a large tip) She did take a pretty nice photo though.

We returned home, still in darkness and enjoyed candlelit bedtime preparations. I also got to see one of the most spectacular skies of my life. With no light pollution the sky was just ablaze, the milky way was clear right above us and there were tons of shooting stars. It was a very special way to spend my last night in South Africa.