Post 11: South Africa, mouth smackin' ya's

SO Im still doing this thing, even though it has been a while....
I'm in plettenburg bay as of yesterday afternoon, about an 7 hour drive from Cape Town (CT). In CT we had a homestay with a couple named Sean and Lucinda. Lucinda is a US transplant from florida who marriend sean, who is south african. They were both in their 30s and 40s a very nice people, buttheir house was in a very quiet little subburb of CT called Kommetjie. There wasn't much around their house (other than the beach) so it was a bit of a mission to find a computer and as such i haven't been posting. So sorry to all who were waiting for another post, the backpackers hostel in Plet has computers so that should make me a little more actice on here.

For those who don't know I am doing an orgainized trip up the coast of South Africa with a brittish company called Ticket To Ride.
Our group consists of 13 riders and 2 trip leaders. We have one Scottish leader, nikki, and one South African Leader, Bevin.
Of the 13 of us, 12 are brittish (Johnny, Johnty, francis, Camera Steve, Steve the pirate, Jack, Toby, Alex, Pete, Chris, and Katherine) , and 1 is a girl, but all seem to be good people who have stayed fairly enthusiastic about being here together.

In CT we surfed mainly a beach called Muizenburg, which has super mellow waves, awesome for longboarding. It is also in the same bay as Seal Island, which is a huge breeding ground for white sharks, and also the place where they film massive white sharks jumping out of the water to eat seals. But alas we never saw any sharks, even when we out of the water so all limbs are still intact. It is whale season however so we did manage to see over 10 whales, and whle we were surfing a pod of Dolphins and sometimes the occasional seal would come surf with us and jump around us while we sat in the lineup, waiting to catch a wave, pretty amazing.
On the last day in CT a new swell arrived so we tried to surf some new spots, but ended up back at muizenburg and a fierce onshore wind. Oh well. That evening, steve the pirate and I decided to try and paddle out at longbeach around sunset. The waves there were at least a few feet overhead (taller than me standing up), and although i made it out to the lineup I never caught a wave, so that was a little disappointing, but it seemed to impress my instructors and eveyone else that i even made it out to the lineup with the waves so big.

One of the most fun things we did in CT was to play soccer on the beach, and in the street, with Thomas a 28 year old soccer coach, and a few of his students from the township of Masipumhelele. A township in SA is pretty much exactly like the shantytowns where the aliens in the movie Distric 9 live. As thomas explained it to me the townships are both orgainized by the SA govt. and set up unofficially by the hoards of people who move from the country, where they lived off the land but made no money, to the city where they hope to make more money. Their quality of living is pretty poor, and they are pretty much stuck in a shitty situation, surrounded by corruption, uneducated, and unable to find a way out of the townships, but the kids were all really friendly and seemed happy. And Thomas, whose passion in life seems to be soccer seems to serve a much more important role in his community than just a coach: He is about the only person providing activities after the kids get out of school, and keeping them busy keeps them out of trouble, becasue drugs run rampant in all the townships of SA.

Plet is a much smaller place. We stay in the center of town, we will get to do a 215 meter bungee jump (the highest bridge jump in the world. Yesterday we surfed once, immediatly upon our arrival, and now we have 2 days off due to strong onshore winds (which sucks ass). So today we start training for our lifeguard and Instructor Certifications, which means running and paddling. Should be less fun than surfing. But it is a beautiful morning so i am gonna leave it at this for now, and go eat some breakfast.

TTFN