Cape Town, South Africa :)

Hey everyone!

So my furthest and most recent trip was visiting South African with Robyn and the Hume family. I was most excited of course for tanning over winter break! The plane ride was way too long and a little cramped, but it all was worth it in the end. I made tons of new friends and experienced a totally different environment!

The first new friend I met was one of Aunt Sue's cats, Ginger. He is FIV positive, but continues to run the household and live past everyone's expectations. Everyone was extremely friendly including the house gecko, and the ducks and geese around Robyn's grandma's house. The Egyptian Geese relate to bio because on the marina, they are the largest predator so their population explodes. They control the duck population, but every year there are more Egyptian Geese because they aren't prey to anything in the area.

I went to the Fish Hoek, Muizenberg, and Hout Bay beaches and saw seals at the waterfront! I walked and swam a lot during the whole trip. I was mostly nervous for the great white sharks around the cape, but luckily I never even saw them.

I also visited Rhodes Memorial (Cecil John Rhodes) and took a picture on top of the giant lion statues which is probably not supposed to happen but it was necessary. This was important to our study of bio because surrounding the memorial is large area of open land that is protected. From the top of the stairs, I happened to see wildebeests grazing on a hill.

Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden was our next stop. It's like walking into a giant perfect ecosystem! There's tons of open grass fields of the native bufallo grass and streams and tadpolls and birds like guineafowls. Lining a walkway are these trees called cycads that are really old and important I guess because they're highly protected since people tend to steal them for some reason. Anyway, there's tons of flowers like the national protea and strelitzia. I also went up Table Mountain in the cable car. Of course we chose to go on the windiest day of the trip, but we survived. From the top I could see Devil's Peak, the World Cup stadium for 2010, Robben Island, and different coastlines. On the mountain were the same weird plants I'd been seeing the whole time and these small dussies scurrying around the place. Overall I met new people and animals, visited historic landmarks, and had tons of fun!