Saturday started out real strong. We all got up early to catch a mini bus into Cape Town to then catch the train to go to Spier, where they were holding their annual harvest festival. So we got to Cape Town with no problem and went to catch the train but soon realized that we had just missed it and the next one wasn’t coming for another hour and a half. Super. So we walked around for a little, went to green market square and bought some cool bracelets and what not then headed back to the train station to hope on! Train ride was uneventful, trains in Africa are sketchy. It’s fine. We finally got to Spier and it was a wine festival but they also had a cheetah outreach and a bird sanctuary. Wine, food,… cheetahs… and birds? It was 60 rand to get into the festival, which is not even $10, and you got a free wine glass and 5 tickets to try 5 different kinds of wines. We got some food and then started indulging in the wines. They were all delicioussss as we suspected. I got a chicken shawarma at one point/ a coffee chocolate bar? We then ventured into the middle of the festival area and we stumbled upon the do it yourself wine aka you shmash the grapes yourself, with your feet. So for only 2 of our tickets we could go into these barrels and smash them. Hysterical. Kara and I went into one as seen below…
And then Mack and Sarah went in the one next to us. You legit stomp them out with your feet and then they open up the little spout coming out of the barrel and someone gathers some in a wine glass for you, not kidding. I couldn’t bring myself to trying the wine that people had been stomping their feet through all day. Sarah on the other hand took the plunge and tried some of the wine. She said it was delishhh. Still I couldn’t do it. The feeling of your feet smashing the grapes was disgusting enough. Kaka. So then we moved to the cheetah outreach I saw one of the cheetahs and then decided to go see the owls instead. They were SO cute omg. We got to pet the baby owls! One was named woody and the other was coco. Then onto the NEXT owl station there were 3 barn owls that were dancing to the music! The head owl man was playing some main stream song on his phone next to the owls and they were bobbing up and down to the beat.
And here is my friend piggy and his friend that i cant seem to remember their names, they were cool. Note the eyes... weird
Owls are awesome. So then the keeper of all owls lead us into the owl sanctuary where there were 4 owls perched up on all the trees and logs. He told us to put gloves on and they owls would just come to your hand. They weren’t kidding. The second I put the glove on and flipped my hand over Piggy came flying over and landed onto my hand. We stayed friends for about 15 minutes he didn’t want to get down. I asked the guy if I could have an owl for a pet. He very politely told me there was no way in hell I could EVER have an owl as a pet. L. Sad. The rest of the birds were cool too but they were just chillin in the cage, random. There was one tortoise in the one of the birds cage, he was cool. We decided that we should probably leave because we didn’t want to miss the last train going to cape town. So we said our last good byes to woody and coco who were verrryyyy sleepy at this point, but they did wake up to say their goodbyes. We get to the train station and a train comes within about 10 minutes of us getting there yet the train wasn’t supposed to be there for another 15 minutes and it was going in the wrong direction. Umm? I decided ti ask the lady getting on the train and she said that the train will be coming back in an hour. Ummmm????? An hour, okay we figure whatever, we will go get some munchies at a gas station that was right across the railroad tracks. Once we figure out how to get over there we quickly found out that it was closed, mind you this is like 5:30 pm. Who is closed at that time on a Saturday?? Fail. Back to the platform. Sarah, Mack, and Elise picked some grapes off of the grape vines that were behind the train stop, they were good. And then all of a sudden we heard the train coming. Thank God. The train is starting to stop at the station we are at and we realize that 1st class are the first cars of the train not the last. Great. We start walking very briskly to get to 1st class before the train left. That brisk walk turn into a full out run. I finally made it to the first 1st class doors and as soon as I went to step in the doors closed. Totally sealed and shut. I was trying to pry the door open with my hands and it wasn’t having any of it. Two seconds the train started moving away from the platform. We missed the train we had been waiting an hour and a half for. You have GOT to be kidding me. All of a sudden as the 3rd class trains were moving by this very large purple object came flying through the sky and hit Sarah straight in the forehead. Obviously I was VERY confused about this situation and looked down to see what it was that had been thrown at her. A plum. Someone threw a plum at Sarah’s head. This is not real. We just missed the train that we had been waiting for and Sarah got hit in the head with a plum and there were no more trains going to Cape Town. Not to mention we were in NOWHERESville South Africa. Oh My God, literally. I thought that was the end of us.
note. middle of NOWHERE.
We end up calling the director of our program to try to figure out what we were going to do now. He texted me a number to call to get a ride. Lenny it was. He told us it would be around 350 rand, which wasn’t too bad considering we were like a half our outside of Cape Town. Great. We decided to go back to Spier because it was the only safe place within miles. We sat at the restaurant at Spier called Moyo which was cool until about a half hour went by and I got a text from Lenny saying he had messed up the numbers and it would actually be 80 rand per person. This was now going to be 480 rand, such a rip off. Not to mention the fact that Lenny told me he was leaving right after we hung up the phone. Guess that didn’t happen. So once again great, it’s about 715 by this time so our only choice is to call the cab company. They said it was going to be 450 rand which is a lot but whatever we had no other choice. Then the decided to mention right as the phone call was ending that they wouldn’t be there for an hour. This day was getting worse and worse as the seconds passed. Sarah, Elise, and I decided to go to the hotel and see if they could call us a cab or something of that nature. After about a 15 minute walk we found the hotel and asked the lady about the cab nonsense. The only option they had for us was to drive us with their personal driver for 490 rand. No thanks. Time was moving extraaaa slow until about 815 when the cab driver FINALLY called me to tell me he was at the welcome center. The best words I have ever heard in my whole life. Of course we didn’t have enough money to pay for the cab so we had to make it wait while we ran into the seven eleven to get more money out. What a major fail of a day Mr. Delivery delivered me some delicious pad thai and apps that Mack and I split about an hour and a half after we got home. Basically it took forever, so typical of this day. The food was very good though and well worth the wait. Thank god this day finally came to an end. Oh and I forgot to add than when I was getting money out guess who I look over to see waving at me? ….. The waiter I had on Thursday night that told me “if I think it is morally right to take the food and not pay then I should do it”. This was not real life I kept thinking. He of course the proceeded to ask me how my pad thai was and if it was actually worth it. FML worst/best day ever.
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