Hi, everyone! Well, today is my last day in Cape Town for the next few weeks. Starting Monday, I'll basically be on hiking tours and safaris and such until I get back to Cape Town on 17 Nov. I will be heading back to America shortly afterwards.

Travelling alone gets to be a drag, of course, but I've met a lot of people here in Cape Town (mostly from England) and have found a good bar which has become my "local": a pub called the Rockin' Shamrock (where the dancing on tables and on the bar occurs more frequently than I care to admit). The regulars all know me by name, the owners buy me drinks, and they always make sure I get my drunk ass home at the end of the night. A pint of lager is 7 Rand, which is about 75 cents, but unfortunately I think my liver will give out before my wallet does.

When I'm not drinking heavily and making an ass of myself (or recovering), I've been doing all the touristy bits. Most of the really interesting stuff is actually in the areas around Cape Town, not in the city itself, so I've been signing up for guided tours. One day I went down to the Cape of Good Hope, which is at the very southern tip of Africa (though not, actually, the southern-most point). There's a nature reserve in the surrounding area where ostriches and baboons roam free. The baboons are really aggressive and they tell you not to feed them (though that doesn't stop the Japanese tourists). I have a few good pictures of the baboons there. Damn, dirty apes.

For those of you who don't know much about Cape Town, it is surrounded by mountains, the most famous of which is Table Mountain. Its peak is at about 3000 ft and it is very steep. There is a cable car which will take you up to the top, and there are a few trails which you can hike. Last Friday I decided to give it a shot. You don't actually start your climb from sea level, but generally from the lower cable car station, which is probably at about 1200 ft. I took the "easy" trail (Platteklip Gorge), which is the most popular and takes about 2 hours. Now, mind you, I have been drinking pint after pint of lager for a week now, and any semblance of health and fitness has been long ago left behind. I got about 30 minutes into the hike and I thought I was gonna die. Like I said, it is very steep but I was taking a break every couple of minutes. But once I was in sight of the top, I had this total adrenalin surge and managed to rush up there. It was a fantastic sense of accomplishment, and surprisingly I completed the trail in 90 minutes. Hiking back down was a hell of a lot easier. =)

I think I told everyone about how my digital camera called it quits on Monday. Anyway, I got a lot of advice on what to do about it. I took it to a repair shop but they said they weren't 100% sure they'd be able to fix it and I'd have to leave it there for a week or so. That wasn't really assuring. So I went out and bought a Pentax IQZoom 200 which has a super-duper zoom (to 200mm) and does the panoramic photos as well. So hopefully I'll have a lot of great photos to show everyone when I get back.

It's 80 and sunny and not a cloud in the sky, and I think I've spent TOO much time in the Internet Cafe, so I'll be signing off now. I hope all is well and I will definitely be dropping you a line in four weeks!

Chris