Cape Town Capers

Hello Online Voyagers!

I had a pretty fun time in South Africa. I went to an aquarium, climbed a mountain, watched a rugby game, and saw some beautiful artwork. Our ship docked in Cape Town, a city in the most Southern part of South Africa.

At the aquarium, I saw the trainers feeding penguins! They fed them whole fish and squid. When I come visit you at the library I will show you my pictures of penguins in the middle of swallowing their food whole! I also saw two scuba divers swim in a giant tank and feed the rays and the turtle. They trained the turtle to hit a target with its head, and when it did, it got its treats. That’s a pretty smart turtle. Have you ever seen a ray? Rays look like big, diamond-shaped fish with long tails at the end. The rays with the long tails don’t sting, but the rays with short tails can really hurt you! If you are swimming and see a ray, just be careful not to touch the tail. Rays usually hang out in tropical waters like Florida and the Bahamas.

The divers were in a tank called the “predator tank”. In case you didn’t know, a predator is an animal that goes after other animals to eat. The animals it tries to eat are called “prey”. There were big reef sharks in the predator tank, and when they got too close to the diver that was feeding the turtle, the other diver had to poke them with a stick! I don’t know about you, but I think that would be a pretty scary job!

My favorite part of Cape Town was climbing Table Mountain. It’s called Table Mountain because- SURPRISE!- it looks like a table, with a big flat top. It was a pretty tough climb, but it was so pretty at the top. I could see all of Cape Town on one side, and more mountains and the ocean on the other side. I love to hike, so I had a lot of fun.

I also went to a town called Stellenbosch to watch a rugby game. Rugby is a game that’s sort of like football and soccer combined. It is very fast and involves getting goals like soccer, but there is a lot of tackling, like football. Nobody wears padding, so it is very scary to watch the players get thrown around the field. It was fun to see a game! There are 15 players on each team, so there were a lot of people running around the field.

I saw some really cool crafts while I was in Cape Town. I saw bowls and plates made from weaving colorful wires together- I bought one, so I can bring it in to show you when I get back- and pretty beaded bracelets made to look like the South African flag. Making beaded decorations is a popular art in South Africa, and the markets had lots of beaded stuff: animals like lizards and pigs, big stars that you could use as lamps, and even beaded spoons!

I did some serious stuff in Cape Town, too. South Africa used to follow rules called “Apartheid Laws” that kept the Black people separate from the White people. The Black Africans were treated very unfairly by the White South Africans, and fought for a long time to get rid of the Apartheid laws. I went to an old prison called Robben Island, where they kept South Africa’s most famous president. His name is Nelson Mandela, and the Apartheid rulers kept him in prison for thirteen years because they knew he would help get rid of Apartheid. He did a great job helping South Africa fix its problems after Apartheid was over. He was a very important person to the whole world, because everyone on Earth is equal, and should be treated just as nicely as anyone else.

I think that’s a good message to end on: Everyone is different and special, but we are all people trying to make Earth as beautiful a place as possible.