First Impressions of Cape Town

• No black people on our flight – to AFRICA!!
• Flying in felt like Australia (dry and mountainous), drive from the airport felt like a European city (modern, groomed gardens, etc.), and then reminiscent of India (townships here look like slums)
• Every store has barred doors and the street we are staying on has surveillance cameras all over and 24 hour security patrolling
• Lots of cafes and trendy food (acai smoothies, organic wraps, fusion, etc.), lots of Caribbean and Indian influence, lots of meat
• Within 24 hours of being in the city, some kids came and hustled us, grabbing at our pockets and asking “you got something in there for me?!”
• Weird to think about 1 in 4 people around us has HIV (never feels that close)
  Signs we’re in the developed world again: can drink tap water, prevalence of chain restaurants and big grocery stores, traffic is organized, credit cards accepted, roads are marked, hot water comes out of the tap without a geyser, tourist brochures are everywhere
• Kelli absolutely loves how the cover bands here Africanize American pop songs
• They call their traffic signals “robots”!!
• Entertaining to walk by boutique stores here and see them selling stuff we actually bought in Southeast Asia and India for a tenth of the price
• Never seen a big city with such an insane number of things to do
• We’re here in the middle of winter (the end of our eternal traveling summer) and there are so many cool things to do that aren’t open… but in reality this is fortunate because we otherwise might never have made it out of Cape Town. (We have already decided we’re coming back at some point during the summer and with money!)
• It’s a very, very cool city… if only they could get rid of the crime!