Cape Town, I love you, but you're bringing me down

Gray skies. Cold weather. Rain. For those from the 98102, does this sound familiar? I can't believe I'm now halfway across the world, experiencing the same weather as before I left. I saw the most beautiful sunrise on the plane ride in, and I guess I just sort of expected to have beautiful sunny weather here in Cape Town. Not so my friends. Not so. I guess the weather wouldn't be that big of a deal if my hostel had heat. But it doesn't. So there we are.

Cape Town is certainly beautiful though. It's odd in that it feels nothing like Africa. Or at least what I would expect Africa to feel like. It's actually not all that different from European cities. Imagine taking San Francisco and slapping a bunch of big beautiful hills behind it, fill it with a Dutch vibe and Dutch-sounding things, add a pinch of good food and great nightlife, and there you have it.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. By far and away my biggest gaffe thus far was sitting next to the former President of South Africa on the flight from London to Cape Town, the guy who shares credit and a Nobel Prize with Nelson Mandela for ending apartheid, and having absolutely no idea who he was. He was friendly enough, and talked about how he was thinking of selling his farm in Cape Town, and yada yada. It wasn't until the plane landed, and we were walking out the door and all of the people on the plane were shaking his hand, and there was the South African equivalent of the Secret Service there to meet him at the gate, that I realized he must be somebody important. And then even after that, it wasn't until about two minutes ago that I looked him up on Wikipedia that I realized who he was. Doh! That could have been an interesting conversation.

I went to tour a township today with a great German couple who just completed driving their car all the way from Germany to Cape Town. I can't quite put in words yet how I'm feeling about the yawning rich-poor gap that you see here, so I think I'm going to noodle on that a little bit before writing anything.

One thing I think I've decided is that I cannot do an Overland Tour, which is just a different way of saying a really long guided group tour on a 4x4 bus. That seems to be the way that everyone travels through Southern Africa here, and they have tours that go all the way from Cape Town to Victoria Falls over 25 days, which is basically the route I want to take. The German couple inspired me to set off on my own, so I think that's what I'll do.