Cape Town, South Africa – by Anna

Cape Town is gorgeous! We had been looking forward to South Africa for a while so we were so excited when we finally landed in Cape Town. We stayed in a beautiful house with Emma,9, Sam,12 and their parents Sonia and Dirk. We had such an amazing week. We learned a lot about Nelson Mandela and other prisoners of Robben Island. We also learned about the apartheid. An apartheid is when black people don’t have the same rights as whites. For example, the blacks didn’t have a passport to visit other countries, the blacks lived in really poor conditions like slums and they had no way of finding medical help. Many blacks passed away back then, due to many different sicknesses. The waterfront in Cape Town is beautiful. We all had so much fun wandering around the waterfront, listening to local Africans playing music and visiting the Lindt factory. Cape Town is known for a mountain called ” Table Mountain”. It is a big mountain with a very flat top and it actually looks like a table. We did the Table Mountain hike and it was exhausting! It took us about an hour and a half to hike up then, a long time to climb back down. The gondola was closed for maintenance the one day we were there, so we had to hike back down after we’d reached the top. I’d say it was tougher to hike down than up because it was so steep. The view at the top was amazing and worth the hike. Another day, we did a hike called “Lion’s Head”. People in Cape Town think that a few mountains beside Table Mountain form the shape of a lion and the hike that we did was the head. We were in Cape Town for a week and I still couldn’t see the lion by the end. A few hours away, there is a little town called Montague. Montague is known for their lovely hot springs. On my mom’s birthday, we drove up to Montague and spent a night enjoying the hot springs. We stayed in fancy a chalet at the base of a cliff. It felt like we were cheating because when travelling, we’re always staying in rustic places like…hostels. After our amazing 16h getaway, we returned to Cape Town. Saturday, the parents went wine tasting so the kids went to the jump park. We really enjoyed it because we hadn’t gone jumping for so long. We left early for the airport to fly to Joburg.