Living Shark Week: Great White Shark Cage Diving

Theresa had her baby!!!  This made me so happy, and I have been showing everyone the pictures of my precious nephew Nathan.

My roommate for the past two months, Emma, had her last week in Cape Town this week as she left Friday for a trip up to Kruger for a safari so we celebrated Wednesday night.  We went out to Bob’s on Long Street for karaoke.  No worries as I did not participate in the singing although the DJ asked if any Americans were in the audience and proceeded to play American Woman for us.  Thursday night we had another supper club – this time with Indian food.  Leila is a very good chef.  We had some delicious Malva Pudding, which is very popular in South Africa.  Unfortunately I do not have cable, so for the Olympic opening ceremonies a group of us went down the street to the Kimberly Hotel Bar to watch.  I was rather disappointed with them, although apparently they were received well all around.

One of the new employees at work who is South African actually lived in Nebraska and went to UNO for a while!  She is the first person I have met here that has been to Nebraska at all which was very exciting for me.   The 19^th annual International AIDS conference took place in Washington DC last week and my boss was there for the beginning of it.  This was a huge milestone for the USA because we have never hosted the conference before due to our harsh VISA restrictions that banned any HIV positive individual from entering the country.  Obama reversed this rule and we finally hosted the event.

A bunch of different things are happening at work as all of us try to figure out what we are doing and how to effectively plan all the local forums as well as the annual forum in December.  Preparations are already starting as we amass content and a speakers list to try to address the current issues occurring in all of our clinics.  We have received a research grant so PATA will be conducted its first research project at this forum.  Word of mouth about PATA continues to spread in Africa as clinics in Somalia, a country we have no clinics in as of yet, have requested to join our network!

I went back to my favorite market Saturday morning on Hope Street.  It is just a great atmosphere with local foods all around for purchasing.  Afterward Rebekah and I walked through the Company Gardens behind parliament.  There are tons of museums on this stretch including the National Gallery.  The park is pretty and will be gorgeous once spring hits and the flowers all bloom, especially in the rose garden.  We found the sundial, during which I realized that I can accurately read one to tell the time.  There are very friendly squirrels in the park that are used to being fed, so if you have food out they attack you.  Someone told me that they had been in the park and the squirrel literally climbed their pant leg.  This park is not safe to be in at night because lots of homeless people sleep here, but during the day it is perfectly safe.

We started walking toward the beach down the fan walk, passing the tragic location where my camera was stolen.  We ended up walking 3.5 miles around Signal Hill (and hearing the noon cannon blast) to a beach at Sea Point near the sea water pool.  It was a nice walk once you get around Green Point with a promenade on the seashore.  This path is right on the edge and you follow the ocean and beach as it curves around.  We sat on a rock by the water just soaking up the gorgeous sunshine.  We put our feet in the water for awhile just enjoying it before our 3.5 mile walk back home.   

Unfortunately at this point I saw one of the grossest things I have seen occurring on the streets.  A homeless man was sitting on one of the nice benches on the edge of the promenade that faces the ocean.  He literally just pulled down his pants and let them sit around his ankles while he was sitting.  He proceeded to urinate on the promenade just sitting there.  It was gross and now I never want to sit on those benches ever.  He could have at least walked down to the beach and urinated there or something.

We went up to the rooftop to watch the sunset.  The colors are absolutely gorgeous and although we can’t see the part where it sets on the ocean because Lion’s head and Signal Hill are in the way, the view was still spectacular with the oranges and pinks and greens out over Table Bay and the surrounding mountains north of the city.  The best moment occurred when we checked to see if the sauna was working.  We try to check every week since it broke and this time our efforts paid off as it was fixed.  It only took 6 weeks during the winter cold for this to happen, but it made me very happy.

For an early birthday present (to myself) on Sunday, Rebekah and I went Great White Shark Cage diving!  Our pick up time was at 9:40 in the morning; however our driver definitely picked us up at 9:20.  It was a good thing we were ready to go.  At this point we took a pill to help prevent seasickness – other friends who have gone on this trip said that the water is very rough and on their trip over half the people were throwing up when out on the water.  We drove around picking up more passengers and then hit the road for the 2.5 hour drive to Gansbaai, the Great White Shark capital of the world.  The van was equipped with a television and a specific set of movies that would play and could not be changed.

First movie:  Alien Occupation from the Sci-Fi channel.  It is about a mom killing her daughters husband so that they can get the life insurance money, but the body is in a shed and aliens attack so they can’t get to it.  It was definitely a winner with stellar acting and an interesting plot line, not.  I highly do not recommend watching it. 

Second movie:  Alien Tornado from the Sci-Fi channel.  A town is being attacked by weird alien tornados that the FBI is covering up, but a young girl who has no money for college is figuring out how to communicate with the aliens.  Also a great movie….

Dad, seeing as how you love alien movies you really should have been on this car ride.  Instead all of us were laughing at the horrible selection especially after our initial relief at the end of Alien Occupation only led to the beginning of Alien Tornado.  To add to the excitement we stopped 2 hours into the drive just outside Hermanus to pick up 5 more passengers. We pulled into this wooded area to wait for them to hike up the hill from their lake house and get in the van.  It took them over 30 minutes to get to the van, so we sat in the woods watching the alien movie.

Finally we arrived at White Shark Adventures.  While snacking on sandwiches, they make you sign your life away on indemnity forms in case you get hurt or die.  I even had to put down an emergency contact for them to notify if anything happened to me.  Then we get a brief safety lesson including do not stick any body parts outside of the cage because the sharks could easily bite you. 

A crew of 5 took us out on the Nemo.  The boat took us out 20 minutes to an area between Dyer Island and Geyser Rock, where over 60,000 Cape Fur Seals live.  This stretch of water is known as Shark Alley.  This is also one of the main locations where Discovery Channel films for the annual Shark Week (which is coming up soon in August).  It is high season for the sharks in the area since it is winter.  Rebekah and I bet on who would get seasick first, my pick looked very hung-over from the night before.   I lost however when her pick, the young Asian girl, was the first to succumb.  The boat definitely rocks back and forth a ton on the choppy Atlantic water, but I felt fine the entire time.

They provide wetsuits for you to change into while anchored out on the water.  It is definitely a challenge to put one on in the rocking boat, and we all got thrown around a ton.  Then they give you wetsuit-socks to wear on your feet as well as goggles.  Last they put a weight sash over you (I felt like Miss America) to help you stay down to view the sharks.  I was in the first group to get in the cage.  The cage is hanging over the side of the boat with about a foot on top above water so that we can breathe.  There is a bar inside to hold onto when you want to go down.  Rebekah was on my left and a Spanish doctor on my right. 

To get the sharks to come near, they attach dead, bloody fish to this rope and throw it out into the water and wiggle it around.  In the tank parts of the fish and little chum bits float by, but I barely noticed.  Then the sharks come swimming by, getting as close as 3 feet to me!  They chase the food around and make their slow passes.  We can see out of all sides of the cage and are spinning around, holding our breath, watching them move around.  The waves are constantly rocking the boat and all 5 of us in this cage became best friends real fast as we were pushed up against each other as we all get air and sink under the water to watch.  The bait-man shouts out “shark” when he sees one approaching and we all dive under gripping the inner support bar as it passes.  Sometimes the shark is coming head on at you to get to the bait. It is an unreal feeling watching this massive creature swim leisurely straight towards you and then speed up attempting to get the food.  Other fishes were swimming around every time we pulled the main bait out eating the remains until the bait was back in and the sharks reappeared.  Occasionally I would turn around to look the other way and a shark would be directly behind me passing by without me knowing that it was near me at all.

The Atlantic water was freezing, but it was well worth it.  When my turn was up after about 30 minutes, we climb out of the cage and change out of our wetsuits while the next batch of people gets a turn.  The 3 people who got seasick did not get in the cage.  On top you can see the sharks swimming by pretty well.  They start chasing the bait and when the crew member pulls on the rope at the right time the shark will breach, leaping out of the water trying to grab hold of the fish guts.  One time the shark succeeded in grabbing on and the rope went taut as he fought for it, in which case we let it go and the shark won the meal.  A different time the fish parts were close to the side of the boat and the shark thrashed against the side splashing everything and those in the cage got a very good show.  A different shark kept swimming in circles around our boat.

We were told by the expert that we saw a minimum of 4 different sharks based on the size.  There could have been more that look similar, but it is hard to tell.  The largest one was around 3.2 meters in length.  Back on dry land we get to watch all the footage taken by the videographer and recover after our delightful dip in the ocean with our shark friends.

The van ride home consisted of another winning selection of movies.

Third movie:  Bad Ass about a Vietnam veteran (40 years after the war) who becomes famous for protecting a black man on the bus from a hate crime.

Fourth movie:  Big Miracle about the whales stuck in the freezing ice in Alaska.

These did not compete at all with the random alien movies of earlier.  I mean really, who makes these movie choices?

Below is a  clip I cut together from the video footage our driver took:
1) A shark neraby as I get in my wetsuit and ready to go
2) A shark nearby as I climb into the cage
3) A shark leisurely swimming around
4) A shark breaching from the underwater view
5) A shark breaching from above
6) A shark catching the bait and splashing the boat

This is a picture that Rebekah took on her iphone.  Her finger only got in the way a little bit.

Hopefully my friends who took pictures of me e-mail them my way at some point and then I will post them up here too!

My Stolen Camera (and the Manchester United match)

We stopped by jazz night at the Mahogany room this week.  A local band plays all evening and you just sit and enjoy the music.  It was a 4 man group with a saxophone, drum set, double bass, and guitar.  To my musically ungifted self, they sounded pretty good.  Friday night I was supposed to attend the practice session for the players of Manchester United and the South African Ajax, but it was pouring down rain outside, so I decided I didn’t want to get soaking wet just to watch them practice.

Saturday morning we walked to the Hope street market. I had another delicious brownie – they are the best ones I have ever had.  It is my favorite market in Cape Town, better than the old biscuit mill.  We then started the fan walk early to the stadium.  The fan walk was created for the world cup in 2010 to prevent traffic congestion by the stadium.  It begins by the train station and bus station where I get on to go to work.  In 2010 and now, tons of people get into the city center through these means and then they can just walk all the way to Green Point.  There is a distinctly marked pedestrian path with red and white stripes put around the light poles marking the way.  They also put up huge fences and block off lanes of the roads so all 55,000 people can get to the stadium.  It is a nice walk that takes about 30-40 minutes.  We stopped for lunch along the way and caught the end of the Sharks vs. Reds rugby match.  The weather was cloudy and it kept switching between a light drizzle and strong rains. 

We were sitting in the middle tier in the stadium and over the roof you could see Lion’s head and when the clouds moved, Table Mountain.  The presentation of the teams, Manchester United and South African Ajax, was not nearly up to par with an introduction at a Husker game.  Once both teams were on the field, the entire stadium sang Happy Birthday to Nelson Mandela.  Most of the first string players for Manchester United did not come for the match; they stayed in England and were recovering from injuries or training for the Olympics.  It was still a good match, especially because many South African’s are ManU fans.  They were supporting both teams.  The half time show consisted of 2 dressed up fans in giant balls similar to the ones that hamsters run around in.  They raced across the shorter end of the field to see who would win – the Ajax fan or the ManU fan.  In the second half of the game around the 83^rd minute, the Ajax scored a goal making it 1 to 0.  In stoppage time Manchester United scored, making the final score 1 to 1. 

After the game ended we were heading back along the fan walk to our apartment.  Instead of taking the same path we came in on, we took a route on the other side of the road.  This eventually matched back up with the original path except a fence separated us.  Eventually our side led to an interstate so we needed to hop over the fence to get to the sidewalk.  There was a gate that was padlocked with the security standing beside it, but for some reason they did not open it and told us we had to climb over. That is South Africa for you.  We waited behind all the other people ahead of us, and then it was my turn.  I had been holding my camera in my right hand, and I slipped it into my coat pocket.  Less than 2 minutes later I was on the other side and down a small slope when I realized it was missing.  My roommates had gone a few people behind me over and no one still on the other side of the fence claimed to have seen it.  I am 99% certain that someone must have seen me slip it into my pocket and just pulled it right out as I climbed over using both my hands.  Not zipping it in my purse was a big mistake.  Fortunately I always upload my pictures each week, so I only lost the ones taken at the game.  The other option for when it was stolen was that right after I got over the fence, a very large woman was attempting to get over it as well.  I basically saved her life as she came hurtling over the side.  I caught her and completely supported her body.  During that moment either she or someone nearby could have grabbed my camera without me realizing it. 

I have sent my mother on a mission now to purchase me a new camera and FedEx it to me here in Africa. Hopefully it doesn’t take more than a couple weeks to get here.  There are 2 main reasons I refuse to purchase a new camera here.  If I purchased it, the plug would be South African.  The outlets here are three circles in the shape of a triangle with one of the circles bigger than the other two. I have no desire to own a camera with this kind of plug.  Also cameras here are more expensive.  The same exact models that are sold back home are sold here with a 50% mark up.  That is a lot of money for a camera with a plug that won’t work back home.  I have been told that the camera quality is also not as nice, so my pictures wouldn’t look as good.

In my sad camera-less state we stopped for dinner at the Eastern Food Bazaar. This did not cheer me up however because we got there just after sunset so the lines were outrageously long.  Ramadan has just started and everyone came out to get their Indian food.  It made me feel a little bad waiting in line because everyone behind me was starving since they don’t eat during daylight hours, while I had ate lunch only 5 hours earlier.

Sunday morning I was supposed to go on a crazy adventure in Gansbaai, but it didn’t happen because there were 4 meter high swells in the water.  Now that particular trip has been postponed until this coming Saturday or Sunday.  Instead we decided to climb Table Mountain.  Our taxi driver dropped us off at the start on Tafelberg road, around 300 meters above sea level.  We took the easiest hiking route possible called Platteklip Gorge.  It is the oldest route on the mountain, and the quickest way to the summit taking only around 2 hours to reach the top.  It is roughly 1800 stone steps up to the top, with the climb moving 700 meters up to just over 1000 meters above sea level and only 3 kilometers inward.  The path was very steep at parts.

For the first 30 minutes of our hike it was raining fairly heavily.  I had on my nice north face that is supposed to prevent water from coming in (thanks dad, best gift ever – and if I had a camera, yes I would be in my green coat in the picture).  It kept me relatively dry during the deluge.  There is a small stream that flows down the mountain here, and it was flooding parts of the path so we had to hike over and around them without soaking our feet.  The rain let up for the rest of the hike which was nice. The clouds were forming the distinct tablecloth on top of the mountain. For the entire hike we were walking through these clouds so you couldn't see very far in any direction.  The mist was swirling around and it felt like I was in another world. 

When we reached the top over the gorge, the wind was coming in strong.  After being damp from walking through clouds the entire hike, and sweating from the effort, it was very cold.  Also the elevation change was noticeable.  We decided to go warm up in the little restaurant up top and have some hot chocolate. I hiked with Rebekah and her friend from Tennessee as well as her friend’s brother.  Their parents and other people travelling with them came up in the cable car to meet us on the top.  We had lunch and joined them for the cable car back down.  We were much too cold and worn out to hike back down, although one of these days I am going to do both.


On top of the mountain we met these crazy guys who hike up Silvermine, run across the mountain, hike down, and run to the Waterfront for a beer.  This is a 40km trip.  I was very impressed with their dedication and what great shape they must be in.


We went back with the family to their hotel on Camps Bay.  We ate dinner next to the beach to watch the sun set over the Atlantic Ocean.  Clouds blocked part of the view, but it was still pretty.  In the dark we walked down the beach and out onto some rocks that jut into the ocean.  With the huge waves crashing around them it was so peaceful and beautiful.  Camps Bay is one of my favorite places in Cape Town (I pretty much like every place in Cape Town).

These pictures below I stole off of the internet after running a Google search.  The first is the path that I hiked up the mountain (Platteklip Gorge).  The next is part of the way up in clouds.  It looked similar to that for my hike up.  The last one is some lady, but she is at the top of the gorge in victory. That is how I felt, and that is how cool the space looks at the top.

These are ACTUAL pictures taken while I was hiking:

Noon Gun

I went to The Labia Theater this week to watch a documentary called One Day on Earth.  On October 10, 2010 they filmed in every country in the world.  All of this footage was compiled into a 2 hour long movie that shows different parts of the world and different statistics.  There was a section on all the types of music in the world with scenes from rural Africa to the North Korean military to playing drumsticks on the metal bars of the US-Mexico border.  The documentary was first shown this year on Earth Day all over the world in free screenings.  I remember what I was doing on 10.10.10 – it was the day I went door to door in Lincoln to collect money for the Friendship home, a place that provides safe shelter to battered women and children.  The movie does insinuate the waste in America vs. third world countries that struggle to provide clean water to their people. 

Saturday morning we walked through the Bo Kapp neighborhood. It is on the slopes of Signal Hill, or Lion’s Rump.  This is where the Cape Malay people live.  They were originally a slave colony, imported from Malaysia, Indonesia, and various African countries by the Dutch.  South Africa’s first official mosque is in this quarter.  The Afrikaans language originated in this area as the slaves and the Dutch settlers tried to communicate.  The neighborhood is very distinctive with cobbled streets and brightly painted houses.  We stopped for a Cape Malay brunch up high on the hill with an incredible view out over the city bowl and Table Mountain.

 

Every day at noon, a cannon is fired off of the top of Signal Hill.  It has been a historic time single that dates back to 1806.  There are two guns, the seaside one and the mountainside one.  They sit next to each other and are fired every other day. The gun goes off at noon Monday through Saturday, taking off for Sundays and public holidays.  These are the oldest smooth bore muzzle loading guns in daily use in the world.  The guns used to be fired at Imhoff Battery starting in 1806, but they moved to Lion Battery in 1902.  This is Cape Town’s oldest living tradition. 

15 minutes before noon a military personnel gives a speech about the history of the guns and the tradition to Cape Town.  He then explains the loading and detonating process. The gun is already loaded with gunpowder only from the day before, and he reloaded the one fired yesterday to prep it for tomorrow.  Then he inserts the shell that will ignite the flame and the cannon blast. He puts one in each of the cannons because if for some reason the first cannon doesn’t fire, the second one will need to be shot to keep up with tradition.  No cannonball is used as the gun fires toward the city center and would hurt people.  He has no control after inserting the shells because the Observatory in Cape Town that is synced with the official time sends a signal 18 milliseconds before noon to the cannon so the blast occurs exactly at noon.  Today the seaside cannon was used, and the blast was loud shooting a trail of smoke out of the muzzle.  I never hear the cannon blast at work in Mowbray because it is too far away, but on Saturdays if I am in town then I hear it shoot off at noon.  The gun and its backup both failed once in 2005 and that was the first time in 200 years that the gun had not fired as scheduled.  I witnessed the 64,847 firing of the gun.

We walked back down to Greenmarket Square for some bargaining and shopping.  Every stall sells similar merchandise so it is a matter of your haggling skills and how much you want the object.  Without fail, every stall told me that they would give me the special price – this price is way too high.  Usually it is better to go to these markets when they are closing up or on Sunday afternoons because they are likely to give you better prices to offload some more merchandise.  I don’t recommend going alone because they take your hand and pull you to their stalls; I greatly appreciate having a backup to save me from some situations.  If you claim to have no money then they say that they will accompany you to an ATM if need be because they don’t want to lose the sale.  In fact I didn’t have money on me after buying a couple items so I wasn’t even lying.  Yes family – I bought a few presents for you this weekend.  Sorry you have to wait until December to get them.

A group of us attempted to go to a local show at the Artscape featuring hip hop dancing Saturday night, but the show was sold out.  Instead we headed downtown to sample some different African beers at a beer garden.  The sweeter one I liked, but the rest not so much.

Sunday I finally met up with James – my dad’s friend’s friend who I have been trying to meet since my arrival in Cape Town.  The weather was rainy and cold, but he picked me up in his car and took me to Bellville a suburb of Cape Town.  His home was gorgeous, and his family very nice.  He cooked a traditional African braai in the fire pit in the wall of the living room.  We had lamb, chicken, and sausage.  They have this adorable pet bunny that hops around and is super cuddly and soft.  It was really cool to talk about travel stories and find out that they too went to the Tiger Temple in Thailand to play with baby tigers and pet the adults – it was so random that we had both done this.  I ended up spending my entire afternoon there.

Leila hosted another supper club Sunday night.  We had a delicious 3 course meal taste testing some new recipes for her.  

Garden Route (and Bungy Jump!)

My weekend started early on Friday morning, when Dave from BokBus picked 11 of us up for our Garden Route tour:  Emma, Rebekah, Melinda, Katie, Rebecca, Kiley, Carly, Mariella, Brittany, Thomas, and myself.  The Garden Route is the coast on the southern part of South Africa.  It follows the Western Cape and goes a little bit into the Eastern Cape.  It is bound by the Indian Ocean to the south and the mountains to the north.  The rest of the coast is the Sunshine Coast followed by the Wild Coast going up the Eastern side of South Africa.  We all piled into one large van with our luggage – a tight fit.  On our way west we took Route 62 through the Klein Karoo.  It is a gorgeous road through green expanses and mountains.  It is bound on the north by the Swartberg Mountains and on the south by the Langeberg and Outeniqua mountains.

On our first stop for gas, we were all standing around and talking.  It turns out Thomas in not here on the same internship program and, even weirder, I met him in Amsterdam since we were on the same flight to Cape Town.  I had completely forgotten since I hadn’t seen him since then (that was June 1). 

It was a 5 hour drive to Oudtshoorn so we made the obligatory stop midway at Ronnie’s SEX Shop.  This is a small bar/souvenir place in the middle of nowhere and surrounding by nothing but open land and mountains.  The owner Ronnie wanted to open a store called Ronnie’s Shop which is the sign he painted outside his building.  His friends as a practical joke painted SEX next to it.  He just never changed it back and now the place is always crowded even at 10 in the morning with people starting to drink early.  There is graffiti everywhere, as people sign their names and date them.  People also sign random articles of clothing they are wearing, take them off, and hang them on the wall including a lot of bras.  We did not participate in this activity.

We continued on to the Cango Caves.  They are made of limestone and at the foothills of the Swartberg mountain range near Oudtshoorn.  The caves are over 4 kilometers long, but the tour does not reach all of those places.  We booked the adventure tour which was supposed to take around 1.5 hours.  Our guide was very amusing and called us by the state we were from (I was known as Nebraska).  It was very hot inside the caves, which was a weird change from the cold weather outside.  Near the front is a huge cavern that they have held concerts in because of the great acoustics.  They no longer have any performances here because when packing in 2,000 spectators a handful always break off bits of the stalagmites and stalactites to take home as souvenirs.  This is unacceptable, and now concerts are banned to prevent any more disfiguration of the caves. 

Further into the cave we started the adventure part of the tour – sliding through the Tunnel of Love. This is a narrow part where your hips don’t fit straight and you have to go sideways.  The guides advise certain people of a heavier nature not to do the adventure tour.  Everyone in our group was fine, but he told us a story about one lady who insisted she could do it.  She proceeded to get stuck for several hours while they tried to get her out.  Further along we encountered the Devil’s Chimney.  I ducked under a wall and had to climb straight up for several meters in a narrow passage (similar to a chimney).  From here we progressed to the Devil’s Post Box.  I slid in on my stomach and crawled to the end, where you turn yourself around and shoot through a narrow gap down a slide.  

Dave drove us up the Swartberg pass to see the views: south was the Little Karoo and north the Great Karoo.  The dry stone retaining walls by the road are 120 years old and still hold up the curvy road we took to the top.  We drove back to Oudtshoorn to spend the night in a Backpackers.  The place was very nice and had a communal cat that just lounged around in the dining area.  Before dinner Rebekah, Emma, and I went to the bar area to get a glass of wine.  I decided to put a coin in one of those games that you see often at McDonalds where you slide the coin through water and if it lands in the cup than you win.  It turns out I was very good at it and won a free shot.  We had ostrich kabobs and sausages for dinner that were grilled over the fire pit outside.  

We started the next day at the Cango Ostrich Farm.  I learned how to tell real ostrich leather from fakes by feeling it for the correct bumps and textures.  A female ostrich produces around 15 eggs a year, but the ones here produce over 100 because they constantly take the eggs from them and incubate them.  They take 40 days to grow and hatch. The eggs are also super strong since the ostriches put all their weight on them while keeping them warm.  We can stand on the eggs and not break them (but don’t jump or try to break them because they smell really bad when cracked).  Outside we got to feed them out of our hands.  The males in our tour group were allowed to put a piece of the food in between their lips and the female ostrich will “kiss” them and take the food.  They don’t like kissing female humans though.  Another method of feeding them is to hold a bucket full of food in front of you with your back against the fence the ostriches are in.  They come up behind you and all their necks are wrapped around you reaching for the food. 

Over in a small arena several ostriches were wearing saddles and ready for us.  They catch the ostrich and put a bag over its head to calm it down.  An ostrich brain is smaller than their eye, and they are very stupid.  When the bag is there and they can’t see us, they think we aren’t there.  The ostrich was brought to the edge and people could sit on it.  For my turn I got to ride it.  They have two staff members run beside you to catch you.  Once I was situated on top with my knees under the wings, they remove the bag from his head.  The bird takes off running and it was really hard to stay on.  My bird proceeded to turn around and then get in a fight with another ostrich in the pen.  This was not supposed to happen.  I fall off backward and am caught by the guides who push me away from the fight so I won’t get hurt.  It was a very interesting experience.  

Dave drove us south over the mountains and to the southern coast of Africa starting at a town called George.  We drove east along the Garden Route and stopped for lunch in Knysna (pronounced nice-na).  The Knysna oyster festival, the best 10 days of your winter, was going on.  When we drove up the cycling race was occurring in several of the lanes.  We stopped at the harbor for lunch and everywhere was packed.  The place was gorgeous with great views out over the Indian Ocean. We drove past Plettenberg Bay and on into the Eastern Cape region.

We stopped at Tsitsikamma National park to hike to the Storms River mouth and suspension bridge.  There was a path along the coast through all of the trees that led to where the bridge spans the river.  We climbed up the other side to a lookout point that had a magnificent view of the entire area and the ocean.  I thought the Cape of Good Hope was gorgeous, but this was even better.  We spent the night in another Backpackers in the area.

Sunday morning it was time for the bungy jump!  Bloukrans Bridge Bungy is the world’s highest commercial bridge bungy at 216 meters (709 feet) above the Bloukrans River.  It is also the highest commercial natural bungy jump in the world.  Face Adrenaline runs the operation and they have a 100% safety record with no accidents.  Prince Harry, the Zuma family (Zuma is the president of South Africa), and the Amazing Race have jumped here. 

The first thing they do is weigh you, since the cord you used is based off of what your weight is.  Then we got our first harness put on around our legs and shoulders.  This will be used as the backup safety.  We then start the bridge walk.  There is a caged pathway that goes up under the bridge and out into the middle platform where we jump from.  The bridge is made of mesh material and when you look down it almost looks like you are walking on air.  All of us stand in the middle of the platform under the bridge surrounded by all of the crew and staff.  I got to go second that morning, and first out of our group of 8 from the tour.  The other 3 people were too scared to go bungy jumping.  I sit down at the first point where they attach the leg padding around your ankles and they close the harness in the front of your body.  Then I move to the second station where they bind your ankles together and wind the rope that will be attached to the bungy cord. 

From here they carry you to a standing position between the two ropes near the edge.  I am hooked to a safety rope to the platform while they get the bungy cord attached to my ankles and the backup attached to my harness.  They have never had to use the second safety system as they have never had a problem with the first mechanism.  All of this is being recorded for you to purchase later.  The instructor than asks for any last words.  Mine were, “lekker bru.”  Lekker is Afrikaans for good and bru is calling someone bro or pal.  We had been saying this all trip with our guide as we try to talk like a South African.  Other phrases we started using include "hectic man" and "shame."  From here I am taken off the safety to the platform and lifted to the edge of the bridge.  They count down from 5 and I jumped.

It was absolutely incredible.  I free-fell for around 5 seconds feeling nothing but air and hearing only the sounds of nature.  Up on the bridge it is loud, chaotic, and they have music blaring in the background to get your adrenaline running, while falling there was dead silence and it was peaceful.  The cord pulls tight against my ankles, and I flew back up several times.  It was not painful at all.  The worst part was hanging there upside down after it was over waiting for the guy to slide down my rope and pull me back up to the top of the bridge.  He slowly turns me right side up to a sitting position which was nice for my head.  At the top they lift me over edge and remove all the cords from my ankles.  The entire trip from jumping to being back on the bridge takes about 4 minutes.  A really cool part is watching the workmen pull the bungy cord back up onto the platform.  They work in a rhythm to the music and it was very entertaining.

Our next tour stop was the Knysna Elephant Park.  They have 9 African elephants.  The elephants sleep in giant stables inside at night to stay out of the cold.  In the day they roam around their large enclosure.  We took a vehicle, similar to a hayrack ride, out to where the elephants were loitering.  I had my bucket of fruit ready to feed them.  The elephants all line up on one side of a divider wiggling their trunks towards us wanting food.  For the grown up elephants you put the fruit in the palm of your hand and they suck it into their trunk and put it in their mouth.  For the baby elephants, you roll the food toward them so you don’t aggravate the adult elephants.  You never bend down in front of an elephant because they think that means you are fighting them. 

After we had fed them all the fruit, we are split into groups to go interact with them up close.  We get to pet their sides, trunks, and tusks while posing for pictures.  They are very friendly and sometimes walk away, but are never aggressive with us.  African elephants are smaller here than they are further north, and much smaller than the Asian elephants I have seen.

We drove to the Garden Route Game Lodge for our game drive safari.  Our guide, Kim, was the wife of the manager of the lodge.  We climb into a jeep of sorts that has three rows of seats and an open top.  They provide these warm green ponchos to protect us from the rain (thankfully it didn’t) and to keep us warm. This is a malaria free area.   The reserve has 3 sections.  There is an elephant area, a lion area, and the main area.  These animals are kept separate for varying reasons, but mainly to prevent death of certain animals they don’t want killed or eaten.  The lion would take out too many of their other animals.  The fences around this huge reserve are just boundaries and don’t have to keep the animals in.  A good portion of the animals such as the lion or springbok could jump the fence if they wanted to, but the land is spacious and fertile where they are so they don’t want to leave. The cheetah sometimes escapes and they get calls from neighboring farms to come collect it before it hurts somebody.

The goal of going on a safari in South Africa is to see the Big 5.  The Big 5 are elephant, lion, cheetah, buffalo, and rhino.  They are deemed the big 5 because they are the five most difficult animals to hunt. They are all smart and dangerous.

We started by driving up to the elephant enclosure.  They have two large elephants that are orphans.  Their parents were slaughtered.  Elephants are far from endangered and sometimes when you have too many you have to kill some of them.  These two were babies when this happened, and they were kept alive to be tamed.  However, orphaned elephants are unruly and misbehave so they were sent to the game lodge to be wild and free.  The protocol for killing elephants is that you have to kill the entire family to prevent this kind of trauma to the children.

The female elephant may be pregnant.  Female elephants have a gestation period of 22 months and they don’t show at all.  It is expensive to get testing done to see if she is pregnant or not, so one day she might just give birth and they will arrive at the elephant area and find a new baby.  There is a chance that she is 12 months pregnant now.  The male elephant proceeded to charge at the neighboring jeep because they got to close.  Then he turned towards us.  He started acting really weird and lied down digging his tusk in the ground, which Kim said was very strange behavior.

Our next stop was the lion enclosure.  They have one male and one female lion.  There used to be two females, but the male accidently killed her.  She had eaten from their meal when it was his turn so he swiped at her neck and snapped it.  These two lions had just been fed that day and there was a dead cow by them.  They feed the lion by bringing him dead meat in the back of a truck.  He climbs up and takes it away.  The lion and the elephant are the only two animals they feed and they are the two that are separate from the main reserve.  The female lion was lying down taking a nap and the male one was watching us.  At one point he mock charged at us to get us to back away.  Kim stopped the jeep pretty far away from them, but she said that if the lion wanted he would run and get to us before she could sit down and start the engine.

Lions mate for 4 days out of the year.  During this time they have sex every 30 minutes for 30 seconds at a time.  The female lion in this reserve has birth control so she won’t get pregnant.  Every 18 months they dart her (put her to sleep) and put the hormones in to prevent pregnancy.  There is no shortage of lions in Africa and they do not want any more right now.

We drove by herds of zebra, wildebeest, springbok, impala, kudu, and other antelope species.  There are tons of them all over the reserve.  Most of these herds are one male and the rest female.  The lone males are called bachelors and were kicked out of the herd and forced to live alone or form a new pack.  Once the dominant male has mated with all the females, he is tired and the bachelors come and take over.  Then they get to mate with the females as well.  Most of these animals do not mate for pleasure, but just for procreation during the mating season.

We drove around the game reserve until we found the cheetahs.  The lodge sent their male away after the baby giraffe was born 6 months ago to prevent him from killing it.  The mother cheetah has 4 cubs, but only 2 are with her in the game reserve.  The other 2 are being raised by my guide at her house.  She has the most incredible life I have ever heard of.  She has a 2 year old child, 6 month old child, and two 4 month old baby cheetahs in her house.  Then she raises baby springbok in her backyard, and the elephant enclosure is right next to her house.  I would consider having her life because it sounds amazing.  The cheetah and her cubs were so cute and just lounging nearby where we were parked eating and playing.

We drove through the riverbed area to where the giraffes were spotted.  The baby was so cute.  These giraffes have shorter necks because they eat the shrubs and bushes off the ground and not out of high reaching tree branches.  The sun was setting by this point so it was getting harder and harder to see the animals.  Back at the lodge we had an amazing dinner before sleeping in our chalets for the night.  This day officially makes the cut for one of the best days of my life.

We had a sunrise safari to try to find the animals that we didn’t spot last night.  The sunrise was gorgeous.  We found the buffalo roaming around.  They were just wandering and weren’t bothered by the sight of us. Up the road by them were the rhinos.  These are white rhinos and they are about to be put on the endangered species list.  The black rhino, which is not in this game reserve, is already on the list.  The animals are hunted for their horn, which when ground up into powder is supposed to be an aphrodisiac.  This is the same material as fingernails, so this finding is false, but poachers come to take them anyway.  Poachers generally dart the rhino, to put it to sleep, and then they saw off the horn and leave.  The rhino bleeds to death either while still sleeping or it wakes up in pain and dies.  In South Africa if you catch someone poaching you can shoot to kill.  The rhino walked right up next to the jeep and didn’t care that we were there.  

Our guide took us to her house to pet the baby cheetahs.  This is not a scheduled thing, nor do most people on safaris get to stop there.  They had the two cubs on leashes.  One of them was brought to my end of the jeep and we got to pet their soft fur.

After the safari we went to the reptile house where they have a variety of snakes. One of the snakes bites so lightly that you don’t even feel it, and then you die of the poisons.  The Puff Adder is Africa’s deadliest snake because it causes the most human fatalities with its venom.  Similar to how a rattlesnake rattles before striking, the puff adder puffs up.  I got to hold a Ball Python (I think that was the one I held), before we took off.

We stopped for lunch in Hermanus.  Hermanus is where you can find the best land based whale watching in the world.  Moments after we climbed out of the van the horn sounded signaling a whale sighting.  The Southern Right Whales migrate 6-8 weeks from their feeding grounds in Antarctica to mate in this area on the coast.  There were several more whale sightings, mainly just their tales, fins, and the water spewed into the air from their blow holes.

On the way home we stopped at Stony Point to view the penguin colony.  This colony was much larger than the one at Boulder’s Beach.  There was a long boardwalk that had penguins lounging on all sides on the rocks, beach, and in the water.  Finally we made it home after a long incredible weekend!

Doritos Roulette

Sunday night I only watched the first half of the Euro Cup Championship.  People are allowed to smoke in bars and restaurants here and in certain places it gets very smoky, particularly the Kimberly Hotel bar.  South Africa is currently voting on a smoking ban in most of these places, which I 100% support (of course I have no say in the matter).  They want to totally ban indoor smoking and even make it illegal to smoke in open spaces such as beaches, stadiums, parks, outdoor eateries, and zoos.  In 2007 they successfully passed regulations that banned smoking in shopping malls.  If the legislation passes South Africa will be the first African country to go smoke-free.  By the time the first half of the match was over, I was ready to leave and get out of the disgusting air.  Also one guy in the bar who was an ex-cop was intoxicated and would not stop talking to Rebekah and I, no matter how many times we turned away or ignored him. 

I bought the craziest chips ever last week: Doritos Roulette.  “Doritos Roulette has a hot chip in every handful of cheesy chips.  So play with fire if you dare to get burned.  It’s a gamble in every bite.”  Emma, Rebekah, and I played – of course my first chip was one of the really hot ones.  Not sure I will be making that purchase again, but I couldn’t resist.

Four of us went to the Fat Cactus to celebrate the fourth of July with the best Tex-Mex food you can find in Cape Town.  Only Rebekah and I were Americans, as Milou is from Holland and Leila is South African.  I had made the reservations online, but it turned out that I made them for July 7 instead of July 4 (not really sure what I was thinking).  They happened to have a table available so it worked out in the end.  One of the tragedies I faced is that they do not make queso dip here; however, that is definitely a first world problem and something I can learn to live without.

As of July 1, electricity prices increased in the Cape Town area.  We used to pay 100 Rand and get 95 credits on our meter.  Now we pay 100 Rand and get 65 credits on our meter.  South African electricity used to be ranked number 1 for the cheapest electricity a few years ago, but now it has slipped to number 11.  This is very sad for me and my electricity bills.

I finished reading a book called 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa by Stephanie Nolen.  It was very good and definitely taught me more about how HIV affects daily lives, the process of discovery that you have the illness, disclosure to family and friends, and obtaining treatment and medication.  At work I have been analyzing data about our Expert Patient program to see if Expert Patients are helping prevent children from defaulting on their medications and appointments. I also am looking at the follow up rates for those children who do miss appointments to see how our clinics are working to get them back on track and on their medications.  One of our main funders, the One to One Children’s Fund, provides the monetary support for this program so they want to see what impact their money is making.

Acronyms I know very well now:

•  PMTCT = prevention of mother to child transmission
• ARV = antiretroviral
• ART = antiretroviral therapy
• HAART = highly active antiretroviral therapy
• MoH = Ministry of Health

Tonight our new roommate finally arrives!  We were told she would be here July 1 (which didn’t happen).  Then we were told July 4 (still didn’t happen). Now we have been told tonight so we will find out if she makes it or not.  Supposedly her flights were delayed due to storms and bad weather which is apparently hitting parts of the USA.  I wouldn’t really know because it is cold and rainy here mostly so I try not to look at how sunny and hot it is back home.

I am spending this upcoming Friday-Monday on the Garden Route! Feel free to Google it to see what exciting activities I have in my future.  Hint:  One stop is at the Garden Route Game Lodge for a Big 5 safari!!!

Murder Mystery Night and Mzoli's

Sunday night I watched the football match between England and Italy.  We were at the tavern nearby and we happened to sit at a table with these two guys.  It turns out that one of them sat by my roommate Emma on the airplane to Cape Town a month ago, pretty random. The tavern had a nice fireplace and a friendly dog that wandered around.  The game kept on going (into overtime and a shootout) so we didn’t get to head home until late.  We live just around the corner from the tavern, but this guy from inside the bar insisted that we needed an escort home to protect us.  We would probably have been fine, but he kept insisting that he was worried about us since the area we live in does have muggings at night.  He looked alright so we let him walk us home, which we got there safely.

The weather wasn’t very nice all week (it is the winter/rainy time of the year here).  On Monday Rebekah and I walked to EFB (Eastern Food Bazaar) for dinner.  Tuesday I stayed in all night, not wanting to be out in the weather.  Wednesday I needed to go rent a costume for a murder mystery party Friday night; the only problem was the store is open 9-5 and by the time I get off work at 4:30 and get to town it is after 5:00.  My boss let me leave 20 minutes early (4:10) so I could catch the bus (4:20) to get to town (4:40).  Then I got a cab (4:45) to drop me off (4:50) and I had 10 minutes to pick an outfit and pay.  It was pretty hectic, and it is very frustrating that everything is open only when I am at work.  I won’t ever be able to return it, so Rebekah is going to return it for me so I don’t lose my 100R deposit.  I did manage to get an awesome medieval dress.  Wednesday night we went to the bar to watch Portugal-Spain.  Once again the game lasted forever since it went into overtime and a shootout.

The movie collection in our apartment consists of Bridesmaids and the Kings Speech, Emma’s 2 movies.  Thursday night we were upstairs in a friend’s apartment and it turns out they had season 5 of Will and Grace.  We have borrowed it and now have something new to watch when we don’t go out during the week.  Rebekah and I proceeded to watch disc 1 while messing around online and reading our books.

Friday was one of the best days at work I have had.  I work directly with the Executive Director of PATA and right now we have very minimal staff.  I get to work on important projects one of which is to fill out the report to register PATA as a non-profit with the Department of Social Development.  Every year you have to resubmit the forms, and if you don’t then the organization is no longer a non-profit in the country.  Having all of that responsibility placed on me is pretty exciting.   I also found out how incredible PATA is as an organization; of all the children in the world on ARVs to treat their HIV, PATA provides care for about 50% of them.  That is a huge statistic and represents over 300,000 children that are directly impacted by the money and resources we provide.  Unfortunately there are lots of children that aren’t on ARVs yet.

In the afternoon my boss took us to go visit one of the clinics we support.  We drove 45 minutes to Paarl, a town in the Winelands. We went to the TC Newman community clinic.  One of the doctors gave us a tour around.  He explained how the town used to be split with blacks on one side and whites on the other (Apartheid).  This hospital was the black hospital.  Then after Apartheid ended, they worked to integrate the community.  The clinic itself was absolutely beautiful.  They had received a grant from Global Aid (I think that was the organization) and the structure was brand new.  It opened in January 2012.  The funding was to provide health infrastructure.  We got a tour of the new facilities as well as to this cool area out back.  They converted the old boiler room from the past into a space for counseling with the HIV positive kids and adolescents.  There we met one of our expert patients (PATA funds their salary) who is an HIV positive individual that has become knowledgeable about the treatments. They help others understand different aspects of their care that goes beyond the use of ARVs. 

Afterward the doctor asked if we wanted to go to a palliative care center nearby.  We drove over to a small township nicknamed “Fairyland.”  Here we visited the Butterfly House, which was also very inspiring.  The facility is gorgeous and located in the middle of all of the shacks where people live.  The people who come here are HIV positive children and adults, siblings of HIV infected individuals, and orphans of HIV infected parents.  The center doesn’t provide much in the terms of treatment, but it provides tons of other resources.  In the mornings while the kids are in school, they have a variety of classes to teach life skills to adults.  Then in the afternoons over 300 children come to the facility for activities. Most of the kids only get one good meal a day – and that is the one the Butterfly House provides.  The children don’t have desks at home to do homework so they use the desks here to study.  In the back there is a little playhouse that is used for playtime for one child at a time.  Then a counselor can be in there to talk to the child if they think there is a problem at home or just in general.  They have a great puppet stage where the adult acts with a puppet and the children open up about their problems.  One of the strange facts was that no child ever picks to “talk” to the policeman puppet.  This shows how they view the police in South Africa.  I was very impressed with everything they do there. 

We ended up not getting home from the clinic visits until 6 and I had to be at the murder mystery dinner party at 7.  I came home and quickly changed into my medieval dress.  I had already read my character description that was e-mailed to me last week.  The dinner party was a group of 8 people who each have a different character.  The theme was The Bloody Grail.  I was Meryl Knight, a well-known historian on Stonehenge from New York.  I went with Rebekah and Melinda.  One of the people at our table of 8 didn’t show up so Rebekah played 2 characters throughout the night.  It was a three course meal.  We each had a character book in front of us with three tabs – so we opened one for each meal course as we delved deeper into the murder.  It turns out my character was very suspicious and was the last seen at the scene of the crime, but I guessed right that Giovanni murdered Kathleen!  The party was so much fun and everyone was in costume and in character.

Saturday was the township tour.  A township is a settlement that was forced to be created during the Apartheid era.  The blacks were forced out of the city to live on the Cape Flats.  Now they are still separated because they choose to continue living with their own people rather than move back into the city, even if they can afford it.  Our tour was of the township Langa, and we had a local man named MC guide us around the area (he is from Langa and still lives there).  We began near this nice recreational facility that was built on their land when South Africa bid for the 2004 Olympics against Athens (they got 2^nd and Athens won the bid).  The facility is very nice, but people from Langa are glad they lost because the government would have taken their land back to build more venues and facilities.  Langa has a small allotment of land originally intended for 5,000 people, but now 70,000 live in the area.  It was a lot of working men from rural areas, but then their wives and families all moved as well for the greater opportunity near the city.  Across the highway from where we were was the initiation place.  Women are not allowed in this area ever.  Men can only go if they have been initiated or if it is there turn which is when they are around age 18.  Initiation is basically circumcision.  The boys are turned into men at this time, which creates a very painful memory that bonds them to each other and everyone who has been initiated before them.  They know that life will never be that painful again.  They receive no drugs, only an animal skin wrap when they are done.  Sometimes boys still die from this initiation.  Then for the next 6 months they wear a specific coat and hat to signify to everyone that they have become a man.

Next we went to the craft center.  Here they have places for people to learn pottery and other art forms.  There is a strong feeling of ownership of the building so it remains in very good condition.  Next we walked by shipping containers being used as houses.  The government provided these old crates for use for two families per crate which is very crowded.  We stopped in a small shack that is the local brewery.  The women must make this brew, which has a name in the Xhosa language.  This is a click language that has three different clicks as well as sounds.  They taught us how to say the name of the beer which has a click right in the middle of it.  At important events the tradition is that the beer is put in a giant bucket and passed around for everyone to take a sip.  There is a place by here where they sell smileys – sheep’s head.  It is a delicacy here where everyone wants to eat every part of it especially the tongue.  We walked to MC’s house afterward which is nicer than a lot of them.  There is an area nearby nicknamed Beverly Hills because those are very nice houses that are lived in by people who could afford to move out and live in the city.  They choose to stay by their roots and with their people, but they build nice houses for themselves.  

We continued walking into one of the many hostels in the area.  This is the term for housing that is where they cram many people in together.  One small room, probably smaller than your bedroom at home, is where three families live.  The couples and small children each share one bed and the bigger kids sleep on the floor.  There are many bedrooms in each hostel and then a main kitchen area for eating and socializing.  The area on the other end of Langa by the highway has government houses.  They built them for the people however, they are too expensive still for them to move in.  Now they are sitting empty because no one can afford it, and the government doesn’t change the prices or strategy for providing houses.  Right next to this area is where all the shacks are.  They are made of tin and wood and tarps.  It is a huge area of people with their little plots of land together.  They all have electricity that is pay as you go and most of them have televisions despite their poor house structure.  The bathrooms are all lined up in a row – a bunch of portapotty like structures.  There are communal areas to get fresh water which is free by the government.  We got to look inside a couple of the shacks to see how they live. What they like is that there is privacy here so that it is only one family per shack and the parents can have a separate private space for themselves away from the kids unlike in the hostels.  Outside one of the shacks this young boy came up and kept pointing at the shiny part on my purse.  I wasn’t really sure what he was going for since he spoke Xhosa.  Then I realized that in the outward part of my purse I had 2 cereal bars that I brought as a snack in case I got hungry.  The child must have seen the wrapper sticking out at one point.  I pulled out one of the bars and the kid grabbed it and ran away in less than a second.  Suddenly I was swarmed with other children around me.  I gave one my second bar, which then made the rest of the children sad that I didn’t have any more on me.

We walked to a traditional healers shop.  He had tons of dead animals and weird furs hanging in his little place which was another shipping crate building.  Inside he had tons of weird potions and jars of things.  I couldn’t really understand what he was saying while he was talking, but it was about his training and his healing beliefs.  Our next stop was Mzoli’s.  This is a restaurant in the Guguelethu Township.  Here you order a bucket of meat for your group and everyone just digs in and takes what they want.  There are no drinks, plates, napkins, or anything provided.  You are just given the cooked meat consisting of sheep, steak, and boerwores.  

Saturday night I wasn’t feeling very good and really just didn’t move. Rebekah and I had put on Will and Grace disc 2.  The disc kept skipping and restarting the episode, but I didn’t want to have to move to fix it so we watched the same 10 minutes probably around 8 times before we fixed it.  I have those scenes memorized now.   All of Emma’s coworkers came over for a bit before they all went out.  I sat in my spot and talked with them. Once they left I just went to bed, but I woke up Sunday morning feeling much better.

Sunday we took a cab back to Mzoli’s.  Rebekah’s boss invited her and Milou and their friends to come with them.  We beat them there and had to wait outside the restaurant for them to show up with the reservations.  While waiting many different people from the township came up to us to comment on how beautiful we were.  One guy continued proposing to me for the entire hour until Vince arrived with our reservation slip.  Despite telling him no many times, he continued to tell me that he would fly to America for me and that he wanted my dad’s number to call and ask for permission.   One of the other guys asked what state I was from, and he had never heard of Nebraska.  He kept confusing it and then asked what city I was from, Omaha.  He kept thinking I meant Ohio.  It was really funny because he would leave and then wander back to me and be like “Omaha? I have never heard of that. I am going to look it up.”  Once Vince arrived, we got our seats and ordered our plate of meat.  The place was slowly filling up with people while we waited.  I thought the meat was much better this time because it was very hot and fresh off the stove.  We stayed at Mzoli’s for 5 hours.  By the end of it, the place was packed, the dj was on, and everyone was dancing and drinking lots of alcohol.  Since I didn’t feel good last night, I refrained from drinking which made the situation pretty comical to watch.