COLDPLAY IN AFRICAAAA

Sorry I haven’t blogged in a while, I’ve been so busy with finals coming up this Thursday and Friday!

I realized I never blogged about going to see Coldplay at the Cape Town Stadium where the World Cup was last year! The stadium holds up to 60,000 people and it was packed. We originally had seats up pretty much in the nosebleed area which wasn’t bad because we could really get a sense of just how huge the stadium is, but I have to say I was pretty jealous of everyone on the ground. While waiting for Coldplay to come on we met some other Americans who were from Utah and currently living in South Africa for an internship which was pretty cool and actually ended up meeting up with them to climb table mountain that weekend! Before the show came on we ended up going down to the ground floor to the merchandise tent and ended up being able to stay on the ground floor for the remainder of the show! Needless to say it was amazing. This was my second time seeing Coldplay and they were even better in Africa. There were fireworks for the opener and closer of the show, giant balloons bouncing through the crowd throughout the entire show and of course the band was flawless. Definitely worth the investment. I want to thank my dad for finding these tickets back in March when we bought them! ☺

CLIMBING TABLE MOUNTAIN!

10/10/11

So this weekend I accomplished the impossible. I, Kate Harris, climbed the giant-ass mountain outside my window, also known as TABLE MOUNTAIN!!! What does this entail you ask? Let me enlighten you! It consists of packing and drinking over 3 liters of water and hiking for 4.5 hours pretty much UP HILL for 7K. Not an easy task for me if you know me ☺. However I thought I kept up pretty well and have to say I was pretty impressed with my capability. So obviously table mountain is gigantic so there are many different trails you can take. As a rookie I wanted to take the beginner route of course, but ended up taking the “scenic route” by accident when we decided “that path looks good!” Note to self... don’t do that again! In the end I was glad we took that trail because we really got to see just how beautiful the area is and pretty much ended up climbing three mountains to get to the actual top!
Along the way, we climbed ladders attached to the mountain, scaled rocks, and drank juice boxes. All in all a fantastic time! I have to say getting to the top was one of the most rewarding things I have ever accomplished. The view from the top was absolutely breathtaking and I could see both the Atlantic/Indian Ocean and all of downtown Cape Town. Such a beautiful view. After taking many pictures we ended up taking the cable car down which was awesome because it rotated 360 degrees while we were descending so we could get a full view of our surroundings.

All in all a great weekend, even though The Springboks lost in the world cup :(

miss you all!!

KAYAKING WITH WHALES??

Sunday, October 2nd


So I’ve officially been in Cape Town for a full month! I cannot believe how fast this trip is going by and I have to say I’m not too happy about that! I’ve still been doing lots of awesome things with my time including going to Hermanus Whale Festival yesterday, celebrating Jenn’s birthday, and going to Kirstenbosch Gardens today.

On Friday we celebrated Jenn’s birthday with a party at Cubanas a restaurant/bar that our new friend Bunny organized. It was so cool of her to show us a “real South African” birthday and we all had a lot of fun. On Saturday we went to Hermanus a town that is well known for having over 80 whales swimming along its shoreline. We got there at 8 in the morning and I had scheduled a kayaking trip in the ocean at 9. I was sooo nervous at first because the waves looked gigantic and I could not stop thinking that I was going to be eaten by a shark! Four of us from UConn joined a group where our instructor told us the basics of kayaking and that it is really very safe. Jenn and I shared a kayak and I took the front of it. Once we got out in the water, our instructor had a radio and any time there was a whale spotting he would hear about it and we would kayak over to near where it was. We ended up seeing a good amount of whales breaching but none were ever really scary close. We also saw penguins and a seal just chilling in the ocean, which was really neat!! I actually wasn’t terrible at kayaking in the middle of the ocean surprisingly and didn’t even get sea sick. There ended up being one girl that got sick and had to lie down in her kayak while the instructor attached her kayak to his and paddled her around for the remainder of the tour. Lucky that didn’t happen to me! Soo glad we ended up doing the kayaking trip because it really wasn’t that scary, and such an awesome experience!!

After kayaking we had lunch and then went over to “treetop canopy slides” in the middle of the woods where we paid to zip line from tree to tree. I had never done zip lining before but after kayaking in the Atlantic Ocean I wasn’t too nervous about it. Ended up being a lot of fun, even though one girl ripped her pants, and we made friends with the zipine instructors so that they played music while we ziplined. Pretty fun.


Today I was supposed to hike Table Mountain, that giant scary mountain that is pretty much the staple of Cape Town. However, we got to the base of the mountain and the workers there said it was soo windy and dangerous that if you were to try and hike the mountain you would get blown right off of it! Needless to say we ditched that idea and decided to go to Kirstenbosch Gardens instead! It was still cold, but the flowers were beautiful and we had a nice and relaxing walk around the area, which I really needed after a busy weekend!