Days 7 and 8: Wednesday and Thursday

Wednesday the conference organized tours for the attendees, so we were able to spend the day with the guys. There were several to choose from, and I thought we chose the one which visited an ostrich farm and olive oil production facility. I was getting really excited, because I really wanted to ride an ostrich if I could! Instead, we booked ourselves on a drive up the coast to Hermanus, which is home this time of year to the Southern Right Whales that are calving. Whale watching is pretty cool, too, so I wasn't terribly saddened by the mix-up. The drive was beautiful, although I admit that I fell asleep along the way. One one side we had the ocean, and on the other the mountains/hills. We stopped by a botanical garden, which had very interesting native plants. But since it is not quite spring in SA, very few were blooming. We stopped in Hermanus for lunch after looking for the whales. They didn't seem to be coming as close to the shore as they are sometimes reported to do, but S saw one, and E saw a tail, too. I didn't see any.

After lunch, we visited an abalone farm. It was actually pretty interesting. They have a big market for abalone meat in Asia, but it takes 5-7 years for these things to grow large enough to export. They are a type of marine gastropod mollusk (snail), some species of which produce beautiful shells which a mother-of-pearl-type interior.

We left straight from there to Stellenbosch, where all the organized dinners were held. This evening we were taken to a Carnivore Dinner! They had a buffet with all kinds of the different game meat from the region. There was springbok sausage, kudu skewers, dika, ostrich, crocodile, and I'm sure many others. I'll tell you: I ate more red meat these past two weeks than I have eaten all year. And as funny as that sounds, I don't think it's an exaggeration!

On Thursday, we parted ways with the guys again. This time, S and I went on a walking tour of the city. I didn't take my camera with me, so I'll have to wait for S's pictures. the coolest part of this tour was going to Bokaap, formerly known as the Malay district. This is the part of the city that is primarily inhabited by Muslims. It is famous for its brightly colored houses- green, pink, purple, orange, yellow, blue... they were all very bright and very beautiful. After lunch, the group split into those who wanted to continue the walking tour and those who wanted to do some shopping. Since we hadn't had many opportunities to shop, S and I decided to do so. There were only three other people who wanted to shop (a family), and I think the mother wanted a new diamond ring, so our guide pretty much led us around the city as looking for a particular diamond shop. We were a little disappointed, needless to say. Once we got back to our hotel around 3pm, S had to make a phone call, but after that neither of us were tired, so we decided to be brave and walk down to a market (Green Square Market) where a lot of crafts-people have their stands. I found a cool set of bookends for E in the shape of a hippo.

It seemed that even though our tours weren't what I expected them to be, they still turned out well, even if we had to make a little fun of our own.