Cheese Festival and Signal Hill

Hi Everyone,

Sorry for my long hiatus. I can’t believe May is here already. This semester, and especially the last month, has flown by. In 9 days I’ll be finished with my school work and in 11 I’ll be taking off on a trip to Botswana! I’m going on a 7 day tour with Evan, Casey, and Pablo up to the Okavango Delta. We’ll be camping and hopefully seeing tons of animals. My friend Lydia did a similar trip in January with her parents and they saw lions, elephants, leopards, water buffalo, hippos, rhinos, giraffes, zebras, hyenas, and more. She was there during Botswana’s rainy season whereas we’ll be there during the wet season (we assumed these two names referred to the same season, but they don’t), and we’ve heard that the wet season is even better for animal encounters. Needless to say I’m really excited. Special thanks to mom and dad for funding my trip!

So as for the past week, there were two outings that I’d like to update you on. Last Saturday we went on our final AIFS excursion to the South African Cheese Festival. The entrance fee was covered by our program and we got to spend the entire day tasting all the delicious foods and drinks that vendors were offering. There were hundreds of different wines and cheeses, along with a wide variety of breads and olive oils. There were so many things that I wanted to buy from various companies, but I narrowed it down and left with just a few things. As I’m not a big fan of wine, my favorite samples of the day were basil pesto by Pesto Princess, any of the avocado oils from Westfalia, cranberry cherry ice tea from Frutea Ice Tea, Pecora Africana cheese from Ovis Angelica Divine Sheep’s Cheese, and the raspberry brownies from Yummi Brownie. As a bonus, I also got to see a pregnant cow and a baby goat at the festival.

On Wednesday there was a full moon, so some friends and I took the advice of the man at the Cape Town Planetarium and headed to Signal Hill for the evening. When we had visited earlier in the month he told us that Signal Hill is a beautiful place to watch the sun set into the water as the moon rises over the city. So five of us rented a car for the day (another five friends had rented one for the week already), and drove to the hill right next to Lion’s Head in Cape Town. There were some low clouds that prevented us from seeing the sun melt into the water, but the sky was beautiful to look at as the sun set. Once the sky turned from pink and orange to dark blue and black we walked the short distance to the other side of the hill to look at the moon. It was so big and bright as it sat above the city. There was a huge cloud that completed covered Table Mountain, but as we sat on the hill looking at the moon it began breaking up and small puffs of cloud flew quickly from the mountain, over the hill, and out to the ocean. We stayed up there watching the clouds fly past the moon until we were too cold to enjoy it anymore. It was a really great night, but I’d love to go back to Signal Hill again before we leave and try to see a sunset on a clear day.

The mountain on the left is Lion's Head and Signal Hill is to the right. I took this picture last month when we hiked Table Mountain. I'll add some pictures of the sunset once I put them on my computer so check back here in a few days if you're interested.