By rbhargava
As of tomorrow, I'll only have one more month in South Africa. Although that is still quite a long time, everything already seems to be in terms of how little time is left. In fact, this week will be my last in class, as my last day is this Friday...after that I'm free! Of course, I have mixed feelings about that, and would not mind a few more weeks of classes since I've thoroughly enjoyed every week I've been here.
This past weekend, my program took us on a weekend camping retreat to Silvermine, an area just south of Table Mountain on the Cape Peninsula. Our campsite was situated right in the middle of the cape, with quite a high elevation. Just to the west was Hout Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, and to the east was the Cape Flats and False Bay. The area was beautiful and quite strange in that it was very isolated from the city but yet surrounded by Cape Town and the suburbs at the same time (if you google Silvermine on a map you would understand what I'm saying). We arrived on Friday afternoon and spent much of the afternoon relaxing, trying to climb across a rock wall there, and exploring the area. We had a braai (South African barbecue) for dinner and then enjoyed star gazing for quite a while. The sky was surprisingly clear considering all the light pollution nearby, and I was able to see 3 shooting stars in a short period. Growing up near NYC and now studying in DC, seeing 3 shooting stars was a mind boggling event for me. On Saturday morning, we left for a long hike around the area, hiking to the Elephant's Eye Cave high up on the peninsula from where one could see much of the Cape Flats, False Bay, and far out towards Stellenbosch. From there we hiked even further to one of the highest points on the peninsula - Constantiaberg and ate lunch overlooking the beautiful Hout Bay. We hiked back to our campsite afterwards, with a brief stop at the Silvermine Dam to cool off. Arriving back at our campsite, we rested a bit before the three students on our program (Hunter, Dave, and I) made 15 minute presentations on our themes for the semester - mine being sustainable transport systems. The rest of the evening was quite uneventful, besides some more great stargazing and a few more shooting stars! We left our campsite early the next morning to head back to Stellenbosch. The weekend retreat was an excellent way to escape Stellenbosch one last time and appreciate our time abroad thus far. I calculated that Friday and Saturday night were my 10th and 11th nights sleeping in the great outdoors here in South Africa, and I certainly will miss all my great camping nights here (although almost all of them were great struggles between me and my sleeping bag in an attempt to stay warm).