Goodbye Capetown

 

Today we woke up excited to be going into town to see the famous Table Mountain.  We had bought tickets before we left, so we were anxious to see the spectacular views everyone had been talking about.  When we looked outside, however, it was very overcast and Table Mountain was not anywhere to be seen!  Because of the rain last night, it was still cloudy this morning.

We loaded up all of our bags, cleaned up the dishes after breakfast and the rooms, and headed into town.

We decided to go shopping down by the docks and wait to see if anything changes with the cloud situation.  The mall was huge and there were a lot of shops, but most of them were pretty high end shops that were out of our price range.  We did see some nice souvenir shops, however, and stocked up on gifts.  After that, we had a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant and compared our finds while shopping.

After lunch we checked Table Mountain again, but nothing much had changed.  The clouds were cascading down the side of the mountain like a thick blanket or table cloth.  The local legend is that when this happens it is the result of a smoking contest between the devil and a retired sea captain called Jan van Hunks.  The appearance of the table cloth of clouds signals the beginning of the contest.

Because Table Mountain is, well, off the table, we split into two groups; a shopping group and an aquarium group. Nine students went to the aquarium and eight went to do more shopping.  I wonder if you can guess which one your child chose??  The shopping group went to Watershed and I, of course, went with the aquarium group.  It was a medium sized aquarium with some nice features.  There was a Nemo tank where you could pop your head up into the middle of them, a seahorse tank full of seahorses, a large turtle shell where you could pretend to be a turtle, and a penguin exhibit with three different types of penguins including the ones we saw at the beach.  They had a microscope interactive exhibit where a gentleman helped you see some tiny details of organisms like coral polyps and a cleaner shrimp tank where they would clean your hand.  However, when we were there, the shrimp were apparently full, so we didn’t get to try that one.  There was of course a very large tank full of sharks, and large fish called mussel smashers as well as many others, and they did a feeding while we were there.  There was also a short underwater walk-through tube that was cool.  There were many other tanks to see, and we spent about 90 minutes there before heading back to the taxis.

On arrival at the airport, we realized that we had gotten separated from the other taxi van.  Pastor Ohm was not very happy about it and had our driver go get him and show him how to get to where we were.  We finally got everyone together, got all of our bags unloaded, double checked for anything we may have left behind in the taxi vans and headed into the terminal.

We paid for one extra bag, the guitar, but I had cut our trip bags down from 4 to 1 with one carry-on. I put one of the smaller bags into one of the bigger ones and packed it that way.  One of the other bags was left with Pastor Ohm that had all of our extra VBS stuff in it that we didn’t use at the school on Wednesday.  He said he would have his staff look it over for anything they can use or donate.

We said our goodbyes and headed to the check-in counters. After check-in we went through customs and then through security; all of which went fine and was fairly fast. We had about an hour before our flight for more shopping, getting snacks, etc, and then we boarded the plane, found our seats, and settled in for the long flight to London.  We got served dinner on the plane, then most of us watched a movie and then crashed for most of the rest of the trip.  We woke up for the breakfast serving and then prepared for landing.  We are now in Heathrow waiting for our flight to Charlotte.  Students are checking out gift shops, getting coffee, or snacks, or breakfast and hanging out with each other.  Although most hang-out time is centered on their phones. We have a pretty quick turn-around in Charlotte with only an hour and a half to pick up our bags, get through customs, get through security, and get to our departure gate.  Please pray for this time that it would be quick and go smoothly.  Because of the time window, this will probably be our last blog entry for this trip. We have greatly appreciated all of the prayers that you have given us and we have definitely see their power on this trip.  Thank you all for your faithfulness in this regard!  We love you all and are looking forward to seeing you later this evening (6:35 pm at American Airlines)!

See you all soon!

Mr. Worthington