Friday, February 09, 2007

Friday Fish Blog

I am home from South Africa. I'll get back to discussing the end of my trip very shortly - I've been concentrating on getting my sleep schedule back on track and working since I've been back in New York.

But, in the mean time .... here is my whole fish familiy!


George


Food - he misses his school (I had two others but they died) so he might eventually go to someone who has a school. Or, I'll get him a friend. We'll see.




My roommate has named him "Princess" even though you can tell by the spike dorsal fin that he's a male. Princess might not be able to stay with me - he only eats live foods, so it depends on how well I can supply him with those. If he looks like he's starting to starve, I'll have to give him away. :( Sad.

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Even More Capetown!

I went allllllll the way to the top of Table Mountain today.

All in all, it was a good day. I woke up early, had breakfast, and internet-ted a bit. I had planned to do Table Mountain but the weather was overcast and quite windy. When the clouds sort of stick on the top of the mountain and it's windy, they don't let anyone go up. So, instead I walked around Cape Town a bit, got my hair cut (finally), got my eyebrows waxed (finally), and bought a cute little dress that will have to go away until it warms up again in my hemisphere. Le sigh.

Anyway, when I emerged from my beautifying extravaganza, I noticed that it was suddenly gorgeous outside. Thus, I grabbed a taxi and headed for the cable car without a second thought. The cable cars spin a bit going up the mountain which gave me the distinct feeling of seasickness. When I got to the top, there were all sorts of little walking paths to go down, plus bigger hiking trails. I started down one of the slightly less paved trails and got to a section full of huge boulders. There was an enticing looking sign at the bottom of the boulder path and and enticing looking path leading up the other side, so I went down.

Turns out the sign said, "Danger this way". Less enticing than I thought. The other path was fine though, so after climbing down a bunch of boulders, I climbed up another set thinking that I might be able to just walk around the ravine on the way back.

Of course, then I saw this and realized that wasn't going to be an option:



I was still intrigued as to where I was going. Eventually, I ran across a sign that indicated I was heading for the "Smuts Trail". The name rang a bell - I eventually realized it was the path that would take me down from the mountain. I paid for a return ticket on the cable car, so I knew I didn't want to do that. Then I ran across another trail that seemed to lead to this pretty little lake:



I wanted to get a better photo of the lake, but in my haste to take advantage of the good weather, I forgot about something:



So, I turned back. It was beautiful up there - more (and better) photos at flickr, as always.