When we went to the townships

We discovered the local cuisine and a popular dish which is basically a cooked sheep's head nicknamed 'smilee' because it looks like it is smiling when the skin is peeled off. It is too bad that the Internet does not convey odours, because you would have loved the smell of sheeps guts in the morning! We also had a chance to try the local beer with the inhabitants, served in a paint can and shared between the group. Five of us promised to stop drinking forever after the first sip.

When we went to the Cape of Good Hope

Remember 'Spes Bona'? We will not say much about it as the view left us speechless. But you know what they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Day 2 in Cape Town

Well rested and ready to explore!
First stop on the way to infinite knowledge is the University of Cape Town (which we affectionately call UCT). The University was founded in 1829 and is the oldest university in South Africa. It is also ranked the first African university. It was also voted "Best view from the campus" by the team. We are sorry to say that IÉSEG cannot compete.

This is the coat of arms of UCT, the motto is "Spes Bona" which means "Good Hope".

University of Cape Town website

And this link to a comparison of the figures about South Africa and France using Wolfram Alpha, just so you know.

Day 1 in Cape Town

After 11 hours of flight, we finally arrive in Cape Town. It's 8:00 am and the very first thing we see (apart from the airport parking lot) is Table Mountain with a double rainbow going all the way across. The team is sorry to say that we were too tired to think about taking a picture but the sense of wonder and extraordinary that we felt overwhelmed with made us know that the south african experience we were about to have was going to change our lives (if this sounds cheesy remember that we just got out of an 11 hour flight).

The first (friendly) persons that we met were Niv, who is going to be in charge of our group during the program, and Joe who is going to drive us around in the SHAWCO bus during our stay. 

We then headed off to the 41 Trill Road in Observatory where we are all staying in the backpackers called 33 South, where the manager is called Alan and is the nicest and coolest backpackers manager we have ever met.

We took the afternoon to regain energy after such a long trip and had the opportunity to meet a little friend whose mum works at the backpackers. Communication was restrained by the fact that he speaks one of the many languages in South Africa which are not English (only the second most spoken language in South Africa).

More pictures to come, we still need to sort out the Internet restriction at the backpackers.