Today was one of those days that seemed perfect. As I stepped out of the taxi and trudged up the hill to my new home, I knew I was lucky. I’ll start at the beginning. After a night of fun in the town over last night, I woke up earlier than anticipated and quickly got ready for the last day of UCT orientation – course registration. I had heard horror stories about long lines, stressful approval processes and class disappointment, so my friend and I were determined to beat the rush. To our surprise though (and embarrassment), we turned out to be the 5^th people in line and a half an hour early. We waited in the growing cue (what South African’s call a line) to register and after a seemingly short process we were on the last step – acquiring a UCT key card. We waited in the “cue” for almost 2 hours to get this stupid identification necessity, but made friends with the people around us, I guess you could say it was a cultural experience.

Around 11 we could walk down the hill from the campus and say we were done. My housemate and I decided to go to this quaint little Internet café/eatery down in Rondebosh to steal Internet, eat and try and plan our Garden Route adventure next week. To our disappointment however the waitress didn’t seem to like that we ordered tap water (I guess a real insult) and both “forgot” to give us the Internet voucher and half of our food. We shrugged it off though because the people watching was good, and we were happy to be done with tedious school requirements.

The wind had settled a bit from yesderday and the sky was cloudless so we decided to follow our tanning inspired noses to the beach, but it came with a twist. One of the guys in line had told us about hiking Lion’s Head (a mountain in Cape Town) tonight right before the sunset, so we could simultaneously see the sun disappear and the full moon rise. My 3 adventuresome friends and I brought along sneakers and athletic apparel for an afternoon of sun and sweat. Getting to the beach around 2:30 would be late in any real New Englanders eyes, but in South Africa the sun was still hot and a half-day of rays was more than enough. Men in Speedos and women in thong bikinis filled Clifton 3 (a beach that’s no more than a 15 minute walk from Camps bay); the scenery was a mix between hilarious and idyllic. If I hadn’t looked behind me at the panorama of towering mountains I could have thought we had been transported to the Bahamas. A part of me felt a tad guilty – I swear I didn’t know this was going to be partly a beach vacation! Why would anyone want to go any other place in the world?

Around five my crew decided to grab dinner snacks at Pick and Pay (a local grocery store) and catch a taxi to the trailhead. We laced our sneakers, swapped our beach cover-ups for shorts and a t-shirt and were on the trail by six. Even though I’ve olnly been here a week I’ve learned one thing – South African’s have no sense of time. We had asked around about how long the hike would take and answers ranged from “no time at all,” to “about a half an hour” to “more than an hour and a half.” We had heard the trail got steep but I wasn’t expecting the kind of hand and knee rock climbing it took to get to the top. The path wove around the mountain, looping once, twice, three times until we had gotten every possible view of the city and its expansive ocean. Half way up we had stripped down to bathing suit tops and glowed from sweat and the setting sun. A group of hikers (both foreign and local) gathered at the top, either taking pictures, eating, drinking or pensively looking out at the myriad of views, each head turn seemed a bit more lovely (as we many locals exclaimed) than the next. Finally, the sunset and the full moon shined bright in the opposite direction.

Eventually though, my worry wart self convinced my friends that the rocky path down, filled with ladders and barbed wire, would not be safe in the pitch-black African night. Half way down the face we saw fire works bellow, and the four of us couldn’t stop talking about how amazing this all was – how happy we did this on such a whim.

Now I’m sitting in my room as my housemates prep for a nightclub on Long Street and I can’t keep going. I think I’ll lock my three doors, take a quick shower and sleep, tomorrow new adventures a wait.