Room With A View

Here is the view from my hotel room, it was quite nice. I stayed at the Westin Grand (location), even though it got mixed reviews I found it to be quite nice and would definitely stay there again. Green Point Stadium can be seen in the background of the first picture. This stadium will house many of the World Cup 2010 games, including a quarter final and semi final match.

Mama Africa

The food at this restaurant was quite good:

Mosques

I was quite surprised to discover that Cape Town had a significant Muslim population. There were a number of Mosques scattered throughout the city. This particular mosque had a very nice door:

Unusual Paint Job

This building, located in downtown Cape Town, had an unusual paint job:

Meat Dealer

This woman cooking and selling miscellaneous meat parts on the side of the road. Some of the products that she was reselling were similar to the sheep's heads (smiley) discussed earlier in the blog.

Assorted Township Housing

These houses were mostly built illegally, they are built without permits and are considered squatter housing. The South African government is currently building new, permanent housing in these locations but the current occupants need to be relocated. The government has been having some issues with this task since the new housing is not free.

As you can see, houses come in all shapes and colors:

More Views From the Townships

Here are some pictures from the Townships.

This kitchen is shared by several families that live in dormitory style housing. When the people were forcibly relocated here by the apartheid government an entire family shared a single bedroom and up to 15 families shared this common area:




The kitchen sink:








The newer dormitory housing being built by the government. I believe that a room in this building costs R300/month, whereas the other dormitory was free.




Church:

Recycled Shipping Containers

Another interesting thing done in the Cape Town townships is that they make buildings out of old shipping containers. Here is a shop where they sell diapers:

Crabs in Cape Town

After seeing these giant spider crabs at the Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town, which by the way is one of the best aquariums I have been to, I began to wonder why the crab bodies are not sold in the store. The legs do look much less appetizing when attached to the body.

Penguin Video

Finally, I figured out how to upload the video of penguins hanging out on a beach. I missed by about 2 seconds these guys rolling in with the tide:



The quality of this video after upload is not so great, maybe I will try putting it into youtube to see if I get better results. On an interesting side note, youtube is banned in Turkey.

A Snail Eating Cheese

I was unaware that snail's like cheese:

Township Business

Here are some more pictures of various businesses that are run in the Langa Township.

Here is a local convenience store:




A local restaurant and it's kitchen:








Smiley, which is essentially an entire sheep's head, is a South African delicacy. As seen here, it is prepared in the townships and then sold on the side of the road. The reason it is called 'smiley' is because during the cooking process the lips open up and it looks like the sheep head has a big grin.

Fruit Vendors

Along St Georges Mall with the other street vendors are fruit vendors. These guys sell a wide variety of seasonally fresh fruit. Notice the markings on the ground that signify the zone that they are supposed to occupy, the vendors appear to be quite careful not to move outside of this line:









This interesting looking Ford truck is used by one of the street vendors:

Strange Cloud

This cloud looked out of place:

Gasoline

Gasoline in Cape Town is relatively inexpensive, at the time this picture was taken (April 27th, 2009), a liter of petrol was R7.13 (R26.95/gallon). One interesting thing to note is that they still sell a type of Leaded Petrol, Ultra LRP.