Hanna and Tobbes amazing Antarctic adventures: Gear check and Cape Town

Today we saw our ship for the first time! What a feeling! We went into Cape Town early in the morning, to get our equipment and to hand in our passports. It turned out to take a whole lot longer than expected, as everything had to be tried on. We don’t want to get down to the base and then realize that the boots don’t fit or that your hat doesn't go with the colour of your eyes. We had a lot of fun doing it though. After an hour we were finally equipped with two enormous bags each of ‘stuff’, and we realized that all the incredibly important can’t-live-without stuff we brought from Sweden is not going to fit in the luggage anyway, so we will have to leave lots of things behind in Hermanus! Considering how extremely fashionable we look in our new gear, I’m sure we’re not going to lack our old clothes… =)

This is how cute we look in our Antarctica gear!

After the equipment procedure, Andrew and Agatha dropped us off at the waterfront, and we spent a few hours wandering about Cape Town. It’s my favorite way to explore a new place and to get a feeling for the city. We walked from the waterfront into the city centre, visited the old castle and just breathed the atmosphere. Cape Town is a weird mix of old and new, many of the buildings feel so 80’s, whereas suddenly you come across a Victorian house, or a modern building. For example, my favorite statue (sofar) is of a classical African figure in rock, with Bart Simpson sticking out his head here and there. As we return from Antarctica we will hopefully have a few days to do all the things one should do here, like climb the Table mountain, visit Cape Peninsula and the Penguins at Boulder beach, and go to a vineyard. No time for those things today unfortunately. When returning to the waterfront we spotted our ship across the harbor, you can see in the picture below what she looks like! Isn’t she a beauty? This will be our home for about 2 x 14 days!

- Hanna