12 April (Day 27)

I think I mentioned in my last entry that the bed and breakfast in Montagu was REALLY NICE. The couple who owned it made homemade bread and rolls and hot breakfast every morning. Easter morning was no exception. The husband had woken up before dawn, and on a whim decided that he would make this incredible marrow (baby zucchini) and mushroom quiche. I don’t even like mushrooms, and I was in love. At breakfast we also found little chocolate eggs and bunnies at our table. The Easter Bunny will find you in Africa, apparently!

Most of the people in the group found churches to go to this morning. Some went to a Christian ceremony (in English) in a local garden. Others went for a Dutch Reform ceremony in Afrikaans. Jake ventured alone to an Anglican service. Jeff did his own form of worship: he hiked the nearby mountain. Kate and I were the two non-church goers, which was good because we needed to load the trailer. As soon as church ended we drove from Montagu to Cape Agulhas.

It was a pleasant surprise when we arrived at Cape Agulhas to find that our hostel happened to be across the street from the beach! Since it was Easter Sunday, we didn’t have any real planned activities. Sandy, Carrie, Sara, and I decided to walk the boardwalk along the beach. This ended up being another cool day for wildlife for us. While we were trying to catch sand crabs (okay, Sara and Sandy were trying, Carrie and I were watching in disgust) there were several people fishing on the beach. One of the fisherman somehow managed to catch a baby octopus! Sandy, being the educator that she is, walked right up to him and asked if we could touch it. He let us! It was so cool, it’s little sucker suction themselves on your skin and pull along—very cool sensation. Then, as we were heading back to the hostel for dinner, we saw huge sting rays in the bay! We’re talking bigger than I can motion with my arms, and they were just swimming along right at the water’s edge.

Before dinner I hopped online to check my email, because this hostel had a computer. It was like Easter serendipity: just as I was online, both of my sisters and my parents were online, too! So I got to talk to my whole family on Easter. It was awesome.

For dinner, we had bobotie prepared in the hostel. Bobotie is a traditional South African dish consisting of ground meat and eggs, served on rice. It was really good! After dinner we hung out in the hostel, which had a bar. I guess they weren’t anticipating our American love of beer, because we literally bought the bar out of Black Label. We played card games and hung out in the hammocks and just generally had a really fun time. We played a game of “how many people can we fit in one twin bed?” The answer was 5 before we ran out of people willing (and awake) to play. I think we could have done more.