Full Circle

Back on the mean streets of CPT. Well, it certainly feels like Compton in places anyway (in case you were wondering, Compton is the birthplace of more platinum-selling artists than anywhere else in the world) but really Cape Town is nowhere near as bad as that dark corner of South Central Los Angeles. Although I did do my now habitual thing of arriving in the most dangerous part of the city - Cape Flats Metrorail Station - alone at 9.30pm with no real idea of how I was going to reach my hostel. 

But it was no big deal really - I survived doing it in Jo'burg which has a bit of a reputation, whereas Cape Town is known by all to be one of the safest places on earth to be at night - the Zurich of the Southern Hemisphere. That's as long as your locked up in your City Bowl Penthouse.

Which I was by 10.00, which allowed me to get a massive case of deja vu. Not only was I in the same place I had started my trip back in June, I was also being confronted by some religious nutter once again. Something I neglected to mention when writing about Cape Town a few months back, but the first person I met whilst starting my travels of this mega continent was a God-fearing mentalist who was hiding in backpacker's hostels to escape the realities of life.

So it was to my surprise and (feigned) delight that within five minutes of re-entering a dorm in Cape Town I found myself in an argument with some bloke who accused the City of London of hatching a conspiracy to subjugate the entire world's populace by collapsing the financial system again, having just caused an earthquake/tsunami in Japan, the tropical storms on the Eastern Seaboard of the USA and are now somehow leading a comet to crash into Russia/China. But it's ok, everyone, don't worry - because out of the ashes of this crisis God/Jesus will come again, cast out the devil and we will be saved.

Except for me. We got into this conversation after the usual questions of, 'So what will you do when you go home?' To which I normally answer, 'Well, get a job probably. Seems to be the done thing.' At which point they ask me what I want to do, and I'll say something like, 'Most jobs are in London, so probably a generic city job or something.' At which point I was branded a Luciferian, and our quarrels began. Yes, Barclays/HSBC/RBS/HBOS/Lloyds/Citi/Every other bank you can think of are run by the devil, in case you were wondering. And they are going to destroy the world unless we do something about it.

Oh dear, I'm boring myself talking about this. I was so bored at the time that I ventured out on to the Cape Town streets under the pretext of getting something to eat, only to find I didn't really want to be out on the Cape Town streets that late at night to I went home again. Still, it was better than listening to the ramblings of a madman.

In other news, my spending has reached start of the trip levels owing to an addiction to Dairy Milk Biscuit (never seen it in the UK - it is diamond, I tell you) which my mugging experience did nothing to put me off of.

Slightly more interesting is the fact that I did the highest bungee jump in the world the other day. 216m off the Bloukrans Bridge, at Storms River on the Garden Route in South Africa. I'd love to say it was amazing, but it was all a bit dull really. The best part was the music they played before we jumped - throwing some shapes to a funky house remix of Dennis Ferrer's 'Hey Hey' whilst two metres away from plunging to my death/an adrenaline explosion is something I won't forget for a while. But all in all, I need to get away from these high octane activities for a while. I think I'll leave them until I've worked a dull job in an office (where my boss will be the devil) for a year or so, then I will appreciate these things a bit more. Got great white shark diving coming up - we'll see how that goes.

Only a week left here now. A lot to cram in, but then even more to do when home.