April 3 Preparing for our 6-week South Africa Road trip

Ryan: At ten O’clock, we all loaded our backpacks into the van and drove down to an apartment- like building very close to the waterfront. Kyrt, Deb and Dad got out and went into the Rental Car place and were soon working out all the details in order to drive safely from Cape Town to our next destination in South Africa. After a while Brendan and I got out of the car because of it’s 40 degrees Celsius heat into the air-conditioned building.

After this, we went to the District Six museum right after the Car Rental place. We walked around learning lots and lots about the District. It is so famous because in 1965, the government decided to get everyone to move out of there house in the next thirty days because they were going to steamroll the houses in order to build new ones for the more fortunate people of cape Town. After steamrolling almost all the the houses, the government realized it didn’t have enough money to build the new and realized they made a huge mistake. Brendan and I both wrote something to be stitched on a piece of cloth as an exhibit I the museum.


Soon later, the adults had worked everything out and we got back in the van and drove to the V and A Waterfront. On our way, we passed a huge convoy of police cars, ambulances and such and we quickly found out they were transporting two really nice, new aircrafts to the Cape Town army base. Why they couldn’t just fly them? We didn’t know.

We arrived at the Waterfront at twelve or one O’clock and decided that we were going to go to the Aquarium, the Robben Island Museum and eat lunch. We finally decided to head over to the museum first. We walked around quietly, reading the boards and looking at the pictures. We learned about Apartheid, the segregation of blacks and whites and that one person can make a huge difference on the world stage to change wrongs to rights.

We exited the museum and Dad, Brendan and I split up from Mom to go to our desired shops and museums. The boys went to a Pick n’ Pay get get some groceries for Lunch and some snacks for a little later on. Mom went to get her hair done at a little beauty shop on one side of the water front while Brendan, Joe and I went to the Aquarium. There, we payed our admission fee and started to look around before hearing a call over the PA system to go and watch the stingrays and the turtles get fed. We found the the I and J predator tank where the stingrays and turtles were getting fed. Someone introduced the stingrays and turtles by there names and introduced the five ragged-tooth sharks and the many other fish species. We admired the feeding process before heading down a ramp to the frog and penguins room. We saw huge ‘Giant Bullfrog sitting under the light in his habitat. We also looked at the penguins swimming around and others guarding their nests. Our final section of the aquarium was made up of many rooms with fish tanks and other plants and sea creatures. We passed by lobsters, sea urchins and small but very cute fish. And huge crabs.

We met up with Mom and got picked up by Kyrt at five and went back to his place. I soon found out that it was his birthday and Mom had never told me. Luckily she had time to pick up a gift for Kyrt, a nice brown wallet.

Guests arrived to the house and all the kids went into the pool, looking for money scattered along the bottom of the pool. Eventually we found all of them except for one that we hadn’t seen. We were called out of the pool for dinner and we had great ribs, fish, bread and salad. Kyrt opened gifts after desert made up of delicious fruits. He got a really nice sweater, the wallet and the many cards. He loved the wallet and the sweater and we partied the whole night. It was a great day! Ryan