The plane's too big captain!

After 12 grueling hours, we finally landed in Cape Town, and were bussed from our plane to the terminal because the aircraft was too big (and it had two entrances, which was odd, but hey, Virgin Atlantic can do their thing).

Customs was crazy easy, basically joked around with us the whole time (seriously, of course), about our visit, stamped a huge stamp into our passports, and let us go. Thats right Customs Agent, what took us so long to get here?

Our driver took us all the way to our hostel on Long Street (think the Adams Morgan of Cape Town). On the way there, we had miles of townships on both sides of the highway. Townships are the really poor and impoverished areas where the homes are built out of sheet metal, essentially. Some of the townships were really a sad sight, where you could see the homes falling into disrepair. At one point, I saw 2 boys on the side of the road, one of which was completely naked and attempting to take a massive dump. I don't think Kaitlin noticed, but not the first thing I wanted to point out to her.

The SA government had started housing projects, and from what we saw and what our driver said they had been pretty successful. We started coming to townships where real homes were being built to replace the metal ones, a 14 year old promise to the people of the townships finally coming to fruition.

As we started getting into Middle Class areas, the last townships on both sides of the highway were very unique. On our left, the muslim community, living in a relatively nice township with proper homes. On the right, the same style homes, with the exception that nearly all homes had bars over the windows and doors. Apparently, gangs controlled that neighborhood, gangs that attempted, to the best of their ability, to fully imitate the gangs of the US. Dressing the same, trying to sound the same, and listening to the same music. Quite a violent area, according to our driver.

As we passed Table Mountain, we came into the middle class to upper class areas. Everything looked much nicer and incredibly western. We made our way to Long Street, paid our driver, and checked into our hostel: Carnival Court.