I sit in places we once sat
haunted by the silence ripping at the lump in my throat
The echos of old feelings
tear my breath right from my lungs
My eyes coated with a sheet of ice
from my frigid soul waiting for what is dead.
-Meghan E. Brown
12.17.14
You can see the light ahead,
so long you have waited
dragging your heartless body
And I was alive in your shadow
behind you the whole time
But you never looked back.
-Meghan E. Brown
South Africa
V&A and Sundowners Party, Cape Town
So the other day one of my dorm mates, from France, and I decided to walk down to the VIctoria and Alfred Waterfront… Better known as “The V & A”. We decided to just go with my navigational skills, aka my gut feelings. We figured finding the waterfront wouldn’t be that hard since basically everyone else we had met in the hostel was able to find the beautiful and upscale waterfront no problem. Needless to say we ended up in a construction zone near the water, and we thought to ourselves, “everyone else was boasting about the immaculately fancy waterfront…”. We felt so stupid having to go up to one of the construction workers asking where the waterfront is, because we were clearly at a water front, just not the waterfront. He laughed, as we expected he would, and told us we made a couple wrong turns. He pointed us on our way, and we managed to find it pretty easily after that, for the most part! We started noticing fancy buildings and shops, so we continued walking towards them and the crowd.
Next, my dorm mate from France wanted to see the beach. So we checked out a map we found in The V & A, we found a road along the ocean called “Beach Road”, and we figured there must be a beach there. So we walk and walk in the smoldeing African Sun in search of a white sandy beach. After walking for what felt like hours alongside a rocky shoreline, it finally dawned on me that not all beaches are sandy…and we could have been walking along “the beach” this entire time. So we stopped a man walking along the path and asked him whether or not we would find sand at this beach, he laughed a little bit and told us we’d have quite a ways to go yet. It was almost time for the sun to go down at this point so we decided to just get into a cab and go watch the sunset over the ocean on top of Signal Hill.
We got into a cab and the driver, Simon, was one of the kindest men I’ve ever met. He knew we were weary of whether or not we’d be able to get a cab for the way back to the hostel after it got dark. So Simon, out of the kindness of his heart, told us we do not need to pay him right now, and he said he will promise to come back after dark to bring us back to our hostel if we promise we will pay him for both cab rides upon arrival to the hostel. It’s hard to find people so trustworthy and so trusting, it’s a nice reminder that there is good in everyone and everything and not to prejudge anyone.
So we sat at the top of the hill, overlooking the breathtaking view of Table Mountain, her table cloth (the clouds coming down off the mountain), and the shimmery lights of Cape Town at dusk. We sat at the edge overlooking the ocean and Robben Island, there must have been about 100 people up on the hill, sipping wine and watching the sun slowly sink down into the ocean. My french dorm mate shouted “this is so romantic, don’t be weird-ed out if purpose to you!”, loud enough for a couple groups around us to hear and stare. We had a good laugh, having just met that day.
Shortly after the sun went down, came up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder.I’m easy to startle so that got me pretty good, sure enough it was Simon the cabbie, as promised. We got in the cab and listened to more of Simon’s life stories on the short ride back to our hostel.
Hola Amigos!
Hello all 🙂
Welcome to the world through my eyes and fingertips! I will be posting random, interesting, funny, and scary travel experiences while I embark on travelling around the world alone….here we goooo!
Meandering Megg 