cape town by foot

I walked and ran the streets of cape town all day long, dusk till dawn. I didn't sleeep so well so when I woke up for the 5th time at 7:30 I justs threw on some shorts and hit the streets. Went by the company gardens (Dutch East Indies Company, that is) and through the narrow side streets, crowded with uniformed teenagers and up the slope towards table mountain. I didnt really have any direction until I saw a sign for Vredehoek, the neighborhood where Alan Drabkin grew up. He described to me in detail where his house was the week before I left but i didn't bring the scrap of paper where I jogged down the names. I decided to just explore until I found something that sounded famailiar and with some luck I ended up in front of his old house. Its a very nice neighborhood, tons of flowers to soften the brutal walls which characterize all white neighborhoods in this country. I cant think of the name of the flowers but they are the same ones I saw and loved in Israel. I took few petals back from one of the brilliant bushes in the weitzmann institute campus so I took a few petals from one of these bushes as well. Its not a bad tradition, I think; collecting petals from a certain type of flower (Its killing me that i cant think of the name!!) around the world.
This fella next to me( he owns the hostel) is saying its a protea and that it is exclusive to the western cape, meaning it couldn't possibly be the same type as those I saw in Israel and elsewhere but Im not sure I believe him. Nope, not the same flower. NOw I found a picture of them and hes calling it borgenvilia. Either way, I like em and I collect petals where ever I go.
SO I wanna go out and dance but my peoples are passed out upstairs. There are others in the hostel but they're way ahead of me if you know what I mean. Apparently they had been playing beirut all night. Yes, beirut has spread like the plague and has supplanted much better drinking games all of the world. Its worse than starbucks. THank god I havent seen any here hold on Im gonna knock on some wood. cape town, long street in particular hasnt been overrun by chain stores.
By the end of this weekend Im gonna be basically broke and will be forced to live like a pauper for the rest of the summer. Luckily I dont need to pay for much besides food and Ive got tons and tons of multivitamins (thanks ma) so I can basically eat bread with olive oil and be fine. Oranges are in season here and they are cheaper than dirt cheap. Were talking juicy delicious seedless oranges here. 5 Rand (~80 cents) for 25 of them. 25 big oranges!! Everything else is comparable in price to american supermarkets. oranges , bread, olive oil and multivitamins...sounds delicious!
Its hard not to spend money in a town like Cape Town because everything is cheap by American standards. I had a guy say to me at the market today, "Ill give you good price, just give me anything." Shocked at the bargaining strategy I asked him how much time he spent of the object in question and he says 2 weeks. I could have given him 30 rand for something thast took him 2 weeks to make! thats desperation! OK to be fair, he probably didn't spend two weeks carving the damn thing - the stone is quite soft - but even if he spent a quarter that amount of time, 30 Rand aint much. I ended up buyin a similar thing from another vendor for 20 more but it was worth it.
Im gonna take a tour of Robben Island, where Mandela was imprisoned, and climb table mountain tomorrow and Ive got a ton of partying to do before then, so I suppose I had better be takin off.
THanks to everyone who is still with me.
sharp, sharp