Noise...

Cape Town is resonating with the thuds and whirrs of construction as I type this, from a cheap and convenient Net cafe (broadband!) down the street from my hostel. It's a busy, fascinating, confusing city, a bit larger than Vancouver and with South Africa's trademark extremes of affluence and poverty.

I'm staying at Long St. Backpackers, a hostel on the buzzing and coincidentally named Long Street, one of the main avenues for nightlife and restaurants, within walking distance of the crowded malls and shiny towers of downtown Cape Town. The hostel is crowded and friendly, with no shortage of varied activities - yesterday I helped wrestle a 10-metre ill-gotten Christmas Tree into place on their patio and on Christmas Day they apparently host a party in a nearby cave.

My plans for the day centre on exploring Cape Town on foot, camera surreptitiously in hand (though safer than Joburg, it's still South Africa). I'll climb the beautiful Table Mountain that someone dropped right in the middle of downtown (somebody google it, I'm running out of net time), and maybe visit Nelson Mandela's prison cell. There are, sadly, no elephants here, but there is a bewildering array of shops and craft stalls (all at extortionate prices), and the best variety of restaurants I've seen in two months. I had Lebanese food for yesterday's dinner, and the sudden rush of actual spices, so long absent from my life, was a moment of epiphany.

The web place will evict me in a few seconds, so I'm signing off. You'll hear more of the furthest corner of Africa as soon as I have more to post...