That title pretty much sums up my first 2 and a half days in Cape Town!

My flight from Johannesberg to Cape Town was delayed so got here a little later then planned, picked up from the airport and driven to the lodge by the sweetest little African man. En route to Table View he gave me a mini tour of some of the neighbourhoods, talking to me about their history...I'm going to be totes cultured by the end of this...

Got to Elements and was greeted by the owners, Stefan and Anja who are also lovely in a hippy dippy kind of way. The people staying here seem pretty cool and laid back too, I get on really well with 4 of the girls.Lets put this out there straight away - dorm life is not for me. I don't like sharing my space, I like to have lots of space and I don't like having a communal bathroom. And if I ever talk about slumming it again, please remind me of this day. I'm too selfish for this!

As soon as I'd been shown round the lodge Anja offered to take me to the local shop to pick up my food for the week and to show me where SANCCOB was on the way. Driving round it looks like a very affluent area, lots of big expensive looking houses, women out jogging, families walking their dogs. In other words very safe!

Day One at SANCCOB...Like every newbie I had to introduce myself at the 7.45am morning meeting. The whole place smells slightly of fish, for obvious reasons, and everyone wears crocs. Even me now. Its not a fashion statement I'll be taking back to the UK, trust me. All new starters get put in "General" for the first day, you have to start at the bottom - cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning. So much cleaning I'm hiring a cleaner when I get home so I never have to do it again!They have these weird power outages in Cape Town too, called "zone loading" or something like that so in the afternoon when the power was out I had to sit in the dark and watch a presentation on a laptop about how to be a good volunteer. Different. After that I had a tour (in daylight, obvs) of all the different areas and things they do in SANCCOB, apparently I'll be trained to handle penguins on my 3rd day there....excited!!My afternoon was spent making formula...don't be fooled, this isn't some nice little milky drink you make for babies. This is the fish milkshake. So at about 3pm on Tuesday afternoon I was cutting of the fins of dead fish while their livers and kidneys and all sorts just casually fell on my hands. Gross. (I presume they were livers and kidneys anyway, I don't even know if they have them?!) So yeah, day 1 and I'm already up to my knees in fish guts. I don't think I'll ever feel clean again. Another bird we look after at SANCCOB is the Cape Cormorant, they sound a bit dramatic: if you hold them too tight, they die. If they get cold, they die. If they get too stressed,they die. Pretty much me on a hangover then, get over it Capey!!!

Day Two at SANCCOB...So on day 2, all volunteers get to experience "Crates and Mats". Oooh what's this? Sounds exciting? Nope. Bird poop everywhere. Volunteers working with the penguins bring their mats, crates, pen dividers and plastic sheeting from the pens to us and we hose them down with a pressure washer multiple times, and with cleaning fluid etc. I was paired with some strawberry blonde posho from Surrey called Charlie, who seemed okay and did most of the heavy lifting for me. Thank god. Because we were super efficient and finished all our work by about 12:30pm that meant we had to go begging other teams for work, oh back to "General" it is then. More cleaning. I even scrubbed walls... In all fairness I am glad I'm busy, and shouldn't moan too much about the cleaning as without this support system running behind the scenes they wouldn't be able to do all the good work they do with the animals.Highlight of the day? Walking through the centre and almost tripping over Flipper the penguin, one of the tame birds you can pet, as he went for his daily wander.Oh, and also the view... you walk out of SANCCOB and see the natural beauty that is Table Mountain across the lake. Stunning.Low point of the day? Getting too excited with the pressure washer and spraying bird excrement up my arm.

I've got two days off now (Thursday and Friday) so I'm hoping to go up Table Mountain tomorrow and over to Robben Island on the ferry on Friday so will post another update then, hopefully with better pictures for you!

Love you all lots and miss you loads,
M xxx