I'm typing this message from the Fastest Internet
Café in Africa. It says so right on the window, "Africa's
Fastest Internet Cafe." I don't know if they mean the connection
or the people that work here. But the connection is pretty fast.
There seems to be a lot of superlatives in this
country. We just came from a day in Stellenbasch,
South Africa's most popular wine region, where we tasted some of the best
wine this country has to offer. Tomorrow we are going sand boarding off
of the highest sand dunes in South Africa. We could also complete the
world's longest abseil off of Table Mountain, where participants repel
110 meters. Cafes around Cape Town offer the "best coffee,"
dance clubs boast of the "hippest DJs" and the Mexican Kitchen
has the "tastiest burritos" (probably b/c they are the ONLY
burritos).
It seems that South Africans are always taking things
to extremes. That must be why Cape Town is a haven for extreme sports,
with multiple places advertising the highest skydive, the fastest canyoning,
and the longest bungee 
jump.
South Africans are proud of what they have to offer. And they should be.
This is a great country.
My time at the Fastest Internet Cafe in Africa is quickly drawing to a close. Maybe I'll find out if the staff is also fast. However, I have been wisely advised against any such action. There is another superlative that isn't so super in this country: the AIDS epidemic.
South Africa has one of the highest rates of AIDS
and HIV per person in the world. One in nine people is affected, and one
in four with people in my age group. This is not helped by the fact that
the president of the country made a public statement saying that HIV and
AIDS were not related to each other. There is a serious lack of education
throughout the country.
Fortunately, there is a loud minority that is bringing this issue to the forefront. This minority includes my current hero Nelson Mandela, who has teamed up with pop stars like Bono and Beyonce to increase awareness for South Africans. Hopefully they can turn some of these statistics around, so the superlatives can one-day say South Africa had the fastest recovery from the AIDS epidemic.