_I was sitting in the bar at the backpacker with Tiny, the most New York-ish girl I’ve ever met in my life, talking about home, and we decided that describing Cape Town is pretty easy: It’s New York City with a mountain in the middle of it and palm trees. But there are some great and wonderful differences. For instance, if you leave your purse sitting out while you run to the bathroom, it will get stolen, as opposed to just probably. Tiny and I were actually drinking at the bar because this had happened to her purse earlier in the day.

_I left her to drink her sorrows away while Travel Mania (the American guy who’s been traveling all of South East Asia, India, China, Pakistan and Africa with his wife for nine months), one of the other backpackers and I went to an African Game restaurant to get the warthog special. Warhog spare ribs are good eating. We chowed down, listened to some nice live African music at the restaurant and then parked ourselves at the bar in the backpacker and had a few while Tiny talked. When Tiny starts talking, you get to switch to autopilot and enjoy your beer. Every ten minutes just say “Oh sure” and you’ll be set for the next three hours.

_But the next day it was Travel Mania who was doing the talking because he was amazed at the miraculous return of Tiny’s purse. We decided that the US intelligence network is scary efficient, because this is how it had to have happened: Tiny’s purse gets robbed of its cash and credit cards and left on the other side of town, with the cell phone and camera still inside. Luckily Tiny had a photocopy of her passport in her bag. So, someone, probably a cop, returned the bad to the US consulate. The only way they could have found her, based on her bag, was to somehow figure out that she was staying at the backpacker which only takes cash, so it wouldn’t have shown up on a credit record. So we figured she must have drawn cash at the ATM in the backpacker and the Consulate traced her withdrawl record or something. So they call the backpacker who says “Oh she’s on a wine tour” and the Consulate gets the name of the tour group. They call that, get the name of the tour guide, and the next thing Tiny knows, she’s sitting at lunch on a guided wine tour in Stellenbosh and her tour guide hands her the cell phone and says “It’s the US Consulate, they have your bag.”

_I mean, it had to have been something creepily cloak and dagger like that. How hardcore is the US Consulate in Cape Town, South Africa, man? I didn’t know they had James Bond working for them. And then Tiny spent an hour and a half talking about how her phone is her life because she works in the fashion industry in New York and gets free Red Bull.

- Kid