Leisure Update

Hello, all! Since my last several updates have been more “official” reviews of my actual internship work / pertinent refugee issues, I thought I would take this entry to discuss a few of the incredible leisurely experiences I’ve had as of late…….That is the beautifully disgusting quality so characteristic of South Africa. Whereas my daytime work is comparable to international development jobs one might experience in other African nations, Latin America, or to my parents’ dismay, Bangladesh, during nights and weekends I am free to indulge in all the “cush” touristy opportunities that this area also has to offer: outdoor summer concerts, wine tastings, just about every extreme support one could imagine, and Euro-style bars and cafés. What makes these activities both interesting and guilty are the fissures between the two worlds.

Example: There is an area not too far away from here known as St. George’s Mall. It’s a pedestrian throughway with stone streets, oodles of cafés, stylish boutiques, and outdoor atmosphere. More than any other area I have seen here in Cape Town, it looks and feels like you are in Europe. There are even a few fountains and French-style kiosks / street monuments. Yet, there are also loads of informal stalls, beggars, and “African” proletarians serving the establishments. In fact, it almost feels like the “new” Europe of immigrants more than either the romantically conceptualized versions of Europe or Africa. And beggars in this country are RESILIENT….let me tell you. They will come right up to your table where you are sitting and assuredly ask for money. If you are walking down the street, they will approach you in the same manner without taking no for an answer. If you ignore them, they follow you the entire distance continuously hollering at you. If you say “Sorry” forcefully and pick up your pace, they will pick up their pace right along with you instead of taking the hint. Thank goodness I am doing something “helpful towards humanity” during the daytime or I would feel QUITE guilty for not giving the beggars any money. I apologize that this paragraph is littered with “quotation marks;” I just feel like I am walking on eggshells in explaining some of these topics so briefly.



That was a bit of a tangent anyways. So back to my activities! I have made TWO different excursions out into the proximal winelands thus far. That equals approximately 9 different wineries and probably 40-some samples of wine varieties. Wine culture is so amazing. I can’t fathom anything more relaxing than an afternoon of casual wine sipping set against the faint, nearly stationary sway of the vines and the jovial pulsation of rays overhead. That sounded forcibly poetic, but I tried to use the exact words of what I sensed despite their sub-par linguistic affect. In fact the calm I had imagined for trip 1 was fleeting at best. We moved from winery to winery by bike, and after stop 3 (which was actually a brandy distillery) surmounted a gradual, but deadly incline. Around 100 degrees F coupled with the brandy I literally almost passed out at the top. Great that there was water! A very pleasant if not exhausting day. Winery trip 2 was by car and FAR more relaxing. Winery 1 was over the top impressive architecturally and sit into a hill of vines: quite the unusual topographical setting for winegrowing but the aesthetics were stunning! A free tasting to top it off. Number 2 felt like a hole-in-the-wall stop in Provence, sporting the name “Le Pommier” (Appletree) to top it off! Casual. Very different from the other place but also enjoyable. Stop 3 was probably the most “authentic” South African winery, as the architecture fit into the Cape Colonial style and the setting more barebones “we make wines here” as opposed to the “there is wine here, but look at this fabulous façade and setting foremost!” Stop 4 was probably a bit of a mix between all of the above.

HOLD on. I am writing this on the roof of my apartment complex early on a Friday evening, and I just heard jazz music start playing from down the street. So much of the South African lifestyle is chill and enjoyable. I can’t tell where this music is stemming from really, but I can hear it rather clearly. At first I thought it was a protest coming from the Parliament (1.5 blocks away, so we hear them a regular amount) but it doesn’t appear to be so. I actually have to head to the laundrette before it closes for the evening. I think I will try to walk down the street and into there without shoes. Shoes are optional at most in this country, and I’ve been dying to try this myself. I’ve been here over 1.5 months; it’s about time! I will update the rest of this entry “just now” (South African English for sometime in the next few hours……if I ever get to it.)

"Over the Mountain, Down in the Valley..."

28 February 2010

Okay, so maybe I’m not the most efficient and timely blogger, but life is busy (and exhausting!) here during the week and the weekends have been my time to get out and see the area! I’ll try to capture some of the highlights.

The outdoors activities Cape Town has to offer are phenomenal. Hiker’s paradise. You can climb Table Mountain and Lion’s Head Peak (the main attractions) as well as countless other mountain paths that intertwine with the coastal range for any assortment of 1 hr, 2 hr, 4 hr, 6 hr, 12 hr, or multi-day hikes that one might want to pursue. So far I’ve only made it up Lion’s Head peak, but the path wrapped 360 degrees around the mountain for breathtaking views of the city bowl, the Atlantic Ocean, and the harborfront. South Africans claimed the hike would be a breezy 45 min. venture, but walking from the apartment complex to the tip-top definitely took more like 2 hrs of hardwork. The trek culminated with the dissolution of any one set path and some pretty legit mountain climbing. Have to say that the top was worth the terror, however. Highlight for me was actually seeing hefty breezes blow condensation across the peak and visible cloud formation puff out across the cityscape.

The abundance of hiking opportunities is perhaps only surpassed by the South African beach scene. So far I’ve been to three hahaha. Most beaches are past the City Bowl on the other side of the mountains, but geographically that’s not a very long distance. Less than 15 minutes by cab and about 50-70 rand (less than 10 dollars for sure). Even less money if you’re splitting the fare. The first beach I went to is Clifton Beach, a fairly popular beach with locals of all size, shape, and colour. It reminded me quite a bit of the beach I went to in Marseille on the Mediterranean as far as beachgoer scene, overall heat, and accessibility. I guess that analogy was lost on you all, because the only other person that would possibly know what I’m talking about is Dana who was there. Clifton Beach is set into an ocean cove, however, with luscious vegetation specific to the Western Cape and a green, vegetal backdrop. Excellent sand that squishes perfectly between your toes. Sorry for any of you reading this who are trapped and sick of Michigan winters!

The next beach I went to is called Camp’s Bay…it’s basically South Africa’s nod to South Beach in Miami or St. Tropez in Southern France. Not your casual beachgoers but people dressed to impress and drop a few hundred rand on minty mojitos at a trendy café. Incredibly European and the standing polar opposite to the townships of Philippi and Khayelitsha. Camp’s Bay is also situated just across the mountain from my residence in the City Bowl, but I realized upon my arrival there how even something as simple as geographic landscape probably helped to entrench South African apartheid. Crest over the hill in a taxi and you literally feel like you are in another country…in another world. Of course it is easy for a privileged minority to withhold rights from the depraved majority when their de facto worldview renders the ‘Other’ virtually invisible. I also realized how so many could have fought so hard and so reticently for this parcel of land…it’s purely hypnotic. In all cases (c/o Darius’s franco-english), going to Camp’s Bay was an all too guilty indulgence for an evening of bourgeois beach frivolity.

The last beach I went to was a venture of just yesterday. I honestly don’t recall the name, but according to one Northern Irish intern the name of this beach is actually Welsh. LLalenguko-whatever. It, too, is located on the other side of the mountain but quite a bit further along the coast than the others. The beach was predominantly white, but you could still definitely tell that it was more of a local haven than a spot for tourists. Unlike the other two beaches, this beach had quite a few surfers there: not your young hooligan hang-ten surfers either…surfers of all ages, genders, sizes, and skill levels. Lining one end of the beach was an enormous formation of boulders. I actually went exploring this particular area and got myself semi-lost for a non-worrisome period of about an hour. Certain areas were clearly victim to Mother Nature’s brutal hydro-erosion as the surf pounded them with relentless vigor. Other highlights of the day included speaking Swahili with a Zanzibarian henna artist and savouring the most refreshing popsicle I have ever tasted in my 22 years of gustatory ignorance: (NB: This is not trite hyperbolic bloggery but an honest and earnest statement) a frozen granadilla! If you ever find yourself in a position to do the same then you can also transcend reality and come join me atop Mt. Olympus.

Since I suppose I’m on the topic of outdoors adventures, I’ll also fill you in on my trip last weekend to Cape Point and Boulder’s Beach. Cape Point is a national park in South Africa home to peninsular panoramas, a bronze medal in biodiversity, and wait for it………………………wild baboons! Our guide even gave us a full-on baboon debriefing: “Now remember, if a baboon comes up to you and grabs your bag away, don’t fight him! He’ll win! Let him have it…he will most likely fouille (lacking the English word at the moment) through it looking for food and then return it.” I saw one baboon out of my bus window but none up close as I climbed to the end of Cape Point. Right adjacent is the Cape of Good Hope, which is (contrary to popular belief) the most SouthWESTERN tip of the African continent and NOT the place where the Atlantic and Indian oceans meet. It still marks an important landmark around which Vasco da Gama sailed looking for a route to the East Indies. Again, stunning.

Boulder’s Beach is famous for zoological reasons. In the early 1980s, a group of penguins randomly appeared on this beach and formed a colony. Today penguins dot the fairly small beach area and continue to breed / multiply each year. These are the only penguins found anywhere on the African continent (outside zoos). It felt a bit odd to see penguins outside in their normal habitat of such hot weather. Right nearby I also met a shark spotter. This is not a hobby but an actual occupation in South Africa. People are employed to sit atop a cliff with a pair of binoculars and scan the waters below for the signs of any nearby sharks. I felt oh-so-comforted knowing that the South African shark awareness system is both high-tech and fool proof. Of course this one person out in the hot sun over 100 m away could never miss an oncoming shark. The shark spotter I met was watching out over Muizenberg Beach. In an odd twist of fate, Muizenberg holds both the Guiness Record for most popular surfing beach in the world and the infamous local claim of being quite popular with the local shark communities. Again, whatever could go wrong? Nonetheless, shark spotting seems a viable career option for @JenniferFulton should she fail to find any other shark-related work opportunities!