"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!

Life in the ZA

Hello, all! Thanks in advance for taking the time to read this blog. Hopefully I will be able to keep on top of it enough to make it worthwhile. I left for South Africa 1 week ago today, which seems unfathomable because I have already experienced so much it feels as though I've been gone for at least a month. Left Detroit last Saturday afternoon, connected through Atlanta and Johannesburg before finally arriving in Cape Town late Sunday night SA-time (GMT + 2, EST + 7). There were a few setbacks in Johannesburg when I realized I was not on the same flight as the rest of the group to Cape Town (despite congruent departure / arrival times) and after narrowly dodging solicitation for bribery and a flight delay, I made it to a fantastic hostel where Mischelle (another Madison intern) and I spent our first night in SA.

I can't believe how many people I have met from literally all over the world since being here! Lots and lots of Europeans at the hostel, such as a crazy Dutch freelance journalist, Norwegian and Danish grad students, Irish, British, etc.

The next day we taxi'ed to the Perspectives Apartment Complex where I will be staying for the next 3 months! Met with Melanie, the Connect 123 (internship broker organization) coordinator who gave the MSU group a brief orientation to the city and apartment, then moved all my stuff in. I'm on the 11th floor of the building, and my apartment unit has a sweeping view over the downtown Cape Town skyline. The other side of the building has an even more stunning view of both Table Mountain / Lion's Head Peak (i think that's the name???). Met my roommate, Walt, who is also with the MSU group but is actually 27 yrs old. Apparently he graduated from Madison (PTCD) several years back, worked as a ski instructor at Aspen for a while then various other jobs for the next few years. Now he wants to apply to grad school for Int'l Studies, but the schools told him he needs more international work experience, so he went back to talk with @GrantLittke who told him the available internship options through JMC. Seems like a pretty nice guy. We are getting another roommate this upcoming week from Switzerland (though I think it is a Swiss student orginally from Norway) so that should change things up a bit, too.

South African society is even more fascinating than I had anticipated. It seems to defy easy categorization as either a developed or developing country with enormous social disparities among its populace. Race is very real here, in discourse as well as practice. Terms such as "Black," "Coloured" (Mixed race) and "White" are in turn complicated by the very significant pluralities of Malays, Indians, multiple African ethnic groups, and British/Afrikaaner differentiation. A ten minute walk from my apartment complex to an ultra-modern shopping centre involved passing quite new building developments, but alongside the sidewalk a couple lay visibly dying of AIDS. The geographic legacy of spatial apartheid is also fairly apparent in the city's racial distribution. There is definitely an increased number of Black Africans present in the higher strata of society, but at the same time I have been hard-pressed to witness any Whites that are not well-off (Note: This is at first glance. Perhaps this perception will change.)

The city of Cape Town is visually stunning . Definitely rivals the south of France as most beautiful place I have ever seen. Probably helps that it is summer, but the mountains, flowers, and sunshine are incredible. We have a rooftop pool deck at Perspectives for which I feel very blessed.....IN-CRED-I-BLE! I have tried to make it up there at least most days. There's also a chill coffee shop ("Mugged") on the first floor with free wifi and a street-side, mountain-view veranda. That's where I am now. haha Gives EL's Espresso Royale a run for its money.

I also started my actual internship last Wednesday, but I will write more about that in the next entry as I don't want to make this one overly convoluted. As the South Africans say, "Cheers!"