R&R on the Cape Peninsula

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Before my "real" adventures start, I decided that I needed some serious R&R. A week with friends in Nottinghamshire in February hadn't provided quite the necessary chilling-out experience, thanks, largely, to my picking up a cold (or, to quote one of my former colleagues, "man 'flu", given the alleged propensity of the male of the species to exaggerate his ailments!), and dealing with the remains of a stomach bug and an odd dose of backache. And I thought I'd done so well in avoiding the zillions of bugs, etc., doing the rounds while I was still working.... In any event, it was all a fabulous excuse to decamp to Cape Town for a couple of weeks.

Colin's tremendous ability to turn clients into friends has given us the van Zyls, a wonderful family who live in Noordhoek, just south of Cape Town, on the Cape peninsula, and it was to their gorgeous house on the hill overlooking Noordhoek beach that I was headed.

The day before I arrived, Cape Town apparently reached a record-breaking 42 degrees Centigrade. Fortunately - I love the heat, but all things in moderation! - we didn't experience that level again during my stay, and the weather stayed mostly comfortably in the high 20s/low 30s. (With apologies to my American friends, I find it easiest to think and write in Centigrade - the Fahrenheit conversion involves, roughly, 32+(2 x Centigrade), if that helps!) The Cape peninsula is curious from a weather point-of-view. It's reasonably well-known that Table Mountain frequently has its own "table cloth" of cloud, but one can easily go from baking temperatures in Cape Town to cool drizzle over the mountain in Noordhoek, or from sunshine in Noordhoek to cloud at the Cape of Good Hope.



Not much to report from my first week. My cold re-surfaced, much to my irritation, so I propped up the South African pharmaceuticals industry appropriately. Otherwise, my days consisted of sleeping, sunbathing, reading and the odd bit of shopping, usually of a domestic nature to help out my hosts. Having given the SA economy such a boost during our trip in November (I "did" Christmas almost entirely from there) and now being one of the Great Unemployed, I resolved to do as little shopping on my own account as possible during this trip.... but still managed two trips to Wordsworths, the aptly named local bookshop, as well as a bit of a blow-out at Cape Town airport to stock up on SA food goodies for Colin on my way back.

By the second week, my Presbyterian/Calvinistic conscience was kicking in. Was I really going to spend all two weeks in this way? Chris, my host, had offered me their Hermanus house for the first weekend, but I'd declined in view of my cold and ensuing reluctance to move anywhere. Actually, I was glad I'd stayed: the Sunday saw an epic cricket match between South Africa and Australia which, incredibly, SA won, with over 870 runs being scored and the result not clear until the penultimate ball. Now, I'm not a huge cricket fan - though England's performance during the Ashes last summer had increased my interest (along with that of many others) - but the tension was incredible. England -v- France in the Six Nations was on another channel, but it was no contest as a spectator sport!

Anyway, I got off my backside on the Monday morning, and went for a long walk along Fish Hoek beach, on the opposite side of the peninsula. While Noordhoek beach is fabulous - long and golden, with the Atlantic waves crashing in - it is also pretty dangerous, and I had been warned off going there on earlier visits. Mindful of a forthcoming skiing trip, I tried to walk on the dry sand, and exercise my quadriceps as much as possible!! Later in the week, I also braved a gym - one of the van Zyl boys' girlfriends had kindly gotten me a "VIP pass" - and felt virtuously achy the next day.

Apart from going to a movie in Cavendish with Penny and Dani van Zyl my first Friday, and a girls' outing shopping in Constantia the following day, my only real trip outside the "comfort zone" of the Fish Hoek/Noordhoek area during the first ten days or so was down to Cape Point. Chris and Penny had taken us there during my first stay with them about 7 years' ago, but it had been a windy day and I hadn't had much of a chance to explore. This time I took a more leisurely trip through the National Park, and duly hiked up the requisite hills at both the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point itself (again working those skiing muscles, I hoped!). The dassies (rock hyrax) at the Cape of Good Hope appeared curious in the tourists and looked as if they'd be very cuddly (though I believe they will bite if provoked), and I rewarded the red-winged starlings' attempts to forage outside the restaurant with crumbs from my muesli bar. The sea looked uncharacteristically calm, but somewhat ominously so when I looked down at the swell at the bottom of the cliffs. This area is widely considered to be the "meeting point" of the Atlantic and Indian oceans - an alleged fact which had worried my pedantic brain the last time as Cape Agulhas appears on maps to be further south. However, on this trip, the literature confirmed this, so I relaxed!

The real icing on the cake of this trip was an unexpected weekend at the van Zyls' game farm in the Karoo. They've had it for a number of years, and have been gradually building up their stock, focusing largely on various types of buck from the giant eland to the delicate duiker, but they have also obtained about a dozen zebra and two giraffe. They are intentionally not bringing in predators, as these would consider the buck to be veritably "meals on wheels", but their older son, Matthew, had, for some time, suspected that there might be leopard around. On this trip, his suspicions were confirmed when he located a den, its owner's identity confirmed by the baboon skeletons littering the place. He and one of the other guests on this trip, a vet involved in game conservation and relocation, endeavoured to set a trap to capture evidence of the leopard on film. Matt shot a springbok as bait, and left it just off the road with a motion- and heat-sensitive camera located appropriately close by. However, to our combined disappointment - and amazement - nothing touched the carcass in the 36 hours between the trap being set and our leaving. That not even a jackal had nibbled at this free meal was very surprising, but the experts put this down to the fact that the bait was too tainted with human smell. I'm sure the experiment will be repeated next time Matt is up there.

In any event, we left Cape Town for the farm early on the Saturday and, via stops for breakfast and to change vehicles, we reached our destination by lunchtime. It's roughly between Prince Albert and Beaufort West for those of you who are interested, about 20 km of dirt track off the Oudtshoorn/Beaufort West highway, and covers a large area of varied landscape, with hills, ridges, plains, river beds (mostly dry, apart from the odd flash flood as we had experienced during our visit in November) and gorges.

The best way to get around the farm, given the terrain and distance involved, is by quad bike, a fabulous mode of transport that I had underestimated before encountering them 5 months' ago. I had also underestimated the physical effort involved in riding them: it took several near-encounters with thorn bushes before I got the hang of the steering! Of course, I needed a refresher course this time, but, before too long, I'd found my quad bike legs (if that's the appropriate analogy). To my delight, we had a lengthy trip out late on the Monday afternoon (the Tuesday was a public holiday in SA, so most people were taking the Monday as holiday too). We probably covered a little over 20 km, covering the ground from the farmhouse to the far boundary, which we had not been able to do in November, and managing to see a variety of animals, including eland, wildebeast, steenbuck, zebra and the neighbour's four giraffe, nicely silhouetted on the skyline. The landscape was stunning, with clear views of the mountains to the north and to the south.

Although the farm does not yet have electricity (there is a generator but it is not run all the time), we were not exactly slumming it. Both Penny and Ali (the vet's wife) are excellent cooks, and the men experts with the braai. We ate like kings, feasting on a wide range of meat, fish and vegetable dishes all set out on the table on the stoep, and the alcohol flowed commensurately. Particular highlights were, for me, the grilled yellow-tail, and, for the carnivores, the fillet steak with mushroom and oyster sauce! Another tough day in Africa!

The farm is set up to be able to deal with crowds and on the Saturday night, I took advantage of the oodles of bedding to sleep outside without the need to disturb my own bed. It was distractingly beautiful. The moon was rising around 11 pm during our stay, and the stars before it did so were stunning, the Milky Way a clear slash of starry dust across the sky, with the occasional shooting star to hypnotise me. I wish I could say I slept well: I didn't - it was too tempting to lie awake and star-gaze. Living in cities for so much of my life means that I really appreciate the blackness of a country night and the resultant clarity of the stars.

By 6 am on the Tuesday morning, we were en route back to Cape Town: my companions to work, college, school, etc., and myself to a late evening flight back to London and temperatures 30+ degrees colder than those to which I had become accustomed....

All in all, I can safely say that two weeks in South Africa has relaxed and revived me, and I now feel better placed to start the work involved in researching the countless voluntary work opportunities that are out there.....

More anon.

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Photos

Chapman's Peak
view of Chapman's Peak from Noordhoek

Dassies
SOOO.... cute!

Red-winged starlings
Could you refuse this guy?

Quad biking
Not quite the City lawyer any more...

Steenbuck
[full credit to Matthew van Zyl for this shot]

Giraffe
[full credit to Matthew van Zyl for this shot]

Eland
[full credit to Matthew van Zyl for this shot]

Comments

[Colleen Vossler]

Outstanding!
Elizabeth, your depiction of this trip is stunning. I felt as though I were there with you. Glad to hear the illnesses seem to be in the past and that you were able to suitably relax. All is well on this side of the pond! I'm looking forward to another entry. Colleen