Checking Off the To-Do List

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Sunday, July 27, 2008, 10:55 AM

DISCLAIMER: I know, I know, it’s been a while since I last wrote, so in all of your best interests, I will split up the entries instead of giving you one fat 60-pager. Enjoy ☺

So picking up where I left off, last Thursday the 10th: I felt moderately better thanks to the lifesaving effects of the hard-won antibiotics and felt up to a little cultural jaunt. So I brought my laundry to the little laundromat down the street (cultural experience #1--the ladies there speak 9 parts Xhosa and 1 part English. Also, for the record, that was only my second load of laundry since I’ve gotten here…my bad) and then headed up the block to the South African Jewish Museum. This museum (cultural experience #2) was my favorite SA museum by far. Even though it sounds like a bizarre and slightly too specific topic to dedicate an entire museum to, it was really well done, and it nicely highlighted the Jewish impact on South African culture and economy. Isaac Kaplan, a famous, Jewish business man, collected Japanese art, especially Netsuke, and the security guard gave me a tour of the exhibit. Yes, the security guard. He dedicated his time to becoming a tour guide even though it was clearly not in his security guard job description. It was fantastic.

Next was the Holocaust Centre, right across the courtyard, that was also very informative, but I had to rush through more than I would have liked (I can hear my mom now, “Anne, go back and take your time!”) because I had a lunch date with Katie and Austin at Nando’s. It’s a S. African chain of fast-food-esque chicken restaurants, and is Katie’s absolute “favorite!” (I have found that many, many S. African things are her “favorite!”). So needless to say, Austin and I were easily persuaded to join her for a chicken burger with “Hot” peri-peri sauce (a traditional South African chilli) and chips (French fries). They didn’t turn out to be my absolute favorite, but good nonetheless.

Keeping with my cultural theme for the day, #3 ended up being the Slave Lodge- a large building turned museum that had previously been used to house city. It had many exhibits, some of which related to the history of slavery in South Africa (did you know that most S. African slaves came from India, Indonesia, and East Africa?), which was logical, but other exhibits, like snapshot biographies of everyday African women and an exhibit on Egyptian history, which weren’t so logical. I guess the curators were banking on variety to keep the museum-goers happy. Not bad, in all ☺.

When Friday rolled around, I was feeling great and ready to get back to work. Little did I know that our car was somewhere around Mossel Bay at the time…one of the girls we carpool with left Thursday evening for an *extended* weekend Garden Route trip. So if I wanted to get to work, I’d have to pay for a cab (~R 70 each way), plus getting to Sarah Fox in the afternoon. I decided, after much deliberation and a little help from Rene (the doctor I work with who told Courtney and Bobbijo “Don’t let Anne come back until Monday!”), that the trek was not worth it. Even though I had lots of work to do, FINE, I’d go back to work on Monday.

With that decision made, I had plenty of others to make about my plans for the day off. Why not hike? So I called Austin who works right down the street (and is also famous for getting half days on short notice) and climbed Lionshead. For real this time. I mean, we ACTUALLY made it to the top. A nice Excite taxi driver brought us to the correct trailhead, and we made it to the top in just over an hour. The beautiful weather, an absailer circling over our heads throughout our climb, and the “you-cannot-sue-the-park-if-you-injure yourself” type of trails (complete with chains to pull yourself up the rocks) made the hike perfect. As did the view from the top, from where we saw our miniscule apartment building down in City Bowl and a bird’s eye view of Robben Island (where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 18 years!). On the descent, I met a student from the University of Tennessee, only because of the fact that I was wearing my Tennessee Tennis t-shirt I picked up at the Destination Imagination Global Finals (Shout out to all my DIers ☺).

Don’t laugh, but I actually paid my daily visit to Virgin Active after the hike (mostly for the shower and sauna to be honest, haha). My gym membership, in actuality, had expired on July 5th, but I’m still milking the “Miss Anne Barnard is not a 60-year-old Mr. Thomas Anthony Murray” ID card complication (see June 27th’s entry if you have no idea what this is). They’ve been “working on the issue” for three weeks now, so I figure I might as well benefit from their procrastination skills, thus getting even more work-out time for my money ☺.

A fun group of girls and I had dinner down at the water front--a cozy, warm (quite a commodity around here in the winter!) restaurant called Ferryman’s Tavern. I had a great vegetarian dish- half a butternut squash with grilled vegetables and cheese baked until crispy and delicious. It was HUGE so I was able to doggy-bag half of it for lunch at the hospital on Monday. For dessert (which we hardly ever get), Steph, Mal, and I tried the legendary Malva pudding. It’s a traditional Afrikaans apricot cake, served warm, with caramel and ice cream. It’s also one of my new favorite things.

Saturday dawned bright and beautiful, which coincided perfectly with our Stellenbosch and Franschhoek travel plans. Mal and I woke up early to grocery shop at the brand new Fruit and Veg City two blocks up the street and stocked our respective cabinets and fridge shelves with muesli (delicious granola-like cereal), Cape Fruit yogurt, Naartjies (Clementine-esque oranges), perfect snack-sized apples, beets, etc, etc. We stopped in Mugged to use the internet (and I found out that the rental car company FINALLY released the extra $280 charge they had on my credit card…it was a great day ALREADY). Mal and I split the famous Mugged blueberry muffin for breakfast (not the chocolate, since it WAS 9 in the morning), then headed out with Steph and Charleigh on the N2 highway, direct shot to Stellenbosch.

As we drove, we thanked the weather for keeping with its warm-and-beautiful trend and admired the gorgeous wine country scenery. The road brought us first to the Spier wine estate, and although it seemed very ritzy and high class, the rest of the day showed us that this pristine management is par for the course in the South African wine business. (Every vineyard we saw that day was beautiful, nicely groomed, and well-staffed). We started off our day with wine tasting for R10, talked with the bar tender (and found out that it’s possible to bring FOUR bottles of wine with you back to the States, which Mal has since proven correct), and explored the grounds which are home to more than just grapes. We were able to see a pregnant (!) mother cheetah and several owls as part of Spier’s cheetah and eagle outreach program. A river crosses through the property as well, and we stood on the bridge looking out to the snow-covered mountains in the distance (the snowfall was big news in Cape Town—one of my friends, Alicia, an intern photographer for the Cape Times, took a picture of kids playing in that snow…and it made the front page!)

Next stop: a great farmer’s market with many homemade baskets, crafts, food, and free samples ultimately constituting our lunch ☺. We drove from there onto Franschhoek, where they were appropriately celebrating Bastille Day. It was an absolute mob scene (who knew there were so many Frenchmen in South Africa!), and if it wasn’t for the sea of bright red berets, roadside parties, church fairs, barrel rolling competitions, and more wine tasting/buying opportunities, I would have given up on it altogether. Random observation: a couple women were making crepes and selling them as pancakes…at a Bastille Day celebration. Who can follow that logic?

When we started to get hungry again (it doesn’t take us long, haha) we started the return trip, passed a game park with zebras, ostriches, wildebeest, springbok (we think), and easily decided on the same half-price sushi place in Claremont we found early in July. Our enthusiasm was dampened a bit by the realization that management revoked the half price deal and replaced it with a far inferior “R 5 less a plate.” But it was not dampened enough to turn down good sushi, and we enjoyed ourselves immensely anyway (the conveyor belt system for the little color coded plates of sushi never ceases to fascinate me haha). The lure of a good movie, and the prospect of climbing Table Mountain early in the morning convinced us to stay in for the night. We watched Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, a great movie off my list of “must-sees” collated from Steph’s fantastic DVD collection.

8 AM, rise and shine and give God your glory, glory! (For all my Wyo kids ☺) Again, it was PERFECT weather for the world-famous Table Mountain ascent (well, maybe not world famous, but pretty sweet nonetheless). Our group of six (Mal, Rob, Will, Austin, Steph, and I) drove to Kirstenbosch, the national botanical garden at the base of Table Mountain, where two nicely maintained trails lead to the peak. I got in for a discounted rate (thanks to my University of Cape Town student ID), and the group unanimously decided on Skeleton Gorge trail (sounds ominous, huh?) because of the “chains and ladders” necessary for its ascent. Unfortunately, Steph had to turn back before we got to far from the trailhead, but was at least able to walk around the beautiful gardens (making the most of her undiscounted ticket ☺). The rest of us continued on, and managed to lose the trail only once— we ended up on a steep banking overlooking the gorge, and we would never have caught our mistake in time if it wasn’t for the fact that Austin slipped and dislodged a stone, sending it tumbling down into the streambed. A hiker (obviously on the right track) shouted up to tell us that we were dropping rocks (I’m glad none landed on his head!), and Rob called to him in his British accent, “Do you reckon we’re on the correct path?” The resounding “Nope!” was more than enough to convince us to bushwhack our way back down to the stream, where the trail magically reappeared. (We saw that same man climbing down when we were almost at he peak and he commented, “I see you didn’t get lost again!”)

After 3 hours of beautiful, but intense trail up the ravine, many famous false peaks, new flora and (not so much) fauna, and sparse but insightful conversation, we made it to the top (1085 meters, 3560 feet). We were able to see Robben Island and a great view of the city and surroundings. After we got a group photo, a quick snack, and stood on the summit cairn to our hearts content, we divided and conquered. Austin and Will hiked across the Table to the cable car and paid for their descent and taxi ride back to Perspectives. Mal, Rob, and I decided to take the more economical route and hiked down the second of the Kirstenbosch trails, Nursery Ravine. We even made use of our tickets by hiking back through the gardens, which were BEAUTIFUL (and must be even more so in the summer!). We were quite hungry upon our arrival so we stopped by the Kirstenbosch restaurant/deli and ordered a piece of quiche for lunch. We then drove back, got clean, and hung out for a while before heading to Claremont for dinner and a movie.

I’ll admit it, we WERE planning to have sushi for the second night in a row, but unfortunately, we forgot that not much is open on Sunday. We did find a sacrilegious Gourmet Burger, however, right below the mall movie theatre, so all was not lost. Mal and I ordered delicious Mexican burgers (which weren’t quite so Mexican until after we finished it…then we were almost crying it was so spicy!). A banana milkshake helped the healing process, and we then made our way upstairs to the new Pixar movie, Wall-E. It was really cute, but still not as good as Monsters, Inc. ☺

INTERMISSION

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