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Into the Sunset
This was one of the most vibrant sunsets I've ever seen (and we have some good ones in Oklahoma). At Simons Bay. The time at the hospital had come to an end and it was time to head down to Cape Town. Cape Town has the reputation of being much more laid back (some say lazy) and very image conscious. Sounds like the perfect place for a snobby drifter like myself. Cape Town is where it all started for this country. It was originally just a stopping depot, like a 7-11 for the greedy little explorers on their way to pillage spices from the East, but soon the Dutch and British realized that it was a very “strategery” location as a Control Point for the spice route. You can guess the rest of the story: sex, drugs, war, and rock-and-roll.
Now Cape Town is a tourist town. It is squeezed between the mountains and the ocean. Table Mountain is the main mountain for the city, but it actually looks more like a giant mesa as it has a very flat surface. The mountains trail up and down the coast, leaving a thin swatch of land with amazing views and beautiful white sand beaches all the way to the tip.
To save a little money, Jake, Jayson, and I stayed in
The Mean Girls
On our way to see the seals at Hout Bay. a hostel on Long Street (Long St. is the equivalent of Beal St. or the French Quarter, only add an army of junkies whispering spookily, “Cocaaaaaaiiiinnnne” or “Weeeeeeeeeeeed” to you as you pass by them on the way to check your internet, or sing karaoke, or whatever business you might have.). The rest of the group stayed at a B&B with a fancy-smancy breakfast. The hostel was not a dump by any stretch, though, and we even had a separate balcony for tokin’ so that the “unhigh” would not be able to crush our flava. For 13 dollars a night you can’t complain.
Cape Town is a beautiful city. The climate is Mediterranean, so that means typically sunny days with cool nights as the breeze comes in off the ocean. There is so much to do in the area and we got started our first day there. Mission number one: Get Drunk!!!!!!!!!!! I mean, wine tasting tour!!!!!!!!!!! We all piled into a bus, much like the one from our safari, and headed out to the wine lands of Stellenbosch. Our guide, Andreas, was an old-school Afrikaaner. His jovial stories of the settling of the Cape were all dipped in
Downwind from Seal Island
The smell is almost overpowering. Jayson didn't go to the island to "see the frothing maggots" as he calls them. Withstanding the lack of hygiene, the seals were very playful and I enjoy watching the carefree little critters. the slightest bit of bitterness. The older generation of both Afrikaaners and Black Africans seem much less willing to let bygones be bygones than do the younger people I have encountered. Our first wine tasting was at a large commercial type vineyard. The place was beautiful from the outside but turned into a hard-core factory once you passed through the doors. Our guide, high on something, possibly just life, was giddy as a school girl over the mechanical making of wine. As pistons, gears, and bearings screeched and pounded in the background, she giggled her way down into the depths of the place. I can’t say that some romanticism wasn’t taken away, you know, picturing the young and old of the family getting together in a giant wooden crate of grapes and laughing and splashing around bare foot while they crush them down. But I guess steel POUNDING AND SMASHING AND CLANGING the grapes into a pulp is cool too. After the tour is was time to sample the merchandise. We were given 5 tastes at this place and 5 cheeses to eat with the wine. Between the “hints of asparagus”, the “sun rays trapped in a bottle”, and other
Cape of Good Hope
Late afternoon on the Cape. We boulder hopped out into the ocean at low tide. weird ass food references, I started to imagine I was drinking a V8 instead of il vino. But if you surrender yourself to the pomposity of it all, it can be a lot of fun. By 10:30 we had hit our second vineyard with another 6 tastings and suddenly I realized what it was like to tailgate an OU football game. To be absolutely schnockered before noon. To be Anna Nicole Smith. For lunch, we went to Villa Bleu (I think. I know it was very beautiful with long tree-lined roads) and had more tastings (6) then lunch underneath the trees. Should we get a bottle of wine to go with the meal? Sure. I had chicken-something, and we flew or drove or were mailed to the next bar. This one was up on a mountainside. It was Diux Donne (French for gift of the Gods) and it was spectacular. By this time it was about 2pm and I could actually feel the “bottled rays of sunshine” ripening ME on the vine. From the manicured lawn you could see forever into the valley, looking down the long rows of grapes. Hearing glasses clink and chink. The sky was so blue,
it was an amazing afternoon. We sat and soaked and chatted for a couple of hours. It could have ended here but no, let’s get one more in, was the popular cry and so we loaded up and then like bats out of hell, shot down the mountain to one of the few places that stayed open until 5pm. I honestly can’t remember the name of this place, but for the sake of clarity, I’ll give it a name and call it Goat World. It was all about goats. They were climbing in castles at the entrance (I have no idea), the bathrooms were marked “Nanny goats” and “Billy goats”, they were literally everywhere you turned. I expected that the employees might be wearing costumes, but they stopped before that at least. This place offered 8 tastings in larger glasses (with goats on them). I drank, not because the wine was good, cuz it really wasn’t at Goat World, but because it was there and the goats told me to. And then I remember my head feeling so heavy I had to hold it up with my hands. And there was singing, but I didn’t know all the words so
Hout Bay
The view from our boat on the way back from Seal Island. About this time, Clay was leaning up against wind like Kate Winslet from Titanic and got sprayed by a huge wave. Funny stuff, wet t-shirt contest winner. I just said “watermelon” sometimes. And then at about 6, as the sun was setting and shadows started creeping I laid down for one of the best naps of my life, a top-tenner for sure. Woke up refreshed a couple hours later and what did we do, Karaoke, of course, with the requisite 3 dollar margaritas. I know some of you might be rounding up to give me an intervention as I step off the plane about now, but I swear that I do not have a drinking problem. It’s South Africa, the country is one giant “enabler”.
The next day we rented a car and drove down the Cape. There are several picture of this. What I don’t have pictures of is the car the morning after……..with its broken window and missing radio. Of course, the insurance covered everything except tires, windows, and the radio. And so the rampant crime of South Africa became a reality. You see, there are these people, basically glorified hobos with a neon vest on, that take money from you as you park and “watch” the car for you in a very I’m-gonna-make-you-an-offer-you-can’t-refuse sort of way. Well, apparently (I had already gone up
Jackass Penguin
They get thier name from the braying sound they make. Jake, Jayson, and I didn't want to pay to enter the park so we snuck around from the beach and got up close and personal with a couple of the birds. to the hostel) this person first tried to sell crack to Jake before asking for the protection money, so Jake didn’t give him any and our car was broken into. And it’s just reality here, people don’t even hardly react to it anymore. Crime and never having a real feeling of security are the major drawbacks to South Africa. Oh, and the fact that the ATM machine ate my card at the airport thanks to a bank error in the States. But that’s okay, I only had to feel like a bloodsucking leach for 7 days while my bank used the pony express to get me a new card. Between borrowing money from my friends and avoiding my landlord at all cost, I made it. And I guess I should give a shout out to my boy, Colonel Sanders, whose Streetwise Meal at 13.90 rand (about $2.25), made it possible to live on 15 dollars for the last 2 days before my card arrived.
Now back to adventure stuff. My birfday fell while in Cape Town. No day, like the anniversary of my squeezing through a vagina, to go hiking in the rain. We went abseiling, which is basically
Dances with Penguins
Jake actually got into the water and tried to swim with the penguins. Unfortunately they were a little shy and they swim like torpedos and the water was chilleeeeeeee! Here Jake is watching them waddle from a distance. repelling. To get to the 200 ft waterfall that we were to abseil down, we had a good 3-4 mile hike through the mountains. I was pumped, I love scaring the feces out of myself. And on the way, there were several pools that offered cliff jumping. We stopped at one about 1 hour into our hike to do some pool spashing, and I hiked up to the jump barefoot. It was about 35 feet up, looked like 300, but I threw myself off and just as the water was rushing up to me I realized that it looked really dark. When I pop up out of the water, finally, everything is blurry, like a dream. Yea!!!!! I lost both contacts, but luckily, the left one got caught in my eyelash and somehow stayed there. I have a rather strong prescription which means that for the rest of the hike I was basically one-eyed. Binocular vision gives us depth perception. Monocular vision means no depth perception. So I went from the gracefulness of a mountain goat to hiking like Frankenstein hopped up on Hydrocodone. It was trippy, and I was tripping. But still, it was a blast because hiking and
Stalking the little devils
My attempt to sneak up behind them, they waddled double speed to the water. being out in nature is where I like to be. We finally got to the repelling site and then the rain started. It was so cold. I ended up huddling under this spiny bush for about an hour while the guides set up the equipment. It was worth it though. Repelling down the waterfall was the most thrilling thing I have done so far, even more so than the near-death experience I had sky diving in Chickasha when my chute didn’t open properly (that was shear terror which is not the same as a thrill). I slipped and fell into a pool and so the whole way back I was totally soaked which was fine because the rain really picked up and we literally walked back 2 hours in a torrent. And yet all I can remember about the experience is how fun it was, that and the stories of man-eating baboons that the bartender told us when we got back to the lodge after our long hike (and yes, I said bartender, there was more drinking. As the birthday-boy, I was treated to this shot of egg yolk alcohol that plopped down into my stomach like a piece of
The pool
Where I was blinded and I forgot to mention in the text also where my eardrum was busted. hot charcoal.)
And then the last 3 days of my trip, I spent unwinding. Going to cafes in the morning and then the beach in the afternoon. I read and wrote and was able to process exactly what I have experienced these past 5 weeks. I guess it’s time to start being a real American. To finally get a job and pay taxes (until the next time I find the opportunity to blow this popsicle stand, jump a plane, and explore the world some more).
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