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Published: October 4th 2007
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TAKE A LIFT AT THE ROWBOAT
Welcome to our first excursion in the green Daewoo, a slightly rusty and rattle-y little car that we have rented from Sarah’s friend Simon. (Sarah, for purposes of clarity, owns our flatlet.)
We had originally planned to take a short reconnoitering road trip to Paarl. The Cultivaria Festival was taking place there and we wanted to buy tickets for the Soweto String Quartet, and generally get the lay of the land.
Sarah, when we met in the driveway, steered us away from Paarl, at least for the immediate purposes we had in mind.
“Yes, certainly, the Cultivaria Festival on the weekend,” she said, “but today just to see Paarl?” She wrinkled her nose as if she’d just smelled lobster bait.
“Oh it’s really nothing much,” she continued as she turned to get us her road atlas from the house, “It’s just a typical wide South African boulevard-like street with a bunch of stores lining either side. I wouldn’t waste my time. You should go to Chapman’s Peak and Hout’s Bay, and catch sundowners in Fish Hoek.”
When advice is so clear and definitive, and you don’t
MOUNTAIN AND WATER
ON THE COAST SOUTH OF FISH HOEK know Paarl from Pavlov, it’s best to follow along.
Sarah opened the book and sketched out the route with a manicured finger: Through Cape Town to the coast where we were to turn south to Chapman’s Peak, then across the Cape to Fish Hoek where we would stop for drinks at sunset (Sundowners). We’d then wrap it up along False Bay and back north to Stellenbosch.
She did it so casually. It inspired confidence.
Having no deadline, no worries, so we set off with Sarah’s map and vibrated on to the N2 in our little Daewoo.
We made it to the coast, but nowhere near where Sarah’s finger had pointed. We were a little south of the mark, but what harm. The road that pulled us along dipped behind Table Mountain, in a shadowed valley, but delivered us nonetheless to Hout’s Bay, where a fog bank had rolled in off the southern Atlantic and was backed up against the mountains, stalled steel grey and low.
We walked the beach as a strong moisture laden wind blew in off the water. Occasionally a little window opened to reveal a steep cliff, or a ship steaming into
STELLENBOSCH ROBOT
ROBOT IN STELLENBOSCH the harbor. The fog was moving, alive, like stage smoke. Then suddenly, and I do mean suddenly, it dissipated. It was like the old chemistry set experiment where you dropped a drop of Magnesium Tribismuth into an opaque solution of Copper Monobisquick and in an instant the foggy solution turned perfectly clear.
Magic.
And magically we were now standing on the beach with a brilliant blue ocean in front of us, and mountains amphitheatered all around us. A huge pillow of white cloud was still lodged in the valley across the harbor and it was as white as a bleached fish bone.
The road across the Cape from Hout’s Bay to Fish Hoek was closed due to repairs, so we ate fish cakes and mussels and calamari at a restaurant on the beach then decided to simply retrace our steps back home, because that would be the easiest thing to do.
HAHAHAHA.
Somewhere inside Cape Town (I must ask Sarah to point out exactly where to me) we stopped to ask directions at a gas station. Now it must be said that accents here are rather remarkable, and for us Yanks quite often difficult to
LIFT
TAKE A LIFT AT THE ROUNDABOUT understand. When one combines an African language with Afrikaans, then turns it out in English, it makes for a savory stew of rolled R’s and clipped consonants. Not to mention colloquialisms.
“Excuse me my friend, but how do we get to the N2?”
“Oh, you must turn back here and go straight and then take a lift at the rowboat,” said the man at the Engen Station, rolling his R’s with precision. But in fact I could hardly understand a word he said and had merely patched together the few phrases I could understand to form what I hoped were salvageable directions. He was dressed in dirty red coveralls and was wearing a red baseball cap. In the dark he looked too old and weathered, his eyes reddened and watery. “Then go straight again,” he continued, “to the next rowboat and lift again and there will be the N1. Take that to the N2.”
I got back in the car and told Kristen to turn around and take a left at the rowboat.
“What?”
“That’s what he said. He actually said ‘lift,’ but I think he means left at the lights down there. Let’s just try it.”
It worked, almost. We became lost two more times, and it took one more gas station and a taxi driver to put us right.
Another 100-yard visibility fog descended on the N2 as we headed home. Our headlights bounced off the white smoke as we droned on in silence.
“Robot,” Kristen suddenly blurted out, “Take a left at the robot, that’s what they call traffic lights here, I just remembered. It’s not rowboat, it’s robot.”
So class, phonetically speaking, if someone told you take a “lift” in South Africa, you’d hang a Louie. If you were to hear the word “robot,” it would be pronounced like the American word, “rowboat,” with the tongue rattling off the roof of your mouth like our Daewoo when it reaches 90.
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