Long Street, a street on the perpetual brink of carnival, has become like its own village. Old buildings have been preserved, restored and brightened.
Long Street, in the heart of Cape Town, has the same wild magic as some of the famous lanes of the French Quarter in New Orleans. The huge Jack Daniel’s bourbon billboard looming down is quite at home here.
We find our way to 255 Long Street, an upstairs affair called Carnival Court. At the top of a nearly vertical flight of stairs sits young Ntombi, who tells us where to park our bakkie safely away from the little prying fingers of the street children.
Out on the street, we meet the guardian of the block. The lean and soft-spoken Shamiel (Sam) Samson is a former Navy man and he looks the part.
“Welcome to my place,” he says earnestly. “There is no crime on my block. I sort things out myself.”
“What about the infamous street children?” we ask.
“They’re like my very own kids.’’
Reassured, we drag our luggage up the stairs to our room. En route, a young German backpacker mistakes me for the manager and asks me some questions I cannot answer. Room no. 3 looks out over an alley, a barbed-wire rooftop (an anti-streetkid device) and a slice of Long Street. The clean room is equipped with basic bed, desk, chair and cupboard.
On our floor there is a Foosball table, a multi-lingual library of backpacker’s tattered literature (take one, leave one), the Zanzi Bar where tattooed youngsters play pool beside an old fireplace and photographs of street children everywhere.
The best feature of Carnival Court, the place that brings me right back to the Café Royal in Old New Orleans, is the filigreed metal balcony, which runs almost the full length of the block. From here you can view Long Street in all its colour and intensity, in good company and with something cold to hand.
Charl Henning is the young night manager.
“The street has changed. Backpackers, bookshops and breakfast places have arrived,” he says.
Angela Church, an attractive 22-year-old serving drinks at the Zanzi Bar, is a neighbourhood connoisseur.
“Long Street is a wild card. All kinds of people walk down this street. I often see a guy who dresses up in seventeenth-century clothes, complete with ruffled shirt and velvet coat. There’s another fellow who comes around here – he’s terribly well read but homeless.”
Angela, a media, literature and film student at the University of Cape Town, is doing a special study on street people.
“Humans are human because of their interaction with other people. But street people are not seen in that context.”
I venture out onto the balcony of the Zanzi Bar with my beer.
“Look!” Jules urges, pointing at the street below.
He is unmistakably Maasai. Tall, impossibly thin, like a long-legged heron on a mission, braided hair, shukka (tartan tribal cloth) over the shoulders, fly whisk and milk gourd to hand, thousand-miler sandals on narrow feet. He comes loping down through the traffic on Long Street, eating up the road with Serengeti strides.
We find out later that the Warrior of Long Street is Miyere Miyandazi, who has walked all the way from a village near Lake Naivasha in Kenya to Cape Town to protest against human rights abuses of his tribe and the general erosion of the Maasai culture.
Everyone in Cape Town seems to know a little something about Miyere. He’s been spotted in the city and all along the Cape Peninsula. He caused a special sensation down in Kalk Bay outside the Olympia Café, well known for its baguettes and designer coffee. Miyere stood on one leg for hours (it seemed like days to the customers) outside the café, simply staring intently in through the plate glass window. Putting the chills on the breakfast club inside.
The Bo-Kaap, they say, has a tradition of brightly coloured homes because the various artisans who lived in them hundreds of years ago advertised their professions by the colours they painted their walls.
Waking up in the Bo-Kaap.
“And there’s a cow he visits regularly,” says Angela Church from behind the counter at the Zanzi Bar. “It’s somewhere up on Signal Hill.”
We go on a bookshop safari that takes in eight rather noble establishments on Long Street. Jules and I have to make constant stops at Room no. 3 to off-load our new second-hand purchases, and we can sense that the book vendors of Long Street are happy with our patronage.
At Select Books up near our neck of the woods, we meet David McLennan, also known as “Mr Book Man” by the street children.
“They know everything about this street,” he says. “A few months ago we had a problem with the plumbing out back. We needed a long pipe to clear the blockage, but had no idea where to get one quickly. I asked the street kids for help and within minutes they were back with the perfect tool.”
After two days the book dealers of Long Street have become friends. They start giving us some of their books and magazines for free. It feels like we’ve stumbled into a village in the middle of a big city.
The next morning, Jules and I go on a dawn patrol through Bo-Kaap, past the sherbet-coloured homes as the suburb wakes up and packs its children off to school for the day. Bergies (street people) sit nursing their heads on the sidewalk, offering us some of their Cape Calypso Late Harvest for R10 a sip.
Further along, a Palestinian flag snaps in the early morning breeze. The owner of the house says, “We’ve got guests from the Gaza Strip,” and goes back inside to chivvy her children along.
I am starved and say so. We both agree on greasy samosas for breakfast. The man at the Biesmiellah Café says to wait twenty minutes and then he’ll feed us the best samosas in town. They are truly worth the trouble.
At the Rose Corner Café the lady behind the counter sells us a Muslim cookbook called Boeka Treats (snacks to break the Ramadan fast with) and we return to Long Street for more breakfast of the pepper-steak variety at the Halaal Pie Corner.
We sneak briefly down past St George’s Cathedral to visit the flower sellers of Adderley Street. Jean Solomons, who has been flogging flowers here for forty years in the family tradition, confesses to selling roses to “naughty men” on Fridays.
“On Mondays, I sell to the women, who like to take flowers to work.”
We buy a lovely mix of blooms and present them to Ntombi and Co. back at Carnival Court, where New Orleans lives on in Africa. – Chris
After two days the book dealers of Long Street have become friends. It feels like we’ve stumbled into a village in the middle of a big city.
Left The flower sellers of Adderley Street are an institution in Cape Town.
Right Long Street craft sellers display wares from all over the African continent.
Next spread The V&A Waterfront, one of South Africa’s top tourism attractions.
Who knows why a small group of African penguins decided to colonise the beaches at Simon’s Town in the early 1980s?
They usually prefer islands. But maybe they recognised promising real estate when they saw it. Or maybe they thought they’d feel right at home with the smart uniforms they might have spotted around the historic naval base.
Most people, even penguin experts, are mystified.
One of the Simon’s Town residents, though, has a sneaking suspicion it may be his fault.
“Back in the late seventies I took in a few penguins that were oiled in False Bay. I tried to return them to Robben Island, but they kept swimming back. I think I even recognised some of the first ones that settled at Boulders Beach,” grins Marton Berg, a shipwright who has just finished working on an ocean-going yacht that stands in his back yard.
Perhaps it’s a case of cartoon overload, but as we sit on the rocks down at Boulders Beach, the clans of African penguins hopping about the place look like short little waiters just before opening time at an open-air beachfront restaurant. You could fix a dishcloth onto their slopey little shoulders, perhaps a sling bag about their necks for tips. The Special of the Day could be displayed (in washable ink, of course) on their white chests and you could just tick off what you wanted. The loveable African (formerly Jackass) Penguin. Just don’t expect them to serve you the Catch of the Day without taking a small bite out of your dish.
Before Boulders Beach and its 4 000 penguins were made part of the Table Mountain National Park, the penguins had their very own champion – Hendrik “Van the Penguin Man” van der Merwe.
“One day I saw some people throwing stones at a penguin on the beach. I chased them off, threw a shirt over the injured bird and took it to a vet. Its leg was broken. From that day, I was a part of the penguin world. I put on a uniform and went to work every day, looking after the penguins.”
Van, who spent most of his life as a navy man, became world famous as the protector of the penguins on Boulders Beach.
“I had one penguin that always used to stand next to me, wherever I went,” he said. “One day I was talking to a little girl and I told the penguin to take her for a walk. The penguin took her hand in his beak, very gently, and off they strolled down the beach. After about 100 metres, he turned around and brought her back.
Only knee-high, the penguins attract visitors from all over the world, delighted at this chance of swimming and sunbathing with urban seabirds.
“I even told a penguin to peck someone once,” he said, with a shamefaced grin, “and it did.”
He showed us his “penguin scars”.
“Here, look. One penguin even managed to break my wrist bone. He karate-chopped me with a flipper.”
His upper torso was full of peck scars, where anxious, invariably oil-polluted penguins had attacked him in pure panic while he was busy rescuing them.
Once he rescued 150 penguins after an oil spill, cleaned them up at his home and drove them off in his Toyota Corolla to be washed and rehabilitated.
“When I changed gears, I had to move a penguin out of the way. They were under my brake pedals, on my shoulders and staring out of all the windows.”
Van spent thousands of rands of his own money on sick or oiled penguins. They took over his flat, monopolised his bathroom and walked all over his cat. But he forgave them, because he loved them.
“They were my babies. My wife and I looked after them.”
Tourists, of course, asked him incessant questions. Even scientists learnt from his close observation of the penguins, Van boasted.
He compiled penguin information literature for them, and would sometimes wax lyrical on the subject.
“I wish I could manage to show how exactly like men and women penguins are,” he wrote in one booklet. “Again and again, as I sat on a rock watching this bathing parade, I was reminded of familiar scenes at home. All the best-known seaside types were there: the nervous mothers who won’t let their children wander out of sight; the confident mothers who believe in letting children fend for themselves while they have a well-earned holiday; the bully who can’t walk along the sands without barging into everybody else; the rather stout party whose ideal holiday is a quiet nap on the sands; the jolly soul who seems to cry, ‘Come along everybody, let’s have some fun!’”
South African National Parks took over the Boulders Beach area and Van found himself being eased out of the job he had created.
“I didn’t need a degree to tell when a penguin was sick or well. I also knew just how to pick them up. They would just relax in my arms,” he said. “I loved my years at Boulders. I still remember things like how the penguins ran up the beach one day when a killer whale came in close. I admire the fact that they mate for life – did you know that a penguin pines away if its partner dies?” – Julie
The Boulders at Simon’s Town, home of the African penguin.
Thousands of visitors every year come to see Africa’s only penguin species.
“I admire the fact that they mate for life – did you know that a penguin pines away if its partner dies?”
Penguins are charming, but they have razor sharp beaks.
The raid on the Cape Point surfers begins innocently enough. Boss Baboon sidles up to the convoy of beat-up old surfer cars, picks one and jumps on the roof rack. In fact, he’s sitting on a surfboard. He gazes out at the Atlantic Ocean swells, the south-easter blowing his hair back into a fashionable wave that billows around a thoughtful, soul-searching face. What kind of a wave series is happening out there today? How about the Meaning of the Universe? And where does that puzzling, enticing aroma of chocolate and hazelnut come from? What is this itch between my toes?
Boss Baboon is the leader of the Cape Point Chacma gang, some of the smartest primates in existence. Currently, they have infiltrated a convoy of young human surfers and are casing the joint, so to speak.
Ah ha. One thoughtless youngster, possibly a little high on life and Indian hemp, leaves his Beetle unattended for a few seconds. That’s all Boss Baboon and his First Mate need. Quick as striking snakes (now don’t say “snake” too loudly around a baboon), they dart into the little car and puff themselves up to twice their size, baring their fangs and barking loud warnings to the world at large.
With the astounded surfers at bay, the two fearsome raiders grab what they came for and make a break for it. By the seaside First Mate enjoys a full loaf of sliced whole-wheat bread in a plastic bag. Surfer Boss has a jar of tasty Nutella chocolate ’n hazelnut mix (for the munchies, of course); he cracks the top off and slurps the lot down as he sits on the rocks above the road.
False Bay baboons are the bane of security companies – 80 per cent of their call-outs are for primate break-ins. The baboons have learnt to open fridge doors and ovens with panache. They’ve learnt to deal with closed doors in teams – one baboon hanging from the handle and another taking a flying leap at it.
Freya Stennett, who runs Ticklemouse Country Fare in Pringle Bay, recalls how she, her husband and son-in-law were once packing and labelling freshly baked rusks around a table one day, intent on their task.
“My son-in-law Luther was passing the packages to his left once they were labelled. For some reason we looked up, only to see this huge baboon quietly taking each parcel from him, peeling off a rusk to stuff in his mouth, and then passing it onto an almighty pile of packets, each a rusk short.”
Baboons can be infuriating beasts, and the Cape Peninsula and False Bay villages have long taken the brunt of their thieving ways. French explorer François Le Vaillant concluded in the late 1700s that they were “intractable, lascivious, gluttonous, thievish, revengeful and passionate” and added that if they had not yet learnt the art of lying, it was only because they did not choose to talk.
Jenni Trethowan of Kommetjie, though, is turning the problematic issue of fearless, clever baboon raiders into a tourism and job-creation asset.
In 2001 she founded Baboon Matters, an organisation that helps keep baboons away from urban areas, and allows people to walk with them – an extraordinary experience.
We join the Oosthuizen family from Hout Bay for a walk with the 34-strong Da Gama Park troop.
The baboons have spent the night on top of the naval flats. As the humans head off to work, the baboons begin moving as a troop up into the fynbos-covered Black Hill range within the Da Gama section of the Table Mountain National Park. Behind them, moving slowly and making a monotonous low call the baboons instantly recognised as a kind of “move along” sound, are Enoch Sityi and Vuyisile Mayedwa, the baboon monitors who keep the baboons out of urban areas during the day. The animals amble along, showing no fear.
Not all of the baboons are named, only the “role-players” and a few others with distinctive features, explains Jenni.
Apart from Eric, the leader, and William, the would-be usurper, there are young Anakin, with his intense stare; curious, non-confrontational Quizzicat; Shannon, with her dog-bite scar above her eye; and Nosketi. Enoch and Vuyisile had given him his name. Nosketi means “hen-pecked husband” in Xhosa – despite his immense size and perfect physique, Nosketi is the first to duck out of any confrontation.
It is only when Shannon strolls past me that I realise what a special experience this is. The baboon is completely unafraid. Further up, a young mother shows her tiny rubber-faced child how to pluck sour figs to eat.
Young Noelle and her friend Gabriella Leighton sit down and Shannon the baboon peers quizzically at the two girls under her heavy brows.
There is a moment, I am sure I see it, of mutual recognition and regard.
It would be the easiest thing for Noelle to reach out and touch a baboon, but Jenni actively discourages that. It’s a step too far.
“Baboons read humans and their intentions very well. But if they see no threat, they relax,” adds Jenni.
She and nine monitors are all shareholders in Baboon Matters, and they watch over three troops, including this one – a total of about a hundred baboons.
If the baboons were not kept away from the suburbs by the monitors, they would spend their entire days trying to raid houses. The energy in one loaf of bread is equal to the calories they would gain from an entire day of foraging in the wild.
Close encounters with Peninsula baboons are now on the Western Cape tourism menu.
Left A Table Mountain National Park “surfer baboon” looks out for unguarded food.
Right Some scientists believe that False Bay’s baboons are more intelligent than others because their diet, high in seafood, has brainpower-boosting fatty acids.
intractable, lascivious, gluttonous, thievish, revengeful and passionate
Unafraid, a mother and baby eat sour figs only metres away from tourists.
So the rewards are great for a successful raid, but baboons are astute when it comes to weighing up energy needs.
“If they’re far enough away from suburbs, it would waste energy to go all the way back,” says Jenni. “So they concentrate on the 150 plants and bulbs, scorpions, grasshoppers and beetles that make up their normal diet.”
Most of the visitors Jenni has taken on these baboon walks through the fynbos are locals, but there are a growing number of foreign visitors. One, a British journalist, was something of a specialist on primate experiences, and had been with chimpanzees, highland and lowland gorillas in central Africa, and orang-utans in Borneo. She told Jenni she wasn’t expecting much from the walk, but afterwards babbled that it was the best primate experience she’d had, bar that with mountain gorillas.
As the baboons cross a small stream and amble further into the Table Mountain National Park, we chat to the monitors. Enoch comes from Alice in the Eastern Cape, and Vuyisile from Adelaide. Both live in nearby Masiphumelele.
Enoch says he started doing this job “because one day I want my sons to see baboons”.
The funniest thing, they say, is that while they spend their lives slow-chasing the baboons away from civilisation, at five p.m. the tables are turned. The baboons make a special “going away” sound, a soft ohohohoh, and gently chase the monitors back down the hill to Simon’s Town.
“It’s hilarious to see,” says Jenni later. “It’s as if the baboons start looking at their watches and saying ‘Hey, isn’t it your knock-off time now?’.”
In August 2006, Jenni was hospitalised with pesticide poisoning after trying to save three baboons that had come into contact with the banned pesticide dieldrin. But she remains undaunted. – Julie
The Pelagus crew are veterans of anti-poaching patrols.
Jules and I have arranged to spend a morning on the Pelagus, a sleek seven-metre offshore patrol boat run by the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism’s (DEAT) marine and coastal division. These are the guys who make sure there will be enough to eat from the sea today – and tomorrow. By all accounts, it looks like an impossible job because of the demand – both local and foreign – on South African wild fish stocks around the coast. Everyone, it seems, has jumped into a fishing trawler and is steaming towards “South Africa’s teeming seas”, as National Geographic magazine put it.
The day’s mission is to be a “visible policing presence”, to check on fishing permits and to keep a sharp look out for perlemoen (abalone) poachers and shark fin hunters.
I had never, in the past, been able to get excited about a perlemoen, simply because I’d never tasted one. To me, they were slimy ashtray fillings (the shells make great soap dishes and ashtrays and button pots) but to more than a billion Chinese people they are “coveted cuisine”, prized aphrodisiacs, wedding-table gifts and such.
Like the feisty lobster, the abalone used to be poor folks’ food. The wandering Strandloper communities ate them 6 000 years ago and left shell middens all along the coast. In those days abalone were bigger than Texas steaks. Today, the Chinese market likes them bite-sized and box-shaped, in neat little portions for prestige events.
And although South Africa raced into the New Millennium on the tracks of sinking interest rates and unprecedented economic growth, it was still almost impossible for the lower-income groups of the country (meaning most of its citizens) to climb on that particular gravy train and benefit from it.
So, like the Namaqualanders and their diamonds, the people of the southern coastline poach abalone day and night and sell them on to the massive Chinese market. The natural stocks of perlemoen have begun to disappear. And I hadn’t even tasted one yet.
The Pelagus pulls up to the quay and Captain George Solomons, a kindly, solid-looking man with searching eyes, welcomes us on board.
Joining us on the Pelagus is the DEAT marine inspector, Thembiso “Osborne” Thela. The eight crew members, all dressed in orange overalls, are shy, mostly middle-aged gents who have been crewing together for years.
The captain leaves us in the able hands of Chief Engineer Billy Arnold, a nuggety man from Port Elizabeth.
“Is this a dangerous job?” I ask.
“Being linked to law enforcement makes us a target,” he says. “They’ve thrown stones at me, they’ve mugged me and they’ve shot at me. But we’re not afraid of these people. We’re doing a great job.
“My family are far away,” Billy continues. “Even so, I once got a panic call from my wife to say a group of perlemoen poachers were out on my lawn one day, calmly having a braai.”
It was more than a clear warning. We know where you live.
Ishmael Hendriks, one of the veterans manning the Pelagus.
Left Jerome Fouten (in the Balaclava) and Marine and Coastal Management inspector Thembiso “Osborne” Thela head off to tackle possible abalone poachers.
Right The fishermen hold up their catch for us to admire.
China spends so much cash on the perlemoen that the alpha poachers have the best boats, the finest equipment and the biggest engines around. They take cellphones underwater in plastic bags and send each other text messages when boats such as the Pelagus approach – then they simply ditch the perlemoen and escape.
“They send spies to come and see what equipment you’ve got – so they can get faster boats,” Billy says.
This is particularly irksome to the on-board engineer, who takes great pride in maintaining the twin 500-hp Rolls-Royce engines of the Pelagus.
Jerome Fouten, the Second Engineer, skippers the on-board hunter vessel, an inflatable dinghy. When they chase a suspect boat, it’s usually Jerome and the DEAT inspector who are at the sharp end of the quest.
“I’m not armed and I don’t get to wear a bullet-proof jacket,” Jerome says. “I tell the poachers I’m just the taxi driver; they mustn’t shoot at me. Obviously, they don’t listen.”
Suddenly, there is action. Two small boats have been spotted, one of them “suspicious” because it has immediately made a run for it. The dinghy is winched down in a flash. Jerome and Osborne hop in. Jerome pulls a blue Balaclava over his head, immediately transforming himself into a rather ominous, anonymous person. They speed off in pursuit of the running boat. We go below deck to visit the captain.
“It’s not all cowboys and crooks out here,” George says. “Two weeks ago, we took a few divers out to release a whale that got tangled in crayfishing ropes. When you see a thing like that, you really understand that whales are mammals – they’re not just big fish.
“After we freed it, the whale went down and came up again and slapped the sea with its tail before swimming off. I swear, it was saying ‘Thank you’.”
Jerome and Osborne are back. The suspects have escaped.
We approach Simon’s Town, and on the flanks of the mountain we can see some really wealthy homes.
“These people,” says Billy, his voice laced with more than a tinge of disgust. “Some nights, we moor here. And then they complain when we switch on anything more than navigation lights. It seems the rich find our little cabin lights very disturbing. They think they own everything.”
This left me with subversive thoughts. Billy and his mates get shot at for protecting our natural resources. They often have to arrest members of their own community for poaching – people who don’t see much of an alternative way to earn money. And then the rich folks on the hillside – who should be grateful beyond measure – want them to dim their cabin lights. Preferably disappear after sundown. Hmm.
The next morning we hear some distressing news. A scuba diver went missing off Miller’s Point near Simon’s Town the day before. He had apparently run out of oxygen while diving at 5 metres down. Had he been left behind by a fleeing poacher boat? No one can say. But the three bags of perlemoen found near the dive site seem to tell their own story. – Chris
Marine and Coastal Management officials are the guardians of South Africa’s sealife.
Postcard-perfect – Kalk Bay wakes up to another Cape morning.
There’s something strangely comforting about this sensation. It’s just before dawn, the Cape weather’s gone crook on me, my toes are wriggling in the summer sands and I’m waiting for the first light to hit the famous multicoloured “bathing boxes” of Muizenberg Beach. I wish I’d bought an apartment here, back in the days when they were practically giving them away. Sigh. Too late now. Muizenberg’s on the hop again.
We’re testing the Cape Point route for tourists, beginning in False Bay so we can work with the rising sun. Unfortunately, since I’m in the fickle Cape, I’m working more with the rising rainclouds. But we’re dressed for all weathers – as you have to, down here – and I’m delighting in childhood memories of just being on a beach. Yes, I was part of the bucket-and-spade brigade. Got my bum warmed for wandering off once too often, getting lost in the Christmas crowd of sunbathers and skin-rotisseries. Back in the days when melanoma was just a state of mind.
At Kalk Bay harbour, we park and watch the men hanging up salted snoek to dry. Along the harbour wall, the kelp gulls face away from the wind, keeping half an eye on the luck of the lone fisherman at the end of the breakwater. The waves suck and hiss at the wall, as if plotting mischief.
The famous Brass Bell restaurant, we note in passing, is still going strong. Must come back here with friends for a Sunday lunch that stretches into the dusk. But it’s breakfast time, and we’re off to Bertha’s in Simon’s Town.
The famous multi-hued “bathing boxes” of Muizenberg.
Along the harbour wall, the kelp gulls face away from the wind, keeping half an eye on the luck of the lone fisherman at the end of the breakwater.
The walk is worth the view from the Cape Point lighthouse.
We leave the delightfully bohemian Kalk Bay and pass through Fish Hoek as the crook of the peninsula’s finger curves comfortably around these towns, offering protection from the howling south easter that sometimes descends on Cape Town in the summer.
We order an “Evil–Delicious”, which is the road writer’s term for high-calorie breakfast involving, in this case, French toast with bacon and cheddar and lots of coffee.
“Look at it this way,” I say to Jules as the mouth begins to water in anticipation. “If we’d come a little later, we’d have been eating something slimming and vegetarian up at the Tibetan Tea House.”
True enough. We’ve been there before and had a good – albeit spiritually cleansing – time.
While breakfast is being prepared, we wander up the stairs to Jubilee Square at the back of Bertha’s to visit the statue of Able Seaman Just Nuisance, the most famous military dog of South Africa. Simon’s Town is navy to the core, and a walk down its Historic Mile of buildings is the perfect settler after that infamous French toast breakfast.
After visiting our favourite penguins at Boulders Beach, we follow the coastal road down to Cape Point, as great sweeps of fynbos shelter in rocky valleys overlooking the stormy sea.
We continue, and get lost in a macro world of fynbos. At the Buffelsfontein Info Office, we buy all manner of background books on the Cape Floral Kingdom and copy down a William Blake quotation on a poster:
To see a World in a grain of sand
And a Heaven in a wild flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
Along the stormy coastline we drive, past places with exciting names such as Hell’s Gate, The Cauldron, Muishondbaai and Platboombaai.
At Cape Point we take a brisk walk to the top of the promontory to gaze upon that vista of turbulent sea and to know that the gusts of fresh air buffeting our faces come straight from “the freezer” – the Southern Ocean and, ultimately, Antarctica.
We lunch at the Two Oceans restaurant, just a couple of herb focaccias with chicken mayonnaise and Cokes, and leave the beautiful park for some Zimbabwean and Malawian sculpture shopping at an enormous roadside stall.
The first little town we come to on the Atlantic side of this trip is Scarborough, a village of hippies, yuppies, golden-oldies, cliffs and milkwood. There is also a film crew and its attendant trucks and the catering people sitting around waiting for the “chow call”. You can always be assured of running into some kind of film production out here – the route is just too beautiful to be ignored by the lens.
We pause at the hamlet of Misty Cliffs and remember that a southern right whale carcass was once washed up here. Its skeleton now resides at the uShaka Marine World in Durban.
Past Kommetjie, we encounter the unlikely sight of camels (20 bucks a ride) at a place called Imhoff’s Gift, where they sell fresh produce and home-baked cakes. We pass the Cape Point vineyards and then flop down on Noordhoek Beach and watch the horse riders far in the distance. It seems such a wild beach – just enormous. We see the hoofmarks where the horses have galloped along the hard, silken, aching white beach sand. We see little midget dunes where daisies have taken hold. Some excited dogs cautiously crabwalk over to sniff at us before dancing off back to their masters. A seagull passes overhead and politely drops a turd on my wife’s shirt. She’s quite philosophical about it all.
“Oh well,” she says. “Now we’ll have to go shopping in Hout Bay, won’t we?”
Chapman’s Peak drive is classically beautiful and shortly we find ourselves in the fashionable town of Hout Bay looking for some clean clobber for Julie. We drive on to Llandudno Beach and pass the infamous Sandy Bay, where nudists have chosen to display themselves since the 1960s, the era of Free Love and sand on your bum. Long-time locals will tell you about the days when apartheidera policemen used to lie up in the rocks with binoculars, watching for a flash of illegal flesh – a nice job if you could get it ...
Sunset is a cocktail on the porch of The Bay Hotel in front of one of the sexiest beaches on the planet – Camps Bay. While the bucket-and-spade brigade is out on the sand, the Camps Bay Kittens parade in their tangas and the Bling Bling Cowboys prowl the sidewalk coffee bars. It’s a slice of South Beach, Miami, and it’s all fun. – Chris
The Cape Peninsula’s spectacular geography makes it South Africa’s most desired place to live.
Cape Town – the Mother City.
Zimbabwean art for sale along the Cape Peninsula drive.
Cape Town’s beaches are a fine reason to go south for the European winter.
