21 Mar 2009 – Rhodes Memorial

Despite the packing and Fall class scheduling that had to be done last night, about half of the house spent the evening watching Michael Clayton in the Common Room. The electricity had recently been restored to the room (it inexplicably shorts out sometimes), and we sprawled on the square of couches with our computers and papers to multitask as we watched.

At 6am this morning, Kevin and I had decided to run up to the Cecil Rhodes Memorial near UCT. We see the pillared, stone building anytime we glance up at Table Mountain, and it happens to have been the spot from which the wild fire originated a few days ago. We’ve heard that the memorial is worth a visit, perched up on the mountainside about ten minutes walk from campus, and last Spring, a couple of students on the trip had frequently run the distance between Mowbray and the memorial. So realizing that we had more than five hours of sitting in transit ahead of us, Kevin and I opted to run up past UCT this morning at sunrise.

The sky was still too dark to leave at 6am, so we waited about half an hour before hitting the quiet streets of Rondebosch on the familiar route to campus. We weren’t exactly sure where the path to the memorial was located, but we had a vague idea of where to go once we got to UCT. The air was cool and refreshing and the roads eerily empty as we rounded the Commons and approached Main Rd. We had a fairly good pace going when we began the ascent toward campus, but the series of stairs and hills really put our legs to the test. After a brief stretch break at the top of Upper Campus, we ran to the north end of the school property and found a step ladder over the side of a fence. When we spotted the trail snaking up the mountain on the other side, we knew we’d found the right trial. It took us about half an hour in total to reach the memorial, which was glowing gold with the first rays of morning sun peaking over the mountain range far across the Cape Flats. The view was gorgeous and the memorial itself was quite beautiful with its bronze lions, stone steps, and statues of Mr. Rhodes (to whose name the property still belongs). There was a certain tranquility to the location in the early morning light and a stillness that was a calming departure from the noise and motion of life at 10 Loch Rd. The air smelled distinctly of burnt wood, and the blackened chars of the recent fire marked a scarred path up the hillside nearby.

I had already packed away my small camera for our trip to Durban, so I didn’t have a chance to take any pictures, but I’m sure we’ll do the morning run again, since it was both exhilarating and refreshing – and of course, gratifying when we reached the top and could survey all of Cape Town’s southern suburbs.

20 Mar 2009 – Camps Bay, Classes, and Idasa

Almost three days later, the smoke is still rising off of Table Mountain, but the fire trucks and helicopters dropping water have reduced the fires to isolated patches of burning brush. Driving back along the N2 from the city, last night, the smoldering orange glow of the fires dotted the woods beside the highway, which was lined with emergency vehicles flashing warning lights. We’ve heard that this was the largest fire on the mountain in five years, and as many as sixty homes were evacuated the night that it began. Several injuries and one death have been reported, but fortunately, the worst of the fire has passed since the first night. Now the charred undergrowth on the northern slope of the mountain is only casting clouds of light gray soot over the homes and shops that sit uncomfortably close to the embers.

Though I’d arranged not to go into Black Sash on Wednesday, I spent most of the morning finishing up a report that we were responsible for circulating by the end of the week. After lunch, Hilary and I took a minibus to the Cape Town taxi rank and then a second taxi to Camps Bay, a beautiful beachfront location that attracts many tourists to the Cape Town area. The cooler weather kept us out of the water, but we combed the beach beneath Lion’s Head and the Twelve Apostles for almost an hour and then walked down the palm-lined street of tourist shops and restaurants filled with Europeans in resort attire. Before hopping a minibus back to Cape Town, we bought ice cream cones at a gelato shop by the beach and scanned the roadside tables of South African curios.

At Hilary’s request, we spent the rest of the afternoon in Cape Town, cruising through the stands and stands of trinkets at the outdoor market on St. George’s Mall. We haggled with a few vendors and observed that most of the stands were selling identical items. After a small bite to eat at one of my favorite city cafés, we walked to Edgar’s department store, where we spent the last hour or two of the afternoon browsing the sale racks. The ultra-commercial location was hardly a South African tourist staple, but Hilary seemed to enjoy herself, and after all, the pretenses of her stay in Cape Town were quite different than mine.

We joined Dan, Dan’s dad, Vincent, Molly Blank, and Ben for dinner at Marita’s on Wednesday evening, as is customary when members of our group have guests visiting. Over dinner, the company and conversations (not to mention the food) were quite enjoyable. The topics ranged from Cape Town experiences to family and friends to the Table Mountain fire, and were at times light-hearted and fun, at times thought-provoking and insightful. Hilary and I enjoyed ourselves immensely and to top it off, left at 9 o’clock with of bag of extra cheese biscuits.

On Thursday, Hilary joined me at UCT for classes in the morning and afternoon, and after a stop back at the house for her to finish packing, we went into town for a lecture in place of Marita’s class. The lecture was held at Idasa, the institute for democracy in South Africa, and covered issues of politics, gender, and society in the lead-up to the April election. We mingled with other guests over hors d’oeuvres in the lobby before sitting down to an hour-long lecture on voter statistics, party trends, and media influence. Several political analysts and social researchers delivered the information piece by piece. A question and answer session followed, and a little after 8PM we took a cab back to Rondebosch and Hilary and I prepared to head off to the airport. Her flight was scheduled to depart at midnight, so we took a cab around 9:30, and the drop-off and check-in went without a hitch.

Since our group is leaving for the week-long academic excursion to Durban early Saturday morning, most of us spent Friday at our activist projects and then packing and preparing for the trip. We ran errands to Main Rd, cleaned up the house, and tried to finish eating any food that might go bad during the week we are away.

Our destinations are supposed to be absolutely gorgeous, and the activities we have planned will be significantly different than our usual routine, so the entire group is looking forward to the trip. With any luck, we will have internet available to us on Monday night (and perhaps a few other times during the week, as well). Updates may be more sporadic than usual, but regardless of the delay, rest assured that pictures and posts will be forthcoming.

17 Mar 2009 – Cape Town, Penguins, and Fire on Table Mountain

As usual, Monday morning sent us off to our internships, though Hilary joined Cassidy and I at Black Sash for the day. We worked fairly diligently on finishing up one of our reports due later this week, but incorporated an extended lunch into the afternoon so that we could visit two of our favorite lunch spots in the city: Fresh Stop and Charly’s Bakery. We bought freshly made sandwiches and fruit salads at Fresh Stop and then walked the four or five blocks through town to Charly’s for a pastry dessert. Suffice it to say, we spent the rest of the afternoon trying not to fall into a post-lunch coma, while putting together the final details on our latest consumer safety report.

After work, we took the minibus back to Rondebosch and split the evening between running around the Commons, making omelets for dinner, and watching two recent episodes of House that Hilary had brought from home. The internet has been finicky, lately, so our attempts to check email and Skype were largely unsuccessful. Instead, much of the house spent the evening working on papers and talking about various events from the past weekend. Six people had spent Sunday shark diving a couple of hours outside of Cape Town, and their descriptions of the safety cage and the sharks that swam within a few feet of them made the expensive activity seem more than worthwhile.

Monday and Tuesday were two of the coolest days that we’ve experienced in Cape Town, and on Monday there was even an hour or so of steady, light rain. Though some of the group has become spoiled by the dry, warm days of South African summer, I found the change in atmosphere long overdue, and I embraced the relative chill during my brisk run with Hilary on Monday evening. Without consulting a thermometer, I can only guess that the nights have dipped into the fifties (Fahrenheit), recently, and we’ve had to don long sleeves and socks to stay comfortable as we shuffle between the main house and the pool house after dark. Of course, the wind continues to whip through the windows and slam the heavy doors inside the house, regardless of the weather.

I’d arranged to take Tuesday and Wednesday off from Black Sash so that Hilary and I could spend the last days of her visit seeing more of Cape Town. So after finishing up a paper on Tuesday morning, we set off for Main Rd. to pick up bottled water and an iced Choccochino Crush from Cocoa Wa-Wa before catching the train to Simons Town, a charming little village at the far edge of False Bay, about an hour’s ride from Rondebosch. When the train stopped in Fish Hoek, however, we were ushered off to the front of the station, where a coach bus was waiting to take us the rest of the way to our destination. Like so often happens in South Africa, we never found an explanation for why we’d suddenly had to switch modes of transportation.

At the station in Simons Town we consulted a large area map to find our way to the penguin colony at Boulder Beach, our ultimate destination for the afternoon. The tourist hot spot happened to be over a mile down the coastal road, so we set off with the intent of taking our time and peaking in some of the little curio shops we passed along the way. The single road snaked along the coast, squeezing between the mountains and the ocean, and the area was rich with historic architecture, having first been settled by the Dutch East India Company in the late 1770s.We scanned the trinkets at the market near Boulders and then bought our tickets to the board walk into the penguin colony, where we spent the next half hour watching the strikingly colored land birds waddle, dig, and preen along their protected, grassy sand dunes. Just as they did the first time I visited during orientation week, the smooth, white boulders that sat at the edges of the beach looked as if they’d been craftily carved out of hunks of granite and then dropped at random on the shore. The penguins bobbed about or sunned themselves out on the white sand, entirely unfazed by the groups of tourists fawning over them a few feet away.In the late afternoon we took the long walk back to the train station (stopping quickly for Magnum bars on the way), and once back in Rondebosch, grabbed an early dinner at Wimpy’s diner on Main Rd. Back at the house, we discovered the electricity in the Common Room had gone out – as it had once before – so the internet was down and the room was essentially unusable after dark. Jordan and I spent about an hour running around the house connecting and disconnecting wires related to the phone, internet, and power outlets. In the process of hunting down an extension cord, we found a way to open the mysterious door under the stairs, where we found a very odd assortment of objects and absolutely nothing useful for helping us with the power situation. After a long time sitting cross-legged on the floor of the upstairs hall, surrounded by wires, plugs, and the internet router, we finally found a combination of connections that revived our wireless connection. The house rejoiced.

We had a house meeting scheduled for 8:00, and a few of us watched old episodes of The Office on iTunes while waiting for the whole group to convene in the Mandela Suite (as the Common Room was out of commission). The meeting was especially light given the fast-approaching academic excursion to Durban, and most of the discussion centered on our itinerary and preparations for the trip. After the meeting, Ben and Marita remained at the house as Marita met with individuals who’d yet to have their one-on-one meetings with her over the weekend, and both Dan’s father and Hannah’s father – each visiting for a week or two – stopped in for a while, as well.

But the most interesting news of the night came around 9:30, when several people came rushing into the house shouting about a fire on Table Mountain. Given the hot, dry South African climate and the types of vegetation on the mountains, fires around Cape Town are anything but unusual at this time of year. But over the course of the evening, the red flames that first smoldered in a small area near the Rhodes Memorial by UCT blew north with the wind, and soon they encompassed an entire side of the mountain. We ran back and forth between the Commons and the house three or four times before midnight, watching the mountain blaze and the thick gray smoke sift off over toward the city. The yellow-orange flames licked at the night sky, silhouetting a single line of trees that stood dark and ghostly at the base of the mountain by Groote Shur Hospital on the far north slope of the mountain.The sirens and flashing lights that blinked through the smoke around the edges of the fire appeared ineffective at containing it, and after a few hours, it became clear that this was no ordinary mountain fire. Several people who’d gone out to the city for St. Patrick’s Day evening had to find a new way home after they had to close the N2, the highway that circles the base of the mountain and connects the city to the southern suburbs. Even as I write, the fire continues to rage up the mountain and toward the Cape Town slope, with no sign of stopping. The extent of fire, I suppose, will only be seen tomorrow morning.

16 Mar 2009 – Assuming the Role of South African Tour Guide

On Friday afternoon I took a metered cab to the airport about twenty minutes away. Though we hit rush hour traffic on the highway, I arrived at the international terminal just after 4:30PM, when Hilary’s flight was scheduled to land. I remembered the airport enough from the night we flew in that I didn’t need to ask for directions getting to the arrivals area, and I checked the flight status one last time in the terminal lobby when I hurried in the door. Family members searched for familiar faces amidst the stream of weary travelers appearing from behind the terminal's sliding door, and a number of men in business suits held name signs by the crowd partition.

I took my place right across from the door through which travelers were exiting and turned on my iPod as I waited. Watching the expressive greetings and emotional reunions of the dozens of people passing through the sliding doors, I couldn’t help but flip to the Beach Boys’ song God Only Knows. The song played during the final scene of the movie Love, Actually, as characters reunited with their loved ones in an airport, and the novelty of recreating that scene entertained me until Hilary appeared.

We spent the whole cab ride back to Rondebosch catching up on her flight, which had been slightly shorter than ours (because she flew through Dakar, Senegal rather than Amsterdam) but had required her to stay on the same plane for 18 hours straight. I found myself talking a mile a minute the entire afternoon as we settled all of her stuff into my room at 10 Loch Rd and introduced her to everyone in the house. Just before dinner we walked to Main Rd (via the Commons) to pick up groceries at Checkers, and I continued to ramble on and on about everything we passed. We spent the rest of the evening catching up on the last two months, making and eating dinner, and in my case, reading through some of the magazines Hilary had brought from home.

Saturday morning we trekked across the Commons again a little before 9AM for a meeting I had previously scheduled with Marita. At least twice during the term we each have one-on-ones with our professor to discuss the internships, classes, and life in Cape Town in general. We left to meet Michelle and Emily A at the

train station near Main Rd at 10:00, having shifted our activist project from Friday to Saturday.

We rode into Fish Hoek by train, then took a minibus to Lekker Water Rd. and walked into the busier-than-usual TEARS compound. The weekend morning had brought in several potential animal adopters and a group of children from a local primary school on a class trip. Once we’d taken Hilary through a brief tour and introduction, we jumped into dog walking and joined a few other Saturday volunteers on the quiet industrial road.

Around 12:30, we walked the block to Masiphumelele to find the minibus back to Fish Hoek, and as I’d hoped, Hilary got a ten-minute tour of the township as we rolled through, picking up other taxi riders. The streets between the colorful shacks were bursting with activity, which was quite unlike the subdued Friday atmosphere we’ve previously encountered there. Meat fried on a braai by the roadside, the salons and

shabeens (small convenience shops often run out of peoples’ homes) were hubs of activity, and children ran barefoot after soccer balls and old tires on the dusty side streets. It was a great opportunity for all of us to see the weekend activity in the township.

As we’ve done a few times before, we got off the train in Muizenberg on the way home and spent about two hours on the beach. Hilary and I immediately rented surf boards and wetsuits from Gary’s Surf Shop and hit the waves. The relentless wind made the choppy waves even more erratic than usual, so we struggled just to get out to the breaking point, but eventually, each of us got up on our boards a few times to ride a wave in to shore. Hilary – whose always had better balance than I – picked up the technique right away, and if it weren’t for the energy-sapping wind and waves, I probably would have had to drag her from the water at the end of the afternoon.

We rinsed off in the outdoor shower after returning our suits and boards (just $10 each for the time we spent on the water) and then grabbed cones at Muizenberg’s delicious ice cream shop before catching the train the rest of the way back to Rondebosch. When we got back to the house, we were both exhausted and chose to spend the rest of the time before dinner taking a nap and watching some of the recent episodes of The Office that had been copied off the DVR from home. After dinner we waffled over going ice skating with a few people from Cape Town, but opted out of the activity because it was likely to last until at least 1AM, and a separate taxi home would have been pricey. Ice skating, after all, was a bit too reminiscent of the New England climate Hilary had just left.

On Sunday morning, Hilary and I ran a lap around the Commons and ended at Woolworth’s to get a few more items, particularly a big bottle of water. The water in Cape Town has a very distinct taste, which might not be too dissimilar to Connecticut well water but certainly differs from the town water we drink at home. In the first few weeks here, I’d assumed I would never get used to it and would have to buy bottled water everyday for four months, but thankfully, I adjusted to the taste as time went on and now rarely have a problem with it. In the beginning, some of us started a system to gauge the daily acridity level of the pool house tap water using a modified version of the Bush Administration’s color-coded terror threat system. Yellow days were only moderately distasteful, while red days we kept our glasses away from the faucet altogether. Today we’re unlikely to describe the water as anything worse than a level green or yellow, but during Hilary’s brief stay, she’ll probably be sticking with bottled water.

Sunday afternoon Emily A, Hilary, and I took a minibus taxi into Cape Town with the intention of doing a bit of sight-seeing and then hiking Lion’s Head again to see the sunset. While we were walking around the eerily quiet downtown (the city is exceptionally empty on Sunday afternoons), we picked up on an unusual vibe as we rounded a corner. A block later we stumbled upon a film shoot and immediately changed course so that we could (nonchalantly) stroll past. Given the recent star-sighting in Rondebosch, we inevitably jumped to conclusions and had our eyes peeled for Morgan Freeman or Matt Damon, but once we passed the lighting screens and camera equipment we found a pair of shiny black sedans and realized it was merely a car commercial.

We wandered up the street to the Company’s Garden, a gorgeous green park running through the center of the city behind Parliament. We branched off the cobblestoned walk and into the actual gardens, which contain hundreds of indigenous African flora, and then stumbled across a quaint café at the edge of the property, where we sat down for an early dinner. The light chatter of a wedding reception on the lawn nearby and several intrepid squirrels at our feet kept us occupied during the meal.

Around 5:15 we began walking southwest through the city towards Table Mountain and Lion’s Head, which encase the metro on two sides like a bowl. Lion’s Head poked out behind the buildings, a distant, brown-rock silhouette, so when we began our walk we hardly expected to reach the base of the mountain by foot. By 6:00, however, we'd covered quite a distance and were faced with the decision of either calling a cab for a five minute ride or hiking up the steep, winding road to the base of the trail on our own. Our physical energy, we decided, was more expendable than our cash, so we chose a variation of option two: we created our own path through the brush at the base of the mountain, and fought our way through prickly shrubs up the rocky, uneven mountainside. Twenty minutes later we came crashing out of the brush onto a vacant dirt maintenance road, knowing we’d overcome some very difficult odds. The rest of the hike would only prove a further test of our endurance.

This second hike to the summit of Lion’s Head proceeded much like the first, except that it required a bit more coaxing and reassuring on my part, since my climbing partners weren’t quite as gung-ho as the ones I'd climbed with the first time. The hour and a half of climbing to the trail base also put a damper on our energy for the difficult ascent. When we reached the chain-assisted climbs, the sun – which was out of view on the Western side of the mountain – had already flushed the Twelve Apostles red, and we scrambled to the “brow” of Lion’s Head just moments after the sun had sunk beneath the watery horizon. Nevertheless, we pushed on to the peak, utterly exhausted and nursing a few bumps and scrapes. The final rock climb to the top was just as surreal as the first time we’d done it, with the pinkish hues of twilight casting dramatic shadows across the craggy rock face and an ever-darkening eastern sky.

We had time for just a few pictures and a quick snack when we reached the top, which was much less crowded than it had been on the full moon. We noticed with a bit of anxiety that the moon was no where to be found as we began our descent, so we made haste (at least as much as possible on the tricky mountain trail) down the “recommended route”, avoiding the rope chains in the dark. Ever vigilant of potential muggers, we kept our flashlight trained on the surrounding mountainside, and as we circled around to the western side of the mountain, we soaked up the view of the stars over the ocean and the sound of the thunderous surf crashing far below.

We called a cab as we neared the bottom, and reached the end of the trail around 8:15. After a few minutes of catching our breath on the curbside, the cab arrived to whisk us back along the sleepy N2 to Rondebosch.

13 Mar 2009 – Gordon’s Bay Conference, Classes, and an Impending Arrival

Wednesday continued the trend in new experiences and new places when Cassidy and I were whisked away to Gordon’s Bay just after noon. The Black Sash national office has been almost empty since Monday because of the national conference taking place about an hour away near the town of Strand. The office had arranged transport for us from the office at midday on Wednesday so that we could sit in on some of the conference, but aside from a quick glance at the meeting itinerary last week, we had no knowledge of what awaited us that afternoon.
The first surprise was the hired car that drove us out to the scenic town of Gordon’s Bay. It was the first vehicle with air conditioning that we’ve encountered in over two months. Though it was a small hatchback, the interior of the vehicle resembled an American SUV and still had the new car smell. Cassidy and I nearly fell asleep during the smooth, cool ride down the cape. Then we arrived at a four star harbor resort and marina, and the car drove off, leaving us standing in the lobby without an inkling of where we had to go. Eventually we found a message board that indicated the conference room, and walked down the halls of the first floor searching for a Black Sash sign. In the meantime, we passed a ritzy hair salon, a decorous dining room, and a fitness room built inside the fake hull of a ship that poked out of the first floor walls on all sides. The conference had just let out for lunch when we stumbled across the room, so it was the perfect time to meet up with our four national office staff members, Jane, Nyembezi, Ratula, and Elroy. They greeted us warmly and encouraged us to join them for a delicious buffet lunch in the dining room.
Over lunch we were introduced to several provincial office staff members, and then Elroy led us out to the boardwalk porch to overlook the mountain lined bay and man-made marina encased by over-the-water condos. We’d been given the option of staying over in the hotel that night, but had declined because of our classes the next day. Seeing the hotel and the surrounding scenery, however, we wished we’d reconsidered. It is very unusual for a non-profit like the Black Sash to be able to afford a venue as extravagant as the Villa Via Hotel for their annual conference, but with the economy taking its toll on tourism, the resort had offered the best deal.

We spent the afternoon sitting at the edge of the conference room as Elroy and Jane led information sessions with the twenty other Black Sash staff members who were present. We broke for tea around 4 o’clock, but spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening discussing local debt relief and municipal governance. Considering the size and position of the organization within South African civil society, it was sobering to see that Cassidy and I were among only a few attendees who actually had laptop computers with us. Through the hours of discussion, we gathered that the provincial office staff was strongly rooted in the poor communities they helped to serve and educate. Elroy spent most of the afternoon scrolling through legislation on grants and subsidies on the projector and engaging the rest of the room with questions about the local implementation and impact of certain policies. We certainly didn’t have the proper background to understand much of what was discussed, but we did gain valuable insight into the structure and functioning of the Black Sash at a broad organizational level.


Thursday’s nine hours of class went on as usual between UCT and Marita’s flat. In the morning class we covered the South African Bill of Rights and the responsibilities of the state to protect and promote Human Rights since 1994. In the afternoon, we helped Vernon to establish the criteria with which he would evaluate prospective students for the study abroad program from UNC Chapel Hill, which sends students on a similar program in the fall semester, and then we discussed the outline for our third internship-based research paper. The evening class included the usual discussion and short-film viewing, as well as snacks, dinner, and a delicious Malva pudding.

I spent Thursday evening rearranging my room to make space for a second bed, and then dragged in the extra bed from the empty room between the two “houses” so that Hilary – whose plane will be arriving later this afternoon – would have somewhere to sleep for the next week. Though I’ve been planning the itinerary for her six-day stay in Cape Town for the past few weeks, it is still difficult to imagine that anyone from home could possibly be visiting. Over the last two months, this little microcosm of life abroad in South Africa has existed entirely separate from the rest of the familiar, Connecticut world and the people we’ve left there, so the collision of the two will be very interesting. Hilary’s long-awaited visit will surely cast a new light on some of the things I’ve come to find common place as a (relatively) “seasoned Capetonian”, and I expect it will be a lot of fun to introduce someone new to the many places and experiences of the Western Cape.

11 Mar 2009 – Hosting Dinners and Moonrise from Lion’s Head

We launched into Monday morning less than twelve hours after stepping off of the van from Plettenberg, and the pace of the weekend has not slowed, since then. After our internships on Monday, most people had to go food shopping, and we’d arranged to have Vernon over for dinner to make up for the class we’d missed last Thursday. We had tried to arrange a plan for buying and preparing the food for the communal meal while on the road back to Cape Town the previous night, but between 4 and 7PM on Monday, the main house kitchen was a frantic rush of activity. About half of the house had some direct hand in the purchasing and preparation of the meal, which included meat and vegetarian options for the main course of sautéed sausage, peppers, and other vegetables, baked potatoes, rice, and side salad.

The dinner had come together surprisingly well by the time Vernon and Marita arrived at the front gate. We scrounged up silverware from the pool house kitchen and all convened in the dining room to eat and discuss our newest class assignment. The night would not have been complete without the reiteration of the weekend’s most interesting moments, however, so there was much reenacting and recounting of funny and dramatic moments from the Garden Route.

Tuesday marked the second to last full moon of our time in Cape Town, so we had planned a trip to the local’s favorite moon-viewing spot, Lion’s Head Mountain. Every month on the full moon, hordes of Capetonians climb the jutting mountain peak to watch the sunset over the Atlantic and the moonrise over the city of Cape Town. Lion’s Head sits between Signal Hill and Table Mountain, and as the pictures show, the peak itself is a bare, narrow wall of rock that from certain angles resembles the profile of one of Africa’s “Big 5” animals. Through their activist project, several members of our group have become friends with a young man Khayelitsha, and he helped to organize our transportation to the base of the mountain at 6PM. We’d been

prepared to ride in the back of a pick-up truck – since that is what we’d been told to expect – but just before 6, a van like the one we’d taken to Plettenberg rolled up outside our front gate. The eleven of us who’d opted to do the hike hopped in the van for the twenty minute trip into the city, where the driver dropped us at the bottom of the steep, wide trail up the mountain.

The sky was already turning pink as we began the ascent, so we took off quickly, in hopes of catching the sunset on the Western side of the mountain. The dirt trail wound once around the mountain before narrowing into a tricky, hand-and-foot rock climb for the second half of the hike. The twilight shades and shadows on Table Mountain and the Twelve Apostles were breathtaking as we rounded the southern face of Lion’s Head, but we were moving at such a fast clip that we were splitting into smaller groups as we hiked. Clusters of other hikers also on their way to the top began to separate our group, and we wound up taking separate paths towards the peak. Three continued on the “recommended route” (the most gradual and lengthy path, ending at a slightly lower peak) and eight of us took a narrow trail that zigzagged up the eastern face of the cliff at a disorienting angle. The view at our backs was the sprawling city bowl, the moon rising over the clouded mountain range at the far edge of the cape, and the hulking shadow of Table Mountain. Kevin, Dan, and I scrambled up the mountain as fast as we could, trying to reach the top before sunset, but the rope chains and bouldering were a little too exciting (and dangerous) to speed through.

When we reached the “nose” of the lion, we got our first glimpse of the sun hovering over the sea, poised to sink beneath a broiling layer of orange-yellow clouds that rippled just over the water on the horizon. The ridge to the top of the head required us to climb a steep strip of rocks so narrow that it reminded me of Knife Edge on Mount Katahdin in Maine. The 360 panorama as we reached the approached the top was simply overwhelming. Below us to the south stood Table Mountain, with Camps bay lying just beneath the reddish peaks of the Twelve Apostles. To the west stretched the vast expanse of ocean and low-hanging clouds, awash in sunset hues. To the north, the slope of the mountain arched upwards into Signal Hill, which nestled between the Waterfront, Green Point, and Bo-Kaap. And in the east rose the flat, white face of the full moon against the dark purple sky over the twinkling Cape Town metro. It didn’t matter how many times we spun around at the top – the view was impossibly beautiful. The colors! The contrast between night and day! Watching the sun melt into the Atlantic inch by inch was purely cinematic.

When we’d finally trudged up onto the small, rocky peak of the mountain, sweaty and out of breath, we were surprised by the number of people already lounging on the cliffs facing west. At least a hundred people – most wearing clothes that wouldn’t seem conducive to a technical climb – sat in groups either chatting or snacking, all bathed in the surreal orange light. We took countless photos in each direction off the peak, lingering on the sunset for the next fifteen minutes, until the yellow orb had shivered its last shred of light over the ocean.

Though the western sky continued to resemble an oil painting, we devoted the next hour to surveying the moonrise, as other members of our group joined us. In the end, eight of us gathered on the eastern face of the peak and watched the sprinkling of city lights multiply under the ever-darkening sky. Clouds were moving in over the distant mountains, and the lights they partially obscured seemed to flicker and dance in the darkness. We stayed at the peak until long after dark, realizing around 8:30 that we still had at least an hour and a half’s climb down before we could drive back to Rondebosch.

The climb down was admittedly treacherous by moonlight – even full-moonlight – and certainly nothing any of us could imagine being able to do in the United States. While scooting down the rock ledges in the darkness, I repeatedly turned to look back up at the cliffs behind me to see the seven other shadow figures moving slowly downwards against the starry night sky. The camera simply couldn’t capture the scene.

We made it down the chain ropes and rock scrambles with the gracious help of a Capetonian couple wearing headlamps. And despite one person’s twisted ankle, we reached the bottom of the path around 9:45. Our van and driver were waiting for us by the side of the road when we arrived, so we returned to the house just after 10 o’clock, feeling both accomplished and fortunate to have been able to see such a rare and stunning natural event.

8 Mar 2009 – Tsitsikamma and Plettenberg Bay, Pt. 4

Note: More photos to be added shortly.

On Sunday morning the sunny, sleepy town of Plettenberg Bay was quieter than ever. It was also very gray and cool. Ordinarily the change to cooler weather would have been welcome, but given that our AM plans were to head out on the ocean in open water kayaks, it was a bittersweet turn of events. The eleven of us who remained committed to the adventure walked about ¾ of a mile down to the beach around 7:45, looking for a place to eat breakfast. Eventually, we decided to try the resort hotel on the edge of the beach peninsula, so we walked into the lobby of the monstrous building and asked to be seated for breakfast. Apparently our request was not unusual, and we wound up sitting on the patio overlooking a broad expanse of artificially green grass and lawn chairs sloping down to sea.

Most of the kayak group spent the half hour over breakfast waffling over the decision to actually go out on the water. The sea was choppy and the sky hardly bright and sunny, so when people caught sight of the sign for spa massages, they rotated the full 360-degrees in the revolving door and re-entered the hotel on a mission. The other four of us walked down to the beach to meet up with the kayaking crew at Dolphin Adventures, but the 16-person reservation and 4-person arrival set us off on a shaky foot with the staff. Feeling a bit put off, ourselves, as the manager preached to the choir about failing to show up after making provisional bookings, we dialed as many cell numbers as possible to try to contact the other members in our group, and thankfully, three of them happened to walk by before we suited up and set out on the water.

The weather remained gray with an offshore wind until the moment we returned to land, but the two hours on the water were still quite enjoyable. We were paired in tandem kayaks with a guide joining our seventh person, and once we got out past the crashing (cold) surf, we learned to steer and paddle together very quickly. We set a brisk pace toward the rocky point around the hotel, and then set off through choppy seas, hugging the coast as we approached a nature reserve. The laborious paddling – especially after days of other physical activity – eventually slowed everyone down, and we settled into a four-boat holding pattern at the far end of our journey, surveying the water for friendly fins. Unfortunately, we encountered no aquatic wildlife, and the fifteen minutes of bobbing and rolling on the waves took its toll on my stomach.

The paddle back to the launch site seemed to be much faster than the trip out, and we conquered the rough waves on the push in to shore. The two young English women in the fifth kayak were not so lucky and had to drag themselves from the water with their boat, sopping wet. Dolphin Adventures provided us a warm shower and a cup of tea before we departed for lunch at the Surf Café, a spot the English women had recommended. We walked down the beach opposite the way we’d come, and then took a long a curving suburban road in a wealthy area out of view of the ocean. Just before we gave up the search, we spotted the restaurant sitting on the second floor of a small, well disguised store complex. The restaurant would have fit in perfectly in Southern California with its bohemian surf vibe. We spotted a black, upright piano against the wall when we walked in and a guitar case sitting on top of a bookcase in the corner. Colorful surfboards hung on the walls and the tables and chairs inside and on the patio had a rustic, bleached cottage look to them.

Surf Café also happened to be a Mexican restaurant, so we ordered our quesadillas and tacos and relaxed on the big bean bag chairs that circled our low table on the platform in the corner. Mellow American music streamed faintly in the background – artists like Jack Johnson, Snow Patrol, Bob Marley – and when we finished our meals, we were all very content to remain in the almost-empty restaurant as we waited for the rest of the group to meet us outside with the van. We each made trips to the QuikSpar grocery store a few doors down to pick up snacks for the ride back to Cape Town, and around 2:30 we finally got on the road.

The ride home to 20 Loch Rd. was overall more agreeable than the previous trip, as the day was cool and the passengers were more prepared for the tight quarters. We all caught up on the events we’d missed from the last few days, like the small groups trips to Monkeyland and the Elephant Sanctuary (where a few people even rode the elephants). Those of us who didn’t zone out to books and iPods right away were treated to the other half of the Garden Route – the part we’d missed in the darkness on the way to Tsitsikamma National Park the first night. The coastal mountain road continued to remind of Big Sur, while another person in the group likened the landscape to New Zealand, where she’d recently spent a summer.

The road snaked inland to the rolling yellow-green hills of farmland that remained our backdrop for most of the seven hour ride home. We changed up the seats every two to three hours as we stopped at rest stops for snacks and bathrooms. We opted not to stop for dinner, despite the hour, so that we could reach Cape Town by 9:00, and when we finally pulled up to 10 Loch Rd, there seemed to be a collective sigh of homecoming relief. Amidst musings on how strange it was to feel like we were truly “coming home” (after all, we’ve only lived here two months), people made their way into the locked up house. The amusing stories of the last 72 hours continued on and on, until the last people headed to bed sometime after midnight.

7 Mar 2009 - Tsitsikamma and Plettenberg Bay, Pt. 3

Saturday morning marked the biggest event of the weekend trip: jumping from the highest commercial bungee jump in the world. The Bloukrans Bridge was located just fifteen minutes West of Tube ‘N Axe Backpackers Lodge, so after a breakfast similar to the previous morning, we loaded up the trailer and piled back into the van. All morning the group had been anxious and jittery – some more excited than others, I suppose – and the short ride to the Face Adrenaline Bungee site was filled with nervous chatter and worried confessions.

The group was such a bundle of nerves that the process of checking in, paying, and getting fitted with our harnesses still seems rather fuzzy, but the feeling of sheer exhilaration was undeniable. We gaped at the 218m gap between the top of the bridge and the Bloukrans River valley below, standing on tip-toe and leaning out over the edge of the viewing deck to try to find the end of the rope that dangled from the jump spot at the center of the single-arch bridge. The differences in the ways that people processed their fear and excitement were almost as interesting as the prospect of the jump itself; some were very vocal and fidgety, seeking reassurance, others retreated into themselves and grew very stoic (though the terror still showed behind their eyes). Eventually, a guide led us out onto the catwalk that hangs on the underside of the bridge, and the group proceeded single file to the jump spot. The catwalk had been declared the most visually frightening aspect of the entire bungee jumping ordeal, because the river valley sinks beneath you as you walk across the mesh-and-grate passage, revealing the height from which you’ll be jumping.

Once we arrived at the middle, however, we were shuffled into our jumping order and greeted with the thumping, adrenaline-pumping music from the tech booth near the jumping pad. Though we’d expected the jumps to go according to weight, the order was staggered and Michelle was the first person to be tied into the leg harnesses. If we weren’t nervous enough already, the sight of her simply disappearing over the edge after the shrill, 5-second countdown sent all fifteen of us into a flurry of shrieks and yells. A flat-screen TV on the inside of an overhang by the jump pad played a live feed of the jumpers from a camera on the side of the gorge, so we were able to see what happened every time one of our group members fell out of view. It was truly bizarre.

I was the fifth jumper, so I was fitted with the leg harness while jumpers three and four were heaving themselves over the edge. While others huddled and shook in panic behind me, I slung my arms over the Face Adrenaline jumping staff and hopped to the edge until my toes curled over the rim. Until that moment, all I’d felt was pure excitement. Logically, I knew that no one had so much as needed the back-up harness when jumping from the Bloukrans Bridge, so I was never worried for my safety. But the sight of the river valley nearly 700ft below sent ripples of tension through every muscle in my body as I waited the 10-second eternity for the pre-jump countdown. The music thumped frantically at my back, mingling with the encouraging cheers of the group. The forested hills stretched up the valley and into the distance ahead of me. And all I could do was remind myself to jump forward, throw my arms out, and 3-2-1-BUNGEEEEEE!

In the four-second initial plummet – before the bungee cord begins to tug – the most striking thing is the sudden silence. Sure, the wind is whipping past your ears at an alarming rate, but in an instant, the music disappears, your friends’ cheers have faded, and you are simply dropping down, down towards a green expanse of cascading mountain cliffs. Your stomach flips a few times, but then you feel the sharp tug on your ankles and all of the blood rushes to your head as you begin to bounce upwards again. Your hands dangle freely overhead as you float up in the middle of the valley – a peculiar, inverted Y. You feel gravity taking over again after a moment of weightlessness, and so begins the cycle of falling down and springing up, plunging and levitating. The head rush is disorienting, but the beauty of the wild, Tsitsikamma forest spinning upside down around you is an overwhelming source of calm…

Out of nowhere, a disembodied voice greeted me with a perfunctory “hello”, and then a pair of legs appeared in my line of vision. A few seconds of jostling and the clicking of a carabineer signaled the beginning of our ascent back to the bridge. As we approached, a camera appeared over the edge of the concrete arch and I waved as animatedly as possible. When the bungee staff had finished pulling me back onto the bridge and freeing my legs from the harness, I jumped to my feet and ran over to the rest of the group, which still clustered at the center of the jump area, watching the screen as another person dove off the side.

The first seven jumpers had to exit the bridge so as not to overwhelm the people in the souvenir shop, so we walked back across the catwalk and into the Face Adrenaline shop to see (and purchase) our pictures and DVDs of the jumps. Soon, the other eight jumpers joined us, and we all recounted the jumps we’d had or seen.

Jordan’s jump was of particular interest, given that it resembled something of a feet-first cannonball rather than a graceful swan dive. For many people, the adrenaline high and the feeling of success that followed the daring feat brightened spirits for the rest of the afternoon. We drove the half hour to Plettenberg Bay, where we checked in at Albergo Backpackers Lodge just a few blocks from the beaches, and then ate lunch at a café on the corner, before splitting up to see the town.

Plettenberg Bay bore a striking resemblance to the coastal towns of southern California, except that the streets were eerily vacant of traffic and people. The steep hillside sloped towards the sea, tiered with white stucco, orange-roofed buildings and fancy, walled-off villas. The bright blue Indian Ocean sparkled down the hill, beyond the tops of the main road’s shops and restaurants, and the mountainous bay curved in a wide arc into the hazy distance. Palms and other African flora swayed in the afternoon breeze as Dan, Jill, and I made our way down a secluded path to a boulder-strewn beach. The little “undiscovered paradise” upon which we stumbled became an irresistible photo-op, and aside from a five star resort somewhere out of sight on the cliffs above us and a few fishermen on the rocks far to our right, we had the cove to ourselves. Waves rushed in and swept out as we climbed the rocks in the surf, and then we maneuvered our way up and out of the cove towards the bay along the cliffs. Only after an hour of wandering the Plettenberg coastline did we decide to walk back up the impossibly steep hills toward the hostel.

We met up as a group at 7PM and walked back to the main road for dinner at a slightly fancier restaurant than we usually frequent, and then stopped for ice cream next door before walking back for an early night in the Albergo dorm. Twelve of us shared six bunks in one of the upstairs rooms, and the inevitable antics that coincide with such a large group kept everyone awake until nearly midnight.

6 Mar 2009 – Tsitsikamma and Plettenberg Bay, Pt. 2

Note: Tubing pictures to be uploaded, soon.

On Friday morning we awoke before 7AM, and groggily prepared for a morning of black-water tubing while sharing two small bathrooms. We checked in at the desk/bar in the main room, which resembled the stick house from The Thee Little Pigs and was open to the cool morning air outside. We all ate some combination of granola, fruit, yogurt, cereal, and toast for breakfast, and then we met outside around the campfire ring to listen to the black-water tubing guide (Marius) run through an introduction to the morning’s activities. Our bleary-eyed group immediately perked up when we walked to the side of the hostel to don our super-stylish wetsuits, helmets, and life vests. We resembled something between Teletubbies and Action Heroes once we were all suited up, and the random shreds and tears in some of the suits (“shark bites,” according to the guides) only added to the peculiar image.In classic rural African style, we loaded into the back of a pickup truck and tube trailer and bounced our way along a rutted dirt path through indigenous forest. The guides had explained that the forest in Tsitsikamma contained more floral diversity than anywhere in the world, and many of those unique trees proceeded to pummel us as we drove past their low-hanging branches. The excitement amongst our group of sixteen grew steadily during the fifteen minute ride to the edge of the Storms River gorge, where we hopped off the truck into the forest clearing and grabbed our tubes. Brief safety lectures bookended our steep climb down into the gorge, during which we clung awkwardly to our tubes with one arm and a series of ropes and trees with the other.

The black-water guides and two of us with waterproof cameras took pictures during the three hour float-paddle-swim-kloof-rock jump trip. Our first few minutes on the water had most of the group in fits of laughter and grinning broadly beneath soggy water helmets. We floated through black-water pools that were fresh enough to drink (but blackish because of the tannin, the same ingredient that gives tea its dark color), and awkwardly hopped along the rocks and marsh grasses in the places where rapids would be located in high water. Our guides playfully flipped our tubes or challenged us to tube-standing contests. Four or five times during the trip, they pulled off to the side of the narrow river to climb the walls of the gorge, and jump from 4-8 meters into the dark pools below. The steep, forested walls of the gorge rose high on both sides of the river, but in certain places, it was possible to climb the rocks using small ledges or small tree trunks as hand and foot holds. At the designated spots, the guides would jump first, and then one by one we’d decide whether we had the mettle to follow. The first jump was only about 15ft, so all sixteen of us braved the climb and the fall, and the second was a shorter tube-jump, that required landing on your little yellow tube about 10ft below. For some reason, that latter jump required several attempts for most people, as landing in the rectangle tubes was more difficult than it looked.

The jumps grew steadily higher, however, and soon, it took more coaxing to convince people to jump. One jump had a precarious landing between several rocks, and a few minor bumps and scrapes drove most of the group to sit out the tallest of the jumps. The nearly 30ft jump attracted only the bravest (or perhaps foolhardiest) members of our group, and produced many fretful double-takes from the top, peering down through the tree branches into the water below. By the end of the trip, we had had at least two disastrously awkward jumps, several bruised limbs, and a 26-second tube-standing champ. Several of us did a final medium-height jump before trudging out of the water and over to the waiting truck and trailer. Despite the group’s fatigue, the smiles had yet to vanish, and people were already crafting the best recitations of their tubing anecdotes as we drove back along the bumpy forest path to the hostel.After shedding our gear and rinsing off in the thatched-roof shower hut, we met at the long row of picnic tables inside the lodge for lunch. The consensus seemed to be that everyone like the family-style atmosphere, which was repeated later at dinner. In the afternoon, many people caught up on sleep or lounged in the hammocks that were scattered around the property. We moved our bags into the rooms for our second night, which put four of us out in elevated canvas tents (very cool). We walked into “town” along a wide, old dirt road that oddly reminded me colonial Williamsburg. Tall trees arched over from each side of the road, and for a brief stretch, half a dozen one-story buildings lined the road, housing trinket shops, a general store, and a post office. The long, covered wooden porch along the front of the shops looked like it belonged in an old Western.As the heat wore off and the sun began to set, several of us took a lazy walk down the quiet dirt road at the back of the hostel. We’d aimed to take pictures of the sunset behind the tall mountains that flanked the little village, but in the foggy twilight, we stumbled upon a rural township and got lost in the sound of children playing yard games and dogs barking through the muted mist. After dinner, we met in a common area outside Ben’s room at 9 o’clock to play a rousing game of Mafia as the crickets and stars came out for the night. We had another early morning on Saturday, so we didn’t linger around the fire for very long. The hostel was bustling in the dim light of the bar and campfire, and a few of us played pool or Pictionary before turning in for the night. I set my alarm for 3AM so that I could wake up and take in the stars, once again, but as could be expected, my attempts to capture the mesmerizing night sky in a photograph were futile.