Saturday, January 05, 2008


Hi – Dave’s wife Sara here, guest blogger for our time in Africa. We’ve been here in Cape Town just five days so far, and have enjoyed every minute.

It wasn’t the shortest journey from the States, at nearly twenty hours of flying - an overnight flight from DC to Frankfurt, an eight hour layover, and then another overnight flight from Frankfurt to Cape Town. By the time we arrived, we were exhausted, but still managed to stay up till nightfall. The German sausages helped. We braved the cold to walk around in Frankfurt for a few hours and drink some beer and celebrate the impending New Year before getting back on the airplane for our New Year’s Eve flight on South African Air – where they did hand out some champagne at midnight and the Germans in front of us talked until dawn. Quite a party…

Cape Town is gorgeous, a seaside city set into a natural bowl between Table Mountain and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. It’s highly developed and ritzy near the seafront, while poverty stricken townships stretch out from the airport as far as the eye can see. We’re here for such a short time that it’s hard to get a handle on the contrast. Plus, the natural beauty of the environment tends to overwhelm everything. And the new year seemed to bring out locals and tourists alike for fun. We managed to catch some of Cape Town’s version of carnival, where crewes of musicians and dancers parade through the downtown area, each with a different tune. Little boys lead the front of each group, they were dancing up a storm and weren’t in the least bit shy despite the huge crowds and gale force breeze.


Summer here brings stiff winds, a phenomenon called the Cape Doctor, since it blows out all the smog and city air. But it’s been particularly strong in our time here, with gusts past 50-70 kph. Turns anyone with hair into Cousin It, or into one of those troll pencils that’s been rolled around a few too many times.

We drove down to the Cape of Good Hope, waved at Antarctica, and endured the gentle breezes there, which can be more than 90 kph! The park is full of baboons that sit in the middle of the road and glare at tourists, and we also saw some ostrich and eland grazing near the shore which didn’t seem to mind the wind a bit.

Neither did the African penguins, aka the Jackass, and that’s exactly what they sound like. There’s a colony of 3000 of them on the way to the Cape, and they don’t seem to mind an entire platform of people staring at them at all hours of the day. They’re sitting on eggs now, and a bunch of downy babies look to emerge very soon.

Today we went down to another area of the coast, Hermanus, along an ocean highway that gives Big Sur and Australia’s Great Ocean Road a serious run for their money. The aim – to dive with Great White Sharks. The reality – to experience the miasma of odor that is 50,000 cape fur seals. Yep, despite the great potential of blubbery seal meat being on the menu, there were no sharks around. A major bummer, considering that they have a 98% sighting rate and there have only been three other days in the past year that the operators haven’t seen any sharks. Just our luck. We have vouchers for a return trip in case anyone wants to send us back here. I am still obsessed with diving with these sharks. After all that time at Discovery Channel writing shark week shows and packaging, I have to do it before I die!

As for the seals, believe us about the smell. They STINK. They are also incredibly playful and a joy to watch, especially the thousands of baby seals yelling for their mothers from shore. Just bring a nose plug.

But no time to return to the sharks as we’re flying to Windhoek, Namibia tomorrow, where apparently there is a seal colony with 200,000 residents. The smell must reach down half the coast…and we can’t wait to see it! We’ll share some tales from one of the driest deserts on earth in our next installment – whenever we find some internet.

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2 Comments:

Blogger SouthAfrica said...

Nice to hear the perspectives of Cape Town from somebody who's travelled a lot. I'm going to links to your blog from our next weekly newsletter at www.southafrica.to

9:41 PM  
Blogger SouthAfrica said...

Hi there. Just a quick note to let you know that we've chosen this blog posting as a potential winner for our SA blog of the year competition. Just sorry to see the postings ending in March, but hopefully you'll pick them up again sometime.

9:51 AM  

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