At Home in Cape Town

After our little fiasco with Ethiopian Airlines, we were very happy to actually arrive in South Africa, and spent our first afternoon enjoying the beautiful air of Cape Town (and the 20 degree F difference between the temperature there and in Accra). Before dinner, we were picked up by our SERVAS hosts, Penny (human) and Cadeau (dog). As it's turned out, this has been a jack-pot, so to speak, of SERVAS experiences: Penny is warm, generous, thoughtful, interesting, and fun. From the two nights we were planning to stay with her, she opened her house up for five, which among other advantages allowed us to rest up, do some reading, and get some of the musty smell out of our clothes, which have finally been taken out of our backpacks. She cooked lovely dinners served with lovely wine, facilitated our touristing, and included us in her outings. And on top of that, Cadeau is ridiculously cute.

We've gotten to do a few hikes in our days here on the Cape. Penny has two hiking groups, one on Sundays and one on Tuesdays, which we've joined for loping walks through a rich forest and a sea-view scrub-covered hill. On both hikes, it was a pleasure to talk to her hiking companions, one of whom in particular stood out for having been the personal chaplain to Desmond Tutu for 20 years. In between the two group hikes, we went up Table Mountain on our own. It was a steep climb, so much so that at times it was dizzying to look out to the city and bay below; more strikingly, though, the climb was breathtakingly beautiful. There was a certain kind of unapologetically pink wildflower growing all over the lower 3/4 of the mountain, which was so exuberant in its pinkness-- here a sea of it, there a few defiant survivors growing out of rock-- that it made me giggle and gasp with every blink of my eyes. The trail up was somewhat crowded, as trails go, with twentysomethings by far the dominant demographic. The top of the mountain, though, where the cable car lets out, was a different story. There was a church group there of at least 300 people-- it seemed to be a convention of churches from all over southern Africa. Everyone was exquisitely dressed, the men in full suits and hats, the women in billowing, daisy-bright skirts and blouses, with matching hats and high heels. Although there were non-church tourists up there too, they were completely subsumed by the wave of church ladies. They were really a sight equal to the views of Cape Town spreading to the sea below.

We got another immersion in the flora of the Cape (a unique biome, called the fynbos, which is 80% endemic species) at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, a sprawling, sloping park with winding paths and open lawns, all replete with plants. There were also some goofy looking guinea fowl walking around, posing for photographs just like the squirrels in Harvard Yard; we saw a couple mongoose, too, playing a spastic hide-and-seek in the brush. The most prevalent species, though, was the Cape Town Hipster, a distinctive form of Homo sapien that came oozing into the park for a free concert as we, in our rather un-hip hiking clothes (see photo of Erik entitled "Cool Cat") were heading out.

Our most exciting species-spotting, although it certainly did not require any wilderness skills, was of the penguins that live just outside of Cape Town. They are African penguins, about 18 inches tall and pleasantly round; when they want to lie down, they simply tip forward and land on their stomachs, looking like one of those toys with the round base that will lean from side to side but never fall. We saw the penguins at the beginning of their molting period, during which they don't eat, so they were not playing in the water, but standing on the rocks or sand, their heads angled up toward the sun. Some were digging nests, which involved lying on their bellies in the sand and using their feet like rotorooters to gouge out a hole, sand flying out behind them. We've seen too many ads for "Happy Feet" lately, and were slightly expecting the penguins to jump into a song and dance routine, but even without that, they were pretty wonderful to watch.

On our last night in Cape Town, we went out with Penny to an African restaurant on a touristy street downtown. It felt a bit strange, especially after eating African food without much pomp regularly in Ghana, to be at a place claiming some kind of authenticity and attracting, of course, only non-Africans (more on that theme in the next entry). But despite that, it was a fun atmosphere, and the game meats that are their specialty were very tasty. We felt sad to be saying goodbye to Penny, who has made us feel nothing but at home for all the time we've invaded her house, but also happy to have had such a warm start to South Africa.