Keepin' things classy in Cape Town

Classes are over, finals have started, and we had a delightful closing dinner for my program. Yup, my time is winding down. While some are wasting their time counting down the days left, I’ve been out adventuring.

Here are a couple highlights, my friends.

I hiked Lion’s Head during the full moon. We head up before sunset, hiked above the clouds, watched the sunset while eating a delicious picnic, saw Cape Town all aglow at night, then headed down in the light of a very bright full moon.

It's so easy from above, you can really see it all

Scalin'

Sunset, clouds, mountains. Why so ugly, Cape Town?

I see a bad moon rising

All of the lights

 

Now that classes are over and three weeks are allotted to exams, I have a bit of free time on my hands. What do I do with this free time? Go to Stellenbosch, wine taste, be classy. The usual.

My friends and I headed out to beautiful wine country on Monday, hit up five wineries (go big or go home), and become even more of wine connoisseurs than we already were.

White. Red. Pinotage. Sauvignon Blanc. Riesling. Pinot Noir. Dry. Leg. Tannins. Oaky. Check it.

Wineries are ugly

Really ugly

Wine goes in barrels

Wine goes in bottles

Wine goes in bellies

So exam time is upon me, and my lucky self is done June 1. I’ll be spending the following days basking in and playing around rainy Cape Town. Only good things to come.

Cheers!

Mzoli's Meat

I wanted to keep this post separate from the Township Tour because the environments are so different, but both are Gugulethu.

 

Mzoli’s is a large restaurant in Gugulethu. Basically, big groups come, buy alcohol from unlicensed vendors across the street, hang out in this massive tent, and order HUGE amounts of meat.

I was in a large group that went and we got two giants plates of chicken, sausage, and steak, along with pap. The food comes, and you go at it. Silverware? Unnecessary. Napkins? So necessary. As everyone who has ever had the pleasure of eating around me ever should know that I’m a relatively messy eater. I think this day brought me to a whole new level of mess, but it didn’t matter, because we were all coated in barbeque sauce.

Just to indicate the massive amounts of meat, check out my friend and well-known meat model, Steph:

Before

After!

 It was some of the best braai meat I’ve ever eaten, and boy, we all did some damage. I was quite full when I left the restaurant, and was still quite full when I woke up from a nap a few hours later.

I’m going to miss braais so much when I’m gone.

Township Tour: Welcome to Gugulethu

I recently went on a tour of Gugulethu, a Cape Town township. Going on a township tour is sort of a funny thing- just the whole idea of being a tourist to see poverty feels a little strange. As strange as it was, it was worthwhile to see how a significant portion of the South African population lives.

It’s a large area full of small, informal buildings. We actually went into one shack, made of wood, metal, plastic, etc, so they could easily catch on fire and burn down in a matter of minutes (there was a large, extremely damaging fire in Masiphumelele recently). These families are often squeezed in with no running water, which also means no toilets.

It was hard to see, and especially hard to be a tourist, but also interesting to walk around a play of high unemployment, poverty, and limited resources.

Informal housing

Trash

No grocery stores, only tuck shops

AFRIKABURN

Things I did the first weekend of May:

1.     Drove out to the middle of nowhere

2.     Went to an art festival

3.     Camped in the desert

4.     Face painted strangers

5.     Met a German man named Ralph who made me pancakes every morning

6.     Took candy from a stranger

7.     Road on a land-roving pirate ship

8.     Saw a giant structure get burnt to the ground

9.     Went to AfrikaBurn

Giant art in the middle of the desert, please.

AfrikaBurn, based on Nevada’s Burning Man, was a five-day art festival in the Karoo desert. About 3,000 setup camp, brought everything they needed for their stay, then became part of a self-sustaining community.

Here’s how they describe it: “AfrikaBurn is a creative arts and freedom of expression festival that aims to build temporary community through collaborative arts projects, in a completely non-commercial environment.” Yeah, that pretty much means giant pieces of art, good music, and hippies.

Burning Man Clan

Four friends and I drove in Friday night after absolutely packing ourselves into our car (five people, backpacks, tents, food, water, beer) for a cozy trip. After spending three hours driving down dirt roads in the pitch-black, we were met by cold, wind, and sand. We drove into this massive campsite and squeezed into what looked like a good spot. Then, Rachel and I struggled to pitch a tiny tent in the wind. I’m proud to say we were successful; I think it’s pretty clear that I’m now a champion camper. Now, it was time to roam.

Found a giant shoe. Slid down it.

I need to emphasize again that I was actually in the middle of nowhere. AfrikaBurn just sets itself up in the middle of a national park that is straight-up desert. The layout of the camp was a horseshoe, numbered like a clock from 2-10. So if you asked somewhere were they were living it would be something like “Around 5:30. Look for a bright yellow truck with a purple truck and a white truck with sheep. We’re right next to that.” Most of the music was near the ends at 10 and 2, and huge pieces of art where in the middle. I mean, huge.

When we woke up Saturday morning it was exciting to see this place in the daylight. Tents, camps, people dressed in funny costumes, decorated bikes, crazy vehicles, and more were all over the place. Our neighbors, a couple Germans who have been driving and living all over Africa for the past few years, made some mighty tasty pancakes. Then, we did a bit of face and body painting and explored the place for the afternoon.

Neighbours and "Pancake Express"

My artwork on Becca

I got some tea. I put my handprint on a large canvas. I listened to live music. I painted an umbrella, I wrote on a pyramid. I face painted strangers. Ate soup. You get the idea.

Write on the pyramid, paint an umbrella, see in man in gold leggings.

That night we made ourselves some dinner in the darkness, and also got some potjie from our neighbor, Jan McLachlan, a friendly Afrikaner who loved that we were American. Oh yeah, he couldn’t believe Rachel was a history major. “They still teach history?”

Then it was time for the BURNING. First, there were awesome fire dancers, then the GIANT burning man structure/piece of art thing got lit and fire. Everyone’s gathered around it, watching it go up in flames, and it sounds kind of stupid as I describe it, but I promise it was really, really cool. Then we explored some more. There were pretty much just a bunch of random spots with music and dancing. Like a giant cactus playing trance and the truck that was decorated like a living room with a great DJ and the truck decorated to be a pirate ship. Then I spent another cold night bundled up and snuggling with Rachy.

Burning Man Clan BURNING

Sunday was pretty similar to Saturday. Roamin’. Seeing all the cool art n’ schtuff. We also set up twister towards the middle of the horseshoe. The whole idea of AfrikaBurn is to contribute something to the non-commercial environments, and yes, this was part of our contribution.  I mean, who wouldn’t want to play Twister in the desert? After a few rounds of that, it was getting pretty toasty, since it was 37 degrees Celsius. HOT. So we went to the “carwash,” which was a big tent with a DJ and a nice mist coming from people walking around with hoses, including a little boy in a Spiderman costume.

Success!

The night also proved to be pretty similar. There were a lot of smaller burnings, as a bunch of the art got set on fire.

We left the hippies, the desert, the non-commercialism, the friendliest people super early Monday (a public holiday) morning. We saw a beautiful sunrise and made it back to Cape Town in one piece, without a flat tire (or should I say “tyre”)! Mad props to Laura’s excellent driving skillz.

So after this trip I obviously, I got really philosophical and wondered why the whole world couldn’t be like this. Then, I remembered Lord of the Flies and got back to reality. But yes, if you couldn’t already tell, this was a really silly experience but also one straight from my dreams.

 Cheers!