Table Mountain

We have settled into a nice routine of hiking once a week here, and we are loving it.  We have both moderately enjoyed hiking in the past but never pursued it regularly enough to get into good shape with it.  Now that one of the most beautiful mountains in the world is in our backyard and we have pretty relaxed schedules, there's no excuse!

Our first trip up Table Mountain was with Trevor, the Rotary coordinator for Ambassadorial Scholarships.  He was an excellent guide, taking us up some rock pitches off the normal trail that gave the hike a bit more challenge.  We felt proud when we came across this sign pointing down the trail we had just climbed!

 

Enjoy the views...

Lion's Head

 (Lion's Head from the bottom of the trail)                              (Wildflowers...it's spring here!)

One of our favorite things so far about living in Cape Town is the hiking.  Living right next to Table Mountain, there are tons of hikes within a very short drive, and the views of the city, the ocean, the other mountains, etc. are amazing.  After some relatively inactive years in Vermont, we had quite a bit of work to do getting back into shape once we got here, but the gym time has paid off.  We go hiking almost every week now.

Today's hike was up Lion's Head, which is a relatively short trail with only a few difficult parts.  The trail winds completely around the mountain, so we had beautiful views in every direction.  The section where we were walking right above the coastline was incredible. 

On the way down we met a very loud group of over 100 school kids struggling to the top.  They all asked despairingly how far it was to the top, and one commented “You do this as a hobby???”

We could still hear their shrieking conversations when we got back to our car at the bottom.

Hermanus

This weekend Humphrey and Sonia, our gracious hosts from the Rotary club here, invited us to their vacation home in Hermanus, a seaside town on the southern coast about an hour and a half's drive from Cape Town.  The water there is technically part of the Atlantic Ocean, but it behaves more like the Indian Ocean in terms of currents, waves, temperature, etc.  Spring is a good time for seeing whales there, and we saw several every time we looked out.  They were too far away for good pictures, unfortunately, but we got beautiful views of the beaches and coastline in both directions, some from on top of one of the mountains overlooking Hermanus.

 

On day two, we decided to hike one of these mountains.  We started by climbing a utility trail up to the contour path, but then couldn't find the trail to the top from there.  So with Andrew taking the lead, we just started going up.  A few of the scrambles were hairy, especially since we were climbing on loose rocks and shallow vegetation (some with thorns!) for part of the time.  We weren't able to find a safe climb all the way to the top, but it was a fun adventure and the views made it well worthwhile.

   

Around Cape Town

Today we joined some friends from the Andrew Murray Centre for a touristy day in Cape Town.  Two American students who had been working at the AMC for a few weeks are about to leave, and they had some last-minute shopping and sight-seeing to do.  You know... buy all the carved wooden elephants that no self-respecting African would buy, but that is expected whenever you return to the States?  It was a great opportunity to learn our way around the city, spend time with our friends from the AMC, and take a lot of pictures!  Again, feel free to add captions in the comments.

Albert Luthuli, Desmond Tutu, FW De Klerk, Nelson Mandela...and Franklin

(Follow the links on each name for the Wikipedia article...all Nobel Peace Prize winners for their work in the struggle against apartheid.)

Just for you, Ben Wiechmann.

An award-winning statue.  Please help us figure out what it means!

A bridge to nowhere that should eventually connect the major highways to the World Cup stadium, bypassing the downtown area.

Wooden "fire extinguisher" mounted on a tree, encouraging us to help stop forest fires.  

Franklin does tricks on an "X-treme Racer" we found by the side of the road.

Anne and Ashley practice their "karate kid" moves.

Andrew likes to climb on rocks.

Andrew likes being artsy with the camera while Anne poses contemplatively.

Sometimes a gray day is more beautiful than a blue sky.

It was a great day, although I (Anne) noticed a few times that I feel like a tourist.  I know in my head that we are settling in for a while, and the last few weeks have been quite busy with activities related to that -- finding a flat, buying furnishings and a car, setting up bank accounts and phones, etc.  We have not spent much time doing touristy things.  Still, I don't yet feel like I live here.  Each day is different from the last, so I don't have a sense of a daily-life routine.  This is not a complaint, though, just an observation.  I love having new things to do and large amounts of time to spend doing them.  I also love learning my way around a new place geographically.  After today, we should be decent tour guides when some of you come to visit!

Camps Bay

Today we bought a fridge, a simple enough appliance that quickly grows in importance the longer one goes without it.  We certainly enjoyed our take-out meals in the meantime, but our budget did not!  We were fortunate to find a second-hand fridge through a website called Gumtree (same place we found our flat – South Africa's version of Craig's List) that was reasonably priced, exactly the right dimensions, and had no offensive smells or stains.  The seller even offered to deliver it for us so we didn't have to borrow a “bakkie” (pick-up). 

 

Later in the day we went to look at a couch (which we didn't buy – too big to fit through our narrow door) and ended up in Camps Bay, a beautiful town enclosed by the Atlantic Ocean and Table Mountain.  If you look at the banner picture at the top of the blog, it's the strip of beach on the far right.  With its beach, palm trees and strip of hotels and restaurants across the street, it could be a seaside resort almost anywhere in the world.  The views of Table Mountain, however, make it distinctively Capetonian.

 

Other than people like us climbing on rocks and taking pictures, the beach was fairly empty.  Despite the mild temperatures here, it is technically winter and therefore too cool for sunbathing.  The water is much too cold for swimming at almost any time of year (we are told that it is actually colder during the summer because of winds and currents).  Today, though, we encountered a creative solution to this encumbrance – a man and small child inside a large, inflatable, clear plastic bubble.  

They would walk/roll in it like a hamster in a plastic ball (or American Gladiators in Atlasphere – anyone else remember?), protected from the cold and wet.  The waves were pretty strong, though, so they never got very far into the water without being knocked over, to the great amusement of all us lookers-on.

 

Cozy Mountain Walk-in Fridge

As we write this, we are lounging by a crackling fire enjoying the view over one of the many vineyards located on the outskirts of the Cape Town area.  We are staying in the home of David and Deborah Bliss, long-time friends of Andrew and his family through Park Street Church.  When Andrew spent two months in South Africa in 2003, he was hosted by the Bliss family and worked with their prison ministry.

 

In many ways it hardly feels like winter here, even though we are well south of the equator and stores in Cape Town are advertising “winter sales”.  (One church that we visited is having a “Christmas in Winter” celebration!)  Most days the temperature reaches at least 60 degrees – not the winter we are accustomed to after 3 years in Vermont!  There is one major difference, though – none of the buildings here have central heating.  If it's 50 degrees outside, it's 50 degrees inside!

 

Besides getting to escape from the city and sleep in as long as we want to in the mornings, we are blessed to spend time at the Andrew Murray Centre, the headquarters for David's prison ministry and other outreach programs.  Some of the people that Andrew met his first time here are still around, so he has had the joy of reconnecting with them and seeing how the Centre has developed over the past five years.  We have also finally met the famous Ashley Leimkuehler, also a missionary from Park Street.  (Whenever we had a conversation with someone from Park Street, as soon as they discovered that we were headed for South Africa they asked, “Do you know Ashley Leimkuehler?  She's amazing!”)

 

Which would you prefer: 50 degrees outside and inside, or 25 degrees outside and 65 degrees inside?

Three Continents in Three Days

The trip from Boston to South Africa is a long one no matter how you do it, but the Rotary travel agency, in the process of getting us the lowest possible fare at the last minute (which we greatly appreciate), sent us a particularly long way: Boston to Chicago on Tuesday night, Chicago to London overnight, a full-day layover in London on Wednesday, and then London to Cape Town overnight, arriving Thursday morning.  Nothing like going West when you want to go East, and then going North when you want to go South!  

As arduous as that might sound, and we were certainly dreading it, the trip has been remarkably pleasant so far.  The last few days in Massachusetts, and really the whole last month as well, have been incredibly fast-paced, so even though we are not lying on a beach or sleeping in our bed at home, we are relaxing.  Anne's mother commented before we left that in a way our itinerary was good, because  air travel can be disorienting when you go so far so quickly that your brain doesn't quite register the distance.  We have felt that way on other trips, but not on this one!  When we finally arrive in South Africa, we will know that we have traveled far.

When we first found out that we would be have 10 hours between arrival and departure in London, we were excited.  It sounded like just enough time to leave the airport, take a train into the city, walk around in the fresh air, eat a good meal, see a few sites, and return for the evening flight tired enough to get some good sleep on our way to Cape Town.  Oh, we had grand visions.

Unfortunately, London is sometimes like this:

 

A grey, cold day would not have dissuaded us in itself, but the aforementioned overstuffed “carry-ons” are, well, heavy.  Getting wet isn't so bad if you can dash inside to escape serious downpour, but we weren't going to be doing too much “dashing” with those bags.

So we decided to stay in and explore our own little corner of London.  We observed the local flora...

We sampled local cuisine...

We discovered local marvels such as book vending machines...

Heck with the Tower of London; we found a wonderfully quiet spot just outside the El Al King David Lounge to call home for the day.  The VIP's inside probably had luxurious accommodations, but we were pretty excited by our benches that didn't have arm rails.  We spent a good portion of the time sleeping in relative comfort – resting in the courts of the King. 

 

Overall, it would be hard to find a better 10-hour airport experience.  Have any of you done better?  What is the best way you have found to make the time in an airport go by quickly and enjoyably?