Ken and I are currently on a
business/pleasure trip to South Africa, in which we joined a group
of fruit growers to tour orchards in the Cape Town area.
I have been posting several pics and impressions daily on social media during our trip. In case you'd like to come along for the ride, here is the first several days' worth of those updates:
Day One
~ On the train ride from the
Toronto airport parking garage to the terminal, we met a friendly pilot from
Guelph, who acted disappointed that we were flying to London and couldn’t be on
the flight he was piloting to Frankfurt.
~ Airports are prime locations
for people-watching, if that’s one of your hobbies.
~ I wonder how long airline
stewardesses have to practice in order to muscle those overhead bins shut like
they do; to maneuver food and beverage carts skillfully in tight, narrow
spaces, and to manage walking those aisles with such poise and balance even
during frightening (for me, anyway) bouts of turbulence.
~ It’s nice that a multiple-hour
layover provides enough time to enjoy a meal at a sit-down restaurant in the
airport, and to have a spot of tea. The latter is quite appropriate, too,
especially if said layover happens to be in London, England.
Day Two
~ Africa takes a loonnng time to
fly over lengthwise. Though surely there are longer flights than ours to travel
the north – south route above the continent, our journey from London to Cape
Town meant 11.5 hours in the air. Sadly, there was nothing to indicate when we
flew over the equator; I have nothing to mark the exact moment I first entered
the Southern Hemisphere of the world, except the knowledge that it happened at
some point during our flight.
~ I smelled Africa after we
landed, disembarked the Boeing 787, and were walking up the ramp into the
terminal. Not an odor or an aroma, exactly, but more like an intriguing mix of
earth, humans, and heat. (Probably whiffs of our own humanity entered the mix,
too, after 30 hours of travel!)
~ On this trip, I’m developing a
habit of thanking every cleaning lady I see. It’s fun to watch their eyes brighten
in happy surprise.
~ On the ride from the Cape Town Airport
to our hotel, we passed by what I imagine is a shantytown. I saw a vast area of
shacks lined up end to end and side to side, creating a patchwork of corrugated
metal roofs stretching for what seemed like miles. The satellite dishes popping
up everywhere among them looked so incongruous.
~ The first thing we decided about our hotel room when we walked in, is that we had lucked out and were given a “room with a view.” The scene out its large windows is a fine panorama of the city, with Table Mountain towering above it. Later, we noticed that on the other side of the hotel, the rooms have a view of Cape Town, with the beautiful South Atlantic port and waterfront as the backdrop. If we’d have been assigned a room on that side, we may well have said the same thing – that we had gotten a room with a view. Sounds like a win-win hotel, to me.
~ It was fun to begin meeting members
from our group at dinner tonight. They are a friendly bunch, engaging easily in
conversation about orchard topics, of course, but other subjects, too, such as
hometown areas and family. I decided that fruit farmers are down to earth
people, in many ways. Including literally!
Day Three
~ I hear a lot of apple
terminology in conversations going on around me these days. Trellising,
fertigation, fungicide, Retain and Harvista, bitter pit and scab – things like
that. There’s been a host of apple varieties named as well, many of which I’ve
never even heard of before. The most intriguing to me is First Kiss. Evidently,
it is an apple with enough appeal that people have been known to wait in lines
a block long for the chance to purchase a single First Kiss for $4.00. (think it
should be $4 a peck, instead? 😉)
~ I knew that wild turkeys are pests
in an apple orchard (they especially love Honey Crisp apples) but I didn’t know
they have a special hankering for blueberries, too. One orchardist in our group
told us that he’s seen turkeys actually jumping up off the ground to grab the
berries highest on the bushes in his blueberry patch. His son shot a wild
turkey that was being a nuisance on their farm, and when he butchered the bird
for meat, he found its crop full of blueberries!
~ We got to ride to the top of Table
Mountain in a rotating gondola, a first for us to experience that type of cable
car. A cloud covered the mountaintop when we first arrived, but it soon drifted
away as the sun burned off the fog, leaving a spectacular panoramic view of the
city and the ocean beyond. We had a grand time hiking the rocky trails and
taking pictures as we oohed and aahed over the sights.
~ Our group visited Bo-kaap, a
section of Cape Town that is known for its brightly-colored buildings. Now a
predominantly Muslim neighborhood, the area began as a place where slaves were
housed when they were sent to Cape Town to work in the city. Back then, in the
1700’s, there was a rule that all their houses had to be white. When this
mandate was lifted, and slaves could buy their own houses, they painted them in
brilliant colors to signify and celebrate their freedom.
~ Knowing how easily I get
carried away when it comes to posting photos, I began this series with the
intention of posting one pic a day. One of my readers told me that since I am
following Luci Martin’s example in doing a daily post while on a trip, I am
welcome to also follow Luci’s example by posting more than one pic a day. If
someone gives me an invitation/permission like that, I’m going to take it.
Day Four
~ We went on a Cape Peninsula
Tour, which took us along a most scenic drive on the Atlantic Seaboard. We had
lovely views at Chapman’s Peak, Hout Bay, and the Cape of Good Hope. I always
thought that the latter was the southernmost tip of Africa, but I was wrong. In
reality, Cape Agulhas gets that claim to fame, along with being the dividing
line between the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean. Anyway, the Cape of Good
Hope is the most southwestern point in Africa, and it was an amazing place to
visit, too. We climbed the cliff on stone paths to an old lighthouse, and would
have loved more time around there to explore the hiking trails that had
breath-taking vistas around every turn.
~ Seeing the African Penguins at
Boulder Bay was a highlight of the Cape Tour. The rather small black-and-white-suited
birds were so comical to watch, whether they were waddling around, preening
their feathers, cocking their heads to one side while checking out another
mom’s nest (I loved imagining the conversations that went on in the nursery
section of the colony!) or diving and swimming underwater in lithe swoops. Ken
read some fascinating info about these penguins. They get their drinking water
from the sea, and use a special built-in filter to remove the salt, which they
get rid of then by sneezing it out!
~ I love hearing the South
Africans speak, especially the ones that have a distinct British accent. I got
a kick out of our lady tour guide’s expressions, such as “it walks my mind”
when she meant something puzzled her. She spoke very highly and fondly of a
favorite food called biltong, a dried meat something like the beef jerky we’re
familiar with. I don’t share her appreciation for it, but anyway, when she was
describing the texture, she said its good for tearing off a big piece and
giving to a teething baby “to gum on”. She also told us that a common phrase
around here is “now now”, like you might say we are going to get in the bus and
drive to the motel now now. Apparently, it “really has nothing to do with now;
it just means soon.”
~ We drove by a patisserie named
“The Sweetest Thing” and I pictured them offering First Kiss apples among the
dear little cakes and pastries. Wouldn’t that be just the sweetest thing?
~ I smiled when I saw a young man
sitting on a bench by the beach. He had stacked a pair of diving flippers, the
one slightly slanted on top of the other, and was balancing them on his head
for an improvised sunshade!
~ I wish we knew when and when
not to listen to our guides. They told us to wear long sleeves when we went to
the top of cool and windy Table Mountain, so we took jackets along, but we
wouldn’t have needed to. They said we should wear sunscreen because the sun is
hot at this time of year in the southern hemisphere, and we didn’t put it on
soon enough and now both Ken and I have bright pink foreheads. They said we
should not eat our picnic food outside at the Cape of Good Hope because there
are aggressive baboons there who will come up to you and snatch food right out
of your hands. So we dutifully kept our lunch sacks on the bus, and none of our
food got stolen. But we never even saw one baboon, either. How disappointing!
~ We had a very authentic South African
experience at dinner last night. There was a djembe drum at each place at the
table, and a master drummer taught us how to use them. After the drumming
session, and over the next couple hours, we were served small portions of 14
different foods, such as coconut and mango chicken, sweet potato balls,
venison, and most unique of all – ostrich! Thinly sliced, it looked a lot like
roast beef, and tasted similar, but was maybe a little sweeter. Both Ken and I
really enjoyed it. (There wasn’t any dish that we didn’t like.) The meal ended
with cardamom ice cream and cookies.
~ And I really need to get to bed
now now. (So I can wake up at 2:30am and lie there, wide awake, for a couple
hours. Thank you, jet lag, for being so clingy. ☹)
Some bonus pics:
Remnant of the apartheid era in South Africa (the inscription says Non-whites Only)
Carved animals for sale at Chapman's Peak lookout
An edible flower in my salad
Beautiful gardens in memory of Desmond Tutu, a priest influential in abolishing apartheid
